750m, 10 miles, and #hammocklife

After a full month off training and racing, I decided to do the latter twice (sorta) this weekend, while not resuming any of the former.  It was actually a lot of fun!  I approached it like a real life normal person.  Instead of being so focused on time, performance, bettering myself, etc, I decided to frame it like this – hey, I’m going to go be active with a bunch of people – old and new friends – this morning and it’s going to be awesome no matter what the time on the clock says.

Nothing about “don’t take this shit so seriously” really clicked until this weekend.  It took a month of perspective but I think the part of me that was burnt out with the multisport thing is healing.  I can now separate races and my self worth and there’s an option between give 110% and give everything to the course and not bother – it is possible just to go meet up with friends and run and swim (we’ll get to that bike thing again soon…) just because it’s fun.

Saturday was the start of the swim challenge.  Got to the docks, stuff stuff yank yank tug tug… whew.  Thankfully the wetsuit still zipped, even if I felt like a dark rubber sausage.  I jumped in the chilly-but-not-too chilly water (high 60s? 70?) and got my first wetsuit swim of the year out of the way with 25 other friends.  It always goes like this…

0-100m Holy fuck cold cold cold warm up warm up pleaaaaase (while going about 1:00/100m, aka, way too fast)

100-200m Wheeze, pant, wheeze, I am so out of shape omg why body whyyyyy

200m+ Oh, right, now I remember how to swim in a wetsuit… this is fine.

I knocked off the 1 lap (750m) in a little over 15 minutes.  Certainly not my best, but not my worst, and a good first day of the distance challenge.  A bunch of people got in and did lap 2 (or more) but I was like, nope, done.  Could I have swam another?  Probably.  But I didn’t really want to and since offseason is about only doing activity (beyond my 10k steps) when I actually feel like it, I just hung out on the shore and ate the best breakfast half chicken salad wrap I’ve ever had (swim-gries are real, yo).

Sunday was the 10 mile Austin 10/20.  Our initial plan was to go easy, then we got a little race excitement going and toyed around with trying to go a little faster.  We agreed to see what the day brought and roll with it.

Turns out in my heavy Hoka Kailuas, on a 750-1000 calorie deficit per day, without actually training in the last month – easy is the only pace there really is.  The pain cave well was incredibly shallow and that’s JUST FINE with me.  We ran the first half easy with Brian around 11’s, and then he took off for the second half, and we puttered up the (very small but totally significant at this point of my fitness) hills for a 1:52, or about 11:13/mile finish.

I may have been grunting a lot at the end, though after the race I could definitely tell that it was more the shock of “wtf, I haven’t done anything like this in a while” rather than me actually being close to death.  No deep tireds, just me being a little bit wimpy.  But that’s perfect.  I’m happy to keep it light and easy for a while.

We actually even stayed for awards and a beer and part of the concert, it was so weird.  Normally we limp home right away after races and die on the couch.  Instead, it was like… this is a thing I did this morning before getting on with my day rather than being completely wayyyyysted from racing hard.  Again, I love giving it all out on a course, but it was really nice not to have it take up ALL weekend preparing and recovering.

The one nice thing about running 10 miles right now was having more calories to play with.  To be at a 1k deficit, I could have about 2000 calories.  Such luxury!  I was able to have 3 reasonable meals AND also drinks.  The only thing is – I can definitely tell my appetite wanted about 5 meals and drinks. 😛  Distance running makes you so crazy hungry, it’s definitely not the best way to take off weight.

However, being smart about making my calories satisfying when is definitely helping this #projectraceweight cause.

This was Friday night’s dinner – a flatout tortilla with tomato sauce, feta, turkey pepperoni, olives, onions, and green peppers.  I added a chicken patty on the side (not pictured) with buffalo sauce and yogurt blue cheese for a little more protein.  It was pretty filling!

This was Saturday night’s dinner – grilled chicken on the bbq, half in a bun as a sandwich (extra carb attempt for the race which really was too little too late, it’s clear I will not be race-racing until I quit it with the calorie debt :D), a small potato in 1/2 tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and parmesan for oven fries, and broccoli.  Yum!

We were craving fish and chips, so we compromised and did the baked version at home instead.  Good ol’ Gordons and Red Robin oven fries right there on the plate.  It definitely scratched the itch for me, not quite sure about Zliten, but it was a nice filling lunch after racing that didn’t completely break the calorie bank.

I’m looking forward to training again to be able to have the real stuff every once in a while, but for now, the substitutions will work.  Enough real pizza or fried fish and chips to fill me up would be a full days calories.  I’m fully aware the fake stuff probably has chemicals and other crap that isn’t great for long term consumption (the flat-out has a BUTTLOAD of ingredients rather than flour, salt, and water like good tortillas), but less than half the calories is huge right now.

As for actual weight loss progress… not much yet.  Partying Camping last weekend really jacked it up early in the week, but I did finally see a 180-something weight (twice so far), so as slow as it’s going right now, it’s going.  Zliten offered, unsolicited, that he thought my face and shoulders looked different (and he’s a straight shooter, so I don’t think he was just paying me lip service).  This is that magic fourth week where I should hopefully see some progress if I keep it on the straight and narrow so keep my hopefully shrinking ass in your thoughts and send me lots of good mojo if you have some to spare, yeah?

Besides the racing parts of the weekend, we had a pretty normal and mellow one.  We puttered around and did a few errands.  Zliten decided to bike to a few pawn shops to look for some disc golf discs to take to his parents’ house (they have an AMAZING disc golf course 5 minutes away and we want to PLAYYYY).

I also now am the proud owner of a new portable hammock, care of a bunch of birthday gift cards.  It’s probably one of my favorite things right now in life.  I haven’t had a comfortable way to sit outside and enjoy our backyard for a while, since our chair cushions got wrecked (and even then….eh… they were only comfortable when drinking because… drinking).  It was super easy to set up, and I’m pretty sure I spent close to 6 hours in that thing over the weekend just reading and napping.

It did put a damper on my goals to work on my blog this weekend, but I’m pretty sure it was the best option for happiness points.  Oddly enough, the week was a balance of really active without trying to force it (2 swims, 2 runs, 10k steps every day) and still relaxing and soul replenishing.  Perfect.

What’s up this week?

• Sticking to my plan. 1200 calories per day Monday – Thursday, and doing my best over the weekend. 10k steps per day minimum.  Per ush.
• The race this weekend reinforced some of the weaknesses I have in my body right now.  Spend some time stretching and GENTLY start some bodyweight training.  Like the kind where you do a few reps during commercials watching TV.
• I’ve gotten 5 of my 7 days of my Bonaire scuba pics edited.  I want to get the rest of them done.  It should take two casual nights working on it, or just call it my project and really focus one evening.
• I’d like to get ONE thing on my website to-dos list checked off this week (no, that was NOT an April Fool’s joke).  I’m looking into a mobile friendly theme this week so if I *do* get it done, it will be apparent because we’ll no longer be the default theme! (EDIT: trying this one out for a while.  Images need to be recentered but I’m really liking it so far!)
• Paddleboardng on Wednesday after work.  Water time!
• Checking out a new salad place near work for their soft opening for FREE.  Free healthy food is the best!
• Camping!  We’re going to a place where there’s a beautiful lake for kayaking (and mayyyybe swimming, depending on how warm it is), a super nice place to bike, and some great trails to run and/or hike.  I’m looking forward to another weekend outdoors!

And if I don’t get every single thing on this list done it’s ok, because that’s how we roll here with #projectspring. 3 weeks down, 13 to go!