Adjusted Reality

Month: April 2016

On Happiness

On April 8, 2016

I’m sure it was probably apparent to everyone around me the last few months, I had lost my mojo hardcore. I’m so relived to really feel like I’m getting to the other side of this shit. It’s good to be happy Quix again.

happy

This is a happy face. Lately, this has been forced. After a nice long walk at lunch and paddleboarding after work, this was not forced at all.

Gaining 10 lbs was weighing on me (badup CHING) for so long. And really – who cares? In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t have been such and issue. No one is going to be unhealthy or die over being 10 lbs heavier.

I think my big problem is that I couldn’t do anything about it for so many months even though I wanted to. That’s not true. I made the choice to not do anything about it because I wanted to fuel to race. I felt guilty for not making any progress, but now that I am completely onto #projectraceweight, I feel dumb about that. I could NEVER have sustained anything like this during race season. Losing weight, the process, makes you weak as shit during it. If I would have tried, I probably would have eventually fainted on the side of the road on a long run or ended up in my kitchen binge eating crazy shit like crackers and butter because CALORIES. It’s just how things work, and I can say this because it’s happened before.

Now that I am working on it and making at least a little progress, I feel better about it. Sure, I’m a little frustrated that my husband is down about 3 times as much as I am this month while I’m sticking to my deficit better. Regardless, my face looks a lot more like me, my pants fit a little better, and that plus envisioning how badass I’ll look in my new race kit come July is enough to keep me on the wagon for now. FINALLY, the inertia is going and I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s still very far away, but getting a little closer, so I know I’ll get there eventually if I keep walking. I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

hammock

With maybe just a few stops to hang out in the hammock…

I’m still mentally dealing with having 3 terrible races. I mean, hello, perspective – I finished a 70.3 and 2 marathons over the course of 5 months, I didn’t DNF or get injured or die or anything. I learned things on all those courses. I actually had a SIGNIFICANT bike PR going at Kerrville even though massive cramps until I crashed at mile 50. I ran my fourth fastest half marathon in January, within a few minutes of my PR. I’ve done this racing thing 89 times (yes, I actually went back and counted), not EVERY race is going to be a winner.

I think it was the combination of gaining the weight to fuel performance… and then all my important races sucked. I literally feel like it was all for nothing. Well, besides the pleasure of consuming so many calories in a day for a while, but still, I never would have done that for funsies. I can take a little disappointment, but to have 2 personal worst marathons in a row? Why did I get fat again? Why bother racing? Obviously I’m not any good at this shit, and it negatively impacts my life, right?

Y’know what, it totally makes sense to me to really be proud or ashamed of my races if it’s what I spend 11 months of most of my non-work time and energy focused on. I need this time away more often to not specifically train and if I race, it’s for the energy, the people, the participation, but not for the results. I’m pretty sure my husband MAY DIE if we went months without any racing but I need to be strict with myself that some are JUST for participation. Removing myself from training for a while, I’ve also been able to remove my self worth from my race results. I had another personal worst at 10/20, but I also kind of intended to do that and feel nothing but happy about the day I had.

Various things keep trying to pull me back in sooner, but after being really depressed about racing and training in general the last 6 months, I finished the marathon feeling at peace… but not sure if I ever wanted to do anything like that ever again in my life. Between having some bad bike experiences and feeling like an utter failure at the run this fall/winter, there was not much joy there come March 6. I had ZERO desire to get on a bike with clips, or lace up run shoes in any serious manner.

The good news is that I’m healing. I think it’s going to take the full 4 months of offseason, but if that’s what it takes… fine. I’m getting tingles watching Ironman video clips again, instead of being like, MEH. I’m thinking about doing that a year from now and getting excited, but I’m not itching to even start a training PLAN right now, so it’s very much NOT YET TIME and I’m in no hurry. I had fun doing 10 miles with Zliten and not caring about the pace. I told him I’m ok doing that again during offseason somewhere pretty where we don’t discuss what our watches say and let it dictate what we do.

I rode my race bike for the first time since disaster noob day, and I definitely missed it. I also took my first step towards being less noob-y, I spent 10-15 mins in the back yard practicing the motions of being a confident unclipper. I’m ready to start making some progress there. I’m getting tons of guilt that we’re not doing group rides yet and while I’m standing firm that I’m just not ready to go ride in traffic with a bunch of people, I need to start doing things to get myself there.

feb3-1

Too much of this during the winter. This is not a good way to stoke motivation or run love...

I know winter isn’t really my season to begin with, but I had such a good one last year, I was hoping that my winter blahs were gone for good. Not so much. The cold was actually really mild this year, but the allergies were terrible, which actually kept me inside more. Weather, I can deal with. The air making me sick for a week, I can’t. Even if I WANTED to stupidly brave it, with Zliten’s allergy induced asthma, it was a no go. The treadmill is ok for occasional speedwork or runs in inclement weather, but for 3 weeks of running daily with long runs? Suck.

The bright side is that next year is completely different. I’m not running 2 marathons. Actually, I’m not running ANY marathons. No trip to Florida. No insanely quick ramp ups to half ironman or marathon. No run streaks. Instead, I’ll be riding my bike just about every day as many miles as I can and hopefully discovering bike love the way I discovered run love last year. And at the end of it… I’ll be doing a race distance I’ve never done before, so it will all be a new adventure where finishing is truly the main goal and anything faster than 16:59:59 is totally acceptable in my book.

I was worried that I’d be sad about missing spring training and racing. Sure, I get a *little* twinge when I think about Galveston 70.3 this weekend and the massochist in my head thinks “hey, if we would have ramped up biking this month you TOTALLY could be at that start line”. And that’s actually progress because if you would have asked me that two weeks ago I would have been like…

nope

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

However, it’s truly lovely to enjoy spring in a different way. Long walks. Paddleboarding. Camping. Little bike rides around the hood. Hanging out in the hammock. These things bring tons of joy and a smile to my face and I’m remembering what it’s like to not just be Quix: producer, triathlete, and eater of ALL THE FOOD. And it’s making me happy to not be that me for a little while.

I feel… free. I said I felt free at the finish line of the marathon but I had no idea what free really felt like. I thought the calorie restriction would be terrible, but it just feels freeing to work towards a goal I’ve wanted to tackle for a long time. It feels free to not be stuck somewhere you don’t want to be.

I’ll keep plugging away it until it’s time to do something else. I’ll start dealing with the training and racing stuff when it’s the season to do so. I’m far enough away from both last fall and winter’s disappointments, and next winter’s massive amount of WORK to get to Ironman that I feel like I’m on vacation. I’m in blissful limbo. I had this weird underlying anxiety thing building all winter and now it’s pretty much gone. And for the first time in quite a while, I feel light. And truly happy.

750m, 10 miles, and #hammocklife

By Quix

On April 4, 2016

In Uncategorized

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!

Under Construction

By Quix

On April 1, 2016

In Uncategorized

I’m finally beginning to take the plunge and tinkering with this little corner of the internet, so expect things to fluctuate wildly around here until I get my bearings. I’m sure it would be more elegant to do this all at once behind the scenes and then publish, but I don’t roll like that and you’ll see it changing in real time, warts and all! Won’t that be fun?

#mfw doing web design shit. I don’t know why, but it makes me IRRATIONALLY angry. Hulk smash!

First, I switched to the default layout for two reasons. First, being super boring will hopefully motivate me to get this project done sooner than later. Second, I just wanted to start from zero. Nuke it from orbit. Sometimes it’s the only way.

Second, with a lot of Zliten and the Internet’s help, I was able to finally, after 8 years, get rid of my ugly ugly main flash page and load the blog directly from the main adjustedreality.com site. Effing HALLELUJAH!

I’m happy with my progress for the moment, but it’s definitely not done. We’re not basic functionality and white and drab green around here, no sireee! I may not do all these things in order, but it’s good to have goals, so here’s what’s coming up.

Next, I’d like to get all of that good ol’ social media and community stuff going.

Actual links to me on twitter, instagram, and dailymile. (DONE)
Ways to share my ~~rambles~~ brilliant content on all the said social medias.
A way to subscribe to my blog if you can’t get enough of my ~~brilliant content~~ rambles.
A site search (happily appeared on the default template, but I didn’t have one before and want to make sure it stays). (DONE)
An official “contact me” form that actually goes somewhere I check. Y’know, in case one of the three people that read this want to say hi. 🙂

After that, I plan to update the template to a more mobile-friendly wordpress format. I’m going to try WordPress’s 2016 official one, and see if I can do what I want with that, but while *I* am not a huge phone blog reader, I am definitely in the minority. And I know I hate unfriendly sites when I DO click on a link somewhere on zee mobile. (EDIT: DONE)

Then I want to do some cosmetic shit. This is the stuff I actually have fun with, so I should definitely save it for last so I don’t stop before doing everything else.

Pretty up the headers with rotating pictures, or at least some static pictures that represent me better than a grainy vacation picture from 2011. (IN PROGRESS)
Figure out a color scheme I like instead of whatever exists. (DONE – I actually like the default. For reals.)
Find a way to sort my archives into years, and only display months for the current year (8 years of blog = lots of archives).
Add a related posts section to the bottom of posts. I really like this on other blogs and I’ll have to look for a plugin to do it for mine.
I’ll also probably scrub and polish all the pages to be relevant (Bio, Races, etc). They are all a year or five out of date.

Finally, I have a little soul searching to do. Adjusted Reality has been my playspace since I’ve been out of college and wayyyy before I started doing this biking, swimming, or even running thing (hell, before I even started losing weight from stay puff’t marshmallow gal), and I haven’t ever really found my message. “Becoming more awesome one day at a time” popped into my head so I went with it temporarily, but I’m not quite sure it fits right. Who am I? What does my little corner of the internet want to say to the world?

EDIT: Also, once I decide this, also decide if I want to change the title image.

If I can get there, I’ll be happy with my progress and feel *comfortable* in my own skin here for a while! Stick around to see how it develops.

Questions: anything else you think a good personal website/blog needs? Also, if you can think of a tagline for me, please submit it below. If I use it you get… something cool. I’ll work it out.

Adjusted Reality

“Reality can be beaten with enough imagination.” – Mark Twain

Month: April 2016

On Happiness

750m, 10 miles, and #hammocklife

Under Construction

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