Turning the Corner

First, I have a big announcement… I am now not just a Certified Personal Trainer, I am also a Certified Sports Nutrition Specialist!  Wheeee!   I’m doubly certifiable.  I finished this one a lot quicker than I expected, turns out, I knew most of it already and it took me approximately 8 hours to read the 65 pages of material, watch the 12 videos, and take the test.  I passed with an 91% (70 was passing).

What does this mean?  Well, not much.  I learned a few new tidbits like even my protein consumption out throughout the day and take a concentrated fish oil supplement because I don’t like salmon, but most of it was not a surprise.  But… should I open a business someday that deals with healthy living, I have a little more credibility than “I read about this stuff all the time because it’s interesting to me”.  If I had all the time and money in the world, I’d love to go back to school to do an Registered Dietician program, but for right now, this is good enough.

Excuse me, sir, do you have a moment to talk about riding bikes?

As I’ve belabored over and over here, the previous 9 weeks have been kinda hard on me.  Coming back from a much-needed but also long offseason means I was more out of form by the end of spring than I had been in quite a while.  I also like an idiot chose to do this ramp up over the summer, where everything is harder already even when you ARE in shape.  My only measuring sticks were totally unfair ones: previous years (where I’m 5 weeks behind) and my husband, who comes alive as an athlete after 4 months off in the feels-like-the-center-of-the-sun weather.

Then, last week happened.  I turned a corner.  I had some great weekday training days.  Monday, I rode far behind with faster people and it felt good to push the pace.  Tuesday, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel after that, but I crushed a endurance cycle class + 2 mile brick run (and a swim earlier in the day).  Wednesday was recovery riding, and then Thursday, I finally got out and got that double digit mile run and oddly, it was no big deal. I even sped up the last two miles from high 11s to do race pace – around 10:30s.

Saturday, we took our TT bikes out for some interval work.  We warmed up for about 6 miles, and then did 10 reps of a 3.5 mile loop – we took the backside (about 1.35 miles, very slight uphill grade) fast, and did the rest easy.  I hit 19.6-21.2 mph, with 179-202W normalized power.  I peaked on my 6th interval, but my last half of them were stronger than my first (and it was getting HOT).

After a stop for liquid and a cooldown 6 miles, we headed out for a brick run.  At noon.  In the “feels like 108”.  It took all the mental toughness, but I got through it, and negative split it to boot (10:40, 10:20, 9:55).

I missed one weights session and one swim this week, but still logged over 10 hours and a lot of it was pretty solid, confidence building training.  This week, I have a bit of a stepback week so I can race on Sunday, but still planning 6 training hours + 3 racing.  I’m super excited to toe the line of one of my favorite courses, and only have to do half what I normally do (since the weather isn’t expected to be much better this weekend… SO glad I’m not racing 70.3 miles).

Last week:

• Monday: conference room weights with bands/bodyweight, 19 mile hilly faster ride in 1:17
• Tuesday: 1500m swim (1000m steady, some fast 50s/100s after), endurance cycle (70 mins, 2×3 mins under threshold, 5 mins at, 5 mins over, 2 mins recovery, then an all out 10 minute TT), 2 mile brick run (11:00, 9:40 splits).
• Wednesday: 17 mile recovery ride in 1:19
• Thursday: 10 mile run in 1:56
• Friday: off
• Saturday: 45 mile TT ride in 2:48, 3 mile brick run, 30:45
• Sunday: off

This week:

• Monday: conference room weights w/bands + bodyweight, same hill ride
• Tuesday: splash and dash race (750m + 2 mile run – hoping to take it about 90% and use it as speedwork)
• Wednesday: weights, recovery ride
• Thursday: 5 mile run, some race pace miles if I feel springy
• Friday: off
• Saturday: 1500m open water swim
• Sunday: RACE! 1000m swim, 29 mile bike, 6.4 mile run.

For the race… my goal is to run down third, just like Jack’s Generic.  Whether it’s actually third or tenth, I want to not be a weenie on the run and chase people down.  I run really well off the bike in practice.  I need to put that in play in the race and not let my head get to me and run like I stole it and all those other things that mean JUST FUCKING RUN WOMAN.

As for the other disciplines, I want to swim medium-hard, and not come out of the water completely shelled.  I’m REALLY looking forward to riding my bike there, because other than the chip seal (crack your fillings) roads, I think this is the IDEAL course for me right now.  The first half is mostly a steady, gradual downhill which I love to push.  The second is, minus a few steepies, a nice steady gradual uphill/false flat situation.  Last year I was on pace the first 45 miles to break 18 mph and then *crash*.

Also, this year Zliten will be chasing ME (I start at 8:24, he starts at 8:32) so I will not only be running down 3rd but also running away from my husband (I’ll imagine him as a super scary monster) for those particular 3 hours.

No matter what, my eyes will be on the prize.  6 more weeks total and I race Austin 70.3.

My only food pictures were this and pepperoni pizza this week.  So, as you can tell, I ate absolutely 100% healthy, homecooked food this week.

Let’s just not talk about food and the scale and stuff.  I think it’s probably about time to give obsessing about this a pause, at least until the work changes.  I’m regularly tracking the weekdays, and then just eyeballing it on the weekend (and then, if I remember, tracking on Monday and probably forgetting some stuff).  I KNOW it would be more useful for me to track over the weekend, but I just haven’t.

The progress has pretty much stopped.  And that’s probably ok.  As discussed above, I’m doing more hours and harder stuff, so I need to not be starving myself.  If my body wants more food, it wants more food right now.  I’m not really having trouble with this on hard workout days.  However, during off/light days when all I do is walk 10k steps or maybe do a short swim or something and fitbit says “you have 1300 calories” my body is like “the FUCK we do”.  That was Friday.  And Sunday.

I refuse to go to bed starving when I have to wake up and do 2-3 hours of workouts the next day.  I knew there would be a tipping point.  So, here we are.

This week’s goals:

• Track all weekday food (weekends bonus)
• Attempt to stay -1000 calories but not at the cost of major hunger.
• Spread out my protein and calories better through the day.  I’m getting better at this but still occasionally I end up having to eat two meals worth of food after 8pm.
• Fruits and veggies.  Crushing it so far today with blueberries in my yogurt and a giant veggie-filled salad!

As for the scale, I’ve been consistently weighing 182.  One day, I hit 181.  One day, I hit 183.  But as above, here we are.  I think this is my fall race weight and I can revisit this again come November when I go back to the long and slow stuff in cooler temperatures.  The best thing for me to do is push QUALITY food and pay attention to how things hit my stomach.  For example, I ate a bunch of raw snow peas for snacks a few days last week and noticed I was bloated every evening.  I need to be eating lower fiber or cooked veggies because I’m taking in so many other quality calories.

And because you’ve made it this far, here’s a picture of me practicing being a rich eccentric famous person at Costco.  Ok, fine.  The real reason?  I left my glasses at work and all I had was my sunglasses to see things.  I tried on a coat (as you can see from the picture, it’s not that flattering, so I left it there).  Zliten zoomed off with my phone and the cart, so I spent 10 minutes wandering around the store like this.

At first I was upset because I’m sure I looked like a fucking weirdo.  And then I realized.  Hehe, I look like a fucking weirdo.  Who cares.  I’m sure if anyone did actually notice, they had a fun story to tell when they got home.  So…. yep.  Practicing being eccentric.

Happy Monday, everyone!

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