The Fall Stall

How is it November? I mean, all the things happened, but really quickly, and now we have two months left of 2021. Uh… what?

I intentionally took October a little chill in terms of training. We went on lots of “spookywalks” after work to check out the Halloween decorations in the hood, and I kept up with weights twice a week most weeks, but ignored my bike, my running shoes, and the pool was right out. However, in the last week, I realized that I am a better human when I have some swimming, biking, and running in my day, so I’m working on getting back to that.

I also started tracking my calories and weight when I returned from vacation. The scale was not kind, but it could have been worse and I’m trying to do this thing with the weight through the end of the year, even if it’s during what is normally “the fall stall” (as in, stalling any sort of progress). Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are days, not months, and I shall aim to remember that. It’s been challenging, not going to lie. To be honest, for a few weeks it was going in the right direction, but then a few things happened:

1. Joel wrecked his back, and he’s mostly out for a few weeks. This shouldn’t matter because mine is actually behaving just fine, but having someone else motivating me to do stuff helps.
2. The weather changed, finally. On the positive, I can get outside almost at any point of the day. On the other hand, I’m not forced to get my workout done so some days it’s lead to me putting it off until never.
3. I splurged a little bit Halloween weekend, the scale went up, and now I’m frustrated with it and have been rebelling by “forgetting to weigh myself” this week.
4. I’m in this spiral where I get stressed about something, I sleep terribly, I’m tired, I skip my workout, I’m stressed, I sleep terribly, I’m tired, etc. I haven’t done any sort of training for three days and my garmin watch still says I have 36 hours of recovery due to poor sleep and stress.

Hallo self sabotage, my old friend. I need to fix this. Ironman Texas is in about 6 months and while I’m not ready to have an official training plan, I need to get back out there so I don’t lose the base I built this summer.

Let’s try this. I still need some time to be able to not have a training schedule but I need to go swim/bike/run/weights. So, I’m going to try a list of what I need to do next week. No paces, no assigned times. Just a get-er-done list.

• Run 2.5, 3, and 3.5 miles since we have absolutely gorgeous weather next week
• Bike 30 mins and 1 hour
• Swim twice, and no less than 1k yards each time
• Weights and stretch at least twice

And, just like all my plans until they get foiled, eat 1200 calories + activity each day.

Because I acknowledge I work better with a plan, I’m going to TRY for this:

• Monday: 30m bike, 2.5m run AM
• Tuesday: weights and swim, PM
• Wednesday: spin class at 5:30pm
• Thursday: weights AM (home)/walk
• Friday: off/walk
• Saturday: 3.5 mile run, swim
• Sunday: off/walk

Yeah, this is frontloading the week (when I have more motivation, it seems) and yeah, it’s missing one run (I’ll see if I can figure it out, or maybe two is enough). I know if I can make it a habit, it makes me less stressed, happier, healthier, and I sleep better, and life just continues to improve on whatever the opposite of a vicious cycle is.

Yeah, I could really use the opposite of not being able to relax, not being able to sleep, waking up in the middle of the night, having crappy dreams, and feeling a stress hangover (tired, braindead, head foggy) at the end of each day. And I really want to WANT to get out there and be active. So, I’ll need to fake it until I make it. Starting today.

We realized we needed to remove some friction, so we decided to get a second gym membership. I still love Lifetime, but it’s not convenient while working from home. LA fitness is a little more bare bones, but it has all the basics we need (pool, cardio machines, a huge weights floor, some classes) and it’s about half a mile from the house. I’m hoping this will be a good investment into Ironman training since we will be working at least part time from home through the race. I just have to have the little bit of momentum it takes to get my arse out of the house and half a mile down the road.