The wheels on the bus explode

On one hand, I’m super engaged and excited about 27 different projects I’m working on both personally and professionally.

However, that also means I’m running on a healthy dose of overwhelm right now, as evidenced by my absence in journaling duties here.

I’m in the middle of learning something very new at work, onboarding and training new people, doing crazy balancing acts to manage my time both personally and professionally, and still trying to do this racing and #projectraceweight thing. I failed pretty hard at most this pretty hard in March – the wheels didn’t fall off in many cases so much as just explode. I next owe a post on all the fun things I did over our birthday celebrations (workin’ on it!), and these were all welcome divergences, but it was definitely a solid derailing of a lot of personal initiatives. However, the awesome thing is that we can change the tires and get back on board anytime. Today is that day the bus starts rolling again.

In 2018, I mentioned that on March 20th, when I officially started #projectraceweight I weighed 186 lbs. One month ago, I was very excited to see if I could meet or beat that weight since I was fluctuating right around 189 on my lower days and trending downward. Sadly, on March 19th, my trendweight is 191.9, which is only 0.2 lower than my trendweight was on Feb 20th. I suppose one could look at it as I let loose a little for my birthday and didn’t gain weight, but it’s a little disheartening that a whole month went by without any forward progress.

Well, the leftover sweets are in the freezer for later times, the celebratory birthday meals have been consumed, and it’s back to being kinda strict and counting all the calories until the race. Goals are simple and should look reaaaaally similar.

• Track my food
• Aim for 1500 calories a day average (1200-1300 on low activity days, 1500+ a little on higher volume days)
• Weigh at least 4 times a week 

It’s what was working before, so let’s resume!

When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. This rings so true this month, as my workout calendar looks like this:

I mean, sure, I’ve had worse in 2020 and 2021, but notice there are no swims for 3 weeks because leaving the house is hard (changing that TODAY since my race involves SWIMMING). Also, this week was just STUPID busy and I really meant to get some activity but I had to work and then prioritized destressing (read: whiskey) the few moments I wasn’t working, so that was not the most adult way to cope but what is, is. I haven’t had that many zero workout days in quite a while. I forgot what weights were (last week, I was dealing with various cranky body parts, this week, same plus the time issue).

On the bright side, I’m pretty happy with my cycling, I’ve had an indoor and an outdoor road bike right around that 40 mile race distance, and both of those are more difficult than 40 miles on my race bike. Not this weekend (as I’m doing a charity ride) but next weekend, I get outside on that bike and remember what it’s like to ride Death Star not in my pain cave. It’s also been nice to be back to running for a bit. My pace ain’t pretty, but I can lope along at 11:30 min/miles and seem to be handling the volume increase I need to make it through the race. I *think* I may have solved the heel problem with a change in insoles, I’m going to try a 7 mile run on Tuesday to test it out.

Six weeks to go until race day means I’m not horribly in the hole right now, it just means I need to prioritize things like actually leaving my house to swim, doing the last few long brick workouts/bikes/runs in the next 3 weeks, and then keep up some training regularity during taper, push a little speed, and stay sharp (as well as lose all the weight I can safely).

Mar 21-27 Schedule

• Monday: weights, 1-1.5k swim
• Tuesday: 7-mile run
• Wednesday: weights, 45 min bike
• Thurs: off (stretch and roll!)
• Friday: 5k run
• Saturday: Rosedale ride (either 40 miles + 2-3 mile brick run or full metric century and 0-1 mile run)
• Sunday: off (stretch and roll!)

I would absolutely love to get one more swim in there (maybe Thursday night, Friday night, or Sunday?) but there’s a lot of other To Dos this week so I’m going to cut myself some slack.

So what’s left? I need to hit to feel good before this race:

• Standalone 9 mile run (wk of Apr 11)
• Multiple 1500m swims, at least two in the lake before race day
• At least one long brick (Apr 3) – 40 mile TT bike (outside) to 10k run
• Practice tri day (Apr 9) – 1500m swim, 25 mile TT bike outside, 10k run

Thankfully, all of these seem within reason for where I’m at right now. The path to this point didn’t *quite* look as I expected in January, but I’m glad the journey has been at least directionally appropriate. With a brief interlude for birthday shenanigans, I’m ready to hit it hard and make 43 the year I fully emerge from the pandemic funk and get back into shape (mentally and physically). There is nothing that makes this happen besides patience, persistence, solving problems, and making it happen, so this is how we do.