Adjusted Reality

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

I Can’t Even

I started this post with all the nerd numbers for March.  I got a few lines into it and just didn’t wanna.  I just do not have the level of attention right now to dedicate to stats and graphs and such.  I’m sure part of it was that I didn’t do well, but that usually makes me want to quantify and figure out what happened, and fix it.  Right now, I am just in survival mode.  Long month has been long.  I can’t even.  Kinda like my poor cat there… (believe it or not, she wasn’t terribly unhappy about that)

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This past weekend, we had a “people-cation”.  Since Sunday was Easter we spent some time with my fam, but on Friday and Saturday we had no plans besides training (though everyone and their mother TRIED to get us out).  We pretty much slept.  Sometimes 10+ hours per night, and a nap or two in there.  Hi there, exhaustion.  Nice to see you again (not really).  I feel more rested, but plunging directly back into stress at work doesn’t make me feel much better.  I still feel cranky, stabby, and about one step away from crawling under my desk and rocking back and forth when someone comes into my office with bad news.

Sadly, I still feel like I need about 4 more of these types of weekends before I’m recovered.  I have been wavering back and forth whether I need the day off after Texasman, and I just decided today that YEAH, yeah I do.  There is no way I could hang today that exhausted, and I don’t want to inflict that on my coworkers.

I’m hoping that things settle a little bit later in the week, but it’s been up to 11 since I returned from vacation in March, and I’ll be lucky if it goes back below 7-8 for quite a while.

So, I haven’t tracked my food for the last 5 days.  I may or may not start tracking again until after the race.  I kind of don’t give a fuck right now.

I haven’t made April goals or updated about my March ones.  I probably didn’t get very far because I don’t remember what they were.  I kind of don’t give a fuck about them.

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I was going to give up beer for a month in lieu of smaller amounts of liqueur or wine (I’m not going THAT far) to try to reduce calories a bit.  Then my favorite seasonal beer came out.  The beer-bargo might have to wait until after season ends because there’s nothing like a cold beer after 4 hours of training at the lake or a hard race and I kind of don’t give a fuck.

There are plenty of things I should probably be doing around the house.  I kind of don’t give a fuck because I’m full up.

I have room for a few things in my life right now:

1. Work.  And it’s even encroaching on the amount of mindshare it should have.  I keep having dreams about being at my co-workers in weird situations, like summer camp.  But, it pays the bills, so I can’t be mad at it.

2. Training.  I’ve been maintaining a decent 8-10 hours per week, which includes 20-25 miles of running, and a decent amount of biking and swimming, and weights sometimes.  Oddly enough this consistency has netted some pretty solid race results and I feel pretty prepared to rock my first A race of the year, Texasman x-50.

3. Sleep and rest.  I can’t sacrifice this.  Doing that makes me even more cranky.

4. Small amounts of socialization and fun.  I did finally finish what I needed to run my story (and have probably said NEVER AGAIN because it took WAYYYY too much effort, or maybe just keeping it simple instead of trying to make the BESTEST STORY EVER).  I plan to hang out with friends for a bit next weekend instead of being a shut in.  But it has to be small, measured doses that doesn’t interfere with numbers 1, 2, or 3.

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5. Eat good food.  Try to eat not so much bad food.  Even if I have to succumb to the takeout monster because there is like less than zero time to cook, try to stay away from the trifecta of evil – fried, simple carbs, and sweets, and pick places that I know I can get some good, solid fuel.  I also have to remember it doesn’t have to be gourmet.  Above, I opened up some beans, and added some salsa, guac, olives, onions, cilantro, cheese, lettuce, and put it in whole wheat tortillas.  Perfect meal to fuel a 90 min bike ride later, and took me five minutes.

That’s it.  No feeling shitty because I didn’t organize my vanity, no feeling guilty because there’s something awesome out there I’m not doing, no feeling like a jerk because I ate food I didn’t cook 5 times last week.  I can’t even deal with that right now, I can’t even.  I am in survival mode to get through the next two weeks without sobbing under my desk, murdering people, and getting through all this with my sanity in tact.  I let go of all these things, all these extraneous things, which means you’ll probably not see much here for a week or two unless I get inspired to ramble.

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To end this post on a happy note, I’d like to call out some of the good training things I did last week:

  • I rode outside once.  I fell twice, which is not awesome, but at least I’m getting it out of my system early in the year.  I also rode pretty steady at 16.8 mph in traffic, and could have ridden faster if the cars would just bugger off already.  We also did not shy away from the hills, so that was hills and wind and all of it.  This is my biggest question mark for the race, but that was a good sign going into it.
  • I swam outside twice.  I felt crappy at the beginning of both getting used to the cold water (68 degrees – I don’t even understand how y’all can get down in those cold lakes), but at the end of my mile I felt pretty awesome and 38 mins is not bad at all for a training swim of 1 mile not really pushing it.  I will just know I need a decently long warmup swim – or at the very least to get my face wet for a while so I don’t flip out.
  • I ran 21.25 miles even though I had a Sunday race which I pushed really hard and PR’d.  Six of those miles were off the bike Saturday in the heat, and they were at 10:30s and I had at least two more gears.  Good show.
  • I’m not sure exactly where weights went, but we’ll pick those back up after May 4th.

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Just like I’ll pick a lot of stuff up again after Texasman concludes, I drink a beer or 4, and get a damn rest week under my belt.

Question of the week: What is extraneous to you right now?  Can you let it go and not worry about it for the next week or two?

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5 Comments

  1. I hear this. I have been like this for the past month, and finally now I have a week off to regroup and recommit. Feels good. I heard Let It Go on the radio in my car and belted that out for a while, so that felt good. I highly recommend it 🙂

    • Quix

      That’s on my running playlist. It makes me happy. 🙂 Looking forward to some downtime too, glad you finally get some! 🙂

    • zliten

      so while quix worked late I did our costco run. picked up frozen.. we will watch it again soon.
      I also went to SB today with a coworker. (didn’t get anything) but almost bought the frozen sound track. so close..

      but in happy news just 2 weeks ago I bought and made Quix watch Mary Poppins! For a household who loves musicals, it was a first!

      Love you wife!

  2. Extraneous right now? Interestingly enough, just this morning I was thinking of taking a week-long blogging break…. and then I changed my mind 0.5 seconds later. Maybe this summer instead? A break definitely in order.

    Zilten and the cat. heeeeeeeeee

    • Quix

      It’s tempting. But I’m already composing a new post so it might not be that – I think I’m just getting burned out on being so type A. 🙂

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