Adjusted Reality

So I’ve been trying to process and psychoanalyze what went down in my head this weekend, because, honestly, turns out I actually placed just outside of the top 20% of women.  If there were age group awards, I would have been damned close to in them (5th or 6th or something).  I am allowing myself to be upset about how badly I’ve let my arm strength go with the monkey bars, but only in the capacity that I’m doing something to fix it.  But I effed that up last year too.  I don’t know what possessed me to think I’d do better, but consider that disillusionment that swimming 2x week is enough to keep up arm strength shattered, and that’s a good thing.

The underlying problem?  Hi, my name is Quix, and I am an adrenaline junkie.

Sadly, my addiction started at a young age.  Gymnastics.  Flying through the air. Ice skating.  Twirling and jumping on a razor thin blade on a slippery surface.  Then diving – gymnastics for bodies falling apart.  Then the stage.  Not as physical, but definitely a FREAKING RUSH.

Then, the odd things that are a rush for me, that don’t really make sense.  Pushing myself physically, but not in athletics – the 3 day sleepless college study sessions because I was such a procrastinator (or was a procrastinator because I liked the rush).  Partying with my friends until 3, napping, waking up at 6, heading to the bar with the graveyard crew, and then doing the school and work thing all over again.  Working 100 hour weeks to do something unachievable at work.  Getting promoted so fast my business cards couldn’t keep up.

Then, in 2007, when I decided I had enough of that shit, the adrenaline came from weight loss.  Uprooting myself and moving to a different job, state, and life.  Then more and more and more weight loss.  Once that slowed, I had already tasted the adrenaline of running, and wanted more.  While the actual ACT of running/biking/swimming doesn’t really compare to the first time I landed a double full, stuck a beam routine at state, my first singing solo on stage, the feeling of a PR or conquering some great barrier is just as sweet.

It’s all about those little numbers, ain’t it?  The score at the end of the routine, the numbers on the treadmill, the subscribers in game, the place in the rankings, the reading on the scale.  They can either make you fly, or make you all emo bird.  See below.

My worry is that I’m having trouble getting my next fix.  Tearing away at these 20 lbs is more like clawing my way up a mountain in a blizzard, and while I acknowledge that a few lbs per month is still progress, it’s certainly not something I go around mentally pumping my fist about (and, it’s weight gained back from when I lost it before, hard to get all freakin’ stoked about that).  PRs are getting harder to come by as I improve.  It’s probably why I keep jumping from distance to distance.  The first time you race a distance/sport – it’s always a PR.  Maybe that’s why I’ve jumped from 5k to 10k to halfs to tris – the longer you race a distance, the less likely you are to PR each time.

Maybe I should just take up skydiving instead.

EDIT: THIS.  This.  So this. I need to go from a dabbler to a master.

Normally, I post a race report with a few pics of us from that day, I list a finish time (or approximate), give a play by play of the race, discuss what went right, what I could do better, and state my general pleasure with myself and the course of events of the day.

FYI, picture taken before.  I have some pictures also from the o-course but I just don’t even want to deal with them so this is all you get…

Humility.  Humbled.  Disappointment.   I’ve never really felt unabashed disgust with a race finish before and I definitely did yesterday.  I’m not looking for pity.  I know that going from barely able to walk across the parking lot in 2007 to running a 5k  for any time is awesome.  I’ve not lost sight of that.  It’s just that I’m terrified of backsliding.  Going back to that.  The idea that I’ve done the best I can ever again is terrifying.

Anyhoo, on with it.  Let me give the circumstances of the day – woke up, got ready, and things were going well and good until we got there.  TMI warning (you know runners and their poop talk…) – things got a little gurgly in the guts.  I had to make two visits to the bathroom before the race (which was ONE stall for hundreds of women, you can imagine THAT didn’t work so well) and while it helped, I started the race feeling pretty crappy (ha! ha!).

However, mile one.  I rocked the crap out of that mile.  My goal was to stay between 8-9 min miles the whole race, and I stayed under 8:30s and even dipped into the 7s on the downhills.  And it felt pretty comfortable.  I was elated.  If I could keep at that pace I could do really well today.  My body was holding up.

Then, at about 1.25, the ascent began.  I have gotten better at hills but this one went on forever.  Seriously.  The rest of mile 2.  It was brutal.  I tried to push through but I climbed into the 9s, then 10s, I even think I saw an 11.  I figured all was not lost, and I could pick up the pace and get through mile 3 like mile 1 I could at least finish decently.  Unfortunately, the body problems came back and every time I tried to go beneath 9s, my body was like NOPE!  It did let me sprint it in since it was a pretty nice downhill stretch, but it was already in the 28s.

Don’t have the official time, but it’s most certainly my worst 5k time ever.  My first 5k?  Better.  My 5k last year I ran after a 3 hour brick workout the day before?  Better.  I have no excuse.

I was feeling a bit down on myself but figured I could redeem myself on the obstacle course.  I’ve been swimming a lot so I figured I’d have less issue with the arm strength stuff, right?  No, not at all.  I made it THREE FREAKING RUNGS of the monkey bars.  I even had my weight gloves with for gripping.  I even had to get a small boost on the rope wall (they only gave me one try, it took me a few last year).

Again, worse than last year.  I left feeling… shattered.  Like I had let myself down really badly.  Like I’m a weakling.

Also, to add to the craptastic day, while Zliten had a fantastic 5k finish (35 ish mins), he fell hard on the monkey bars and hurt his shoulder and it knocked the wind out of him.  He’s ok – but definitely has an owie shoulder that will need lots of ice and pampering.

I drank my champagne, although I didn’t feel like I deserved it.  After a while, I just finally broke.  The last week or so just came crashing down.  Something got botched at work that was under my purview, and it was meaningful to me.  I felt like I let my boss down, my team down, and my self down.  But if things are going shitty at work, at least I can take solace in the fact that I rock my hobby, right?  Oh wait, that brought me to my knees today and served me a slice of humble pie.  At least I’m happy with my body… or not.  Sigh.  Double sigh.

I’m pretty much a robot.  I don’t cry.  I sobbed like a little girl multiple times yesterday.  Enough is enough, life.   I went into my little mental hidey hole and wallowed.  I came out a while later feeling better.  I can move on from here.

This seals the deal – I’m focusing on my short game this year.  I can’t expect to be good at anything if I keep changing what I’m doing.  If I stick with 5ks and sprints this year, I can also work more strength training into my workouts.  Plus, Zliten and I can train for these together (he is not into the idea of distance running).

Also, I have the goal of being able to get across the monkey bars on the playground by the end of the summer. Eff this feeling so weak.  Maybe I can even do the coveted pull up.  It will definitely help my swimming.

I’m going to roll with the training plan I put out last week, except try to add more strength in.  Pullups and pushups will be my BFFs.  After the tri, I’ll evaluate what the next steps are.  I will definitely need a redemption race, good thing 5ks are a dime a dozen here in Austin.  Literally, I can just drop by one on a Saturday morning once a month on the way to my rents and pay 1 dollar for entry.  So the opportunity will present itself, I just have to make it happen.

More soon.  I am honoring my rest day today, but tomorrow?  It’s on.  With the ferocity of 1000 lions.

MONDAY EDIT: I feel sorta sheepish admitting this, but I looked at my results overall, and while it was 28:26, I finished 32/154 overall women’s.  So just shy of the top 20%.  If it was a tri and I placed that high, I would be FLIPPIN’ GIDDY.  I can’t be too unhappy with that.  I guess I wasn’t the only one having trouble with the race…

The emotions are still there though.  There is still the lack of strength issue and a lot of other things that aren’t just magically wiped away with this new tidbit, but at least I can feel pretty decent about my 5k finish time.

Yelp Goes Gaga:

Before drinking, waiting for the bus.

Ready for my closeup!

After all you can drink 3 Olives vodka for 2 hours:

Rooftop view…

There were fabulous costumes, drag queens, witty discourse and banter with folks we haven’t seen in a while.  I was hoping we could get dancy but there was just none of that going on.  Oh well.  I WILL drag Zliten out one of these days and have a good dancy night.  It’s been a while.  I’m not disappointed, I mean, I rarely have an excuse to wear a tiara and boa out of the house and that counts for a lot.  I <3 Yelp for giving me a reason to dress up silly at least once every few months and take over a bar.  On them.  Can’t complain!

The next ones are a “faire” themed event at a gourmet hot dog bar/restaurant, and a red white and blue themed party at a bourbon bar.  Totally looking forward to the summer of Yelp fun.

Training plan for Pflugerville Triathlon:

I haven’t had a cohesive training plan for a while and I wanted to lay one out for the next month.   With work and my injury I’ve been holding back a bit, but by next week, I should be all rested and things should be back on track to go at it 100%.

Translations –

Pflake bricks – a group of the folks that put on the duloop also do a swim/run brick group training sesh every other Monday and, oh, it happens to be at the lake where the tri is at.  We’re going to try to hit both instances before the tri.

Veloway – a free bike and rollerblade only 3 mile loop w/no traffic.  All the bennies of biking outside, none of the hassles of dealing with traffic.

Shoal creek lap = 10 miles

I’m going to be getting in 2 bike/run bricks.  While I used to do them every week last year, I feel like I *know* now mentally how it feels to transition from bike to run and that all it takes is the mental fortitude to run through it until it gets better.  I plan to do both outside to maximize the awesome.

It seems as if 7 cardio segments is all I can get in without a) upping the days to 6 and b) ditching weights

May 23 – 29
M Pflake brick – 1 mile swim, 20 mile bike
T 5k tempo, weights
W 30 min hard ride, 30 min easy swim
Th off
F 4 miles hills, weights
S veloway long ride
Su off

May 30 – June 5
M 10k run outside, crunchtime (or weights)
T shoal creek lap, 30 min swim easy
W 4 mile outside run, weights
Th 30 mins ride easy, 30 mins swim hard
F off
S shoal creek lap, 5k run (brick)
Su off

June 6 – 12
M Pflake brick – 1 mile swim, 20 mile ride
T 5k tempo, weights
W 30 mins ride hard, 30 mins swim easy
Th off
F 4 miles hill run, weights
S 60 min swim
Su off

June 13 – 19
M 6 mile ride, 2 mile run (outside if possible, easy with pickups) (brick)
T 30 min easy swim
W off
Th 40 mins bike w/pickups
F 2 mile run (outside if possible)
S  off
Su race!

And, that’s about that.  There’s another event going on right now (Game Dev Beer Night), but I’m at home catching up on Glee because a) I already did the whole “go-crazy-on-a-weekday” thing once this week b) I have a race in two days that I really would like to rock and c) I am old.

Sometimes it’s a shame that I have a conscience and a training schedule.  But it’s really probably a good thing, because there is generally something going on most days of the week and I am not getting any younger – weekday partying has to be kept within reason or I just can’t function.

Life has a way of steering you in the right direction sometimes, yah?

Soul Coughing

What a difference a few days make.  By Friday, my head was in a huge fog.  Work wasn’t going too well, to the point which necessitated weekend work for a lot of the team.  I was too tired – nay – physically and mentally exhausted to deal with low salt cooking or make proper lunches (not to mention working too many hours), so while I’m pretty sure I didn’t blow my calorie load beyond a reasonable level, I didn’t eat quality food, and being that it was many foods not home cooked in a row, it was definitely not low sodium.  Also, my back was showing progress, but it still *hurt*.  I was still definitely INJURED.

Friday night I got off at a decent-ish hour, and the plan was for me to go swim some laps, cook a healthy dinner, and rest up and go to sleep early.  I was in such a mood, and was grumbling about it.  And then, it happened.  We found a dead mouse in the kitchen under a towel that had been there for obviously a few days (what, not everyone throws their used kitchen towels on the floor so they can sop up water and then leaves them?) that had MAGGOTS crawling in and out of it.  Zliten gets MAJOR hubby points for picking it up, but that was the tipping point.

I was so disgusted and grumpy I said fuck the gym, poured my ass a drink (rum, selzer, key lime juice, and a bit of honey – still doing good on no artificial sweeteners), and decided I was going to go outside, bring my laptop, sit on my patio, and enjoy the game I had been toiling over all week.  And thus I did until 2am.  And ate a tiny, salt laden, microwave meal for my dinner around 11pm.

Best decision ever.

Sure I had a bit of a hangover the next day.  Sure I missed an opportunity to burn some calories.  However, I had a blast, and went into the next day with a much better and energized attitude.  I finished up work around 4:30, had a whole day and a half of a brain break, and I am a new woman this week.

The scale didn’t even suffer.  I ate dinner after 10pm on Sunday, and weighed in at 171 the next morning.  With all the salt and the crap over the end of the week/weekend, I was not at all unhappy with it.  What’s better is that I am at 168.6 today.  And it’s TOM.  This is major progress folks!

Sometimes making the soul happy is more important than anything else.

The Condition My Condition Is In

As for the condition of my back/training – that’s on the up and up too.  Sunday morning it was still a little stiff, but feeling better so I got in the water and did over a mile in 45 mins.  Slower than normal, but it felt SO GOOD to be in the water (I could have kept going whereas last week I hit a definitely STOP at about 30 mins).  Yesterday, I biked for 40 mins (hills level 7), and while it wasn’t my fastest pace either, it was better than anything I’d done over a month ago.  Then, I did 30 mins of crunch time class – he modified it for me but I still got a good workout.  Shame that our lake bricks (swim/bike) with friends that we want to start doing every 2 weeks are Mondays as well.

I’m still feeling a bit nervous for running Saturday, I think the plan will be to take it easy, for the most part, with a short run Thurs with some 100m pickups (to keep the legs loose, but not sore).  I’m not going to do anything this week by running hard but hurt myself, so I’ll stay fresh and see what my legs (and back and brain) will let me do this weekend.  A goal: under 25, B goal: 26:30 (beating my second best 5k race time), C goal: crossing the finish line uninjured.  I’ll have the opportunity to get my revenge…

Take a Picture

I just looked and saw that the P5 pictures were up from the splash and dash and…ugh.  The one they caught me in, the photographer was down low (sitting) and full on to the side.  It was not pretty.  Hambeast came to mind, although I know it’s not true, it was just…bad (to be fair, EVERYONE looked bad from that angle).  However, it just got me going.  The idea that ANYONE would see me looking like that from any angle just scared the bejeezus out of me.  Then the anger.  It’s not FAIR that I work so hard and still can look like that.  And then fear.  Is losing the weight I want to going to make me happy?  I mean, is 15 lbs going to cure THAT?

I think I’ve shut the bad voice up for a while.  I’ll lose the weight, be better off than I am now for certain, maintain it for a while, and THEN see if I still feel like I need to do more.  And I need to remember this…  Two pictures on the same night, very different looks.  The camera is distorting me in both instances.  Also – I’m more than a summation of the images I leave behind.  If a few of those are unflattering, so be it.  As my image of myself changes as I change, there will always be unflattering pictures, and I don’t think they’ll freak me out less when I’m at my goal weight.  It’s all about being happy in my skin and I’m getting there.

So, I’m really having a dilemma with my race plan for the year.  I got all dorky and signed up for the Beginner Tri forums and now have access to their create-a-training plan site.  However, doing that made me really have to sit and think what my goals are for the rest of the year.  There’s about 5 months left of tri season, which then leads right into fall running season.  I really want to do at least one Olympic and one half, but now I’m questioning why, other than I did one last year and want to beat my times.  I could probably fall asleep on the bike and doggie paddle with my skillz now and PR the Oly.  It merges SO WELL into a half because I barely have to train for it.  I mean seriously.  I did a total of NINE RUNS (3×3 per week) before taper and PR’d by 8 minutes.

Last year it was an epic 3 months – it was 6 weeks between my sprint and olympic (though I was ramping up the distance way before), and then it was 6 weeks between the olympic and the half (1 week off recovering, 3 weeks training, 2 taper).  I was really mentally burnt out after the tri and kept cursing myself for registering.  All’s well that ends well, and I wouldn’t change a thing in hindsight, but I really and truly don’t know if I want to subject myself to that again.  Might circumstances be different?  Sure.  My body will probably be less wrecked since it’s been there before.  I’m not doing the job of 2 people at work like I was.  I’ll know that it’s OK to take the week after really easy and not have guilt/stress/freakouts about my body being utterly worthless 6 weeks out of the half, and that the runs will  start out really rough but get better.

I know I can do it.  I like the training.  I like the challenge.  But I’m trying to figure out WHY I really want to do the longer races.  Life would be so much easier if I stuck to sprints.  Short, super intense workouts to get FASTER.  Last year, all I could work on was building distances.  I didn’t get any faster.  It’s fun shaving time off my 5ks and seeing regular paces in the 8s and seeing my bike pace slowly creep up to 19mph on the stationary and hopefully beyond.  I know I am going to sacrifice some of this to build distance.

I guess I also feel like just doing sprints, for me, is erm…wimpy?  It’s not the right word but I guess I’m trying to say that I don’t feel like it’s all I got.  I know in my head that I should be able to just go twice as hard through half the distance and be just as spent at the end but I haven’t figured out how yet.  I have a certain tolerance of being uncomfortable, and it gets better with distance.  Once my body is in motion, it will stay in motion (to a point).  I haven’t figured out how to translate it into short bursts as well as I should.  Maybe that’s what I need to learn for this year.

There is always the fear too.  If I don’t do a half this year, and instead really chase that 5k PR, is that going to make me a bad runner?  What if my distance never comes back (my constant fear when I’m not running long – it always does when I train it to/need it to but it always feels weird when I’m running under 10 miles per week.  I did an Olympic my first year, and now I’m considering NOT?  I know in my rational brain that it’s just a different type of training and focus, and shorter is not inferior, but 5ks feel like so 2009.

I also don’t have a race picked out.  The race I did last year doesn’t actually exist this year (it’s a different course/location), and that’s ok, because I’m ok with a little less of a hellbike.  I mean, there are probably a dozen I could do in the month of September within a few hours drive, so it’s not really an issue, but I just don’t work as well without a focus.

Lastly – I seem to be making some progress with project: 150s doing as much volume as I need to do for the sprints.  I can keep weight training.  I don’t have to do 3.5 hour weekend workouts at peak.  It sounds… nice.  I didn’t gain during tri season last year but I certainly didn’t lose.

I think I’ll get through the race on June 19th and then consider my options, but it’s food for thought, and honestly, writing it out has helped me sort through some stuff in my head.

Random Bits and Bobbles

In other news, I worked most of the day, but we seem to have made some major progress and we’re getting out of the weeds.  I’m not HAPPY with weekend work, but it was obvious it had to happen.  Going in today was totally worth having the evening and the whole day tomorrow where I can just relax, not like last weekend where I was just dealing with work via email both days.  Hopefully by next week’s end things will all be back to normal.

My back is getting better, but it’s not all the way better yet.  I have resigned that this week is a loss.  If it wasn’t so crazy with work I would have been in the water every day and weight training, but ya know what?  Sometimes when you’re broken physically and exhausted mentally?  It’s time to just retreat and take some time off.  And thus I did this week.  I’ll log 2 days in the pool and nothing else.  I just have to accept that 1) this is ok and 2) either I’ll surprise myself at the 5k this weekend or I can sign up for another one and have my revenge.

We had to cancel the limo tour (ironically because one of our other friends had to work late into the evening – ah, game industry…), and it’s rescheduled for June.  Instead, we are having a very wild night involving PJs and a movie marathon, which feels much more my style after the crazy week.  Tomorrow, it’s makeup mother’s day celebrations with the fam – bbq, pool time, and playing cards.  It should be a pretty good day.

I’ve not been a saint with the food, but it’s more in terms of the content, not the calories.  Hard to eat low sodium when work’s buying you dinner or you get home too late to cook anything from scratch.  After lunch tomorrow though, it’s back to it.  We’ll see what the damage is Monday, but I’m hoping it’s not too bad.

Questions of the day: any insight on my dilemma – what would you do?  Also – what’s your go to food when you’re crunched for time/too exhausted to cook?