Adjusted Reality

Tag: navel gazing Page 22 of 29

Thankful, then and now.

On November 22, 2016

2016 seems to have been a pretty trying year for everyone. Beloved stars died. I mean, really beloved, ones that were iconic across generations that hit hard, one right after another. We suffered through a nasty election season with a crazy plot twist at the end. More me-centric, I had some really rough races, big shakeups at work, and have had to really push myself to grow a bit after some harsh realizations about stagnation. I probably have had my share of alcohol this year to wash down the bitter taste of many things.

However, let’s look at the bright side.

thanks1

Still wear hoops and chokers. Not THAT much has changed.

I just renewed my passport, and here are my pictures, a decade apart. In 2006, I was at my highest weight (probably about 265 lbs? I dunno – I didn’t really frequent scales at the time…). I was working 100 hour weeks and probably making just over a third of what I do now. I barely fit in a size 24. Running was something I would do only if chased, I hadn’t been on a bike since probably age 12, and I got tired walking around my apartment complex. I always loved swimming, though. That’s something that never changed.

At that point in my life, I would have been thankful for a job opportunity that challenged me and let me take a crash course in video game management and direction, one that would help me learn how to do it on a much larger scale later. I worked the hours I did because I loved it. Like, with a passion of ten thousand fiery suns. Just like Icarus, though, fly too close to the sun and your wings melt. My wings would melt within 6 months of that passport being issued, and passion turned to resentment when I started looking elsewhere to live and be employed.

oct4-1

The difference between this picture and the one above it is totally camera angles. And a 110 lb weight loss, of course.

I would have been thankful for Zliten. He also looked a mess (he is SO happy to get rid of his passport picture too), but we were a mess together. At that point, we had talked about getting married and I was for it eventually, but I wasn’t into a whole big wedding thing looking as I did then. That, plus the actual size of the jeans I had to buy, kick started my weight loss efforts just two months after I got that passport.

I would have been thankful for living in beautiful San Diego with perfect weather and beaches and sun. I can’t deny that it’s the most PERFECT place I’ve ever lived climate-wise, and I miss the ocean and the wonderful balance between humid and dry you can only get in a lush desert beach area. However, 2006 loved the IDEA of outside, but in practice, as you can see from my pale skin, I spent most of my time indoors. At that weight, it was hard not to be a sweaty betty even just walking around, and as anyone who lives in a tourist beach town with regular weekday job hours will attest to, if you can’t play hookey to go to the beach, it’s typically not worth the hassle.

I would have been thankful for the awesome Mexican food. The combo plate with a fried beef taco, cheese enchilada, rice and beans and the iconic red sauce you can’t find anywhere around here. I still miss that stuff sometimes, but Austin is pretty much the capital of TACO so there’s a lot of choices, even if I still dream about the gas station with the taco shop near our apartment. There was alsoTogos and the sandwich nazi and the deli and some other places that probably wouldn’t hold up in reality but still were favorites in my mind.

sept7-3

I get to live within 10 miles of here! I mean, that doesn’t suck…

Flash forward ten years. I still can’t believe it’s been that long. Next June, Austin will house a decade of my life, which is the longest I’ve lived somewhere since I grew up in Chicago-land as a kid. While I dream about living nearer to the ocean, living somewhere a little more runnable in the summer (Oregon, Seattle?), somewhere a little more bike friendly (Boulder) and escaping somewhere tropical in the winter (Florida, Bonaire?), I can’t put my finger on anywhere else I’d pick for a permanent home at the moment.

I am thankful for Zliten. While I’m thankful for many, many things about Zliten, I’m particularly thankful that we became completely different people together. We went from eating, sleeping, and living video games above all else to finishing multiple marathons and 70.3 races, and if all goes well, we’ll be Ironpeople in April. He may have not been super thrilled when I started doing run races (it’s so eaaaarly, we both said, when we had to be at my first 5k for a start time of ELEVEN AM), but eventually he wanted to see what the fuss was about and got hooked (maybe even more than me). We are very changed people, but thankfully, we changed and grew together.

I am thankful for my house, most days. It’s called Casa De Jank because a 50 year old house definitely isn’t a dream to maintain, but it’s OUR weird house with character that is full of clutter and crazy art and drawings on the walls and a smiley face painted in the bathroom from when we moved in and never painted over it. It may need some love to fit into our half-the-houses-have-been-flipped-in-the-last-five-years neighborhood, but we’ll get to that when it’s time.

Apr25-1

I may HATE the color of the brick, but I love a lot about my house (and life) here in Austin.

I’m thankful for Austin being this really cool, relaxed, friendly city, for the most part. When questionable men aren’t yelling and throwing things at me on my bike and when the traffic isn’t RIDIC, of course. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite places I’ve lived because of the people. Everyone wants to be your friend. I’ve never been around groups of people that were more inclusive “yep, the more the merrier”, all the time. and really meant. I love it!

I am thankful for racing. I’m coming up on my 100th race soon, and you don’t pay to do something a hundred times that you don’t love. Once I lost all the weight, I knew I needed *some* reason to continue to go to the gym and continue to be a reasonably healthy person and not gain all the weight back because whiskey and french fries are awesome. I can balance my miles logged vs my tacos logged and try to maintain some level of stasis. Also, for some reason, I thought once I left high school and college behind, there was nothing out there for adults to indulge their competitive sides. Totally not the case! I love the atmosphere, I love the challenge, I love the training, and I love the friends I’ve made doing it.

jacks1

Team we Tri’d. Or Team Tri. Team Race All the Things. 😉

I’m thankful for many other things, but I’m also thankful for having a job, even if it’s been crazy lately, so I need to cut it short(er than I normally would).

And I am thankful that I get the chance to continue evolving as a person! Life is cool! Who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll look like when I renew my passport next, but I’m looking forward to spending the next 10 years finding out.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all!

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Understanding.

By Quix

On November 10, 2016

In Uncategorized

Ow, my head. Ow, my country.

nov9

Let’s start off with the fact that I’m not terribly political. Maybe that’s part of the problem, but it is what it is. I vote (in every election, not just the big ones) and I do my best to get a least general grasp of whom or what I’m voting for. However, I’m a big believer in freedom and choice, so I’m not terribly evangelical about turning people to my side, I want them to inform themselves and make their own decisions.

I went home on Tuesday expecting the election to be called fairly early and get a good night’s sleep. Instead, I watched, with decreasing sobriety, into the wee hours of the morning, as small margins gave way to electoral votes which gave way to our senate, house, and president turning red. For someone who believes in personal freedoms, choice, and equality, this felt like a disaster scenario. Previously considering the possibilities, I figured if somehow the white house skewed republican, a democratic house or senate (or both) would at least keep things in check. This is not the case.

I said that I didn’t know who we were anymore. I still don’t. I mean, your world really is who you surround yourself with. Besides a few spots of red, my social circles are deep dark blue through and through. It’s a huge wakeup call to me that apparently, this does not represent approximately half of the country I live in. I’ve been searching for the answer, and the eternal optimist I am, I feel like the only answer is understanding and perseverance.

My hope is that while there obviously are some people who were fired up by a candidate who was overtly racist, sexist, and just plain crude, this is not the majority of that population. I will continue to believe that in general, people weighed the platforms they both stood on and chose the one that aligned with their beliefs, and in some cases, that happened to be Trump. I was not in love with Hillary, but at the end of the day, the things she supports (and the Democratic party support) are more important to me than who she is as a person. I can’t fault someone on the other side for feeling the same way even if I really really want to, because that would be hypocritical.

I think we are all fighting for a lot of the same basic things, but somewhere along the way, we’ve become the Montagues and the Capulets. I played along, and felt very US vs THEM during the eletion. However, faced with this reality in the light of day, America has not dramatically changed overnight. Just like there is no version of modern America that would tolerate Obama taking their guns away, there is also no version of modern America that’s going to tolerate Trump rounding up everyone with different skin or that likes to bump uglies with someone unconventional and putting them in a prison camp. We are many, many, many steps from any of that. Not that we COULDN’T get there, but it’s not going to happen all of a sudden next January and it won’t EVER unless we let it.

We’ve spent two years with the message “vote for your party’s candidate or the world will explode” shoved down our throats, and after being fed the line for so long, we start to believe it. And with it comes the sentiment that the opposition just wants to watch the world burn. Instead, we need to realize that roughly half the country holds some different opinions and has different priorities that may seem crazy to us, but I can’t imagine 48% of our country is legit crazy. The best way we all win is to compromise. The way we lose is continuing to shout “racists!” and “babykillers!” at each other over the proverbial wall we’ve built between us.

To really turn a nation upside down, you need the VAST majority of the people to believe in it. While the electoral collage worked out for Trump this time, it looks like the popular vote went to Hillary. That’s the majority of the population who are not going to stand for regression of anyone’s rights. That’s the majority of the population who are on the side of equality. That’s a whole shit ton of people. We will stand together. We will not go quietly in to the good night because of one decision.

My hope is that it’s much more and the numbers actually confirm it. I can’t believe voting Trump and being a decent human being are mutually exclusive. To do my part, I’m trying to understand the facts of what Trump really actually stands for and not let fear or emotion get in the way. Some of it will obviously be bullshit I don’t agree with. The stupid Mexico wall is just stupid and amassing a giant military sounds like a boy being eager to win at having the most toys, and he wants to pay for them both by getting rid of inefficiencies? Yeah, why didn’t we all think of that! We could all be have insurance and college tuition at a reasonable cost if we had gotten rid of unneeded inefficiencies!*facepalm*

However, his health care platform doesn’t actually creep me out on paper. I tried to read the words without bias, and I realized it made some sense. Health care costs are really insane. I mean, really INSANE. Like, second rent on a small apartment insane for two healthy adults to get basic coverage. What we have right now is not the answer. While 6 weeks paid leave only for mothers isn’t nearly as much as Hillary was fighting for, it’s better than what we have now, which is JACK and SHIT, which is crazy for a country that considers itself a leader of the free world. In the decision whether or not to have kids – cutting our income in half or less was ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY a major concern and I’m not alone. Maybe if we can get SOMETHING in place, we can improve it in the future.

My hope is that this spectacle is now, for the most part, over. The candidates have to put on a show to get elected, and Trump got the highest ratings. Now, the makeup and the costumes come off, and it’s time to see who Trump as a president really is. I have all the hope that it’s going to be different than Sideshow Trump. We fell in love with Barack Obama on the left because he preached hope and change and then after a while, complained that it wasn’t ENOUGH change. This is the exact reason the right embraced Trump – they want to stir shit up like we did 8 years ago. Anything but the status quo. Let’s elect the wildcard and send him at the government to take down the man!

Funny thing is… once you BECOME the man, you find out there’s usually really good reasons why we do a lot of the things the way we do them. Not to say constantly evaluating the process isn’t important, but I remember as I climbed up the ranks of the game industry, I was going to do things WAY DIFFERENT when I was in charge. I definitely try to BOSS in a way that employee me would like to work for most of the time, but I also know that sometimes you have compromise to get the sausage made even if it makes idealistic you feel a little icky about it. He really comes off as being naive and thinking that he’ll have a lot more power to mandate a bunch of shit once he sits in the chair. Not quite, buddy. That’s called dictatorship.

So my goal today, and going forward, is to understand. For my sanity, I have to believe there is a legitimate Republican viewpoint that is rooted in something besides racism, fear, and greed, even if I can’t really see that right now, and I’m going to continue to do research. I reserve the right to back away at any point and say “nope, y’all are bat shit crazy” and start continue to look into buying a place in Bonaire, but I have to try.

However, at this point, I’m here for a while, unless things start really going the way of Afghanistan, and I can’t believe that would happen. And if I going to fight against that, and not flee, I believe the first step is to be a little kinder and more patient with each other. If you need to be the change you want in the world, this is where I start. I see people who are lashing out incoherently and I feel all their feels. I really do. But, I have to approach this rationally and realize that there indeed are at least two reasonable positions on most arguments, even if you can only agree with one. I will stand up for what I believe in, but I also will do my best to form opinions based on facts, not fear. If someone opposing me has done that as well, I have to respect that.

I’m no revolutionary, no activist, no political leader. In fact, I’m probably only this riled up because I’m on a break from serious running, biking, and swimming. However, I feel like my soapbox wouldn’t be an accurate reflection of my brain if I didn’t spend some time sorting through these strong feelings we all are having right now, and figuring out my path forward. And my path will include logic, reason, kindness, and compassion.

EDIT: And of course, no thought is original. This blog probably summed it up more coherently than I could.

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Three days and taper crazies done right.

By Quix

On October 27, 2016

In Uncategorized

Taper crazies:

oct27-1

#yesmyfacefrozelikethis

I think I’m doing taper right because I am super anxious this week. I’ve been giving myself plenty of rest time (frankly, I’ve been trying to convert all the time I would normally be training to either be in bed reading or sleeping) and I am just kind of… full on sleep. I’m at the point where I feel like I’m losing. precious. fitness. every. single. day… so let’s fire up this party already and get this race going before I can barely do a sprint tri, yeah?

… considering I know that I raced VERY WELL on almost no training, my rational brain knows this is crazy. I think I probably feel like normal humans – I have free time because I’m not spending 11 hours a week running, biking, swimming, or lifting, and I’m not completely fatigued from training. But I feel this weird combination of excited! terrified! ready! tired! relaxed! anxious! weird! not normal! at the same time. I haven’t really felt this way for a race in a while.

Quick wrap up of what I’ve done since peak because if I do well at this race, I’ll probably look back at this post and go… HOW DO I MAKE THIS HAPPEN AGAIN?

oct4-7

One of these things helps physical recovery, the other helps MENTAL recovery.

3 weeks out: 6.5 hours (not intentionally)

All the sleep and food. Cut some sessions to get extra rest. This made it an exponential taper but I think that worked out better for me. The other option would have been to take a rest week in peak somewhere (I needed it) and peak a week later. If I feel stale at the race, I’ll probably go with that next time but I don’t regret it at all right now.
Mostly medium length sessions with speed intervals.
Long workout: a really solid 30 mile TT interval brick followed by a 10k at race pace

2 weeks out: 6 hours training

Mid-week I started to come around and felt pretty rested (FINALLY). I resisted the temptation to bolster the schedule and instead just did the weekday scheduled stuff to the letter.
Endurance cycle hills, race pace OWS in the wetsuit, another swim and easy bike with the BSS crew, and a nice speedy 3 mile race pace run after 2 mile warm up. Felt like I NAILED IT.
Weekend bike went to crap with a flat tire (though I got changing practice!) but rocked a 4 mile race pace run after rolling home.
Ate to my appetite, trying to keep the food mostly healthy (fruit veggies proteins whole grains, yadda yadda), but there were treats in there for sure. I know I’ll wish I tracked through this taper cycle but I just can’t even right now. Weight is holding steady at 180-182 so there’s that.

Race week: … I might be at 3 hours by race day?

Continuing to eat to my appetite, pushing a balanced healthy diet at the beginning of the week, skewing towards (low fat) carb-tastic things later in the week.
Spending as much time in bed as possible reading.
Doing things to keep the legs loose. 30 min runs and swims with pickups, quickie brick, one day I didn’t really feel like doing my trainer ride so we walked instead probably at the same intensity I was planning.
Trying to keep work from killing me. I’m not dead yet.

If this prep gets me to the start line feeling all springy and awesome like the feelings I’ve been flirting with this week, I may be ready to actually attack this race in a way I haven’t done in years. Here are my goals.

Apr4-2

Back in April, we started the swim distance challenge, which lead to my longest open water swim in September of 4500m (or just under 3 miles). I almost didn’t participate because of offseason and all other manner of bullshit, but I’m really glad I did.

Swim:

I would say I felt like my swim this cycle was STURDY, but not particularly speedy. And then, as I sat down to write this, I got back from one of my fastest (if not THE fastest) pool swim in my life (1:44/100m AVERAGE – with warmup and cooldown). Well then, maybe there’s something in the tank after all!

Either way, sturdy or speedy, it’s the first 40-ish minutes of a 6 hour day. No matter what happens, I’m not going to let it wreck my day. I don’t even really have any secret goals here, really. Would I like to get under 40? Sure, but ONLY if that pace matches the level of effort I’m willing to put out. As long as I get out of the water with all my parts in the right place (I have three male waves coming up right after mine), I’ll be fine with the day.

Specifically during the swim, I want to keep my brain focused on the task and not daydream. I swim better when I keep my brain engaged. Also, as odd as it sounds, I need to make sure I don’t sight TOO well, so the men after me won’t be as tempted to swim over my head. I’m willing to do some combat during swimming but lead pack guys are really freaking mean and punchy.

Aug30-15

It was really hard to find a picture of me and a bike this cycle (sarcasm) but I think riding up the Colorado National Monument was one of the best, worst, and most humbling rides this training cycle. Every ride after that has been “well, this is easier than riding up a mountain”.

Bike:

This is another place where I’m not trying to put weird pressure on myself and ruin my day because I’m a little behind some arbitrary number. My best pace in a half is 17.2 mph. Last year I was holding about 18.5 mph, I think, before my crash at mile 50. I did Kerrville at 17.5 mph this year (for one loop, not two), and that was being cautious as fuck in the rain with so much left in the tank for the run. This course has more climbing. I haven’t done a whole lot of training that would help me accurately predict what I’ll do on the new bike on Sunday, and I’m ok with that. Surprises are fun.

So, I’m going to ride bikes. With the new bike, the new course, and my new directive to maybe save a little freaking energy so I don’t die on the run, I have no clue. If I had to throw a dart at the wall, I’d aim for somewhere in the 17 mph range. But rather than chase a number on the bike computer (watts, HR, speed, etc), I feel like I have pretty well honed what a long ride feels like that I can run off of well (though I do have numbers in mind for those to judge if things are SUPER off, they won’t rule the day).

I want to stay in aero as much as possible though I will cut myself slack if I don’t feel 100% comfortable. Whatever happens, it should be an improvement on Kerrville’s 25% of the time shitshow. I want to push up the hills like I know how and try not to burn a billion matches but know I can burn some. Most importantly, rubber side down and keeping that rubber in tact!

Apr18-2

I don’t have a lot of running pictures, but this one is pretty symbolic. It was April, I was just getting over my hip injury and mental fuckery, I was 15 lbs up, and running a few miles at 11:30/mile was hard. I’m glad April me stuck with it even if it took quite a few months for the fitness to come around.

Run:

There’s no getting around it, it’s going to be a hot day. Why didn’t I do the half at Kerrville this year? Oh right, the only way we got great temps was the pouring rain… and my fitness wasn’t there yet. I digress. 88 degrees and sunny is NOT my ideal half marathon conditions, but that’s what the day is handing me. I will be handing it salt pills, hydration, calories, and my both my middle fingers.

The good thing is I have trained in this. I’ve done race pace in hotter weather and hillier conditions off bikes, it’s just about pushing that race pace into the second hour and draining the tank and not giving up when it gets hard. This is my race to spend the dollars and not ask for change. It will be fun to see how much cash I actually have on hand right now.

This is the only place I’m really targeting a pace and finish time – I’d like to hit a 2:15 (10:18/mile). This is a pretty sizeable ask right now off a 56 mile bike in the hot sun. But I think I can get in the zip code if I don’t let my head get in the way. I just need to stay in the moment. There have been plenty of runs where at mile 1 or 3 I had NO idea how I was going to make it through and then, guess what, I did, usually speeding up at the end. I need to focus on getting to the water station and the end of the path and the end of the loop and finish this part of the road and then all those little segments will add up to 13.1 (hopefully) respectable miles of running.

kerrville

Kerrville had it’s challenges, but it was the first triathlon run in quite a while I feel like I just nailed. Runs since have been showing similar promise. I’m hoping to feel this happy when I cross the finish line Sunday.

Overall:

I keep adding up what the day might look like for me, and I think a super great day will be around 6:15-6:20, and a good day will be right around a PR (6:30-ish). I think my two biggest obstacles for getting in that range are any potential flat tires/mechanicals/etc on the bike (the road is pretty rugged) and issues dealing with the heat on the run. The first one I can’t really control, the best I can do is just bike smart, but the second I can fight. Barring any of that noise, I think I can turn in a solid time.

No matter what happens, if I keep my head in it the whole time, I’ll be proud of completing a successful, if very different, 70.3 cycle, and conquering this course for the first time.

sept26-4

Hi my name is Zliten and I always have to make race week interesting! (from recent memory: one kidney stone procedure, one ankle roll at warmup, and now a dislocated rib).

Zliten update:

The rib seems to be just out (dislocated and put back into place), rather than cracked. I’m sure there are great doctors out there but all we’ve run into is “here’s the painkillers, just take those and zone out for a couple weeks” when we get injured. Sigh. Not what was needed here at all.

The chiropractor has worked her magic and while he’s still in a decent amount of pain, he’s feeling a lot better and pretty sure he’ll at least start the race. His wave is absolutely last in the water, he’s planning on swimming very slowly and very carefully, the bike shouldn’t be that different but he’ll not be uber fast charging up or down hills, but the ratio of run to walk is the big question mark. We’ll see!

The fun thing is… I could finish upwards of 3 hours before him, if I have a really good day and he just makes the cutoff. I’m hoping it won’t be such disparity, but I’m going to be prepared like I’m taking my toddler self for an outing – snacks, drinks, a place to sit or blanket to lay on, a change of clothes, etc. I just have no idea at that point whether I’ll want to go cheer everyone on and be a part of the rest of the race, or not. As long as the race goes well, I’m perfectly ok being the completely spent weirdo sprawled out on a blanket in the grass reading, napping, and maybe whimpering a little while stuffing fritos in my mouth.

And if I am, I’m sure I’ll be instagramming the fuck out of it. Wish me luck!

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Saving myself from myself.

By Quix

On October 17, 2016

In Uncategorized

This week, nothing went according to plan and honestly, it worked out really well for my sporty pursuits.

oct17-1

Proof of training, and taper crazies.

I’m somewhat flexible. I typically plan a *little* aggressively in terms of training, so I don’t freak if I miss one of my 10-12 sessions per week that’s just sort of volume filler. Missing a 2 mile easy run is not going to make or break my race. Occasionally, it will be something bigger, and if it’s for a good reason, I’ll get over it. The gauge is typically if I’m willing to eat dinner and go to bed while it’s still light, the relaxation is more important than the training.

However, this week, everything just got kinda fubared with work and life and stuff. I missed an open water race pace swim. It was planned for Monday and I could not fit it in the rest of the week, not for lack of at least half-heartedly trying. I missed said 2 mile run, a weights session, and cut a killer bike workout to a “slightly harder than easy” and shortened it… after already intentionally cutting a bike workout. The original plan was 9 hours, modified plan 8 hours, and I got in… 6.25 hours.

I’ve been dealing with some major fatigue (see above said crawling into bed before the sun sets… this has happened a handful of times over the last two weeks). Stress is stress is stress and things aren’t exactly calm around these parts. I’m still at the point where I’m conquering workouts I can get to, but the amount of eating and sleeping I’m doing to just pretend like I can even right now is not normal.

On Thursday morning, I was able to execute an 8 mile half easy, half race pace run without an issue. When I went to bed Wednesday before sunset, I was not 100% sure if I was going to even start it. On Saturday, I rode the same course as a month ago, and pulled down more power (10-15W+) and faster speeds (.5 mph+) with way less effort (HR 5-10 bpm lower). It was about 10 degrees cooler, but still. It was a pretty significant jump in 4 weeks.

I also had an “intensity TBD” 6 mile run on the plan after the bike. Considering my fatigue lately, I didn’t really want to dig too far down in the pain cave to get this done, but miles 1, 2, and 3 ticked off at 10:30, 10 flat, and 10:22 just concentrating on my cadence, so I stuck with it and finished with a nice 10:12/mile average. It was warm (feels like almost 90), but not HOT, and I wasn’t completely cooked at the end. With more fuel, liquid, and the promise of a week off after, I could have probably put another 7 like that together. I was actually holding my legs back a lot of the time to keep this pace because they just wanted to go. It felt FUCKING great after months and months of lacking run fitness to just nail this one to the wall.

2012-2

I am definitely ready for the race that makes me feel like THIS after. I’m due. I’m doing everything I can to get myself there open for THIS experience.

While all the studies I’ve read say an exponential taper is not necessarily the best, that’s what happened this time and so far, it’s working out. The cool thing is that I’m feeling my legs and brain come around a lot quicker, so my confidence is much higher than normal. With two weeks to go, I’ve usually had at least one nervous breakdown and I’m thinking “how the eff am I going to do a 6 hour race when I feel like shit doing a 30 minute run”? This time, I’m holding my legs back at race pace. I’ll take it.

So, the key now, is volume down, and keep the intensity. Here’s the plan for this week:

Monday: race pace 2250m (3 quarry loop) swim.
Tuesday: endurance cycle class
Wednesday: ~1500m pool swim (with some fast segments) + BSS recovery ride
Thursday: 5 miles w/3 below race pace
Saturday: 1 hour cycle, 1 hour run, both easy with race effort segments

It’s not a whole lot (about 6.5 hours), so I’ll be pretty iffy about skipping anything here because there’s not much filler. If I had to skip anything in terms of not adding much to the training, it’s the BSS recovery ride, but I miss my peeps. But, it’s the first to go if the fit hits the shan.

Life outside of training might be summed up with “what doesn’t kill you makes you tired”. I’m eating a lot – negative 1000 calories is the furthest thing from my mind right now. If I’m hungry, I’m putting food in my face. I’m doing my best to make it quality food, but let’s be honest, it’s not all veggies and brown rice. Every 3-5 hour Saturday workout leaves me starving for about 2 days. Yesterday’s eats were ridiculous. I ate tons of fruits and veggies and good stuff, but I also ate a churro and two servings of ice cream.

oct17-2

Compromise. Delicious, delicious compromise. Normally the lack of veggies would be a point of contention, but I had already had strawberries, plums, corn, onions, green pepper, and carrots that day and met my fiber goals.

While I’m super not concentrating on losing weight or dieting right now, I am doing these things:

Easy access to fruits and veggies means I eat more of them. Literally having to cut up salad or peel a piece of fruit may mean I’ll go “nah” and eat something else sometimes. The barrier to entry on this stuff needs to be NONE. Buying bags of baby carrots and snow peas, cut up watermelon, or grab and nom fruit like apples is key. This is not the time to work on habits. It’s time to make doing the right thing as brainless as possible.
Hydration. I’m getting my daily intake of water and also trying to make sure I interject more electrolytes into the mix because I seem to be running low lately (running and biking in the “feels like 100000” definitely causes this). When I’m drooling over coconut water or would crime for some watermelon or can actually tolerate nuun in my water bottle at work or start adding salt to pre-packaged foods, I know I need to be doing that stuff until things are too salty and watermelon is just another fruit and not my secret lover.
Trying the healthy things before the craving. I was craving pizza so I made pizza bread at home w/turkey pepperoni and lowfat cheese, and the craving was satiated. I was craving sweets more than normal last week, so first thing I’d try was fruit, or a quest bar, or a protein shake. Sometimes that would do me. Sometimes, I still wanted the sweets and I’d indulge.

The plan up until the race is simple and one I’ve been using for a while. Eat fruits and veggies. Hit my protein and fiber goals. Don’t go overboard on the fats. Let my activity level and appetite dictate the carb intake.

In about a month, I’ll be back to stage one, doing all those normal things. Weights. Tracking food. -1000 calories. Training less specifically, doing things more things as they sound fun (let’s go ride bikes with people all day Saturday!) and less structured workouts that are super duper business time important for an imminent race (30 miles of intervals w/an hour race pace brick run during the heat of the day when I’ll be racing). Letting my life dictate what training I have time for, not vice versa. Probably not sleeping at sunset. Probably not waking up before sunrise unless there’s a huge twinkle in my eye about what I’m doing in the dark.

oct17-3

For the next two weeks at least, the goal is to treat this stuff like a responsible adult and not a frat boy.

So, it’s taper week two. Time to continue to walk myself off the ledge of overreaching, store up some of the energy and confidence that comes with not being beaten down and having legs that might be considered *snappy*, and trying to keep from losing my mind over everything.

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Social Media 101

By Quix

On October 13, 2016

In Uncategorized

For those of you who have been reading pre-April 2016, you know how much attention I paid to maintaining this site and publicizing it – exactly ZERO fucks were given. This page looked like crap, sometimes triggered malware warnings, and was all sorts of broken like a bike that you left in the shed six years ago and forgot about. I had zero social media pages associated with it, and the only thing I would do is occasionally post a link to it in my fairly inactive twitter account that has less than 300 followers because I realized that’s how *I* found blogs but that’s it.

Apr15-3

Time to metaphorically bridge the gap between being a complete social media dunce and maybe figuring out how to find my people.

During #projectspring, I actually spruced the place up to take it into the ’10’s, it looks nice on mobile phones for the most part, and I updated the content of the static pages. So, I have this nifty new page that has about 100-200 hits per post and got a comment every so often. I was pretty fine with that until I decided I wanted to teach myself how to use social media to market things. Right now, I don’t really have a product to sell, but I do have a lil ol’ space where I talk about triathlon and food and life and post selfies and it might be fun if I had 2 or 3 comments instead of 1.

I never intend to make this particular space about selling anything, but I’d like to know how to market myself elsewhere in the future. Since this year is about learning new things and diversifying myself, along with learning how to be a personal trainer, sports nutrition specialist, and a triathlon coach, I also would like to figure out how I’d let people know about all that and maybe someday take their green paper for some service that I would provide. I have utter confidence in my ability to provide a quality service. My biggest fear, however, is that someday I’ll decide to make the leap, and no one will dance at my party. I’ll build it, and no one will come.

So, I’m going to see who shows up to the dance floor when there’s no pressure of me making a livelihood on it. This will either prove that with proper activity and marketing I’ll get the audience I need, or prove that it’s just as effing mystifying as I think it is right now, and my panic is justified, and I need to figure out how to sell out a stadium before I go through all the trouble of building it (how many different metaphors can I mix today?).

sept7-3

Biggest fear: my party will look like bike check in at 10am. Empty, empty, empty.

My first step was creating all the social media pages and giving them a unifying theme, along with my blog. I’ve enjoyed the rotating header pictures, but I also really like having a solid LOOK that screams Adjusted Reality whenever you go to an AR related page. For now, the cover photo is the Colorado National Monument we climbed on two wheels, and my profile is one of my favorite pre-ride selfies… one of the only ones without sunglasses since it was a grey day. I look happy, and while I have no makeup or anything on, I don’t exude grungy athlete.

I imagine those things may change as I go on other adventures and take a billion selfies on Instagram, but I’ll make sure they all change at the same time. I originally wanted to do a “collage” type thing, but Zliten partway talked me out of it, and also the size difference between headers on this blog, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus meant a lot of work and tweaking and frustration. So, I just went with the mountain look for now. I’m pretty sure once I return from Florida, there will be a winter ocean theme.

I’m in the middle of step two right now – populate the pages. The last thing I want to do is create a bunch of pages, put up a “hello world” post on each, and then start asking people to like them all naked and content-less. So, I’m giving myself a month to post regular content to all these sites:

Facebook
Twitter (same ol’ account)
Instagram (same ol’ account)
Pintrest
Google+

I’ve never created a Facebook or G+ Adjusted Reality account before because I didn’t know what to do with it besides link my blog posts. For now, I’m trying to post on each about once a day on the weekdays. Content is/will be… a mix of links to my own blogs as I write them, the better pictures from Instagram, links to other stuff that interests me, sharing links to races I’m doing, or cool shit going on in Austin, and occasionally just some random thoughts.

kerrville

Probably stuff like this for Facebook and G+. Probably not the blurry picture of my garmin on the way back from the pool or yet another bowl of Fage 0% and cereal.

Twitter and Instagram… I’ve already been at for a while. Twitter, I started as my personal account but it’s more tied to this blog than my real identity, so I’m keeping it. This is where you’ll see all sorts of shit, including random deep thoughts like “butterflies are the cheerleaders of the insect world”. Insta… I’ve actually found I’m decent at it. I love taking random photos and I’ve gotten better at the hashtags and when I do the right things I’m getting ~75 impressions and ~25 interactions. Of course, insta is the HARDEST one to actually link back to the blog. That is a thing I need to get better at.

I avoided Pintrest for so long, but I actually am kind of loving it. I have yet to actually go down the rabbit hole of surfing others stuff, but I created four boards in Pintrest that kind of categorize my life: triathlon, food, adventures, and scuba. Every so often, I’ll go through my blog/insta and pin stuff that’s relevant if it’s a decent quality picture.

I’ve been at this for about a few weeks. I want to give it about a month or so, and then I feel like I’ll have enough content. If I bring someone there, and they’re interested in my particular brand of crazy, they have enough to scroll down and see what I’m really about.

If you’re here already, I would love if you would clicky clicky on the links above on the social medias that you frequent. If you dig, follow/like/etc me and I’ll follow you back if you’re not a bot. If you have any feedback on things you would like to see, or things that you like to do on your social media accounts that are awesome and you’d like to see more people do, I’d definitely be into hearing about it. Help a n00bie out!

Aug15-2

Next steps, follow and interact with other people on social media without feeling like a creeper. Obviously, as you can see above, this may be a challenge.

Step three – follow all sorts of people that look interesting and interact! I’m really bad right now about seeking out cool people to follow. I’ll follow people who follow me and don’t look like they’re overtly selling something I’m not buying (or are obviously bots), or people I know or “know” (either IRL or through blog reading).

And then… interact with said people more on social medias. I consume content all the time, but I don’t always react to it. For some reason, I feel like a bit of a creeper being like “hey, you have no idea who I am on the twitters, but here’s a comment about the thing you posted”. I’m getting better at liking and hearting, but I know I think comments are so much more awesome when you have something to say.

I know in my rational brain it’s not creepy, and I enjoy getting comments from people I don’t know, but for some reason, I feel like a creeper. It’s not like I’m saying creepy things like “nice bike kit pic, I want to wear your skin like a suit”, or something equally Silence of the Lambs, it just feels weird to even say “nice bike kit pic” to a complete stranger. Getting over that and talking to people I don’t know online is part of step three.

Step four – advertise. A little. After I’m pretty sure I’ve done all I can on my own, and have established a pretty good routine and have extended my circle and comfort zone a bit, I’m going to enact the final stages of the plan – play with the lowest level of paid ads on the mediums that make sense. I felt SUPER cheesy about even considering this before, but it’s no longer narcissism (here, let me pay money to get people to read my blog I make nothing from just to make me feel good). If it was my living wage on the line, I need to know how ads work and what sort of views I can get with the lowest level of spend.

I have some other future ideas – I’d like to branch out to doing video content (YouTube), streaming (Facebook Live, Twitch), and maybe even start selling some bite size stuff on Fiver, but that’s definitely Social Media 201 for me.

Is talking about this shit taboo? It’s definitely “how the sausage is made” stuff, but I’m quite fascinated by it, as an interested beginner sticking toes into the social media waters. Making the pages felt great, watching my views/interactions increase with my #hashtageusage on Instagram is cool, and it’s been fun trying to thing about… “hmmm, what should I share with (a few people in) the world today?”.

Aug15-1

Come to Adjusted Reality for the sweaty selfies, stay for the random pictures of mannequin heads in cars.

What’s the one thing you’d want to tell a newbie that’s looking to move beyond a soapbox to stand on, towards creating a brand? I know some of y’all out there are super smart about this stuff. The “contact me” link and comments section below are arms wide open, welcoming suggestions, tips, feedback, and all that jazz.

Adjusted Reality

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

Tag: navel gazing Page 22 of 29

Thankful, then and now.

Understanding.

Three days and taper crazies done right.

Saving myself from myself.

Social Media 101

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