Adjusted Reality

They say that doing the same things and expecting different results is madness.  So, I’ve spent a few years with some solid goals, and done well the first part of the year, and then, got frustrated and said “fuck it” at some point because it was too regimented.

This year, I have a lot of different things I’d like to accomplish, but I also have unique focuses during each season.  This also gives me three months to accomplish things instead of one, which will help me stress about things less, a reset point four times this year, and also might save y’all from monthly wrap up posts (maybe…)

Winter (Jan-March)

Racing:

• Get your racing confidence back.
• Try latch onto B at 3M half marathon and see if a PR is in the cards.
• Race happy at Woodlands and also open yourself to the possibility of a 4:xx:xx marathon.

Training:

• Run a lot.  Streak January (7 days in!).
• 6 long runs 15+ before March 5, please.
• Don’t neglect speedwork, one speed session and one run with some faster than M-pace miles per week until March.
• Foam roll and stretch (put on some music and use this as meditation time).
• Get back into the habit of at least throwing my bodyweight around once or twice a week if not more (weight or time).
• Try to remember what it’s like to swim and ride bikes whenever possible.

Food/Scale:

• Eat good, solid, quality food.
• Get a good start by doing 2-3 weeks of meals at My Fit Foods and Snap Kitchen, and graduate to solid, healthy, batch cooking after.
• Count calories, and try to figure out where the sweet spot is for training.
• Transition to a lower calorie count after the marathon by end of March.

Work:

• Set myself and my team up for success by establishing a good and solid plan for the year.
• Get back in the habit of to weekly to do lists.
• Find a better way to handle the stress than I have been.  Leave it at the office more often.  When it comes home with me, find ways to calm it down that are less self destructive than late boozy nights.  Coloring books have been awesome.  Going out and doing something might be a better answer than sulking on my couch.  Just going to bed and starting over the next day sometimes helps.
• Play games – my games and other games.

Life:

• A weekly to-do list seems to work well for me at work.  I want to start doing this at home as well.  Not to stress myself out, and not to pack my day full of tasks, but so I have a few things to focus on instead of wasting my free time solely on social media and netflix.
• Decrease consumption of my e-cig. Because there are so many less health and performance consequences of using it, I’m finding I’m using it more often.  But it’s still not the greatest thing in the world to feel addicted to nicotine (even if it’s a very small dose).
• Set some better limits on the LENGTH of drinking sessions.  Having a few drinks a few days a week is fine.  Drinking for 8 hours on a weekday is not.
• Go out more.  If nothing else than for the purpose of putting on a dress, doing my hair and makeup.  I’ve realized while it doesn’t bother me that much because I’m just not focused on it, I have not looked in the mirror in a while and said to myself “hey, you look awesome/put together/etc”.
• Color!  Since I’ll be training for a marathon, I’m not going to put a whole bunch of to-do life goals here, but I’d like to fill up a bunch of pages in my coloring book.  It’s relaxing and fun!
• Bike/run commuting.  I don’t think I’m going to really hit my stride before the marathon here, but it would be nice to get out the door on my bike a few times before spring.
• Get the leezard situated.  We had to tear down her cage since she hurt herself on it, but find a more permanent structure for her to have as a home instead of some boxes and bags piled in a closet.

Spring (April-June)

These lists will get shorter, because in some cases, these are just additional to the goals earlier in the year.  This season will be focused on weight loss, and being kind of a normal person!  For someone who really loves triathlon and racing, I’m oddly excited for it…

Racing:

Any races are just for fun.  No pressure.  Probably 10/20 and Lake Pflugerville because, tradition, but nothing here is about gunning for PRs.  Maybe race without a garmin just for funsies.

Training:

• Use that time March – June doing things like taking walks in interesting places, doing casual “coffee” (decaf?) rides not worrying about paces, getting better at yoga, camping, and just remembering what normal people like to do in spring besides run bike and swim until they pass out.
• I don’t plan to 100% abandon training but be selective on what I spend the few hours a week I let myself do.  The absolute best thing you can do to maintain fitness over minimal time is short, high intensity interval training stuff.  So, I plan to do one HIIT session per week of each discipline, and having some form of strength training.  Basically, the stuff I used to do before when I was actually losing weight.

Food/Scale:

• The whole goal after the marathon is to lose weight as quickly as possible while not a) doing a bunch of unhealthy things that will sabotage my goals later in the year and b) not driving everyone around me completely insane.
• However, this is totally timeboxed so I will essentially be at the weight I want to be at for the next 9-12 months when I stop.  So, my goal is to make that as low as possible.
• This is the typical attempt to maintain a 500-1000 calorie per day deficit depending on my hunger, sanity, level of activity, and… life.  If the numbers worked out properly, I should lose between 20-40 lbs.  I’ll take anything in that range.

Work:

Things will start to get busy with two milestones in the spring.  Continue to manage stress, use a weekly to do list, plan well, and play games.

Life:

• Have 4 usable bedrooms (aka – clean out the workout room and office).  Clean off the vanity and all the bedroom surfaces.  I feel like if I can deal with those things, I’m in good shape for the year and most of the rest of the organization I want to do are little projects.
• Kitchen or back patio renovation.  We really need to start one of these two things unless some SEVERE financial hardships come our way.  This season, we should at least pick which one and start the process of planning and estimates.
• Do something with the blog (design-wise) intentionally and commit to shorter content more often.
• Get back into my piano, jewelry making, and/or sewing.
• Bike commuting – the weather should be nice, the light should be good, I’m not fatigued from training, there’s no excuses.  Spring is where this becomes a habit.

Summer (July-September)

Summer will see a gradual ramp up and return back to training, though a lot less steep than normal to get to Kerrville in 2 months.  Since I’ve had Spring as my offseason, I’ll need to balance the need for workouts with the need for water recreation. 🙂

Racing:

First big block of training, so probably not much racing here.  Maybe Jack’s Generic Sprint as a measuring block.

Training:

• Start training and decide on the rest of the season from there.  Speed comes back faster than distance.  Shorter races are NOT less worthy.  It’s not giving up not to race a 70.3 or a marathon late in the year if it’s the right call.
• Either way, the summer will be focused on speed, not a whole lot of distance.  I mean, more than my spring offseason, but I’m not ramping up to 10+ hours of training a week.  That will come later.

Food/Scale:

Transition from weight loss to eating to fuel training.  Not nearly as much as I will later in the year when I add bigger volume, but hopefully I’m happy with where I’m at since it’s likely I’ll be there for the majority of the year.

Work:

This will be the busy season with a few back to back milestones.  Continue with the stress management tactics I’ve established.

Life:

I’ll probably have more to talk about here as the year goes on, but either in the summer or fall, I want to go on vacation here (Roatan).

Fall (October-December)

Fall will be a ramp up to bigger volume, and hopefully less chaos at work that normal, since I’ve planned to have the bigger stuff done in the summer.  Instead of a big 4 month ramp up to get to 70.3 and a marathon, I’ll be training more conservatively with a 3-4 month ramp up for a 70.3 and only a half this year.

Racing:

• Kerrville for sure, but maybe just the Olympic.  Depends on how we feel a month or two out.
• Probably actually doing our hometown 70.3 in Austin.
• Spacecoast HALF this year, not full.

This sounds very light compared to last year.  Y’know what?  It is.  Because the big goal is…

IM Texas, April 2017.  Yeah, buddy.  It’s time.

Training:

Time for volume!  Build for a 70.3 and a half marathon, and then a short break to get rested up for the big push to IM.

Food/Scale:

Ramp back up to eating like an athlete.  Hopefully maintaining whatever weight I’m at, not gaining like I did fall 2015 :P.

Work:

Continue with everything as all year.  This is the prime time for feature creep with the last big milestone in the last year.  Try to protect against it.

Life:

This will definitely be overflow from earlier seasons, and since I’ll be ramping up training, probably have less time to do life stuff (for the most part).  But, we’ll see!

And, because Texas weather is weird, all the selfies are from the last two weeks, not 4 different seasons. 😛

Cheers to an amazing 2016!  I do have some specific things I’m doing in January, so I’ll probably dedicate some blog space to that, but for now, it’s all out there, and hopefully I can make 2016 just as positive as: Confidence, Commitment, and Fluidity.