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2015 Goal Wrap Up

On January 3, 2016

2015 is done and dusted, and it’s time to tally the results. It was a really mixed bag, but as they say, you either win some or learn some, and there was a lot of both things in the last 12 months.

Racing:

Do some soul searching and figure out what is important to YOU for 2015 race-wise, since you may be on a different schedule than Zliten for at least half if not more of the year. Race the marathon Feb 28th only if training is going well. Make appropriate goals as such. No arbitrary January 1st goals on what you’re supposed to PR or tackle next year, just the promise that each race will be for a reason.

Well, sort of. I raced a lot less this year than I have in the past, with doing only five triathlons and four running races, and that was by design. I’ve learned that I don’t love jumping into a bunch of races if my intention isn’t to either a) PR or b) use that race for a specific purpose. So, I actually focused more on the training than amassing a bunch of t-shirts and medals.

Luckily, after winding down after the Woodlands Marathon (and vacation, and recovering, and getting sick before I could actually train again), Zliten bounced back rather quickly and we found ourselves mostly on the same schedule, so I had my training partner back much more quickly than I expected. While I’m a bit more of a higher mileage pony overall and ducked out for some extra sessions/add on miles/split off to do our own thing the last part of runs or bikes during periods of 2015, we mostly attacked the same training.

I had some really awesome races. The Woodlands Marathon may have been slower than I’d hoped, but I ran the whole thing and felt really strong that day. I PR’d race after race after race after race after race in the spring and summer. Rookie and Cap Tex netted me some insane PRs and I showed I was a better athlete this year by improving at Pfluger and Jacks by about 1.5 minutes each time.

I crashed and burned at the end of the year. One time, it was due to circumstances outside of my immediate control. One time, I just lost steam and my brain and body gave up on me. I’m still trying to put together exactly what happened and restore my shaken confidence, after 4 months of training resulted in 2 SPECTACULAR blow ups, but I definitely learned a few things from both the good and the bad:

I’m able to put enough training to be decent (and maybe soon starting to be AG competitive) at the shorter races. My head holds together pretty well and executes well up to the 2-3 hour mark. I’m able to dial in a goal and most times hit the targets (or at least come close).
There’s something about the longer stuff I just can’t seem to fully grasp. I had decent luck at running a full marathon without stopping, but I had spectacular crash and burns at 70.3 and another 26.2.
Still, I find enjoyment in training and dreaming and racing the longer stuff. Or I’d just stop doing it.
Racing a hot marathon on 6 weeks of training banking on post 70.3 fitness is always doable, but never going to be your best shot at a great experience.
Even if I’m having a fantabulously shitty day and want to give up and DNF, that’s not what I do. And that’s something to be proud of, if nothing else.

Training:

Polarized and periodized training seems to work. Continue with this. Easy days easy. Hard days on point. Base periods without electronics or focus and embracing the joy of movement with really loose volume suggestions instead of nailing a certain mileage/pace. Months out of your A race – 85% easy 15% hard. Closer – more goal pace work.

I think I did the best at this than I ever have, though I have room for improvement. I did push the intensity a bit too much leading up to Lake Pflugerville (almost all quality sessions), which I would dial back because I was missing a little give a shit on race day from too many hard workouts in a row. But, I did much less throwing a lot of easy volume at things and trained much more specifically.

1k run miles, 3k bike miles (less on the trainer), 100 swim miles.

Run check (1,022). Bike, so not check (1893). Swim, also not check (45 miles). I definitely had a different focus than I did years before – but when you have 5 months out of the year focused on marathons, 1 month of offseason, and only 1 long triathlon to train for – the volume goes by the wayside.

However, I can tell you that it was the most INTENSE year for swimming and cycling. I did a lot more focused workouts with sets and paces and watts and goals, and I got faster at both. Funny how that works.

Work strength and stretching in as I can.

I’ll have to go back and count this up later because dailymile is being cranky but the gist of it was I sucked at it the first half of the year and was pretty excellent at it the second half, minus December.

DDR is a great plyometric workout.

And my mat broke and the workout room is full of junk. Moving on.

Run streak January.

Nailed it! Doing it again this year, I’m already on day 6 and loving it!

Figure out a time for offseason. True offseason, same as July for you this year. At least 1 month.

Nailed it as well. Had a great 5 weeks focused on water park and lake time above all else.

Food/Scale:

No booze January

In which I held out for 11 days, reset my tolerance for a bit, but with a new promotion and job stress and trying to also clean up my eating and not spend any money, I spent the most miserable and boring 2 weekends of my life and decided that moderation is the key instead of abstinance.

A bunch of other stuff…

I tried to continue to do the lower-grain thing and found it wasn’t the weight loss panacea I had hoped. In fact, I gained some lbs and was kind of cranky about it. I worked with a nutritionist in July and found out

a) I know how to lose weight, I just forgot how. Counting calories, hitting macros, actually sticking to it.

b) It’s counterproductive to try to lose weight during season. Workouts are hard, racing suffers, and I get hangry.

c) I’m still looking for the way to fuel my workouts and sustain me during season without gaining a shit ton of weight, because his plan piled on 12 lbs in one month that I still can’t seem to shake.

I did feel a lot freer being able to eat things in bread and out of flour tortillas and rice and pasta, and I was able to lose weight during offseason (5 lbs in a month) doing that. So, eating a damn sandwich is not off limits. That was nice after a year of bread being the devil.

Work:

The promotion that was up in the air happened. Sadly, reorganization also happened which made doing my new job a whole lot more stressful.

The good:

While I felt like a damn duck, looking calm and composed on the surface, but paddling like hell underneath a lot of the time, my team and I rocked this year.
I feel like this position is probably one of the best fits I’ve ever had in terms of taking my experience and letting me fly. I kind of feel like this is something that my entire professional career has been leading up to, if that makes any sense.
I played a lot of my games. I’m not as caught up with everything as I’d like, but I’m getting closer.

The bad:

Holy hell, let’s talk about that paddling like mad thing. I feel like I blacked out some really stressful periods of 2010, which was my first year of being producer. I’m pretty sure I’ll look back on this year the same way. I think I held it together pretty well on the surface, but I don’t think I’ve needed a 20 day vacation more than I ever did this December.
I got bad at leaving the stress at work. I’ll be honest, I’m not a stress eater, but work definitely drove me to drink at some points.

Life:

I didn’t give away 1 thing every day like I wanted, but I did have a giant garage sale and donate a bunch of bags after it to charity.

Don’t go into a training hole…

I think I balanced the social calendar pretty well. I had to pull back a bit in March for marathon recovery/getting sick, and again in August-September due to family visits/work stress/mental recovery, but I don’t feel like I missed out on too much.

Less facebook/twitter, more short posts here, less weekly recaps.

Well, um, let’s move on, shall we?

Complete the TX tri series with a combination of volunteering and racing.

Yep!

Do something that’s a hobby, not dying in front of the tv, once a week for more than a few minutes.

I actually got really into reading this year. Some periods of time, I did well with gaming. My sewing machine, necklaces, and piano are untouched. 🙁

Actually go scuba diving in lake travis this summer (or somewhere) so I don’t noob it up in the winter.

Yep. It was totally awful. I hope to not have to do that again for a while.

Spend as much time in the water I can.

Ahhhhhhh…. yep!

End the year with 3 words to describe 2015 that are as positive as “grateful, fun, and focused”.

This took me a little while, and while I considered “stressful” as one of them, I tried to look beyond that.

Confident.

Minus the last two unfortunate races of 2015, I really feel like I came into my own this year in a few regards. I have ZERO imposter syndrome anymore at work, I rock at what I do and I know it. I REALLY nailed some races this year. I’m a lot more confident on the bike though I know I have a long way to go. Of course I still have those worries if I’m doing the right thing at times, but I have confidence in the things I chose being the best decision I could make at the time.

Committed.

Again, in so many regards, I spent the year saying, “rock and roll, let’s do this” and then having to follow through (and doing it). The major stuff – I didn’t quit. Even when it was hard. Even when I wanted to. Sometimes this caused a bunch of stress, but, I feel much better about following through with the hard stuff and learning the lessons. True, it tested my strength and pushed me to the limits of my capacity and sanity at times, but here we are, and I’m ready for more.

Fluid.

This is kind of a two parter. I found so much joy, so much healing, so much… love in the water this year. Paddling, swimming, racing, kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, waterpark-ing, and sometimes just existing and kicking back. I am not me when you remove my water… I am a pisces through and through.

Also, I found fluidity in life to be my savior this year. The January streak and the whole Woodlands training block made me realize that “run – a lot – whenever and whatever” is actually a decent way to train for a marathon. Work threw me curveballs and waking up in the morning sometimes was hard, but I learned how to run with a headlamp or at lunch or just sucking it up and training in the heat like a dang animal. When work projects started to go sideways, we always got things back on track by having a little fluidity in the plan and being able to attack a problem from many angles.

So there you have it. 2015 had it’s ups and downs, but at the end of it all – confident, committed, and fluid are not terrible ways to sum up 365 days of life.

December Resolutions – A Map and a Plan

By Quix

On December 9, 2015

In Uncategorized

Usually I do this shit on January 1, but, it’s time early this year care of deep thoughts brought on by two crappy races in a row and the desire not to schluff and mope my way through December.

I keep thinking through why my late season racing has gone way south, and its got nothing to do with my training. That has gone pretty dang well. But, life has been a little weird lately and I think that has worked its way into my overall physical and mental well being.

Let’s create the map then, shall we?

***

All stress is stress and there’s too much of it.

This year has been exceptionally stressful for various reasons. It is the first year of my promotion to Senior Producer over multiple products, so a little is to be expected, but this is ridiculous. The beginning of the year primed the pump. August stepped it up into overdrive, and the cherry on top was our big November release.

I have history of losing my shit this time of year – hell, two years ago I punched a wall 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. I didn’t quite do that (maybe I should have? it was incredibly cathartic…), but I have been seeing the big blinking signs like getting really jumpy and snappy and making mountains out of molehills, even besides my lack of enthusiasm with… life.

I found a way to keep up with what I felt like the minimum training was to succeed in my races, but even with that, my overall stress load was too much and maybe I should have gambled by staying under my blankie more often.

My mind is unquiet too often lately.

Over the last few months, I’ve found I’m increasingly unable to leave my work in my office, or concentrate on other things that are bothering me only when I can actually do something about them which is kind of a big rule of mine. I’m more often mulling problems over on runs, while sitting and watching TV, late at night, etc, and finding my blood pressure raise over it.

Over the years, I’ve built up good habits to put that stress in a box and leave it where it should stay and they have been unraveling over the course of this year. Frankly, upon the first day back from Florida, I was sitting at home on a day off work and my husband just MENTIONED a random work comment and I freaked out and stewed about it for ABSOLUTELY NO REASON. This is not the person I want to be and if I’m bouncing off the ceiling for nothing, it’s sure hard to keep my head about me when things get hard.

I’m not excited about races or training right now.

Space Coast was the culmination of a lot of BS, but weeks before that I would literally have to drag myself out the door almost every run. I just wanted to curl up in a ball and sleep. Once I got out it was usually ok, sometimes even great, but you shouldn’t go through that absence of motivation for weeks – especially when it doesn’t rebound on race week.

Over the last week off, I’ve read some really inspiring race reports, which have ignited the tiniest little spark in my belly. It will come back. In fact, just a few minutes ago, I looked at a triathlon picture and thought “I kinda can’t wait to do that again”. But, to go full force into training right now would probably just snuff it right back out, so I’m being careful with my fragile self.

This new fueling plan isn’t working.

I gave it 4 months. Operation: carb and calorie overload may have fueled training well, but was it that much better than last year? I don’t think so. This extra weight is definitely making me feel awful and neurotic and I’m back to offhand comments about looking like a cow and feeling a sense of dread instead of excitement when it’s time to play dress up.

I was willing to handle it in exchange for some awesome PRs but obviously that isn’t happening. Maybe that’s because of my mental state, but I’m thinking that the extra 10-15 lbs aren’t helping either. So, it’s time to try something else.

I’m relying on crutches to escape.

Let’s not spin this twisted – I think that a few glasses of bourbon or a few pints of beer is a proper way to celebrate every once in a while. Whether that is the finish line of a race, a gathering of friends, or sometimes, just celebrating the end of a rather cantankerous day.

However, I’m finding that, intermingled with all the things in my life right now, it’s less of the “hey, let’s get a drink and celebrate”, and more “ughhhh what a day, I need a drink”. And I’m finding that I’d rather have another than go to sleep sometimes because who wants to deal with tomorrow sooner when you’re stressed?

Theses are all happy times spending time with my husband or friends or out… talking, plotting, scheming, laughing over silly you tube videos, or whatnot, so I’m not spending time being all depressed and crying over my beers or anything. But, there’s no denying that I’m escaping something. Not to mention the extra calories, lack of rest = less recovery, and all the other practical reasons why an increase in alcohol consumption might not be a great idea during season.

I’m a little bored.

It’s definitely not that I’m not busy or have a lot going on. I just find that I end up wasting my precious free time doing stuff like dorking on the internet, drinking beer, or just watching netflix after netflix because I’m too mentally and/or physically out of it to do something more interesting.

I’ve also ducked social interaction or been really reluctant to drag myself out because small talk, or work talk, sounds PAINFUL to me in my crispy crunchy state.

***

So, what’s the plan?

#1 – Take the time off I need to mentally recover from the year and set myself up to really relax.

I’m going to burn a few extra PTO days and give myself a full 20 days off at Christmas – starting December 15 at 5pm, through January 4th. I was going to go back for 2 days in the middle of it since the office is slow to save some time off, but right now, what I need is solid time away.

I have a LOT to do to feel like I’m in good shape to leave things for the year, but I’ve been making good progress. I have been really on top of my to do list, I’ve kept focused, not fucked around on the internet too much, etc. My goal is to have nothing to fret over during this awesome long break.

#2 – Wait to start training again until the itch hits me.

I want to remember what it feels like to be *this* about all this stuff. Physically, I’m fine, my legs feel awesome. Mentally, I need some time. I need to be patient with myself so I don’t jeopardize having a great winter season. My endurance is in a good place to succeed – even if I do JACK and SHIT for two weeks or even a little more, and then start slow from there.

Right now at ~10 days out, I feel halfway there. I am cranky from the lack of endorphins (I’m a joy to be around at work, let me tell you), but looking at my bike shoes, run shoes, or thinking about jumping into the cold pool or training plans still gives me a bit of the heebie jeebies. Not yet. Soon.

I need to run again when I feel the itch and start with as little mileage and structure as I need. I need to give myself space to bail on runs and swim, bike, walk, do yoga, or just do nothing if I need to to get back to the place where I love sports again. However long that takes.

#3 – Eat better. More plants. Less refined grains. Count calories again.

I think if the last 4 months of fueling taught me anything, it’s that carbs (even refined carbs) definitely have their place in my diet. Pasta or a sandwich is not a failure of epic proportions to be guarded against at all costs.

However, I also really miss the amount of fruit and veggies I used to eat. To hit the calorie and carb targets without completely ODing on fiber I had to eat less of them. That just never felt right and I’m going to stop worrying about that. I’m going to keep the stuff that feels good and ditch what felt wrong.

This month, I’m tracking again and I’ll eat 1500 calories per day + activity. In general. I’m going to go back at times to a lower grain type existence but not put any hard and fast rules in place. That means mixing my potatoes with cauliflower again, switching flour for corn tortillas, mixing my pasta with veggies, and all those other tricks I had before to eat nutritionally sound meals without feeling completely deprived.

I’m sure it will take a few weeks to get it on straight, and I mean, who does this during the HOLIDAYS, right? So, there will be some treats and exceptions to the rule. But, I think establishing the habits is the main focus this month.

#4 Transition away from drinking like a fratboy.

To be honest, with 4 more days of work where it still feels like everyone is in competition to get on my last nerve (sorry guys, it’s mostly me, not you), and some holiday shindigs, I don’t feel like this is the time to really inflict some sort of strict rules on myself. Also, it’s offseason. It’s very rare that I get to indulge without worrying about the swim/bike/run implications.

However, I do want to do a few things this month to start good habits:

Set time limits on when I need to go to bed. If it’s a day I have to get up in the morning, I need to be in bed 8 hours before my alarm no matter what.
Set a general limit on how much I should imbibe that evening. If it’s party time, then cool. Let’s do it up. If I just intend to stick with a glass or two of wine, then, that’s what I should do instead of letting it escalate once I have a buzz.

#5 – Free time suckers

The one thing I’m sure about is that Facebook is pissing me off lately and I spend way too much time on it and angry about crap. So, I’m setting a 10-minute a day limit on it. I do like keeping up with family and friends and what they’re doing, and pretty much everyone has gone to using it as messenger so I can’t abandon it, but I’m sick of everyone using it as a way to share their political agendas and other such bullshittery that I don’t need to see on a daily basis.

Honestly, other than that, I’m hoping the boredom thing will sort itself out with the other changes. If I’m more excited to train, I may want to train more and just feel blissfully tired like I used to and be ok with the totally G-rated version of netflix and chill most nights. Once I get time off and feel less crispy, I may actually get into something again that I want to dedicate free time to like gaming, sewing, music, etc. Once I get more rested and recovered, I may find myself wanting to go out more like I used to.

With a map and a plan, I already feel better. That’s the point, right? Hopefully concentrating on these things will help me establish some good habits, and roll into 2016 set up for success!

If We Had (Decaf) Coffee

By Quix

On November 13, 2015

In Uncategorized

Whew! This week is nearing closer to a big deadline at work, one more big marathon training week before shutting it down, and some social/fun stuff going on. All good stuff, but peeps, I’m super busy-cakes and focus is at a premium right now (isn’t it always?).

I like Carla’s “if we sat down to have (decaf) coffee” (the decaf is my addition) posts, so I’m going to borrow the format.

I’d tell you that due to schedules and weather, we ran 15 miles on the treadmill on Saturday morning/afternoon.

This was wayyyy harder mentally than physically. Running is running is running, right? But staring at the same window or same space on the wall or same bad TV just makes it HARDER. By the end it was MSNBC with a special on some judge filmed for beating his kids – NOT what I want to see at mile 13, thank you! I prefer cartoons or food network so I can dream about what I’m going to eat after, thxuverymuch.

But, I did it, I did it decently fast, I got faster as I went along, I was able to get on with the rest of my day instead of postponing, and hopefully it will be a +1 increase to my mental toughness Nov 29th.

I’d tell you that HOLY CRAP Nov 29th is coming too fast and can’t come fast enough at the same time.

I’m feeling a little crispy with work and 4 months (minus 2 weeks) being ON specific race prep training all the time. I’m ready to go out and run 26.2 miles as a yardstick to see where I’m at in Florida. I also (always in the fall) fight that 6-8 weeks is not enough time to prep for a marathon from 70.3 fitness to rock it, but it’s enough to complete it. So here we are.

I’d tell you, speaking of work, it’s been a stressful but successful year.

As things are sort of winding down for a bit (please for the love of all that’s dear and fluffy), I’m getting news that the year has gone really well. I started the year with a new promotion (yay!) more games to focus on (yay!) but let’ say… creative staffing solutions to get the work done (boo!).

There were two choices – allow the staffing changes to affect the projects by being less productive, or kicking ass and being creative, and MacGyvering our way through the year doing way more than expected at the cost of some chaos and stress and stretching and learning and growing.

Because it’s me, I took route 2 because it’s not in my nature to let things wither if I can help it. All signs are pointing to things having gone pretty swimmingly, and that good deeds will be rewarded. We shall see.

I would tell you that I’m both ready for the season to change and not at the same time.

I love running in (Austin’s version of) the cold. I love running in the rain. I love running under grey skies. I love the simplicity of this time of year… do I run or do I not (there is no tri)? I like being able to do a lunch run and then not shower (sorry/not sorry) because I am barely glistening.

But… leaving work every day when it’s dark sucks. I’m learning to embrace my headlamp and doing lots of night runs, and getting out for walks during the day, but the early nights still just happen all of a sudden and kind of sucks. Running in the cold is awesome, but getting myself out and going in the cold is kind of rough. The grey makes it hard to get going.

There’s not a whole lot of awesome going on in terms of playing outside. No waterpark, no lake (ok, I’m taking an OWS this weekend but ONLY to test a new wetsuit and I don’t expect to last too long), no summer happy fun times. Though… maybe that’s ok. It may be time to hibernate for a while.

I’d tell you that I am unhappy with my body right now.

Let’s not get this twisted. I am thrilled with the feats my body can accomplish. I’m not in some self-destructive depressive mood over it.

However, I don’t look like me. It’s rare that I get ready for work or going out and go “damn, I look cute today”. It ranges from “ugh, whatever I guess I have to wear clothes” to “I guess this doesn’t look TOO horrible today” lately. I’m dreading holiday parties this year because I LOVE getting dressed up and this year nothing will look good.

While I have run endurance for days (and my speed ain’t too shabby), I feel incredibly sluggish in daily life lately. I can’t ignore that this might have something to do with the 10-14 extra lbs I’m carrying that came on like ALL OF A SUDDEN. I mean, marathon training and all, but bleh.

My gums got ALL puffy this dental check like all of a sudden too. The only thing that really changed in the last 6 months has been my diet and weight. Hmmm. Inflammation?

This week, my mid-section is doing this puffy, irritated, sore, water balloon thing where I wake up in the middle of the night and need to either ice it or ibuprofen it to get back to sleep. This might be compounding the sluggish. I’m not sure if this is related to doing the dozen for the first time in 2 weeks and just being a whole bag of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), or more manifestations of this new eating regiment (or maybe just *something* I ate?).

So, thus continues the attempt to figure out how the fuck to be an endurance athlete and have a happy body and not be 2000000 lbs, which somehow everyone else in the world has figured out besides me.

I don’t need any encouragement here. I know I look different (in the wrong direction) from how I looked a few months ago and it’s on me for jumping on an experiment that didn’t really work out. I don’t need anyone saying “but you look FINE” or “10 lbs doesn’t matter”. I don’t need anyone to come sit with me in my tent of feeling super schlumpy. I’ll figure it out and emerge eventually. This is just where I am right now.

I’d tell you I’m a *little* worried about my iguana.

She ripped off a toenail and was bleeding everywhere two weeks ago. She was fine and spent some time on painkillers and is not eating much (’tis the season for it, but not quite THIS little) and is being very nomadic all over the house. That in and of itself is not bad, but she is supposed to get certain types of light for 6-8 hours a day, and if she doesn’t go to them… sigh.

Pretty sure she just needs some iguana ex-lax and to get over herself.

I’d tell you I’m plotting and scheming for all things 2016.

At work for our next milestones. At home for resolutions, race schedules, and vacation plans. I don’t have a lot of concrete answers for the first 3, but I think this will be next year’s trip.

I’ve been to Roatan twice on a cruise, and have always wanted to go back for a longer vacation. The snorkeling has been divine, I’ve been told the diving is top notch, and I’m pretty sure I won’t want to leave there either.

I’d tell you that one recent morning, bleary-eyed, I mistook the Ben Gay for the toothpaste, and almost made a HORRIBLE mistake.

I lost a toothbrush over it, not my teeth, so there’s that. And that’s pretty much where I’m at lately.

Now, your turn. If we were having coffee, what would you tell me?

Nutrition and Me: The Beginning of Experiment #14385

By Quix

On July 12, 2015

In Uncategorized

As I mentioned HERE, I met with a nutritionist a week ago, and I felt it was worthy of it’s own post and not just lumped into an update. So, here we go.

His first instinct when I was talking him through everything was “why do you need me here?” because I’m pretty knowledgeable about this stuff. However, it was pretty clear I just needed some direction – I had fallen to “paralysis by analysis” over the last few years with all the things to try: grain free, meat free, clean eating, organic, etc. Not that any of those things are bad, but they’ve distracted me from the core of weight loss.

The Basics:

I had forgotten about the basis of calories in/out (kind of) and hitting macronutrient goals (because if I’m not eating many carbs, they’re totally off). I’m going back to tracking to that stuff. Nothing is off limits as long as I’m hitting my macros. That’s kind of a relief after the crazy experiments I’ve put myself through the last few years.

The goal is:

100g protein (about what I eat now)
40-60g fats (a lot less than I’m eating now)
25g fiber per day
variable carbs to fill out my calorie goals depending on training levels

For the next month, while I’m not really training, I’ll be aiming for about 1500 calories per day (my current basal metabolic rate is around there).

After a week I’ve realized that:

1500 calories is the first goal. If nothing else, I need to do my best at stopping my intake once I hit this.
Next is macros. If I am eating super clean, I have no problems hitting this. Days with some booze, or not as clean eating – I just do my best and get as close as I can.
Next is food quality. I’m not completely turning away from organic food, and I’m not stuffing myself with simple carbs, but I’m not avoiding them completely. For example, I went looking for some bagel thins, and the ones with the most fiber were actually the white everything bagels. I’m sure I’ll want to pay attention to this more during season when hitting my macros will be SUPER EASY but at 1500 calories? I’ll take what I can get.

Losing Weight and Training:

He also said that the ability to not lose weight easily while training hard is legit. In fact, he cautioned me against trying to pull the hours I am and try to take down weight. One at a time – either training hard or weight loss. Can’t have both in a healthy way. I tried to eek out the “well, what if I just kept a smaaaaall deficit?” to which I got the eyebrow.

I guess I minimize the amount of training and effort I give because there are so many people that do so much more, but after describing my normal schedule, he was like… yeah… that’s enough that you need to be eating a lot of calories and carbs to sustain that. It was nice to have permission – though it does feel weird – to consider myself an athlete. Without an asterisk.

This will probably be the HARDEST head shift. Since I was… 12… I’ve always been in a state where I have been at least passively or actively trying to lose weight. Make the scale go down. And now, starting in August, I will not be doing anything in my eating or training with intentions to the scale number fall. It will be OK to maintain my weight at whatever it is at for many months. That’s both exciting and terrifying.

The good thing that should keep me from trying to be stupid:

Muscle gains (which I honestly care more about than losing weight) are still possible – and the way to get them are eating enough and weight training. Ok, ok, I will lift heavy things throughout season. Promise. Please yell at me if this falls off.
He said that honestly, my training should be sucking with the levels of carbs I’m eating. I actually had a pretty great year! If this is sucking, I can’t wait to see what fully fueled feels like!

Intuitive?:

He wants me to try some intuitive eating approaches as well to see if that will help me. Honestly, the first two weeks seem to be enough working on the calories or macros, but once that’s second nature, I’ll give this a try (though, Skeptical Quix is skeptical that this will do much for me).

I’m supposed to log the time of day I’m eating, how I feel when I’m eating, and my fullness on a scale of 1-10 (1 = I have to eat now or I will pass out and 10 = I will literally explode if I have one more bite) before and after. I’m not logging this, but I’m definitely keeping it in my head.

The goal with fullness is to eat when I hit 2-3 and stop when I hit 5 when trying to lose weight, and more like 6-7 when I’m in season. For me, stopping at 5 (not hungry but not full feeling) is hard but I’m finding that stopping at 5 sustains me for a lot longer than I think it will.

I don’t think how I feel influences my eating, but I’m willing to log it for a while. I don’t tend to eat my feelings. I asked Zliten too, just to make sure I wasn’t just blind to it, and he said that besides getting angry if I DIDN’T eat, I don’t. We say – “I am sorry for the things I said when I was hungry” and “There are very few problems that can’t be solved by putting food in my face”. I know that while racing a negative head translates usually to not enough fuel, and it’s not that far off other times of the day. I can weather just about any storm much better on a full belly.

Season’s Eatings:

When I ramp up training again, he suggested that I should be at no less than 400g of carbs per day. That is actually based on the very very low end of the athlete scale for the weight I hope to be racing at in the fall (around 170). For reference, I eat around 150g right now and probably have eaten no more than 200 for the last year even on heavy training weeks.

He said ramping up slowly is fine so it’s not a shock to my system but… holy crap. When he was doing endurance training (college swimming I believe) he was training similar hours to me and doing this ratio and he didn’t gain weight. I’ve read that sort of recommendation before, but I figured that was for… like real legit athletes. Not me. Again, head shift.

During training, I should eat about 2500 calories. 1500 of those should be carbs. While this all sounds crazy for ME, it does gel with a lot of the research I have done.

When I joked that I probably need to eat more cake to get to 400 carbs per day, he said that as long as my other macros were in order, there was no problem with cake or sourdough bread or anything else. In fact, if I try to do this with all whole wheat and fiber horkin’ stuff, I’ll probably make myself sick. It will definitely be an adjustment to eat some of that stuff guilt free, but one I’m looking forward to trying.

He said it should cure the hungriness I feel a lot and that when I’m training heavy, I should never be hungry (and if I am I should eat). He did say that when I’m cutting calories, I probably WILL be a little hungry. At 1500 calories, I’m feeling a managable amount of hunger, which means it’s probably the sweet spot right now. It’s kind of nice to know that it’s OK to be hungry when I’m dieting, but it’s NOT ok to be hungry when I’m training.

2015-16 Season and Changes:

Evaluating my year to come, I’ve had some thoughts.

There’s no way to fake my 70.3 or my two marathons. I need to train for them, and if I’m going to train for them, I’m going to train hard and go for PRs.

However, I can fake random shorter races, I’m probably going to ramp wayyyyy down starting in March. I always race a 10 miler at the end of March, and a sprint triathlon in June. I don’t want to skip them, but I think I’ll be ok going in undertrained and just seeing what I can do. I may pepper in another race or two but definitely nothing long and maybe not at all.

I won’t treat it like offseason, I’ll continue to swim, bike, run, and weight train, but I’ll severely limit the hours I do. IIRC, I was able to do about ~5 hours a week and still lose weight, so I’ll peak at that.

And… if I’m going to do that in March – I’m definitely going to make the most of my August – February. To the point where it’s not detrimental to my marathon training, I’ll probably be racing a lot. There’s a 30k and a half marathon in January, I may see about a half at the end of October, and I may plan some shorter Saturday races with a longish run on tired legs on Sunday.

I’ll evaluate more as the season progresses, maybe somehow the weight will just fall off before then, but I don’t expect it to (since it hasn’t before). I just need to look at next Spring as an extended training block with a purpose.

Some other random notes:

When I said I wanted to LOOK more like an athlete, he was like… you don’t think you do? (I don’t – I definitely feel like I have imposter syndrome at some of these races, especially when I come in top 1/3, quarter, even place in my AG, etc). From August – February, I’m going to do my best to treat myself like an athlete physically and mentally.

He is a BIG believer that the current BMI charts are ridiculous. When they were concepted, women did not regularly exercise and were probably malnourished. That makes a whole lot of sense after considering it.

In summary, for 3 more weeks I’ll be at the lower intake and see if I can make any progress. After that, I’ll be interested to see how a mass influx of carbs works for me, and what carbs my stomach seems to tolerate before hard workouts and races (I may just be eating a LOT of potatoes and corn and fruit some days).

Stay tuned for more updates. I’m sure I’ll be talking about this a lot.

Pflugerville Goals and Race Weight Update

By Quix

On June 19, 2015

In Uncategorized

One more shakeout trainer ride and it’s go time. How did this happen so fast?

Because it’s been fun in the past, let’s math this one up a bit, just for fun, shall we?

My best times at Lake Pflugerville Triathlon:

Swim (2014): 11:33
Bike (2013): 46:27
Run (2012): 27:08
Overall (2014) 1:32:09

My multipliers from Rookie:

Swim: 5.8%
Bike: 6.25%
Run: 9%
Overall: 7.6%

This means I can reasonably expect:

Swim: 10:50 (swim has a run in and out so this is not all paddle time)
Bike: 43:45
Run: 24:45
With the 2:15 and 1:30 transitions I did last year, this works out to 1:23 and small change overall.

…well then. That would be a 9 minute PR. I will try to open my mind to the fact that this is POSSIBLE, but WOW.

Let’s just try this again from my best result overall, last year.

Swim: 10:50
Bike: 45:10
Run: 26:20
Overall: with same transitions as above… 1:26 and small change

…a little more believable, but still wow. That would be a 6 minute PR. Considering the last 3 years I’ve finished within 45 seconds of each time, that’s still a huge change.

I’m going to have to lean on a little bit of unicorn and rainbow magic here. The forecast is obviously a little far out, but it’s not kind (low 75, high 90, and INSANELY humid), and that works against me like WOAH.

Swim:

The lake’s condition will definitely influence this, but if I was able to pull 30 seconds off a 300m swim, I can probably do better than that unless the lake is SUPAH CHOPPY. I just need to keep the effort ON, which I’ve gotten much better at this year. I’ll be trying for a watch pace of around 1:42/100y (around 1:50/100m, but my OWS settings only display in yards). And hey, I’ll finally get a chance to see if the race course here is long like I suspect!

T1:

Same deal as all the other races. Every second here is another second I have to take off on that run. Run as fast as I can to transition. Sock, shoe, sock, shoe, helmet, sunglasses and go.

Bike:

This will be interesting. I ride here a lot, but I rarely get the chance to fly down the blocked off roads without worrying about traffic or keeping Zliten/friends in my sights. Here I get to just RIDE. 18-19.something mph sounds crazypants to me, but I did just ride this under the above conditions not giving anything close to 100% at 17.4 mph, so I guess it’s reasonable. Again, just hard to open my mind to the fact that 19 mph is a pace I can keep outdoor riding since that’s new.

If I can feel the same riding as I did at Cap Tex, I’ll be thrilled. Riding aggressive without being aggressive, consistently keeping a comfortably high cadence, pushing up hills and recovering on the downs once I’m back up to speed, staying honest and working to gain speed on the flats, and just rock my home course advantage.

Just a note to myself: sub-42 is over 20 mph. I’ll go on the record right now that if I can ride that speed, I almost don’t care what my run is like (within reason). And also, if I’m close, I may just go for it.

T2:

The run starts as soon as my feet touch the ground on the bike. I’m not using bike gloves this time, so I won’t fumble with them. I’m debaaaaaaating using a throwaway frozen handheld bottle, but I need to decide whether the extra happy of having a frozen bottle will outweigh the “i have to carry a bottle” annoyance. The temps will decide. Shoe off, shoe on, shoe off, shoe on, step into race belt, grab visor (and maybe handheld) and GTFO.

Run:

I predict my run will be in feels like mid-to-upper 80s. A little better than two weekends ago starting my run around 11am in the feels like upper-80s to mid-90s, but I was only able to muster 10 minute miles going probably only one gear under race effort. The run is a little short at something like 2.85 or 2.9 miles typically on my garmin, which makes these silly run times possible. On a cool day. Not on gravel. Not off a hard bike. With a healthy dose of pixie dust.

I need to channel my inner badass here and just FUCKING RUN MY ASS OFF. Remembering that this is the last 3 miles of season. For the next 5 weeks, I can run 13 minute miles on the treadmill inside in the AC if I feel like it. These three need to be aiming somewhere around the low 9s/upper 8s if I can summon the sheer amount of will, guts, gumption, suck it up buttercup, caffeine, sugar, and unicorn dust to do so.

I’ve spent a lot of time running on kitty litter and while it hasn’t stopped sucking, I’m probably more used to it. Dreaming about dunking myself back in the lake helped me on previous runs. That and freezy pops may singlehandedly get me to the finish line.

No matter how things go, I’m looking forward to one more go-crazy-as-hard-as-I-can race before it’s time to change things up a bit. Let’s go with… 1:23 is my A+ goal, 1:25 is my A, sub 1:30 is my B, and a PR is also perfectly acceptable to me if the day does not go as planned.

…y’all just come here for the selfies, right?

Project Race Weight:

I’ve learned some things.

It is indeed possible for me to eat like a normal human, where a large restaurant meal is actually the majority of TWO meals, not something to be consumed also with an appetizer and a snack later. It’s super nice to buy a big sandwich and have it last for two meals. Less training hours helps this but also not letting myself get to the point of being famished is key.

Eating less food definitely means I have a little less to give while training. It wasn’t that I was lacking the ability to get through any one session, but I couldn’t string as many together as I could two weeks ago when I was shoving food in my cakehole like crazy. As long as I’m careful, workouts don’t suffer, but some days where I’ve lived on vegetables and fat and protein, I’m definitely feeling lethargic… until I eat my before workout snack of fruit and yogurt, and then I perk right up.

This is just how the calorie defect game goes. I won’t have to worry about training until August so after Sunday, things will get less complicated. However, this week’s plan was to be careful about workout fueling Mon-Wed and try to maintain a smaller amount of calories, and then Thurs-Sat, no less than 2000 GOOD FOOD calories per day. Kind of like carb loading, but calorie loading. I thought this would be hard, but yesterday I went over by like 500. Oops.

Just for kicks, since we’re talking numbers, I ate an average of 1864 calories per day last week, and burned an average of 2315, resulting in an average calorie deficit of 451 per day. If math worked out properly, I’d be just a little under 1 lb down.

So, let’s take my average weight over the week, throwing out my high and low. I think that’s one thing that gets me needlessly frustrated. One weird low swing and I get excited. When it doesn’t happen again for a while, I get down and think I’m not making progress when I am. My average weight June 1-7 was 182.6. My average weight June 8-14 was 180.7. I would say a little water weight played into the extra loss but… progress. I expect to make a little less this week because of the race, but we’ll see.

Less than 48 hours until offseason, so I’m off to make it happen!

Adjusted Reality

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

Tag: #projectraceweight Page 19 of 20

2015 Goal Wrap Up

December Resolutions – A Map and a Plan

If We Had (Decaf) Coffee

Nutrition and Me: The Beginning of Experiment #14385

Pflugerville Goals and Race Weight Update

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