Adjusted Reality

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

Tag: psychoanalysis Page 16 of 31

Tomorrow I will be the oldest I’ve ever been…

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On March 2, 2017

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Tomorrow is my birthday.  Normally I get all sorts of introspective, but with all this training, that part of my brain is kind of asleep so you’ll get a little less than normal, but indulge me a bit.

37 was the year I would finally not feel like an imposter wearing this shirt…

A year ago, both my body and spirit were pretty broken training for The Woodlands Marathon.  I spent a lot of time last winter believing the way out was through, but sometimes, as I learned, you just need to strategically retreat and live to fight another day.  I don’t regret suffering through a 6+ hour marathon to really hammer that lesson home, but would it have been smarter to cut my losses and run the half?  Probably.

Right now, I’m really enjoying the process of watching my body transform into someone capable of calling themselves an Ironman soon.  Is it hard?  Yep.  Do I have moments of despair and doubt?  Absolutely.  However, each workout I conquer gives me confidence that I’ll be able to pull from on April 22nd.  It’s fun watching my body do things it’s never done before and when I check in, it’s like “that was ok!  I can’t believe that was ok, but it was!”.

A year ago I was terrified of being a cyclist.  I’m still not intentionally heading out to those crazy cycle races where you can touch 5 bikes from your own while riding, and things like pacelining and riding my TT bike in the pouring rain still give me pause, but I’ve made big steps.  I can ride my bike with the clipless pedals in traffic with other people confidently.  I’ve got the hang of commuting and running errands on my cruiser bike.  For my birthday weekend, I’m going to go play bikes with people (and run off it because I *do* have to train for a race and March is for bricks) because that’s what is fun to me now.  All of this would have sounded like greek to me 365 days ago.

A year ago I didn’t weigh much more, I’m a few lbs down from March 2016 depending on the day, but I’m a lot more sturdy now.  I’ve spent (most of the) year being a good student at weight training, and it’s helped me be successful and relatively uninjured once my hip recovered.  I lost some weight and gained some back and now I know how to do both and I’m going to try to do more of the former than the latter this year.

A year ago, I was kind of content just doing what I was doing.  In the last year, I’ve become certified as a personal trainer, a sports nutrition specialist, and I’m about to be a certified triathlon coach.  I revamped this space and I’m starting to learn the ins and outs of social media, PR, and marketing.  No matter what I end up doing with this knowledge, it’s helped awaken the part of my brain that grew up loving learning because learning shit is awesome.

37 was definitely a year of discovery.  What will 38 be?  Who knows?  I’m looking forward to finding out.

Training updates:

Bike->Run->Bike->Cake.

7 weeks, 2 days to go.

I will definitely say that I’ve found an edge, but I’m still hanging on.  I know that I have five more weeks to build fitness, five more weekends to do the long stuff, and then it’s time to shut it down and taper.  Light, tunnel, and all that.

I detailed my long day in REALLY FINE DETAIL here, but, in other training news, last week was definitely one of the peaky ones this cycle.  It included both a) a long run of 19 miles and b) a long day workout (1 hour swim, 5 hour bike, 2 hour run).  Luckily, they were separated by 5 days because I had the day off Monday.  I had a really lovely solo 19 miles in beautiful weather… well, ok, I had a lovely 15-16 miles, and then toughed out the rest of them when my legs started to cramp a little, but it was still definitely the best long run I’ve had in well over a year.

During the week, I kept it pretty chill.  I did find that my body needed a little more time to recover after the 19 than I’d hoped, but not beyond rational expectation.  I had to cut a 90 minute cycling session to 30 easy minutes instead, but there was just about no choice in the matter.  As soon as I hopped on my bike I instantly had a headache and felt gross.  That was my body slapping me on the wrist and saying “NO!”.  So, I ate some soup and went to bed at 7pm and felt just fine in the morning.  Listening pays dividends.

Last week:

  • 2 runs – 19 miles (3:39), 11 miles off the long bike (2 hours)
  • 2 swims – 15oom in 27, 3100m in 1:01
  • 3 bikes – easy 30 mins, 60 mins high/low, 5 hour TT ride.
  • 2 weights sessions – 1 conference room body/bands session, 1 dozen/kettlebells session

And that makes about 14.75 hours.  More if you count my ~45 min recovery walk on Sunday but I didn’t log it.  So there.

This week’s plan (mostly complete):

  • Runs – 1 hour easy (48 mins DONE), 1.5 hour with some pickups (80 mins DONE), 30-60 mins off the bike
  • Swims – one lunch swim (DONE), one long swim (in the lake, if possible)
  • Bikes – 4+ hours (more casual, playing bikes on the road bikes with the only goal as saddle time), cycle class or similar effort ride (DONE), easy hour and/or commuting (DONE)
  • Weights – 2 sessions (one DONE, one happening in about an hour).

As planned – about 13 hours or so, but as you can see, I’m not quite hitting 100% on some of the workouts.  Technically, the long day is supposed to coincide with a rest week next, but my schedule didn’t line up, so I’m playing it by ear and listening to what my muscles are telling me.

The goal this weekend is just your standard sort of volume training with a few pops of intensity.  I want to run off the bike again (and take less than 90 minutes to transition this time), and I’m hoping that the weather cooperates for a nice long lake swim.

Life Stuff:

It’s nice to have some actual rest days with gorgeous weather so I can take long walks and sniff flowers and pet neighborhood kitties.

In other news, last week I did actually finish chapter 16.  I’m done!  This week, my goal is to spend at least a few hours reviewing all the chapters.  I won’t quite make certification by my birthday, but it will be close… and mostly because I don’t want to spend my birthday weekend taking the test…

This is a total estimate since I had to go back and track from Thursday to Monday all at once, but on average, I ate 2632 calories per day with a 647 calorie deficit.  I know I missed some snacks in there.  It was really weird dealing with the long day + two days completely off around it.  Some better planning will help keep things a little more nutritious and even for next time.

To round out my ratios – 78g fat. 331 carbs. 106 protein. 30 fiber.  Not my finest nutritional week but life will go on.  This week it’s back to planning and moar carbs and less fat and veggies and fruit and stuff.

My average weight is 188.0 (up .8).  Bleh.  I’ll attribute the two long days to a lot of water weight.  I am enjoying this cycle, but I really can’t wait until my workouts allow for more predictable weight tracking.  It’s really weird to see your weight fluctuate 7 lbs in 24 hours…

I did better with drinks but also a little worse – I stayed up WAYYYY (read: 3am) too late on Thursday drinking WAYYY too much wine.  The good news is that I had 14 drinks overall (better than last week), and I had enough of a hangover that I won’t be trying that again any time soon.  Bleh.

My sleep was a little less awesome than lately, but still more than adequate with 8:15 average per day and almost 4 hours of deep sleep.  I’ll take it.  I’m adapting to this training and it’s zonking me out a little less.

Last week I took the week off other responsibilities, and it was nice.  I’m going to do the same this week because it’s my birthday weekend and eff if I’m going to spend it doing any more chores than I absolutely have to.

Off to enjoy BIRTHDAYMAS, aka March, the most wonderful time of the year!

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5 Odd Side Effects of Ironman Training

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On February 17, 2017

In Uncategorized

I have two really gritty posts about fear, rejection, facing the unknown for about a month… but to be honest?  I’m really tired this week and looking at them is giving me the heebie jeebies, so they’re staying in the drafts folder. Maybe I need to ignore all that stuff until #projectspringencore

So, instead, let’s talk about the lesser known side effects of training for an Ironman.

#1 – The food situation is in teenage boy territory and I’m definitely not gaining weight by eating this way.

Right now, this is an appetizer…

I know I joke about this a lot, but it’s the truth. I’m buying at least 20% more food at the store every week, and I’m still supplementing with the occasional snack and just as many meals out (probably more) as normal.  I am legitimately eating 4 square meals and snacks on training weeks and 3 big meals with lots of snacks on recovery weeks.

Try as you might to eat good quality food (and you should, because you can definitely feel the difference if that’s lacking), you can’t stick to it 100%.  Here’s the real talk – complex carbs have FIBER.  This is a great thing.  But when you’re eating about 2-3x a normal human’s carb intake, you absolutely DO NOT WANT 2-3x the daily recommended value of fiber.  Ask me how I know.  The upshot is, you need some crappy simple carbs in your life to make your ratios and be properly fueled.

You will constantly complain about how things have not ENOUGH carbs, not too many.  I wish someone could fit more than 25 carbs in 100 calories but it’s just not possible.  Some days, to hit my ratios, I should be huffing pixie stix.

#2 – You will be in the best shape of your life.  Too bad you probably won’t look it most days.

#muppethairdontcare

These weekend workouts that are approaching a full eight hour work day?  They’ll make your weight swing up and down with dehydration and refueling and you’ll go from feeling empty to pregnant with a liquid baby and back again.  I don’t swing much normally on the scale, but I was up and back down 6 lbs in the stretch of 5 days.  Some days you’ll feel great.  Some days your jeans won’t fit because you’re super bloated and rocking inflammation all over.

That shouldn’t affect my super hot, shapely legs, right?  Well, I certainly won’t be accentuating them with some killer heels any time soon.  When you’re putting so many miles on them, your choices are a) cushy flat sandals or b) sneaks and maybe c) occasionally flat boots.  But not too often or your feet will still get cranky.  Hopefully, like me, you’ve found the pair of sandals that is BARELY acceptable to wear with a nice dress but also works after a 20 mile run (and I order them once a year on Amazon when they wear out).  And live somewhere where 90% of the time, it’s sandal weather.

Let’s go up top.  Higher.  The frizzy mop on my head.  While I’m not known for my moments in front of the mirror at any point of the year, things get interesting during this cycle.  Washing the hair is for a) after swims and b) after the long effort for the week.  The apres swim wash is in the stuff the gym provides which is actually all purpose wash, so I use real shampoo about once a week.  And… if you do the math between 3 washes and about 12 workouts per week… my hair is sweaty probably about 75% of the time.

#3 – Training just becomes something you do.  Motivation really doesn’t factor into it.

Ride to work, run home, this is just how we do nowadays

I get a lot of comments about how we must be such motivated people.  Like I get up every morning at 5am and shoot rainbows out of my butt and say “let’s go run and swim and ride bikes and smile and be happy all day! Wheee!”  I’ll let you in on a secret – most of the time I roll out of bed around 7:30-8:30am (headlamps are my BFFs), and I honestly suck at motivation.  If I really don’t want to do something, I’m GREAT at inventing ways to justify getting out of it.  I am the queen of procrastination.  My couch has an INSANE gravitational pull.

You are what you repeatedly do.  The first week or two of any cycle after offseason is hard, but then it just becomes habit.  Training 7 days per week, 2-3 times a day sometimes, is just what life is right now.  Honestly, sometimes the fear of not being ready for April 22 plus the mental gymnastics about when I could possibly reschedule a session typically equals showing up and powering through instead of flaking.  But sometimes I flake, and that’s alright too.

And, while right now it’s all a very lot right now, I try not to lose sight of the fact that I get the opportunity to do this shit!  I have a strong and healthy body that gets to play bikes with friends and swim forever staring at the black line spacing out and thinking up new blog posts and explores new places (or just my ‘hood for the thousandth time) on foot.  There is no better way to spend a beautiful day when you feel great… it’s just showing up to all the other days that takes a little oomph.

#4 – You will never sleep better about 99% of the time.

It’s all about the recovery.  Yep.  EVERYWHERE is a potential place to nap.

As my training hours go up, so does my sleep requirement.  8 hours is a requirement, not a suggestion.  9 hours is better, and 10 is awesome.  While I’m not one of those “up with the sun” triathletes, I still go to bed pretty early most days to make sure I’m getting enough ZZZZs.  If I try to shortcut that, my body just shuts down.

My body also seems to do it’s part and respond by spending more time in deep sleep.  Saturday night, after my long run, I spent 5.5 of my 8.5 hours there, according to my garmin (and I woke up feeling pretty awesome, so I wouldn’t disagree).  I’ll be interested to see what it’s like during offseason, but I *know* I don’t sleep as well, quickly, or deeply.

The downside?  I’ve not had a book take me THIS long to finish in months.  The upside?  That crazy thunderstorm at 2am?  Yeah, I have ZERO recollection of it.  Except that Zliten told me I mumbled at him to stop making noise, rolled over, and went back to sleep.  Oops.  While you might have the occasional thrashy night if your legs are super sore, overall, you’ll have the best sleep of your LIFE!

#5 Ironman brain is a real thing.

Six hours of riding produces the crazy eyes.  Brain not far behind.

I just spent 5 minutes attempting to untangle my backpack string from my bike lock.  I’m having trouble remembering the word I want to say.  My writing is probably starting to look like a grad school child’s, and it’s all IM training’s fault.  When they say Ironman triathletes are not right in the head, they’re not completely off.

Normally, I enjoy the juxtaposition of my job (very sendenatary, very people oriented and communicative) and triathlon (very active, very solo focused in my own head).  However, while I’m handling the TIME commitments alright, it’s the MENTAL stuff I’m having an issue with.  It’s like, my body’s hanging in there like a trooper, but my brain is checking out about 75% through what needs to be done on any given day.

I’ll definitely not knock it, I’m feeling like I’m getting prepared for the race, so training is doing what it’s supposed to, but the side effects are very unexpected!

Question: What’s the weirdest thing that’s happened to you when you started working out?

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The Middle

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On February 8, 2017

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This is the middle.  The newness of “wheee, I’m actually training for this Ironman race” has worn off, and I still have 10 and a half weeks until the race (thankfully), so the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t quite there.  Zliten and I are a little snippy at each other.  I have given my scale a STERN talking to on several occasions like it was a real person.  The training sessions JUST DON’T STOP COMING because dang, it’s hard to fit in another part time job when you already have a full time one, and want to do fun things every once in a while, and also have family and friends that actually want to be in your life and stuff.

Sometimes looking at the light is dangerous.  Just ask my iguana.

I’ve figured out a few things:

a) this is NOT the time to be cooking anything fancy.  I don’t have the oomph right now to spend half of Sunday in the kitchen.  Easy meals that multiply out well, crock pot food, this is what needs to be happening.  I DEFINITELY, even if I convince myself otherwise because food is better fresh, don’t have the oomph to cook food at night when I get home.  We tried that last night and there was yelling and rude words and one of us just had to leave the kitchen because dinner took 20-30 minute to cook after we got home at 8:15pm.  “I’m sorry for the things I said when I was hungry” is a phrase that is on repeat around here lately.

b) this is also not the time for a shit ton of commitments.  I have to use the word NO liberally.  In May, I get to use the word YES more often.  In February, I have very few slots on my dance card.  If we hang out between now and April 22nd, you probably either a) also swim/bike/run or b) you are very special to me.

c) midnight is absolute bedtime on weekdays and 2am is pushing it on Saturdays.  Once I pass that 10 hours/week training mark, I either sleep or my body just shuts the hell down.

Want to make your Monday awesome? Bike to work, eat amazing food, run home, and then eat more amazing food!

It’s not all bad though, in fact, mostly great.  Last week was pretty stellar.  I hit every workout I planned (besides the wishy-washy “maybe a recovery ride or run if I feel like it” plan Sunday when I haven’t had a full day off in 36 days… I mean DUH, I’M NOT GOING TO FEEL LIKE IT).  I only shortened one bike.   Almost 13 hours of quality training in the bank.  Rock on.

  • 2 swims – 3150m in 59 min and 1350m in 25 min
  • 2 hours easy riding and a 6 hour long hard ride (87 miles/5k climbing)
  • 15 miles running – 10 mile long run in 2:03 on super tired legs, 5 mile in 57 mins on fresher ones.
  • 2 weights – one dozen set, one bodyweights/bands session
  • Stretching/rolling every day

Nothing particularly fast or impressive here, just a bunch of solid work at a steady pace.  It’s not sexy at all.  And that’s exactly where I need to be at this point.

This week, I’m ditching the long ride in favor of a long run.  Now, my longest run so far is 13 miles (14 if you count as far back as October) so going straight to aiming for up to 20 may be crazy, but the cool thing about endurance is it DOES indeed transfer between sports, so we’ll see how it goes.  I have one more crack at the 20 later in the month so this first one is just to see where my comfort zone ends on legs that aren’t *completely* wasted.

  • 25-30 miles of running with 15-20 long run.
  • 5-6 hours of cycling broken up into 3 rides – one hard ride, one interval ride on the TT, and one recovery ride (plus maybe some errand/commute riding)
  • 2 swims – one shorter 1200-1500 and one longer 3k-4k.  Hoping for at least race distance, but we’ll hit that next week if I don’t.
  • 2 weights workouts.  Gym once, either dozen or something else once.

The balance hangs somewhere between the swim and the salad and the burger and fries.

Life stuff:

I did Chapter 14.  This week, it’s Chapter 15 (and actually already done).  Next week is my last week of class, and then it’s time to study…

I didn’t social media much.  I’m kind of stuck and bored with it TBH.  I think this might need to take a back seat until I can really attack it.

I tracked my calories for 2367 average each day with -673 deficit.  I’m actually surprised this was as good as it was, considering I overate even my total burned calories on Sunday.  My ratios were 89g protein, 76g fat, 29g fiber, and 276g carbs per day.  Wrong way again on fat, I upped my fiber and carbs (yay), but my protein wayyyy down.  Honestly, I just ate like shit all weekend and that threw my ratios off.  Same deal as every week it seems.  More carbs, less fat, and now keep my protein on track (which has been MORE than fine since Monday *shrug*).

My average weight was 189.1, which stayed the same from last week. Still 9lbs to go back to 70.3 race weight.  Inflammation from these long weekend sessions (and then the calories I’m eating back) is real, yo.  I swung from 192.8 on Monday to 186.7 this morning.  My body fat reading is up too.  It’s going to be a hard fight while training, but I’ll keep chipping away at it, because that’s the only alternative.

I drank quite a few drinks last week – 8 over 2 days during the week, a bunch after the race and I didn’t keep count, honestly.  Whiskey on the rocks was divine but a few of them and I was tipsy and also falling alseep.  I figured I would have a little bit of a crazy week with the beer only embargo finally lifted and some social events, but I don’t want this to become the norm.  This week, I’ll aim to go back to where I was in January.

Rest and recovery and sleep are going well.  I’m averaging over 3.5 hours of deep sleep per night, with almost 9 hours average total.  Even with the extra drinkies, I ended up with lots of sleep.  This is a good compromise.

This week, I have some errands to run so I’m not going to set a bunch of other goals:

  1. Pick up new glasses (DONE!)
  2. Exchange Christmas present shirt (all the way across town and only available select days from noon to 5. :P)
  3. Pick up Valentine’s Day dinner food and have a super awesome grilled steak and lobster love fest.

And, that will wrap it up.  One foot in front of each other.  One workout, one mile at a time.  Keepin’ on keepin’ on.  Nevertheless, I shall persist (thanks Elizabeth Warren).  Rest week is imminent.

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A little looking back, a little more looking forward.

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On February 1, 2017

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Shall we do some of that retrospection and reflection now that January is done and dusted?

A little scruffy but STILL SPARKLING DANGIT!  January did not defeat me!

Let’s start with the general stuff.  January life goals were a big HELL YES.  Besides completely procrastinating the great car cleanout of 2017, I did a great job at sticking to the things I wanted to get done.   I made ZERO progress on my weight, but I am tracking and weighing daily, and I know last time it took me SIX WEEKS to see any change.  If I have to choose between losing weight and fueling workouts properly I’ll take the latter, but I’m hoping to accomplish a little of both.  I started pretty strong with batch/healthy cooking but I’ve fizzled the last week or two.

I finally broke the cycle of doing moronic things like staying up super late and drinking like a frat boy a little too often (oddly enough, it just took 11+ hours of training per week, duly noted).  To do this Ironman training thing, I found I either had to a) prioritize rest and recovery or b) break the eff down.  I’m choosing a) for the next few months and I can do idiot things in May if I want.

Obviously, training-wise, the focus in January was cycling-centric and I capped that off with my first 100 mile outdoor ride.  I was able to get in 3 runs in the double digit range, but not a whole lot of mid-week volume to back it up.  I struggled to build my swim as planned because of allergies, lack of motivation to swim outside in the cold, and the fact that my ass was attached to a bike seat every day, but I got some work done there and reached the 3k/1 hour mark.  I did a pretty good job sticking to strength and recovery work, simply because I’ve figured out the most lazy ways to do it so I don’t have excuses.

Ways to make sure you do double digit runs/actually run faster than a slow slog during bike month – sign up for races with friends!

January stats:

  • 53 miles of running (10h)
  • 601 miles of cycling (35h)
  • 9541m swimming (3h)
  • 8 strength sessions (out of 9 planned)

Bests:

Body Stats:

  • Average daily intake: 2161 calories, 112g protein, 64g fat, 30g fiber, 256g carbs
  • Average daily deficit: -806 calories
  • Average January weight: 188.7
  • Average weekly beer consumption: 12 beers (1.7 beers per day)

Going into February, I feel a little behind on the bike (I was hoping 100 miles would be more in my comfort zone instead of doing it once and it being REALLY FUCKING HARD), but I’m less worried about it then I was this time last week.   I’m ready to shift from all-crotch-smashy-against-my-bike-saddle-all-the-time January to training a little more evenly in February, making my foray into the longer-than-half-marathon runs so I can test the waters in that sport.

I’m planning on this block (and maybe more in the future) of 2 weeks on/1 week off.  I think if I have a shorter time to rest week, I can push myself a little harder.  Also – last week was rest week and kinda not that restful, so I can definitely see the value having a stepback week sooner than later where we don’t have errands evvvvry day after work and I don’t do a 7+ hour ride.

What, your rest weeks don’t involve riding 100 miles?  Pffft. 🙂

Week 1 of block 2 (this week):

  • Long run of 2 hours/10 miles.  Already done.  I hoped to maybe extend it closer to 3/15 miles, but I did it so close to my long ride that 10 miles was super hard enough.  Another hour run easy on the plan tomorrow and that’s it for runs.
  • 6 hour bike race.  I want to get as close to 100 miles as I can.  Even if I fall short, I’ll get to spend 6 hours of QT on a closed course with Death Star and notch another solid outdoor long ride.  Backing this up with mostly easy, short bikes the rest of the week.
  • 3k+ long swim and a lunchtime shorter speedier swim.
  • A more balanced week.  My bike streak is done, and while I believe it did me lots good, I will be MORE than happy to not hop on my trainer every 12-36 hours and spend some of that time running and swimming.

Week 2 of block 2 (next week):

  • Long run of 3-4 hours.  At least 15, up to 20 if I’m feeling good.  I’m actually blocking my long workout of the week off for this instead of a bike.  And, this will be the last big workout before a rest week, so if I feel awesome and go for the 20, I can immediately transition to rest week, I don’t have to *save* anything.  I’ll back this up with a *little* more mid-week volume (probably 2×1 hour runs, one slightly faster than slog pace).
  • Backing off on the cycling volume for one week.  No long ride, but 3-4 hours of quality riding and 1-2 hours recovery happy fun riding throughout the week.
  • 3-4k long swim.  Race distance would be great, if not, at least an hour session plus a shorter lunch speed session.

Rest week:

I haven’t planned this one out yet, but I’m hoping to spend some good QT in the pool.  Swimming is recovery to me.  Even a long swim makes me feel awesome the next day.  As for the rest of the week, I could approach it with little mid-week volume and a long effort on the weekend, or just a consistent 1-2 hours max daily.  It might be nice to just roll through some comfortable sessions and give my mental toughness a week off.  I’ll have to see how I feel.

Next block (Feb 20th and beyond):

I’m still struggling with what’s next and to be honest, I think I’ll have to evaluate how this block went and what I need to work on.  Do I need more cycling or running work?   When should I do my two “big days“?  Do I feel like I need more volume or can I back off a little and work more speed? How absolutely BEAT am I?  Should I do 2 or 3 weeks on before a rest week?  What life stuff do I need to work around?

Only time will tell.  But, I definitely have goals.  Let’s list them, shall we?

  • 20 mile run once, 15+ run at least once
  • 4k swim at least twice
  • Two outdoor long rides approaching 100 miles.  Now that I’ve hit the mark once and have two “long days” planned a bit later in the cycle, I’m not as hyper-focused on triple digits, but the effort should be there.
  • 2-3 sessions per week that are harder than an easy slog (cycle class or videos, pool speedwork, some intervals that are faster than 11-12 min/mile run, etc)
  • Weights twice a week.  Get into the gym at least a couple times to lift the slightly heavier stuff.  One non-dozen set each week since it’s kind of getting easy now.
  • Continue with the boots, rolling, and/or stretching everyday game.  It’s really helping.

And, to round out February, I have some non-triathlon related goals. The big focus of the month is IRONMAN TRAINING.  Everything else that needs to fall off to hit that hard?  It’s fine.  I’ll worry about my to do list and how my house looks in May.  But, I would like to accomplish some things, so it’s worth putting them out there.

It was a month of balancing a LOT of the sporty sporty with a little of the beers.  February will be much the same.

Healthy Living Stuff:

  • Even if the beer-only embargo is lifted, don’t be an ass about drinks.
    • Beer on weekdays, other stuff on weekends/special occasions.
    • Don’t average more drinks than January.  Training hours will be going up.  Beer counts should not.
  • Continue to track my food and weigh every day and aim for the proper ratios.  It will be GREAT to have this data.
  • Water.  it’s always harder for me in the winter.  Most days I’m getting my ~64 oz but I should be drinking more if I’m training.  I should be getting that PLUS some during workouts.
  • Realize that cooking during the week is probably not going to happen and my limit for batch cooking on the weekends is lower than normal.  Put together SUPER easy meals and plan for healthy take out options in between.
  • Priorities go in this order: eating good food to fuel my workouts THEN trying to maintain a deficit.  Both are good, but the former is more important than the latter.

Life Goals Stuff:

  • I feel torn up about what’s going on in the world right now, but for my own good I need to largely ignore it.  I don’t have time to give, but I have money I can donate to causes that are fighting all the bullshit and that’s something I can actually do.  This month, I need to investigate where to put it and set up some sort of donations.
  • Actually clean out the cars.  For reals.  It’s almost hilarious how long we’ve been procrastinating this.
  • Speaking of cars, after cleaning it out, mine is very overdue for it’s 60k mile service.  It’s just dropping it off and spending the money.
  • Wash and lube the entire bike stable.  Evilbike is a dirty girl right now and Death Star is kind of sticky.
  • Finish the last 3 triathlon coach chapters this month and start studying for the test.
  • Keep making small efforts to pursue my big scary end of the year side hustle goals.  Play with my book outline I’ve started.  Continue to play with growing followers and social media stuff.  Avoid personal facebook because it is a hive of scum and villany.
  • Once we get our bonuses, consider what we’d like to apply them to in terms of a housing project (and start researching).

Life goals – to have all Mondays looking and tasting this awesome!

All in all, it feels GREAT to have survived January and actually kicked it’s butt!  February is looking promising and then it becomes one of the best times of year… spring!

3M Half Marathon – hold onto your hat! #upwindtodowntown

By

On January 23, 2017

In Uncategorized

Right after running 3M in 2016, I signed up again.  It’s seriously one of the best chances I’ll ever get for a PR – it’s in January, so it’s 99% likely to be gorgeous weather for running, and it’s net downhill which makes it fast (they call it #downhilltodowntown).  Every year I sign up, I’m like “this is when I’m going to take a crack at that 2:07:xx”.

Pre-race, the ever important porta potty stop and huddling for warmth with a few thousand of your closest runner friends.

Then, every year, I realize that January is not really my month.  I’m either deeeeep into marathon training and fatigued or this year, very undertrained and also deeeeeep into fatigue having finished a 3 week block of the highest volume I’ve ever done.  I’ll probably early sign up for it again, and say the same thing.  I actually think next fall/winter I might just concentrate on halfs and see if I can get faster but something will inevitably come up.  But it’s still a fun race that everyone does so I don’t mind showing up and seeing what happens so much.

Let’s talk about how untrained I am to run a solid half marathon.  If this was a cycling race, I’d be golden.  Swimming?  Probably a little better off.  However, in the last 3 months since my 70.3 I have run a 10 miler and two 11 milers, but ZERO of the miles in any run have been speedwork, and my total mileage is about 100.  Yeah.  My normal weekly mileage this time of year is more than my currently monthly mileage.  Yeah, I’m riding all the bikes, but still.

The point of this big long depreciating diatribe?  I lined up with only two goals yesterday morning: 1) work hard but still be able to get up and train today and 2) if at all possible, try not to get a personal worst at this race, which meant I needed to beat 2:27. Any of the outdoor runs I’ve done lately have been paced slower than that so that was actually a consideration.

It was a SUPER pretty day for running… except for the 25+ mph wind gusts… #upwindtodowntown

We started with the 2:15 pacer since that seemed like a reasonably hard goal right now, and ran with friends until they decided to take off and go a little faster.  I took in a caff gel right away over the first two miles, and stopped at an aid station to wash it down.  It was so windy, my hat blew off and I had to chase it, and then I had lost them.  I figured that was the last I would see of anyone and it wasn’t even mile 3.

Let’s also talk about how Zliten and I respond to rest.  He takes months off running, he runs amazingly (even better than during training).  He is the epitome of a low volume runner.  I take more than a week off running regularly and my legs forget how to run.  It will be MONTHS until I feel like I’m a competent runner since I took a fall break.

I ran harder trying to catch up, and finally I saw Zliten running alone.  He was wearing a red shirt, which was the same color as this year’s race shirt which EVERYONE was wearing, so it was hard to pick him out.  I was looking for Matt, the shirtless guy in the kilt, who was slightly more unique.  I asked him what happened and he said he wanted to race with me instead.  Awwww.  I’m not sure if he was fatigued or just being nice, but I decided I would take it!

We clipped along at 10:30-ish pace – he stopped to use the porta potty and I kept running but slower, so he could catch up (and he did within half a mile).  I found that the 10:30-ish pace was just a hare past comfortable, so I kept letting Zliten get a little bit ahead and then put on the gas to catch up.  Around mile 6 that was getting tougher so another gel went down the hatch.

Spoiler.  We all finished.

By mile 7, we took a turn (more) downhill and that gel started doing it’s thing and I started feeling good, so we sped up.  We passed the 2:15 pacer and started talking finish times and we figured we’d put as much time as we could into the 2:10 pacer and see how close we could get to catching them.  Actually doing it was kind of an impossibility without me running my 5k pace for 5 miles at the end of a half marathon (which would take all the pixie dust and magic in the world), but I said I’d be ok holding the sub-10 pace we were but it was business time, no talking.

I shoved my headphones in and we went fishing.  I actually felt really good until about mile 10, which is where the hills start going the other way.  Zliten loves the hills and runs faster on them, so I spent that period fishing for him, I’d let him get a little ahead on the way up and catch him on the flat.  At that time, I started moving from actual words to grunts, except I told him I hated his face and legs for going too fast, so I’m pretty sure I was the best running companion ever.

However, I stuck with it.  Every time he ran ahead, I asked myself if I had that gear and was I willing to shift into it, and the answer was always yes.  This is a good thing.  I’m not exactly sure how much slower I would have finished if Zliten wasn’t towing me, but I am certain it wouldn’t have been faster.

Rainbow legs followed Zliten’s stupid (lovely) face and legs.  Thanks Zliten for your face and legs!

We found the last uphill right to the finish and crossed the line together at 2:13:40 (just slightly above top half in my age group).  It’s my 5th best half (out of the 14 I’ve ran) and I expected to be much slower, so I’ll take it!  Hooray for aerobic capacity crossing over between sports, because I *know* this is not because of my run training.  The best feeling is that even though this is my fastest and longest run in months, I feel like I had more distance in me (though more speed? not really).  One of these days I actually will spend a cycle trying to crack open that PR, but for now, I’ll get on with rest week and keep building that cycling for Ironman Texas.

The rest of the day was for mexican food, some beers, using the puffy massage legs, napping, and watching movies.  I’m loving the post-race nap tradition and I feel pretty decent today to get on with my training, so I can check off both my goals for this race.  Win!

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About Me

I'm a video game producer and a lover of anything game related by trade.  I'm a triathlete by hobby.  I live for being on or in the water as much as I can - scuba diving, snorkeling, paddleboarding, water slides... you name it.  The dichotomy between my outdoor and indoor realities are interesting, but they're all mine!  Longer version here...

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