{"id":7853,"date":"2018-04-10T17:08:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-10T23:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/?p=7853"},"modified":"2022-10-10T19:41:31","modified_gmt":"2022-10-11T01:41:31","slug":"bluebonnets-bikes-and-half-a-cup-full-of-give-a-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/2018\/04\/10\/bluebonnets-bikes-and-half-a-cup-full-of-give-a-crap\/","title":{"rendered":"Bluebonnets, bikes, and half a cup full of give-a-crap."},"content":{"rendered":"

Hello, world.\u00a0 Nice to meet you.\u00a0 I like riding bikes, if you didn’t know that already.<\/p>\n

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Bluebonnets and cheese…<\/em><\/p>\n

However, I like riding bikes a lot less when it’s really cold and windy.\u00a0 I’ve done plenty of that riding training for Ironman Texas, and I have no issues heading out on my bike into the cold, or into the wind, but both at the same time kind of sucks.<\/p>\n

Last year, hardening the eff up was kind of a point of pride and helped me make the jump to the Ironman distance on the bike (which was the discipline I needed the most work on, endurance-wise).\u00a0 Honestly, it also helped me when Ironman day came and we had 20-30 mph winds on an exposed toll road.\u00a0 However, this year, I’m training for sprint triathlons, which translates to racing for approximately 40 minutes (vs 7 hours) on my time trial bike.\u00a0 Then, later this year, I will be training for an approximately 3 hour ride in hot and humid conditions.<\/p>\n

So, there was nothing that riding 43 miles in the feels-like-30s and super windy conditions would benefit me, besides the excuse to eat some junk food along the way at aid stations and after (which would probably sabotage my weight loss efforts – I can negate that calorie burn in one aid station full of cookies and PB pretzels).\u00a0 So, instead of doing any of that, we stayed home.\u00a0 This is my third DNS over the last 9 years, and the other two were because my knee was so injured I could barely walk.\u00a0 There was no choice in the matter for the previous two.\u00a0 On first blush, I figured I should woman the eff up and go.<\/p>\n

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I should probably miss the start line for things more often than I have.\u00a0 In this case, for very little gain, I would be subjecting myself to illness (cold and windy riding for hours) and injury (always the risk of it riding outside, but in a group of thousands of other riders it amplifies).\u00a0 When I signed up, I was super looking forward to it IN SPITE of it not being specific training, and was ok taking a break from hammering the bike to go have a beautiful morning riding outside and supporting the Rosedale school.\u00a0 When the enjoyment part was removed with the crappy weather, I realized I was still supporting the school with my entry fee and decided that a trainer ride in my living room would be a much better idea.\u00a0 And that was that.<\/p>\n

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We don’t want to get here.\u00a0 We want to keep a reserve of give-a-crap.<\/em><\/p>\n

I hate giving up, but I had to put it in perspective.\u00a0 Seven days previous to that would-be ride, my body and mind produced a PR and a first place.\u00a0 Four days after that, my body and mind ran 8:58 pace (30 seconds better than I raced at) off a challenging bike.\u00a0 These breakthroughs are coming around for a few reasons, I believe:<\/p>\n

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  1. \u00a0My body (and mind) are strong enough, finally.\u00a0 Those two months of weighted squats and throwing kettlebells and working the posterior chain and my upper body finally feeling stable enough to be comfortable in aero position and my arms and hips gaining enough flexibility to start approximating a runners stride instead of the marathon shuffle -these things are starting to pay off.\u00a0 And, I’ll give credit to a little bit of mental work as well.\u00a0 Figuring out how to get out of my own way and let my body do what it can do without judgement or limitations has been a 2018 focus.<\/li>\n
  2. My body (and mind) are RESTED enough to do this kind of thing.\u00a0 I have learned in life that for me to be successful, I have to walk the line between “we are what we repeatedly do” and “I have a finite-amount-of-give-a-crap”.\u00a0 If I ask myself to HTFU constantly, and for things that don’t matter, I end up becoming the girl who cried wolf and I won’t show up when the chips are down.\u00a0 If I give myself a pass on the things that don’t matter, I’m more likely to show up to the things that are more important.\u00a0 Then again, if I shy away from HTFU moments entirely, I tend to continue to avoid them.\u00a0 Like I said, it’s about walking that line.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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    Go ahead and pretend this is a selfie of me in the cold and wind riding outside.\u00a0 I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.<\/em><\/p>\n

    So, I skipped a charity ride (apparently a lot of other folks went outside at 7am, said NOPE, and did the same as well) and life went on.\u00a0 I had a nice relaxing weekend at home and then in my sleep on Sunday morning, I decided to shove one side of my ribs two inches higher and spent the day spasming in pain.\u00a0 That was super fun.<\/p>\n

    I’m all fixed now (chiro put me back the next morning and now I’m feeling reasonably fine), but that was the universe shouting to BACK THE EFF OFF for a day.\u00a0 I couldn’t run or bike or swim (was actually planning on doing a short session of each that day).\u00a0 I could barely help with chores – which sounds conveeeeeenient, but I set off a spasm attack by putting a sweatshirt on. \ud83d\ude1b Yeah, it sucked. But, I watched about eight movies this weekend and got reacquainted with my couch and feel like I had some nice, lazy downtime and I’m ready to attack this week.<\/p>\n

    Workouts last week:<\/p>\n