September Recap, October Goals

Now that October is about half over, time to at least record these for posterity!

September Goals:

1. Shake off all the cobwebs in my brain.  Focus on the next two weeks of training, getting solid work done, and then let it go and taper and don’t get tempted to squeeze more in.  As of Sept 14, the hay is in the barn, and wherever I am, I am (and wherever that is, it’s WAY better off than I was going into BSLT in June).

Yep.  I did pretty good at not letting the taper crazies get the best of me even though I was pretty sure I was dying the last week.  I went in mentally strong and was ready to kick ass.

2. Race Kerrville the way it deserves to be raced.  Rock the swim and the bike with the new abilities you have gained this year, and draw strength of will from your running past and the longer runs you have completed in August and will in September.  Find your edge and keep going until you fall off.  Persevere.  Your body can keep going on that run as long as your brain can.  Kerrville is the race where I get comfy in the pain cave and either end up at the finish line or the med tent.

Well, I raced this hard and came up with a 29 minute PR.  No complaints.  However, just the work I’ve done in the last week makes me realize that I did not find my edge, I could have pulled a little more out on the run, and there’s more work to be done here.  I raced smart though, and I never gave up, so I’m proud of that.

3. Eat good food.  Eat enough to fuel the training, but not any more.  Realize that taper the second two weeks of the month means less calories needed.  Make good choices, but allow some times to go out to eat or eat cake pops and stuff.  Pie in the sky: weigh 169.something before Kerrville.  Realistic: maintain 173-176.  Do something between that.  Also, don’t stress too much about food this month beyond making sure the calories are in line – trying to get bad calories down to 10% made me a bitchy bitch.

I hit 172 this month.  Race day, I was probably sitting around 175-ish.  I ate decently, just as expected.  After the race I ate crap for a week, then ate good for a week, and landed back around 175-177.

4. Buy myself something with those 75$ gift certs so Zliten stops telling me useful things I can use them on.  Try not to buy a bunch of junk otherwise.

I bought a new pair of my favorite running tights and a purple hat and some crazy sunglasses.  DONE!

5.  Clean out rest of pantry.  Gold star if we go through and reorganize the tupperware section so we can fit all of it into the cabinet instead of it spilling out onto the counter.

Pantry done.  No gold star though.  Baby steps!

6. Continue working on 2014 plan for races.  Nothing needs to be decided this month, but work on getting ideas.

I really wanted to get through Kerrville and see how I felt.  I went through a period where I wanted to RUN ALL THE RUNNING RACES in spring.  Then I sort of had a reality check where I really like to have longer training blocks and not race every other weekend.  I also am not sure how much offseason I want and whether I want to focus on speed (sub 2 half marathon? sub 50-something 10k?) or distance (more marathons and a 50k?).

7. Finish book.  Start another.

I’ve forgotten which book I was on last month, but I didn’t read that much, so I am guessing I didn’t get through this.  Ah well, next month!  I’d like to get through this series this year.

8.  Make a new music playlist on the zune or 3.  Marathon training is coming up, which means lots of quality hours with the zune, unlike now, when it’s a treat the few hours a week I get to listen to the same playlist I’ve been using for 6 months.  That will get old if I don’t change it up.

I made a few new ones and added some music to my main one.  We’ll see how this goes (I just need to now not just automagically load up my main playlist each time).

9. I’m trying out probiotics and digestive enzymes on the recommendation of some research I’ve been doing.  My most recent “cleanse” (stomach flu) coupled with the fact that it’s one possible reason I might be holding onto some weight, and the fact that the vitamin store had a buy one get one half off sale makes me feel like I don’t have much to lose.  Keep on these for the 15 day supply you have, and if it’s awesome, go get more.  If it makes me ill, stop it.

This was AWESOME!  I was super regular and felt a lot less tummy bloat.  Right before Kerrville I stopped it and haven’t resumed, and though my weight hasn’t changed much, I feel like I’m way stopped up and my tummy is hanging out further.  Resuming for the rest of October!

10.  Lots of sleep.  Lots of relaxing.  If something is stressful, avoid if at all possible. I have no race in October so I can go be a spaz then if I have the energy to do so with marathon training.

Did my best, work didn’t help, and neither did everything falling apart the week of the race, but I think I was able to get some good quality chill time in.

11.  Gaming!  Gaming is high quality relaxing feet up type activity.  Let’s make some more progress in my game, play some Disney Infinity, etc etc.

Ehhh… a little bit.  Not much.  I really don’t know what happens during taper, when you halve (or less) your training hours, you would think you would have all this time, but not so much.

12.  Sometime before the end of the month, pull all the summer shirts/tech tees I haven’t worn lately and box them up or donate them (if I love but they don’t fit, box them up, if I just don’t love, send them onto someone who will love them).  Also, since I’ve lost about 15 lbs this year (yeah yeah yeah YEAH!), try on some of the stuff I have boxed up to see if I have gained more wardrobe!

I did this, however, since it was after a week of eating bad food and drinking beer, I just pulled the stuff that was only a little tight back into the mix.  We’ll see how that holds up.

13.  Find a day that I can justify the calories and eat the damn desert I got in August.

Oops. 😛  However, you can take solace in the fact that I ate many other deserts, I just forgot about this one.

October is half over, but, there is still time for goals!

1. Train smart.  Do your 5-6 runs per week and check the boxes.  Easy on the easy days.  Speedwork on the speedwork days.  Go into tempo days and focused long run days with a plan in mind and communicate that to Zliten ahead of time to not disrupt marital bliss.  If things start to fall apart, first drop back to easy, then drop mileage, then miss runs.  Missing runs = more bike, not buttsitting, unless the only option is buttsitting.

2. No getting sucked into racing anything this month. Use the money and the time to plan for next year’s race schedule.  Keep adding to the list of ALL THE RACES and try to consider what my goals are before signing up for a bunch of races that I have to try and train around.

3. Eat what fitbit tells me to.  It’s actually pretty magical, fitbit tracks my steps/activity, and translates that into calories.  I set my weight loss goals to the “pretty hard” setting (-750 calories per day, losing 1.5 lbs per week), and it changes my food goals throughout the day depending on my activity.  It has more than once made me get off my ass so I can eat more.   So, that being said… the goal would be at this point to get back into the low 170s by the end of the month.  I’ll be more specific next month.

4.  Also track food quality as a secondary measurement.  While keeping calories in check is what makes me lose weight (and I will overeat whether you give me carrots or chocolate after running, I have talent), keeping that DQ score up will make me feel better.

5.  Get the Halloween costume settled (almost there).  Sew the patch on the shirt.  Since you have to sew the patch on the shirt, also mend the items piling up on that table.

6. Probiotics and digestive enzymes for the rest of the month starting today.

7. Finish this book, start the next.

8. Stressing recovery.  Ice baths every week after 15+ miles.  Compression sox/sleeves the day before and after long runs if not during.  Stretching after weights sessions and after long run.  Shockies and foam rolling as necessary.

9.  Make progress on the story I’m supposed to be writing for our gaming session next month.   I’m going to run a game for the first time for people sometime soon and it’s scary!  I love telling stories for people in text, but I’m terrified (in a good way) of doing one interactively.

10.  Write stuff on the blog that’s not a status report.  I’ve found lately that I’ve thought of nifty things to write about and by the time I get to do them, I squeeze them into these long posts and don’t give the thoughts the time the deserve.  I still feel like it’s important for me to catalogue my weeks of training and eating for posterity, but I also feel like maybe I should spend some more time refinding my writing voice.  I used to be a decent writer!

11.  Quarterly maintenance – nails, toes, and brows.  I’m getting scruffy and since I live in Texas, sandal season doesn’t end for another month or two.  On the upside, my nails are in lovely shape since I cut them all down to nubs for wetsuit ease a few weeks ago, so they’re mostly all the same size (minus the index… always the index).

12.  While I’m not confident I’ll actually settle on a theme for my blog this month (and who knows, maybe I’ll keep switching it around!), I want to update my pages, especially my RACE RESULTS page, I haven’t done that since tri season.

13. Make some sort of healthy pumpkin spice desert thing.  Tis the season.  If I make it at home I’ll be less tempted to eat the pumpkin everything out there in the world.

What is your October goal?