Adjusted Reality

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

Awesome (and not awesome) Things – 2014

The days in 2014 are getting short, so here’s a recap of how things went.  Honestly, I stopped tracking a lot of my goals, and happy I got as much done as I did!  Here’s my top 3 (and bottom 3) things for 2014 and how I did on my goals.

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Racing:

Awesome thing #1: I got really really close to my half marathon PR!

Awesome thing #2: My first AG placement in a tri that was not 3rd out of 3!

Awesome thing #3: Laying it down at Kerrville with a huge PR under rough conditions.

Honorable mentions: Volunteering a lot more.  +karma and it’s actually kind of fun.  Surprising myself big time at Jack’s Generic and breaking the curse.  A PR at 10/20 for the 3rd year in a row.

Not awesome thing #1: Nutritional nightmare and subsequent tummy blow up at Woodlands.

Not awesome thing #2: Huge burnout funk (the start of it here) encompasing X-50 and Pflugerville.

Not awesome thing #3: Kind of dying at Space Coast marathon.

2014 Goals:

1. Plan out a reasonable season with adequate training time and enough offseason to keep me from being crispy.  Figure out what the A, B, and C races are and set appropriate goals.

I did great here – except for late April – early June.  I thought throwing a bunch of training at burnout would make it go away.  Surprise (to no one but past me, I guess)!  However, I rebounded with a vengence later to attack season pt. 2 with full on sharp teeth!

Also, apparently I didn’t set any racing goals as resolutions.  I’m ok with that, as I set them all year as races approach.

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Training:

Awesome thing #1 New gym!  Lake, outdoor heated clean pool, endurance spin with wattage_cottage, and less than 5 mins from work.

Awesome thing #2 Getting my run legs back after the debauchle which was 2013.  It’s nice to be putting down paces that don’t embarrass me.

Awesome thing #3 Finally womaning up and riding streets outdoors in August and September.  Can’t wait to get back out there, actually!

Honorable mentions: longest swim ever, longest outdoor bike ever, fastest over-half marathon run ever, some massively awesome triple brick miles.

Not awesome thing #1 Missing 1k run miles by just a few.  I’m totally going to hit this next year.

Not awesome thing #2 Letting myself get into a hole after x-50 and trying to push through and do long distances for no reason.

Not awesome thing #3 Marathon training was inconsistent this year.  Also, missing my training partner!

2014 Goals:

1. Maintain a 20+ mile per week base, with some 40+ weeks during peak (running).

20 mile per week?  Close.  I intentionally took some weeks off or lower during off season or after races, but if you expanded it to be 15-20, I’d say I hit that.  40+ weeks? Yeah… only during marathon training.  Maybe next year.

2. Have a specific workout planned for each session with pace goals (unless it’s truly a recovery day, then EASY will suffice).  Do not neglect speedwork on any of the three disciplines.  Show up and conquer each training session.

I did REALLY, REALLY well at this for the Kerrville cycle.  I think I know how to periodize tri training decently now.  It didn’t work as well for marathon training, shockingly, that doesn’t seem to fit into a 2 month cycle. 😛

Thurs-6

Eating:

Awesome thing #1: Butter coffee w/protein powder.  This has replaced yogurt as my breakfast and rocks my world because of the ability to consume it so quickly after training.

Awesome thing #2: I hate to say it, but upping my fats and lowering grains.  I’m going to stick with it for a bit if for only one reason: my gut is a lot happier and I am able to handle race day nutrition much better since I started carb fueling myself by corn and potato instead of bread and pasta.

Awesome thing #3: I batch cooked throughout most of the year.  It’s just gotten to be a habit.  There is nothing that fights the junk food monster better than having a healthy, yummy meal ready to heat up.

Honorable mentions: tacos rule my world.  If I ever get an academy award or something speech worthy, I’ll probably have to thank tacos in the list of things that got me there.  Bacon fridays (on Friday, a group of us at work split a large order of smoked bacon) are also on my list.

Not awesome thing #1: I had some bouncing around, but I’ve ended up about back where I started.  It takes about 2 months for me to really get in and start losing weight and feeling good and then I have a race or vacation and it goes back up.

Not awesome thing #2: I don’t think I did much better this year about not eating crap that I didn’t want because it was in front of my face.

Not awesome thing #3: I have a ninja blender and have not made ONE morning smoothie with it.  I see a 2015 resolution.

2014 Goals:

1. Track calories and diet quality all year, minus vacations and/or periods where I am on break.

Oops.  I went super neurotic about it, then got stressed and stopped in April.  I think I’m going to figure out a middle ground for 2015.  Tracking helps me, but when I spend too many hours analyzing my intake it gets me crazy.

2. Batch cook the majority of 2014, and make use of my fit/snap kitchen when I’m too busy to do so.  Try some new recipes, and try to incorporate foods that I don’t 100% love but want to love, to see if I can make myself love them.  Keep variety in my fruits and veggies – man cannot live on spinach, mixed veggies, apples, and berries alone.

Yep!  I so did this.  I expanded my veggies (cauliflower, brussels, sweet potatoes, etc).  I did lots of batch cooking and it still rocks my world. 

Skating

Leisure Time:

Awesome thing #1: Vacations!  I got to visit Honduras, Belize, Cozumel, Portland, the Oregon Coast, Pajaro Dunes/Monterey Bay, Port Aransas, Cocoa Beach, Miami, and the Bahamas.  Not to mention race trips to Allen, Denton, the Woodlands, Boerne, and Kerrville TX.  I am really lucky to be able to have the financial means and be healthy so I can use my time off on vacations, not sick days.

Awesome thing #2: Waterpark!  Getting a season pass to Hawaiian Falls made my summer.  I’m already counting the days until we get to do it again.

Awesome thing #3: We’ve had a regular gaming group for most of the year and it’s been so much fun.

Honorable mentions: Getting the chance to see FIVE broadway shows this year.  Lots of awesome friend time and parties.  I barely felt like I fell into a training hole this year and it was a good thing.  Ren Faire.  Halloween.  Five weeks summer offseason to do fun stuff.  Life is good.

Not awesome thing #1: So much money fixing things.  Everything broke this year – electronics, house stuff, car stuff, teeth, legs, etc.  I’m really fortunate to have both a cushion in the bank and our salaries are such that shit like this can still happen and we still are able to put money into that cushion.  And that everything broken that was important could be fixed.  But still.

Not awesome thing: #2: I need to pay some more attention to the house – we have so much stuff that needs organization and purging.  Two adults should not be wishing for more space than a four bedroom house.

Not awesome thing: #3: Gonna go with three fractures in the leg bones for Zliten.  While I’m sure it’s much more annoying to be the one on crutches, it wasn’t without annoyances to be the spouse of a crutchy mc crutcherson.  And, hello, runs are not as fun solo all the time.

2014 Goals:

1. Set one goal per month to clean/organize/redo something.  It can be as small or large as I choose.

Ugh, I tried.  But this stressed me out and I left a lot of things undone.  I still need to scope this smaller (plans for 2015 already in the brain…).

2. We must fix the shingle in the roof and replace the front door.  Scope out redoing the slab on the patio and covering it, repainting/brick work the exterior, kitchen counters and if we want to redo anything else there (gold stars for completing).

We did the shingle and decided to wait because money.  We’ll do this next year.  Door is still holding together.  Nothing else yet.

3. Holy crap, I had a lot of minor things.  So, um, let’s list them.

Things I wanted to do that I did: continue to either host or go to a game night every ~2 weeks or so, not go into a training hole (aka, see people that aren’t my family a few times a month), uploading photos that go on the blog on the blog instead of linking from elsewhere, have more house parties, complete the TX Tri series with volunteering the races I didn’t race.

Things I made some progress but didn’t really accomplish: social media blackout days (I find I close it down more often than I did, but it’s still too much), purge my lists and follow people I’m interested in (working on the second, but I feel BAD about the first!), write shit on the blog that’s not just lists and graphs and race recaps (getting there, but I used to, like, WRITE, now it’s really journally), take care of myself not to get crispy (I did better, but I let the season go too long earlier this year).

Things I just didn’t do: get through my coaching class (I just dropped it, working full time and training and other hobbies and a life means the thought of it is just stressful), go somewhere epic (lots of vacations, but didn’t leave North America), making something wearable on the sewing machine, scuba dive once over the summer (and NOT doing it made me feel like a big noob diving in December – oops), and do something epic over the top nice for someone.  I mean, I think I did nice things for people, even stuck my neck out professionally for some folks, but it wasn’t that selfless “random act of kindness”.

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2014 Summary:

If I could sum up my feelings about 2014 in three words (plus, of course, extrapolation because, let’s face it, I’m not succinct and this is my little sandbox so… yeah):

1. Grateful/fortunate/lucky: I have so much cool shit in my life.  While I’m always going to have things to improve because goals are cool, y’all, I am truly happy and proud of the person I’ve become in my 35 years.  I think me at any age would be happy to meet me at 35 and hang out.  And not just 18-20 year old me so I could buy me beer.  Though I probably would.

2. Fun: Yeah, there are things that feel like chores.  Some days at work are a slog.  Sometime I have to clean the house and go grocery shopping or call a human on the phone and life sucks.  But honestly?  So much of my life is viewed as PLAY lately.  I get to summon a whole bunch of creative people to a meeting room at work and come up with plans to make ideas into life.  I get to play in the lake, the pool, at the gym, on trails, in my neighborhood.  Being able to view life as play does not suck.

3. Focused: I focused on doing races for a reason.  I focused on training for a reason and not just MOAR MILEZ (although I fell into that trap a bit late spring and paid for it).  I tried to help us focus a bit more at work and be more proactive about our planning which helped us be more focused and complete more.  While I lost it a bit at home, I tried to make sure relaxing days were for relaxing, and productive days were productive, and there wasn’t too many of one or the other.

I’ll hoist a glass of wine for 2014, it was a pretty great year!  2015, I’m coming for you… after a nice long holiday break (which I am currently in the middle of and it is GLORIOUS).

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5 Comments

  1. Ohhh. Yes, I have goals but put an actual tracking system in place. I need to do that. It will make me more fantastic — as I follow in your footsteps, of course. Happy New Year! xo

    • Quix

      Happy new year! The balance is tracking without driving yourself crazy… which I did last year. 🙂 Good luck to us!

  2. I opened this days ago to comment on something, and now I don’t know what specifically it was, so I will just say that I did a ton of batch cooking (well, really roasting/ingredient prep) yesterday and it has literally already changed my life. Three hours of work, most of which was sitting around, and SO MUCH benefit!

    • Quix

      Having food in 5 minutes or less when I get home from work/gym/etc saves my life on the daily. I used to say batch cooking wasn’t for me but I have changed my tune. Yay food prep! 🙂

      • *Sits at desk nodding while eating grits n’ egg breakfast from a jar basically prepared on Sunday night*

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