Step one, do stuff, step three, profit!

Just to switch it up, let’s talk about the super fun things I did not involving training or eating.  In slightly related news, I need a weekend from my weekend.

Pic not related.  Just beautiful.  From our poke stop on Wednesday night.

First of all… we FINISHED our personal trainer class last night!  The last two chapters covered the business side, and it alone has been worth the price of the class to me.  While I’ve certainly been interested in the rest of the class, I’ve kind of been doing a lot of this stuff for a lot of my life.  Not to say I have it in the bag, but most of it rang pretty familiar.  The business and marketing stuff is kind of like magic to me.  Step one, do social media stuff, step 2… ?, step 3, profit.  In my mind, that was how it works.

Well, now I have a LOT more information on what to do, and to keep myself learning, I’m going to attempt to grow this site a little.  Because, why not?  Right now, I have between 100-200 views and a few comments max on each post.  Hopefully I can see some progress actually working social media a bit besides my “huh, maybe I should cross post a link on twitter” thing I started doing like 5 years ago.

Anyhoo, this week we’ll take some practice tests, and we’ll look into scheduling our real certification test sometime before we go on vacation!  Ulp!  It’s really happening!

Movie theatre selfie.  Melfie?

Before that, we finally got to a movie theatre and saw Ghostbusters.  It. was. hilarious.  Anyone that said that women can’t be funny and that an all-girl reboot would suck was SO WRONG.  Ghostbusters (the original) was one of my favorite movies growing up, so I would have been pretty critical if it didn’t hold true to the style of the first movie.  But it totally did.  I loved the cameos from the original cast.  And Holtzman’s contrast between quirky and cocky was perfection.  The rest of the cast was stellar too.  I love when movies don’t disappoint me!  Sadly, there are about 3000 other summer blockbuster movies I want to see and maybe a month from now I’ll have a chance to see one more. 😛

Backing up to Saturday night – as I said, we had birthday dinner with friends at a Mediterranean place (yum!) and then did something outside of our normal… we went to karaoke. My voice is still paying for it!  Admittedly scream-singing Killing in the Name might not have been the best option at around 12:30am after singing for 3 hours, but hey, it was fun times.  I found that SingStar is much easier to hold the right pitch (since it has a backup vocal track).  Once my throat feels shot, Fever actually hits my vocal cords just right.  Lastly, singing (and dancing) the Time Warp with my husband who’s normally very anti-karaoke was probably the highlight of the night.

Other than that, we hit a lot of training last week, so the rest of the time was a lot of werk werk werk werk werk.  And like I said, between training and fun and chores and cooking and class and errands, I kind of forgot the part of the weekend where you unwind and relax.  Ah well.  One more week on then REST/RACE WEEK!

Last week’s training built some confidence.  My body started to get with the program and realize that we were actually training for reals now, and is responding more predictably to applying training stress.  My brain is rebelling a lot less too.  It’s not perfect (sleeping in is still a problem), but there’s much progress.  Basically, it’s starting to be business as usual to do 2 workouts a day, even in the heat, which is super refreshing after the adjustment period from a whole season off.  I have not forgotten how to do these things and sort of accidentally hit 10.5 hours of training last week and felt rather… fine.  Not a quivering mass of jello at all.

• Monday: weights, easy 3 mile run
• Tuesday: 1200m swim, endurance cycle class (one 56 minute long hill with no breaks…)
• Wednesday: weights, 90 minute recovery ride
• Thursday: off
• Friday: 5 mile “long” run, 1500m quarry swim
• Saturday: 3 mile run, 3 hour TT trainer ride, 1 mile fast brick run (9:44 in feels like 109 after 3.5 hours of training works for me).
• Sunday: off

The high points: during endurance cycle class, I actually upped my resistance by a lot on the second half of the loooong hill because I was feeling good, and then still felt very strong cycling the next day.  It was a recovery ride, but it does have a few good solid hills and I kept up with the front (of the beginner ride) pack that day. Saturday started as a fail with a missed alarm, but we totally recovered and put in a really solid day of training on the TT bikes, ripping off that long ride bandaid, going from a max of 90 mins to 3 hours.  Also, Saturday’s running felt super fantastic, especially the mile off that super long bike ride.

The low points: neither swim was great – Tuesday I dragged in the pool due to fueling and timing, and Friday I just daydreamed too much.  I enjoyed the swim Friday, but it was much slower than intended.  I’m doing *okay* at swimming right now but I feel like I stepped back a little bit from the gains I made last year.  Also, a five mile run really feels long to me right now, especially with crappy sleep out in the heat when you’re having digestive issues from a nutrition oops the day before.  It’s frustrating because I neither have speed nor distance right now, and my husband is just perky as a little puppy after all this run rest.  My legs need consistent mileage to improve, his need to not run for 4 months, apparently. *angry facebook emoji*

Deep into a 3 hour trainer ride.  My crotch says “send help!”.  My eyebrows also say “pluck me!”.

This week, the goal is to hit the bike harrrrrrrd.  The weather is looking to be rather unpredictable with thunderstorms scattered around all week, so there may be more treadmill/trainer action than normal, with swims whenever I can find a non-thunderboomy moment.  The big challenge of the week is THIS on Saturday.  It’s got a few outs (can just do the 30 mile out and back to the first shop, it rolls by our house about mile 52 if we are dyyyyyying), but my goal is to get cozy with the 3 hour+ bike ride by September.  And the best way to do that is ride with people.  So we shall.

Here’s the plan, which is totally up to the weather cooperating.  It has already been altered.  Pray I do not have to alter it any further (name that movie!).

• Monday: weights, 60 minute trainer ride
• Tuesday: 6 mile run, 1500m swim
• Wednesday: weights, brick (40 min/20 min) (either with BSS peeps or at home on the trainer)
• Thursday: 4 mile run, 1500m swim
• Friday: off
• Saturday: El Diablo – 62 mile ride
• Sunday: off

All told, looking to be another 10+ hour week.  I’m looking forward to it.

I definitely felt the switch flip in my appetite this week.  Y’know, where 4 normal person meals a day plus snacks is about right most days to fuel double workouts?  Such a difference between 1200 calories a day and 2000+, even if both of them are a -1000 deficit.

While I need to reign it back a bit, it is REALLY nice to be able to indulge every once in a while.  This taco plate above was totally within my calorie/macros (because I actually split it into 2 meals), even if it wasn’t the healthiest choice nutrient-wise.

However, this bacon cheeseburger and fries totally screwed my Saturday.  Even almost 4 hours of training calorie burn can be totally wiped out with proper exercise fueling, a huge meal after for lunch, and then celebrating with friends.  The proper fueling was a huge step in the right direction – almost 800 calories (200 per hour) during training for me is really really good.  However, I should have had something healthier than this if I knew I was going out to dinner as well and having some adult bevvies… noted for next time. It was upwards of a 3500+ calorie day without a whole lot of nutrition.  Oops.  Booze OR junk food.  Not both.

Historically, I have not typically been good at tracking my food once I get to high levels of training, but I think actually doing it will be helpful to me to keep the slow trickle of weight loss towards race weight going, because I can identify situations like this where I need to do better.

Last week’s goals:

1. Track food every day, stay -1000 under.  I tracked every day (yay), but I missed a perfect -7000 by about 1200.  Most of that was Saturday.
2. 5 fruits and veggies every day.  I don’t know what’s so hard about this but I only got it about half the time.  Luckily, the bento box trick is working, I’m eating my veggie snacks.  However, I was really bad at remembering fruit.  I have a shit ton of peaches right now to eat.

This week’s goals:

1. Track food every day, stay -1000 under.  Track the day of.  Even Saturday.  Just do it.
2. Five fruits and veggies every day. Specifically, fruit with my yogurt snack or protein shake, a standalone peach, my veggie bento box, and a veggie with each meal.  This should not be so hard, people.
3. I have been going out a lot more than I should because I have been lazy about batch cooking.  Even cooking some spaghetti at home sounded too hard after a long workout one day so we went out.  Last weekend, we actually batch cooked 3 different meals I’m super excited about, so this week should be better.  On Saturday, with the monster ride I have planned, I should go for a giant quantity of at least semi-nutritious food after vs a fat and calorie bomb.
4. Not particularly related to food, but I’ve been bad at Sunday 10k steps since I’ve been training again.  10k steps PER DAY, woman.  Even rest days.  It’s not hard and it’s good for me to loosen up the legs.  If the heat is crushing, get out the ghetto treamill.

And with that, time to do all the Tuesday things.  Wheee!