Cap10k and being part of the solution

I ran a 10k. It’s been a minute (or something like 10 years) since I did a standalone 10k not after a bike.

Here’s what I wrote on social media that day:

I signed up for the Cap10k this year one for a few reasons. One, I’ve never done it. That’s crazy! Two, I wanted motivation to keep running longer than 5k after the Austin Half Marathon and to push myself to run a little faster.

Not much of that training worked out. After Covid in January, I slowed down to keep my heart rate lower while training. This adjusted my running gait. Doing that knocked things out of alignment, and I developed cranky hip syndrome (this is the technical term for it, for sure), which forced me to stay at that slower (11:30-12 min miles) pace during runs since then.

After some chiropractor intervention, things are much better, and earlier this week I pulled my flat 5k pace back under 11-minute mile pace. Progress! So, I showed up this morning hopeful but ready for a jog if running faster didn’t pan out. Ten-ish minutes per mile felt challenging but doable on the hills, so I pushed myself to stay there even if it sucked running some of those steep hills. Halfway through, I got 1h5 mins in my head as my goal time, but I had to speed up.

Thankfully, the second half had fewer ascents, but GOSH my legs were thraaaashed running up 15th and Enfield hills. I stuck with it and tried to go to the happy pain place. I was close to that 1h5m so I gave it what I had the last half mile or so downhill and came in at 1h5 and 15 seconds. (10:19 pace) Top 40% overall, top third female, top quarter masters, top quarter age group. This race is truly against myself and my own goals since it’s so large but nice to see I’m not doing so terribly compared to the masses.

I don’t hate this at all. Y’all, I’m not a hill runner, up or down, and this is honestly faster than I’ve run even on flat ground for a while. It’s a nice sign that I am ready to push myself this year to do some faster runs because they’re in there, just waiting for me to get over the fact that it’s EASY to go out and run easy. Time to find the pain cave again. Maybe that’s the big scary that I need right now.

Unfortunately, the next day (why is it never the same day?) I was limping around on my hip, and it’s persisted all week. I visited the chiropractor yesterday, and she put me back in alignment but I’m still some days away from running. I also spent the week doing that pouting thing I do, sabotaging myself by eating too much, kinda slacking on workouts, and not doing all my recovery. I also felt draggy as hell for almost the whole week. Garmin said I was sleeping pretty well, but I just felt like my batteries weren’t charging up until literally today.

It’s not been all that bad – I’m keeping up with strength training, I’ve swam both weeks, cycling is happening, and 8-9 logged hours of activity (with walks) doesn’t suck. But, it’s not enough for how I’m eating and drinking, I suppose.

So, I can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution. For the last month or two I think I’ve been part of the problem. Time to be part of the solution.

So, reminders to myself:

• The gym is half a mile away from the house. You have a home gym and bike trainer. You are either home or work from home 5 days out of the 7 and the other two, you’re home at a decent hour. No excuses not to swim, bike, do weights, or do the arc trainer.
• Recovery items like the roller do not function as recovery when you give it the side eye and slink past it
• Stretching only works when you do it, not just think about it, dreading it for more than the five minutes it would take to do it.
• These things still exist after 5pm/after work, even if you wish them and will them not to.

And an additional one:

• Your book isn’t going to get edited by procrastinating it by writing blogs/doing whatever

I hadn’t touched it in 2 weeks before this weekend. This isn’t normal. I made such a solid effort to get to the end of the first draft and the first editing pass, I should probably give myself a little grace here. But, I’ll admit, I’ve been less than motivated to pick it back up, finding other things to do instead. In what I’ve learned with writing, motivation doesn’t always just appear when you ask it to, sometimes you have to force the issue. I need to remember that sometimes the Muse comes to you, and sometimes you have to summon her.

The good news is that I made great strides this weekend and am about 1/3rd done with the second edit pass. I think I’m in a hurry because I want to read my draft again and share it with Joel (and that’s a great sign!). I just need to commit to a chapter, or just some pages, every time I sit down with any spoons left in my drawer after work.

It’s not all rubbish, I promise. Here are some good things I/we have accomplished in the first half of April

• Taxes are done, and we got confirmation we don’t really need to pay quarterly/hire a CPA like we thought and we owed less (and have a plan to hopefully owe MUCH less next year).
• Bathroom remodel starts Monday. This will indeed throw my life into chaos for a bit, which is why I’m reminding myself of all the reasons this doesn’t need to disrupt my fitness.
• The pool is on its way from brown to clean! So, like full scale adulting this April is a go!
• Paris pictures are very much in process. Perhaps it’s a little procrastination of book editing, but it would take an act of god for me to not finish the last 50 or so this month! Now I need to figure out what’s next.
• We are really close to booking our end of year trip to Bonaire! Joel got cleared by his doc (not that there were questions but apparently for men over 45 they can ask for a doctor note) and we’re excited to go for another week of diving after we make sure we get our gear serviced.
• Our plans for late summer are up in the air dependent on work travel, there are probably different options depending on where the origin point is, but we’re considering options there too.
• Debating between camping and Mexico next month. I know, wild variation. Camping was the plan, but we have been over a year without diving so we need to log a dive before Bonaire or they will make us take a refresher course. Less likely when shore diving in Cozumel. 🙂

So, I just need to get back into the habits I had made earlier this year and make the numbers go down.

• Raising my activity levels/daily calorie burn a little. No preference on how it happens (walk, bike, elliptical, swim, run when I can run again), but it needs to happen.
• Eat less than 1200 calories a day + activity and THATS IT. Not “sorta kinda oops too much today oh well”. Do this by logging your food as you eat it, not 2 days later and then acting surprised.
• For the rest of April, back to aggressive recovery. Every day I will: stretch, roll, boots, ice, and do the silly crab walk things. I can go back to two things per day once I’m reliably running again with no pain.
• Go back to doing my meditation at least 4-5 days a week not “oops I did it once this week”.

This blog space is repetitive. I say the same things over and over because they’re easy to say and difficult to follow and re-affirming them in text is a way to get back on track. It’s easy to fall off good habits with a “treat yo self” attitude once or twice and then you realize it’s been two weeks and the trendweight, she’s going up. So, I need to do the right things. I’d like the numbers to go down. I’d like to not be limping around. I’d like to have a second pass readable draft. I just need to remind myself to be part of the solution for these things instead of the problem.