Consider this the most phoned in update ever, so I can continue to get one update per month out. Let’s go!

I spent most of August and early September eating and drinking my way through Vermont, Austin, Seattle, and Sacramento. I sorta kinda tracked my food, sometimes. To no one’s surprise, after I started weighing daily, I’ve noticed I’ve gained a few lbs this summer. I’m not upset about it. But I’m now I’m trying to reverse the trajectory – I am actively tracking each day, and this week I’ll really start to adhere to my limits.

October temperatures changing means getting out to walk more is much easier and also, it’s possible to do outdoor workouts that aren’t first thing in the morning, so I have high hopes my activity level will increase. I also plan to back off the prepared meals a bit. These meals are around 500 calories each (give or take), and with a 200-300 calorie breakfast, that’s what I’m trying to eat in a day before additional activity calories. That makes me cranky. That doesn’t satisfy me. I can make much more filling meals (read: tons of veggies) for fewer calories and can add a giant salad back to my afternoon snack rotation, so I should feel fuller and achieve more of a deficit without the grumps (or at least as many of them).

As for activity, not terrible minus a few hiccups:

I traveled for work (and then family stuff) Aug 29-Sept 4, so workout time was limited. I felt like I was coming down with something after we got home (and half the people we were around got sick too). My tactic was to aggressively sleep, which actually worked, and normal activity resumed the week after.

I feel reasonably good enough about my race prep the rest of the month though. I got two open water swims, both felt great (if not fast). I got two outdoor brick workouts on the TT bike, and the first one was a little dodgy but the second was great.

How did it go? This is what I posted on socials this weekend:

I slept very poorly the night before but my good sleeps this week and caffeine made up for it. That and the cooler weather (50s to start, OMG) meant I was raring to go!

The warm water felt sooooo good after freezing my butt off. I took it comfy and slow, finding feet to draft behind when I could. About the same pace as last year (2:15/100) but my heart rate was so much lower out of the water. I just felt refreshed and warmed up. I was able to jog up the hill and transition was almost a minute quicker than last year.

I have been wondering why my outdoor bike times have been slower recently and this week I realized I still had the emergency Gatorskin tires I bought in 2022 the day before the X-50 because my race ones fell apart and that’s all they had. Oops. This is what happens when Triathlon is an afterthought. My bike also hasn’t been serviced since then so this goes on the winter to do list.

Regardless, I had a very nice, smooth, no stress bike (albeit growling a bit at the speeds) where I felt super comfortable even on the crowded course and only sucked a little wind rolling uphill both laps. I finished right around last year’s time (18mph, 46 and change). T2 also went a little faster than last year and I definitely felt more ready to run.

My legs didn’t feel awesome but I let them get under me and warm up until I was clipping along decently. Passed @jetsers going the other way and he was looking strong too! Yay! With my lack of any speed training, I felt ill-equipped to really tuck into the pain cave, I don’t really know my limits right now and I’d rather finish strong than blow up. I tried to push the last half mile but I didn’t have much of a kick and finished pretty much exactly how I did last year – 32 and some change for 3.2 miles.

1:40:30 last year. 1:40:28 this year. I’m nothing if not consistent and hey, 2 second faster!

1:39:11 would have gotten me 3rd in my age group, I got 8th/22 instead. A properly serviced bike with race tires and/or a little bit more oomph on the run will get me there. Maybe next year!

A few days later, I feel the same way. Now that they don’t put age groups on the back of our calves, I have no idea who I need to run down so it’s back to competing with myself. That’s probably better for me in my current mindset and focus. I’m truly happy it went as well as it did, and I think 10% more focus on triathlon next year (a little more specific training and taking care of my gear) will help me close the gap. Instead of limping into and/or after the race like previous years, I was able to wake up feeling great the next morning and go on a 6-mile hike. Does that mean I could have pushed harder? You betcha. Does that make me sad? Not really. I don’t know where my edges are, and until I explore that in practice, I don’t want to extend beyond them and blow up.

Outside of triathlon, I’ve kept up with strength work since I’ve been back from Vermont. It’s mostly at home and I feel like I’m maintaining vs GAINS but that’s totally fine for my focus and the effort I’ve been putting in. In October, we’ll resume our gym adventures, longer hikes, longer runs, but I also want to remember that indoor bikes are a great way to get activity when I need something time-efficient for activity and/or when the weather sucks.

We did some small adulting tasks this month. Does cleaning out the beer fridge count? Well, we did that. We also finally replaced our dryer after 2 months of air drying our clothes. Next month, we have some bigger stuff to do:

  • Joel’s dresser drawer broke the night before we went to Vermont. It’s still just sitting in the closet, making pretty much all of it unusable. We need to see if we can fix it, if not, purchase a replacement. This entails a lot of unearthing of said surfaces due to stacked shelves so it’s a bit of a project.
  • We need to start part 2 of the great office move/situation. We need to clean out both offices of non-office things, figure out how to get a murphy bed installed so it CAN be a place to sleep very occasionally but is normally usable space, and a lot of other logistics. This is the big fall project.

As for fun stuff

  • I’ve finished editing the two camping trips earlier in the year and am next moving onto the next two small projects (random stuff from earlier in the year hikes and Seattle/Sacramento). That will leave me with JUST Vermont to do in later months.
  • I am making great (if not consistent) progress in my book. I’m about 22k words already, even though I haven’t had time to work on it each weekend. This one is about where in the campaign I went from “eating snacks and cracking jokes” to “Captial I” Invested once the campaign went to a setting that was familiar to me (and made my brain start turning in a lot of different ways in different aspects of my life).

I’d like to set a goal to pick up my guitar this month again before I forget how to play it. I haven’t been painting and while I’d be sad about that, writing is taking most of my hobby time, and that’s OK! I shouldn’t chide myself for how I spend my productive hobby time (as long as I’m spending it doing something creative vs just doomscrolling). I’m behind on travel blogs but if it’s between that and being motivated to do book stuff, I’ll always do book stuff.

So, October!

  • Track food, weigh, and actually stay under my calorie range. Trying to get back to cooking more so I can accomplish this better than small/not-filling healthy prepared meals. This is actually my biggest focus this month so I’m bolding it!
  • Lift (back to the gym!), hike, run, stairstepper, and bike when it sounds fun/convenient for exercise. Go do some longer hikes this month to assess if we can reasonably be ready for a 25k next month.
  • Progress on the adulting list (Joel’s dresser, start working on the great two-office set up project)
  • Write, pick up my guitar and tune it, and keep editing photos