Adjusted Reality

Guys, it’s been a pretty good month around here in Adjusted Reality land.

Two for two on podiums so far!

First, let’s talk triathlon and training.  Something is clicking around here and it’s really incredible after a few years of, let’s face it, funk, I’m seeing some improvements!  I’m going to give credit to a few things:

Weight training.  I’ve taken steps to actually do things to strengthen my weak spots instead of just ignoring them and wishing they would be better.  While I already feel my motivation to lift waning these days, I need to stay on it.  There can’t really be another explanation as to why all of a sudden my stride has returned, and as long as I don’t do dumb shit like lift too heavy and strain things, it does wonders for keeping me stable and healthy.

Flexibility/Recovery.  In previous cycles, I knew I should stretch and roll and do all that shit regularly, but I never put it together how it would directly really help things like my triathlon finishing times.  Increased flexibility in my hips and my shoulders gives me a more efficient running stride and a more comfortable and stable aero position on the bike.  Actually bucking up and rolling my ITB and calves instead of thinking about it and then not doing it because that shit hurts when it’s tight has helped ease some of my little niggles and be able to train better.  It’s a war with myself daily to do these things but I’m starting to win it more often than not lately.

Specific training. On one hand, it’s been a relief.  Doing like 5-6 hours a week of training actually makes it easier to be a human person.  Having my longest workouts be in the realm of 1.5 hours means I have much more time to relax and pursue other hobbies instead of just dying on the couch in my non-triathlon recreational hours.  On the other hand, it feels weird that I’m getting better at running, biking, and swimming by not doing much running, biking, or swimming, but I’ll take it.  The hours I am putting in are quality over quantity and at least for the sprint distance, it’s working well.

My monthly numbers are fairly pathetic:

• 24 miles run
• 188 miles biked
• 7000m swam
• 6 weights sessions
• About 24 hours total

However, I stood on top of the podium March 31st and on the third step last weekend, with significant bike and run PR paces/watts/efforts.  I think it’s proven that what I’m doing right now is working, so I’ll keep at it.  I race this weekend again, so the last two weeks have been light, even for my reduced schedule.  I’ll take a day or two to recover after Sunday and then it’s back to it!

I haven’t followed the three per week weights schedule I set out to do last month, but I did hit 2xweek on non racing weeks and 1xweek on race weeks.  I really just need to find the motivation to add the extra core session in and not call it something I’ll do when I have time (which is never).  After Sunday, I don’t race for a month, so I plan to redouble my efforts for May and stick to the 3xweek plan.

See, proof I have been swimming!  Googgly eyes and everything.

Showing up to the pool has improved since the weather has gotten warmer, but I haven’t been doing anything but just swimming.  This month, I will plan at least 1 swim per week with some sort of focus besides going back and forth until my watch reads an acceptable number.  I also need to get in the open water at least once every other week, more if I can.  The water temperature is no longer an excuse!

After a nice month of my ankle being cooperative, last week, it randomly started talking to me again.  It held just fine for the race, but something is not right.  I was being lax about wearing my insoles and real shoes (*grumble grumble*), so I’ve started doing that again as well as rededicating myself to my ankle rehab exercises (they take like, one minute to do but it’s easy to forget).  That being said, I’m keeping my running to short, fast jaunts until it’s been pain free for a while, but I would like to reach an hour/6 mile run by the end of the month, since I need to start considering building some endurance for September and my run takes the longest to do that.

My heart wants to go play bikes with the team on all the lovely group rides and fun outings they’ve had lately and commuting and going on adventures.  My head is keeping me focused on specific workouts that are shorter, include pain face, and more often than not have a run follow up.  I’ve got about a month and a half until my last sprint race this season, and until then, I’m endeavoring to try to get my head to win the battle at least 75% of the time (but playing bikes is a necessity for life, so that will happen sometimes).

Pizza has happened once since the start of #projectraceweight, if I went out with the team it would happen more often. 😛

Speaking of being a bit of a hermit (sorry Team BSS, it’s not you, it’s totally me), the other half of the equation here is that I’m actually making some gosh darn freaking progress on this whole #projectraceweight thing.  However, I know myself.  I’m really bad at temptation and quite honestly, for the temporary period of time that I’m doing this shit, it’s better for me to pretend that pizza and beer don’t exist anymore.  Sure, I could do the rides and then just go home (and when my training starts to include some workouts that say “ride bikes for more than 30 minutes”, I will).  Sure, I could go hang out and drink water.  But I know myself.  It’s better right now to take myself out of the equation entirely.

So, here’s where I’m at.  I am on temporary notice.  I have put myself in the corner on timeout.  Because I have been an asshole with food for a few years, I have to not be an asshole with food for a few months, even though it is fun and social and happy and I work out so I deserve it and all that stuff people say (including me) but the scale does not lie that I do not deserve as much as I have partaken.

See, I can sabotage myself just fine without anyone’s help, thanks.  Over the last two weeks, trendweight has gone from “hey, you’re doing great and will be at your goal weight in June” to “hey, you’re kind of sucking at this and you’ll be at your goal weight in November 2020”.  I royally fucked up my calorie intake while out camping.  Like, consumed more than DOUBLE the amount of calories than my normal daily goal without even trying because I ate a bunch of snacks instead of a real meal.  Lesson learned.  Eat the food right away even if you don’t want it or it’s not exactly what you want or it’s not super healthy or you’ll eat a million times more later.

For the next few weeks, I am trying to be EXTRA good before vacation.  I don’t really have a goal, but I’d like to see what two weeks of being angelic can do for me.  I need to be careful right about now.  My clothes fit.  I’m looking better in race pictures – my first thought about these was that I looked really buff instead of the usual *BARF*.  This is right about the time where I get complacent and subconsciously say, “good enough”.  I want to not do that this time.

The good news is that my weight is starting to trend down again, and even with the TERRIBLE eating on Sunday, being good the rest of the week saved me.  Sort of.

• Average diet quality: 21.5
• Average calories in: 1926 calories (this is where 3700 calories on Sunday really tanked me)
• Average calories out: 2310
• Average deficit: -384
• Average weight: 179.6 (back exactly where I was two weeks ago)

However, the nice thing is that over the month, I maintained at least a 21 or more Diet Quality score on average, and I have lost approximately 2.2 lbs, which does not suck.

It helps me to list out the challenges I foresee each month, so here’s May’s:

Vacation.  The plan is simply not to GAIN weight, and being reasonable with my portions.  I’m not tracking anything. I know how to do this, I just haven’t come off 9 weeks of dieting before so I need to keep my hair at least not COMPLETELY let down.

• Eat a reasonable QUANTITY of food.  I need to continue to eat to the level in which I am either just not hungry or satiated.  Not overly full or uncomfortable.
• Breakfast OR lunch as a full meal, with a snack size for the other meal.
• One plate and one soup bowl at the buffet that includes a good amount of vegetables/fruit.
• At night, the hair will be slightly more down, but I plan on one appetizer not three, ordering whatever I want for my main dish, and either skipping it or a few bites of desert is plenty unless it’s amazing.
• As for alcohol, I’ll probably indulge in like one fruity drink and then stick to my normal whiskey on the rocks, vodka soda, or the occasional glass of wine or light beer.
• And, while I’m sure there will be a slip up or two in there, no surfing the buffet or late night food when I shouldn’t be. 🙂

But, it’s vacation, so this is absolutely going to happen and I won’t stress about it.

Navigating a reasonable calorie intake after the Rookie Tri on Sunday.  I plan to eat whatever food is there as recovery (since they usually have delicious tacos) and have pre-made salads and easy, reasonable calorie-count food for the rest of the day I just need to pop in the microwave.

Game day.  This hasn’t been too difficult lately.  I’ve been eating a snap kitchen meal ahead of time, which actually works out because the food has time to settle before I start shoving snacks in and then get a stomach ache from being too full.  I’ll just bring my own pistachios to much on and share and mostly ignore everyone else’s contributions.

Movie/Lunch day with work.  Trying to decide which one item on this list would either be the most healthy (I mean, hummus and veggies are obvious but that’s not a MEAL) or whether I just want to splurge and make sure it’s most of my calories for that particular day.

My goals when not on vacation:

No dessert besides my nightly square of chocolate.  People be making it hard around here lately but I’m staying strong.  Just saying NO is getting easier as I’m making progress.

As close to 1500 calories average as possible.  Sometimes this means I should eat slightly less than 1500 to compensate for days when I eat more.  This is starting to actually become a possibility, my stomach is getting trained that this is plenty of food to thrive on if I eat all healthy things.

Diet quality as an important but secondary goal.  If I want to eat something slightly reprehensible, I just need to make sure I work it into my daily goal of 1500 calories.

I need dis.

Man, this is getting long already.  In terms of life stuff, I kind of halfway failed at everything but made some progress.

• I started a painting but didn’t finish it.
• I read Operation Ironman and about 60% of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published and the book thing started stressing me out a little so I kind of put it on hold until after the last race, thus preserving my give-a-shit.
• I finished my first draft of my book!  And then, I have completely ignored it ever since.  And will continue to do so until I get back from vacation.
• I made two new videos on healthy breakfast ideas!  I wanted to make 3 but at least I did something.
• Our garage is now clear and we’ve been parking in it since April 14th.  Feels good man!

I’m definitely hanging on by a thread right now, I really need me some vacation, so I’m going to make my May list a little fluffier:

• Get myself ready for vacation.  That means a haircut, tweezing the brows, and a self-pedicure.
• Go through my too-small clothes the week before the cruise and see if it’s time to dig some old favorites out!
• Finish my publishing book and read another athlete memoir (maybe more since I’ll be on vacation but I also should escape into fiction as well).
• Get lots of footage on vacation in beautiful places that I can put together as video.  I want to actually have a PLAN for this before I go otherwise I won’t do it.
• Read the manual and learn all the settings for my new camera.
• And most importantly… RELAX and enjoy some time chilling the eff out.  If I can fit it in my busy schedule.

I’ll go back to the adulting next month.  Maybe.

Approximately one year ago today I was bleary eyed in a hotel lobby, on about 6 hours of sleep, stuffing my face full of an embarrassing amount of waffles and cereal and potatoes and sausage and pretty much anything else I could get my hands on for the next two days.

Eff you this day last year feature.  Don’t you know I’m on a diet?

No, I wasn’t hungover, at least in the traditional sense.  I had just, less than 12 hours before that (yep, I definitely made the most of my entry fee and took almost 16 hours) finished my first Ironman.  It was one of the most challenging, fun, difficult, memorable, and amazing days thus far.  I can barely tell you what I had for dinner two days ago, but I can remember most of April 22nd, 2017 incredibly vividly, from the long walk from T1 to the random porta potty line in the middle of nowhere to the swim start, to sprawling out on a really uncomfortable bench at about 12:30am with all the gear and two bikes while Zliten attempted to hitch a ride to his car.  And, y’know, the 140.6 miles of actual racing in between.

I’m part of the Ironman Texas 20xx group and with all the chatter there and a random email sent out to PAST participants instead of 2018 folks saying “it’s race week get pumped” it tugged at my endurance athlete heart strings.  However much I miss the experience, I’m about 20% sad to not be there and 80% relieved I’m doing the short stuff this year.  I might be able to muddle through the first two events but the run is totally a deal breaker right now.  My goal next IM race is to hit the start line with the confidence that if things go right, I could potentially run the whole/the vast majority of the thing, and that’s absolutely not where I am right now (hello, 4 mile long runs :D).

Texasman, 4 years ago.  We return this weekend.

So instead, I will focus in on the actual race I’m doing Sunday, Texasman sprint.  500m swim, 16 mile bike, 5k run.  While the last one played to all my strengths, this one does not.

It’s an open water swim with a long run to transition.  Obviously most triathlons are in a lake but I got really spoiled with the pool swim last time.  The question is, do I wear a wetsuit for a 500m swim in 72 degree water?  I did last time but that was for a mile.  Decisions decisions.  The cool thing is the entire women’s race starts at the same time, so I can actually have some idea of where I’m in it overall and how many people are in front of me.

The bike isn’t completely outside my happy place, but it isn’t pancake flat.  Most of the course is rollers – which is good because there’s not a lot of the GRIND IT OUT IN GRANNY GEAR type climbs because you have decent momentum but I really need to stay on the effort.  Instead of recovering on the flats and downhills, I need to keep a steady power and cadence and push just like I do on a pancake course (just with much more variety in speeds).

The run also has a little elevation change, but the good news is that the 5k is pretty shaded and also the hills are closer to the beginning so I have the last half to just fly to the finish line.

While the day is looking hot and sunny, our waves start close to 7am and we’ll be done, most likely, before the temperatures get too much over 60 degrees.  So, pretty much perfect for me.

If the results last year hold, on a great day, I’d be in contention for age group podium and on a unicorns and sparkles day I might be in contention for top 5 overall.  But, now that I have my Nationals qualifier knocked out, it’s really just now building speed and confidence for Cozumel.  I’m going to go race my ass off, but if it doesn’t work out *shrug*, I’ve got a lot more races this year.

Last week I actually put in a lot of hours (in comparison), but it still doesn’t feel like much because Ironman has ruined my perspective on this forever.

• Mostly fun on the bike week.  I’ve been working hard on intervals and this week I mostly took it easy and fun.  This included a 2.5 hour bike ride tooling around downtown Austin and a 90 minute commute (which was more Type 2 fun on the way home with the wind, but still…), both of which was not at all specific training for anything I’m doing but also super lots of fun so… worth it.
• A three sport brick Indoor Triathlon style: 1000yd swim in 18-ish mins -> 30 min bike with the first 10 mins easy, 18 min ON (~200W), 2 mins easy spin -> the fastest 2 miles I’ve run in ages at 8:47/mile pace.
• Two other easy 3-4 mile runs.
• Two weights sessions – one at the gym lifting semi-heavy, one kettlebells-on-the-parking-garage.
• I missed one OWS, technically, but really just pushed it a day to Monday.

8.5 hours total.

<3

The next two weeks, I really really really need to watch my give-a-shit, so my schedule is pretty light.  My legs and lungs are ready to race, I just need to keep my head and my heart in it.  So far this week, I have done:

• A kettlebells session to keep the gains alive.
• My first open water swim of the year.
• A short double brick (10 min ride/1 mile x2).  Hopefully the run legs I found on this workout will follow me to the race!

For the rest of the week I will do:

• Probably an easy trainer ride to keep the legs loose.
• One more open water swim and a quick spin around the park as a shakeout the day before.
• ALL the stretching and rolling and shoulder/ankle exercises.

Next week will probably be fairly similar since we do it all again next Sunday.  Maybe even less, if that’s possible.

My one splurge this week.  Desanos Pizza, I love you.

Speaking off less, sadly, I’m not weighing much more of it (less, that is).  I like being a girl and all, but I don’t like that once a month, no matter HOW healthy and good and nice I am to my body, it rebels by gaining weight for a week.  Let’s not fail to mention the stabbing me in the lower abs with pins and needles and making me super exhausted for a day for no reason whatsoever except for the fact that I’m rejecting procreation at the moment.  However, I understand.  Tit for tat.  But the weight gaining thing REAAAAAAALLY sucks.

The weird and frustrating thing is that doesn’t even coincide with the actual event.  Check below.  I initially have a way up weigh in the first day (understood), then it goes away DURING the crimson wave aptly pictured below (yay), but then after that’s done, I tend to have a few days to a week of mild bloat.  The punishment continues.  So very much TMI but it’s frustrating and this is my little soapbox to whine about shit so… deal with it.

The good news is that high outlier is 183 at the tippy top, which is something a month ago I would have been really really excited to weigh, so it’s not all doom and gloom.

• Last week’s average calories: 1607
• Last week’s average daily burn: 2336
• Average deficit: -729
• Average diet quality: 21.3
• Average weight: 180.3 (+0.7 gain)

I really need to watch my protein, it’s been kind crappy last week (I only hit my 100g on 3 of 7 days, hence the diet quality dip from 22.8), but otherwise, everything else but the weight was going in the right direction and in the range of acceptable.  So, I just have to let my body sort itself out and just hang on and keep going.  From the swingy ends of the scale, I’ve gone from 188 on March 19th to 177 last weekend, so there is progress being made, for sure.  I’ve got about four weeks until vacation, so if I can make as much progress as I did in the first four weeks, I’ll be very happy.

Good food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  Carrying on.

Good news: it’s official!  Bad news: bikes on planes are a PAIN!!!

I had a very stressful moment where I felt like a complete dumbass on Monday.  We’re traveling with our bikes twice this year and needed to purchase bike bags.  I read over the airline guidelines at least TWENTY times and understood that anything under 62 inches was good to go.  We ordered our bike bags last week after much deliberation on the type and the price.  I read through that text a billion times but didn’t make sense of it until I saw the bags and thought, “Man, those are really big, am I SURE that’s checked luggage size?”  It’s not.   Sure enough, I go to the United site and clear as day, see that 62 LINEAR inches means the sum of all the dimensions, not the largest side.  To get to Cozumel in those bags its 200$ per bike per way instead of the 25$ I had thought.  Big difference.

Between that and actually pricing out going to Cleveland for Nationals, I was having some major overwhelms and actually had to just shut all sorts of things down and say that I’d start dealing with all that stuff later.  We are looking into some (more expensive but) smaller bike bags that are much more likely to look like regular checkable baggage.  Even if they cost more, they’ll pay for themselves in fees in a few trips.  Once we get that settled, I’ll figure out Cleveland.  But the first priority these next two weeks is keep the cup-of-give-a-crap overflowing for racing, which means doing the bare minimum at adulting to keep my life from ruin, and everything else can suck it.

Other things I have decided to give less craps about until at least the end of the month:

• No house projects and I will be doing the minimum amount of cleaning possible.  If it can wait without being gross and/or killing me, it will wait.
• My book.  I need to let it marinate and I’m putting it on hold until after vacation.  I’m reading my book about publishing a book, and then want to let it all soak in a bit, and then attack it after vacation.
• Selling my photos.  I’m not sure how many things I can undertake this year that put my little creative vulnerable self up for judgement on it’s worth, but apparently I’m seeking out ever single one of them.  I decided I’m going to start fresh from my new camera and after vacation, I’ll take a handful of my favorites and pick a site and submit them and see what happens.

I am happy to report I have recorded a new video (post and debrief coming soon).  Also, I have started the background of my next painting.  So, that’s something.

It’s hard to remember how different season is from offseason in the aspect of free time and the cup of f*cks that does NOT runneth over. I know I can make progress and be productive.  I just have to pick my battles carefully and have my hand on the eject button on other things when I need to jettison them to keep my give-a-crap from running on empty.