Adjusted Reality

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

Author: Quix Page 73 of 217

Normal-assery

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On April 18, 2016

In Uncategorized

Since we’ve been offseasoning, we’ve had some pretty epic weekends.  This was the first one that we really and truly had kind of a “normal person” Saturday and Sunday.  Sort of.  It was totally the weather’s fault.

Apr18-1

Friday night, we went with friends to see Emo Phillips at Cap City Comedy Club.  I’m pretty easy to please with comedy, but this guy was hilarious (as was his opening act).  If you get the chance to see him live, do it!

Saturday, we took our bikes out to Lake Pflugerville and rode for 40 mins in the rain.  I reinforced the fact that a) we do not melt, b) I am out of shape but probably not as bad as I think, c) now that I know how to properly unclip, I kind of can’t wait to keep riding my bike more.

Apr18-2

We also ran a mile because a) that’s what you do after you get off a bike at the Pflug, and b) I wanted to get some new header pix for my blog in my new kit at one of the places I typically train.  Feel free to refresh the page until you see it. 🙂  That mile was just under 11 minutes and that is the one pace I have right now.  We’ll fix that later, in a few months.

Kayaking was on the plan but due to the rain and wind we decided to skip it.  We came home and made lunch, and then I was off to a baby shower!  Now, these are not normally my bag, but it was for a very awesome friend and other great people were going to be there who I haven’t seen in a while, so it was a lot of fun.  I mean, look at this creative spread… right?  How could this not signal an awesome afternoon?

Apr18-3

We had planned to go dancing that evening, but between the grey rainy day and being on my feet for hours, we decided on a movie night instead.  How have I not seen the Great Gatsby?  That sent us down a Baz Lurman hole and all of a sudden it was very late and I had vodka for dinner.  Oops.

Sunday, we woke up and I made actual breakfast.  With pancakes and hashed browns and everything!  And… then realized that was about half my calories for the day.   Second oops.  We watched a little of the second season of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and then it was vanity clean out time.  We got part of the way through the process, and Zliten pleaded severe hunger, so we headed out to do that (protein style burgers at In-n-Out are actually pretty great) and do some errands.

Four hours later, having been through Ikea, Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, and finally Homegoods, I had the thought… this is what normal people do on weekends.  And it sucks.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy to finally get this done, and over the next week or so, clean off all the other surfaces and cupboards in the bedroom.  It causes me stress to see crap everywhere and be like “ugh, I’m a slob I should do something about that” before I go to sleep.  However, I hate errands and I’m not really a cleaner, so it also causes me stress that one whole precious weekend day was dedicated to this type of normal-assery.  It was only made possible by the shitty weather.

Apr18-4

The week preceding it was kind of a blur except:

  • We killed lots of stuff in our Dungeons and Dragons game.  This is a small sample.
  • Finished up a few things at work that have taken some pressure off.  While we’ve still got about 3 things on the docket simultaneously, it’s not the 6 it was before.
  • I feel like I made some pretty good goal progress, so let’s talk a bit more about that, shall we?

#projectraceweight is going IMPOSSIBLY slow.  However, this is the first week I’ve had an average weight in the 180s, so it’s something.  Keep plugging along, I will.  I’m finding it hard to believe I’ll reach my goals (even my more conservative ones) right now, but there’s nothing to do but keep at it.  I can’t actually eat much LESS. 🙂

House projects are off to a good start on two fronts – the aforementioned great bedroom clean out and organization, and also, we spent some time looking at Ikea kitchens and it’s time to do some research.  I wouldn’t buy Ikea furniture anymore now that I’m a real adult with a real paycheck, but I have heard their kitchen offerings are pretty decent.  It’s tempting because the price seems right for what we’re looking to do and really EASY, but… what’s the catch?  Where’s the other shoe?

I also got the name of a contractor that a friend recommended, so we’ll pursue that avenue as well.

Biker chick transformation is certainly not complete, but I felt SO much more confident this last week and think that if the rain could just fucking quit it for a moment, I’m a) ready to start bike commuting and b) probably ready to start group riding in a week or two.  I think I’d like to start with the brick session because triathletes give each other more space, it will probably be a gentler experience than heading to another giant group ride.

I’m calling the site done.  I may upload pics into the header as they happen, and I may set up the mail subscription service at some point if I get motivated, but I can certainly live without it.  It makes me happy right now.  Is it wrong that I just spent some time reading random posts because it’s pretty and I like looking at it?

I did weights once last week (Thurs).  I’m still sore (Mon), so obviously I need to be doing them.

I think my scope of “doin’ random thangs” is going to have to reduce a bit.  With friend and family commitments, and house projects we want to get done, it’s probably the one thing that’s going to slide, sorta.  I love the idea of attending stuff like Chicken Shit Bingo or going to random festivals downtown or going salsa dancing, but it’s like… there is only so much effort I have in a given day, and work, friends, family, and frankly outdoorsy type stuff is going to come first.  I guess I’m a little different than I was when I started triathleting and that’s ok.

Apr18-5

This week is another rainy mess which means my hair will probably continue to look like the mess above, but it looks like it will be clearing up for the weekend.

By the days:

  • Monday – weights, costco trip, pick up the house that somehow got demolished over the weekend, do laundry (yeah, super fun day… be really jealous of me…)
  • Tuesday – birthday dinner and games with the family
  • Wednesday – Friday – getting outside as much as humanly via bike, run, walk, or hopefully LAKE possible if the rain decides to quit it + one more weights session
  • Saturday – biking and/or running somewhere pretty, potentially dance lessons that afternoon, and some relax time belting out tunes on Rock Band while my husband is at a diaper party (male baby shower – I’m pretty sure the diapers will be all baby sized)
  • Sunday – spending time outside because it’s supposed to be nice and sunny, and hopefully being able to call project bedroom DONE

Nowhere on this list is: eat and drink like an asshole, so I’m going to try to stay away from a lot of that this week and see if I can’t just will myself to be a little bit smaller than I was last week.

What’s your favorite thing to do on the weekends?  Do you like to be outside as much as possible or does nature creep you out?

 

Camping the Granger, or my #goplayoutside weekend

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On April 15, 2016

In Uncategorized

Guys, I’m totally falling in love with camping.  And I’m really sad my next opportunity isn’t until June.

Let me clarify, there are certain parts I’m not totally in love with:

Apr15-1

The sheer amount of SHIT you need to bring to live on your own for two days.  There’s the tent, the air matress, sheets and pillows, all the clothes, firewood, cooking stuff and utensils, all the water, beer, ice and food for two people for two days, chairs, entertainment, and gear for all the sports.  We just BARELY had room for us in the Xterra.  I’m sure we could somehow pare down but honestly, the only thing we didn’t use were the lake toys, and that’s only because it was cold.

The second night of the campfire when it’s kinda making you nauseous.

When the weather randomly decides that instead of the high 70s and sunny on the forecast, it’s going to be 60s with clouds and wind and rain, so you end up not being motivated to do as much cool stuff as you wanted.  Also, once you get cold, it’s really hard to get warm when you can’t just turn up the heat.

For all the little hassles, there is one GREAT that makes me counting the days until we can go again.  Camping clears my head and quiets my soul.  It’s amazing how once you turn off your phone and realize that there’s no need to stress or hurry, because all you have planned this evening is cooking dinner and sitting by the fire.  It’s like an all inclusive on an island somewhere, except much cheaper and easier to get to (albeit with less fruity drinks and ocean views, but still).

Apr15-3

For all the things we bring, however, we have setup down to a 20 minute science.  Friday was no exception.  We got there around 5:15 and just after 5:30 we started exploring.  We toured the campsite, found a super cool haunted bridge that lead to an awesome hiking trail, saw so many wildflowers, and also found the scariest bathroom with SO MANY BUGS.  I’m so lucky I didn’t get any mosquito crotch nibbles.

The rest of Friday was for cooking hot dogs, drinking crappy beer and sipping Fireball, singing to Zliten’s drumming, and playing chupacabra dice.  Super fun times.  We went to bed a little after midnight.

Saturday just before dawn, a very loud owl came home from a night on the town and was all “hooooooo hoooooty hooooooo hoooo” on the tree right outside the tent.  Between that and all the trucks rumbling by getting ready for fishing or driving people to the bathroom right next to our campsite, I was up earlier than I would have liked.  I was FREEEEEEZING so I put on every warm article of clothing I owned and curled up and stayed in the tent while Zliten made us a badass breakfast in his new dutch oven – breakfast tacos with beans, garlic pepper bacon, and cheese.

Apr11-1

Proof that we don’t actually melt…

We lounged and hammocked and read for a while while the weather osculated between OMG I’m going to storm and JUST KIDDING, I’m just a little cloudy and windy.  Around noon, we decided fuck it, we don’t actually melt, and got dressed and on our bikes.  The ride was pretty nice – only one asshole that cut the pass pretty close on the main country road to get to Granger Lake, and once we got to the dam, everyone drove nicely.  Which was great, because it started raining pretty hard.

The scenery was nice, it felt good to ride a bike that doesn’t take so much effort to pedal, and I actually did a very slow careful unclip of only one foot and rest on the other at the turnaround, like a big kid non-scaredy cyclist.  We stopped for a few minutes to take some pictures with our bikes in the flowers as dorky triathletes do… hey, no judgies, I need new blog header material!

It is definitely offseason, because 12 miles at around 15 mph average was totally enough.  I’m starting to look forward to building that up again, and I have big plans to do a 30-40 mile ride around that lake sometime during training, but for now, I’ll be happy to be out of shape and happy.

Apr15-4

My husband – hunter of the stick fish!

After we put the bikes away, we wolfed down some sandwiches and met up with Zliten’s dad to fish away the rest of the afternoon.  I got one nibble about 6 minutes after casting my first line, but it got away.  After that, the only thing we caught were stick-fish (that is, getting the line caught on debris in the water), and we got rained on quite a bit, but it was a nice mellow afternoon.

Chicken, taters, and salad was the order of the evening.  I really do like how evenings are very SLOWWWW while camping.  Once the sun goes down, there’s really nothing to do but cook dinner, stoke the fire, and relax.  After singing the praises of our dutch oven once more, we tucked into our books and drank some punch (diet sprite, diet juice, and vodka watered down with lots of melty ice).  I took a break to play some dice with myself while Zliten was still engrossed with his book – oddly enough, right hand won 20 rounds, left hand only won 13.  Poor lefty.

Luckily the owl decided to stay somewhere else and it was nice and cloudy, so we slept like rocks until 9:30.  Crazy!  Zliten made us more badass breakfast tacos, we hung out a bit, and realized the weather wasn’t getting any better, and packed up and went home.

Apr15-2

Unfortunately, Friday’s beautiful sunset did not foretell a sunny lake-filled weekend.  But beautiful it was…

Lessons learned from this round of #goplayoutside for the weekend:

When it’s not summer it’s generally cold at night.  Even if the weather seems nice, bring lots of comfy warm clothes (sweats, pajamas, leggings, etc) that you can layer up and potentially sleep in.  Also, shoes besides running shoes and one pair of sandals would be nice.

Related: don’t worry about overpacking clothing while camping.  Make your best guess, but realize you’ll PROBABLY get it wrong and end up wearing the same outfit for 2 days because it doesn’t matter.  Campfire is stronger than BO anyway.

Campsite near the bathroom?  Great.  Closest campsite to the bathroom with a giant floodlight on a one way road where everyone has to drive past to leave the area?  Not as great.  We’ll choose more wisely next time.

The dutch oven is awesome and can cook just about anything.  Next time, I’ll be a little more adventurous with our meal planning.

***

Do you enjoy camping, or, like my parents, do you call roughing it a hotel without an indoor pool?

One Month

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On April 11, 2016

In Uncategorized

Tomorrow will be one month into #projectspring and I wanted to do a quick progress check.  I have quite a few goals, and I want to get through as many of them as I can.

House projects – slow start.  We cleaned out the workout room, but have not yet made the purchases to set it up as the pain cave.  We’ve talked about kitchen and deck remodels and looked at sheds at Lowe’s but haven’t done much else.  This weekend, we’ve got plans to tackle either the office or the vanity area, so we can cross that off the list next check in at least!

Apr11-1

After actually unclipping the right way and not falling down, I took pictures to celebrate the momentous occasion!

Becoming a biker chick – slow start, but picking up.  I rode my bike (with the clips) twice last week and more importantly, I spent 10-15 mins in the backyard with Zliten holding me up practicing the “unclipping one leg and resting on it without unclipping the other” move.  Proudly, I did that once, very slowly, with no traffic around, on the ride on Saturday.  I plan to ride (if just around the block a few times) a few times this week and continue to practice, and ride this week at the Pflug if I can find a non-stormy window of time.

Energy and enthusiasm back – check.  While I’m not waking up before my alarm (most of the time), I’m not dragging myself out of bed (most of the time) either.  I feel like a different person – a peppier and happier person.  I’m back to making plans and being excited to follow through on them instead of dreading them.  I’m spending as much time as humanly possible outside and loving it.

happy

This is both a happy face and a smaller face.

#projectraceweight – check on the following the plan, sort of check on the body deciding to cooperate.  Besides the two camping weekends where I did my best to be REASONABLE and get a lot of activity, I’ve followed the tracking as close to -1000 calories per day plan for a month now.  I’m definitely looking better, I’m definitely feeling better, but the scale isn’t really budging (much) yet.  It’s ok.  I’m following what has worked for me in the past and I’m seeing some progress and I’m being patient.  On Friday the 15th I take one month progress pics and I’m pretty sure I’ll see a difference.

The exercise part of #projectraceweight – sorta check, sorta not.  10k steps per day, I’ve nailed it.  Yesterday was the first day in 3 weeks I didn’t, because my uterus decided it wanted to wage nuclear warfare on me with the worst cramps I’ve had in many, many years (TMI maybe but… OW).  6 303 muscle relaxers (throughout the day) and 3 aleve pills (all at once) barely fought it back to the stage before *crying on the floor in the fetal position*.   I have not yet resumed weights and I still feel like I need a little more time to heal my body (and brain) before I get into high intensity short intervals.  But, I have swam in the lake, ridden my bike, and ran at least a few times with some level of intensity so not all is lost.

Doing something with this site – somewhere between in progress and check. It is so, so, so, so much better than it was before.  I still have a small list of things I’d like to do… (edits as I do them…)

  • Widget for mail subscription – researching…
  • Widget/form for contacting me – DONE
  • Widget for related posts – DONE!  I had to retag all the posts, but I decided to only go back a few years.  But that’s fine.
  • Update the content of all my pages – DONE!
  • About me widget – DONE!
  • Take more picture for the roating header image that are the appropriate size (apparently, I’m a vertical picture taker, not horizontal!) – ongoing, as I go do cool shit I’ll get more pics.
  • Decide if I want to do something with the fairly plain Adjusted Reality header (image background? color? just leave it as is because it’s clean an uncluttered?) – inclined to leave it alone after consideration.  I’m not an artist and I tend to clutter stuff up I shouldn’t. 🙂
  • Decide on a tagline.  Do I like the created-on-a-whim “becoming more awesome one day at a time” or is that silly? – DONE! found one!  I may change these as my fancy strikes, but I’m happy with it for now.

…but if my site didn’t change at all for a while, I’d still be pretty happy with what I’ve done so far.  Any opinions or things that look weird, or things you like to see on a website, hit me up in the comments!

Finish processing the Bonaire pics – check.  Can we go again, like, now?

Apr11-2

If you want to check out my public album, it’s HERE.

Camping trips – check.  We’ve gone twice.  I’ve definitely got the bug.  I think we’ll have to skip May’s trip due to other commitments but we’re already talking about where to go the first weekend in June!  This has definitely reminded me how awesome being outside is and how I don’t have to be triathlon training to enjoy it.

Water time – check.  I’ve been in (swimming) or on (paddleboarding, fishing, etc) quite a bit this month and it will only get more and more prevalent as the temperatures rise.  This week it’s warmer (yay) but also stormy (boo), so we’ll see how it goes.  Also, I am counting the days (46) to the water park opening!

Doing Thangs – kinda check and more this month.  While I don’t feel like I’ve been boring, I haven’t really fulfilled the spirit of this particular thing.  The next 3 weeks we can’t escape town and go camping or anything, so we’ve got more of these types of plans.  This week, we have a comedy show and Saturday night dance lessons + social dancing on tap!  In 2 weeks, we have a festival in Temple, TX to go to.  I don’t know what’s between then, but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

Crafty and creative in my spare time – not yet.  Maybe once it becomes a little less awesome to be outdoors every moment.

Apr4-4

Beautiful weather trumps crafts.  Sorry.  Always has, always will.

Here are five goals for things I would like to accomplish in the next month that I probably will ignore if I don’t specify:

  • Incorporate weights at least 2xweek.  If that’s all I add in April to my general activity, that’s fine.
  • Have what we want pretty well documented and get at least one estimate for the kitchen and/or patio remodel.
  • Ride my bike with the clips 3xweek.  If nothing else, around the block a few times.  Spend some time practicing clipping and unclipping like a rockstar each time instead of a scaredy biker.
  • Bike commute to work at least once a week.
  • Finish up the work on my website so I can cross this one off the list (either do all the things on my list or decide I can live without them).

Cheers to a great first 28 days of #projectspring, and an even better next 28!

Ask the audience: what did you do last weekend?

On Happiness

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On April 8, 2016

In Uncategorized

I’m sure it was probably apparent to everyone around me the last few months, I had lost my mojo hardcore.  I’m so relived to really feel like I’m getting to the other side of this shit.  It’s good to be happy Quix again.

happy

This is a happy face.  Lately, this has been forced.  After a nice long walk at lunch and paddleboarding after work, this was not forced at all.

Gaining 10 lbs was weighing on me (badup CHING) for so long.  And really – who cares?  In the grand scheme of things, it shouldn’t have been such and issue.  No one is going to be unhealthy or die over being 10 lbs heavier.

I think my big problem is that I couldn’t do anything about it for so many months even though I wanted to.  That’s not true.  I made the choice to not do anything about it because I wanted to fuel to race.  I felt guilty for not making any progress, but now that I am completely onto #projectraceweight, I feel dumb about that.  I could NEVER have sustained anything like this during race season.  Losing weight, the process, makes you weak as shit during it.  If I would have tried, I probably would have eventually fainted on the side of the road on a long run or ended up in my kitchen binge eating crazy shit like crackers and butter because CALORIES.  It’s just how things work, and I can say this because it’s happened before.

Now that I am working on it and making at least a little progress, I feel better about it.  Sure, I’m a little frustrated that my husband is down about 3 times as much as I am this month while I’m sticking to my deficit better.  Regardless, my face looks a lot more like me, my pants fit a little better, and that plus envisioning how badass I’ll look in my new race kit come July is enough to keep me on the wagon for now.  FINALLY, the inertia is going and I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  It’s still very far away, but getting a little closer, so I know I’ll get there eventually if I keep walking.  I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

hammock

With maybe just a few stops to hang out in the hammock…

I’m still mentally dealing with having 3 terrible races.  I mean, hello, perspective –  I finished a 70.3 and 2 marathons over the course of 5 months, I didn’t DNF or get injured or die or anything.  I learned things on all those courses.  I actually had a SIGNIFICANT bike PR going at Kerrville even though massive cramps until I crashed at mile 50.  I ran my fourth fastest half marathon in January, within a few minutes of my PR.  I’ve done this racing thing 89 times (yes, I actually went back and counted), not EVERY race is going to be a winner.

I think it was the combination of gaining the weight to fuel performance… and then all my important races sucked.  I literally feel like it was all for nothing.  Well, besides the pleasure of consuming so many calories in a day for a while, but still, I never would have done that for funsies.  I can take a little disappointment, but to have 2 personal worst marathons in a row?  Why did I get fat again?  Why bother racing?  Obviously I’m not any good at this shit, and it negatively impacts my life, right?

Y’know what, it totally makes sense to me to really be proud or ashamed of my races if it’s what I spend 11 months of most of my non-work time and energy focused on. I need this time away more often to not specifically train and if I race, it’s for the energy, the people, the participation, but not for the results.  I’m pretty sure my husband MAY DIE if we went months without any racing but I need to be strict with myself that some are JUST for participation.  Removing myself from training for a while, I’ve also been able to remove my self worth from my race results.  I had another personal worst at 10/20, but I also kind of intended to do that and feel nothing but happy about the day I had.

Various things keep trying to pull me back in sooner, but after being really depressed about racing and training in general the last 6 months, I finished the marathon feeling at peace… but not sure if I ever wanted to do anything like that ever again in my life.  Between having some bad bike experiences and feeling like an utter failure at the run this fall/winter, there was not much joy there come March 6.  I had ZERO desire to get on a bike with clips, or lace up run shoes in any serious manner.

The good news is that I’m healing.  I think it’s going to take the full 4 months of offseason, but if that’s what it takes… fine.  I’m getting tingles watching Ironman video clips again, instead of being like, MEH.  I’m thinking about doing that a year from now and getting excited, but I’m not itching to even start a training PLAN right now, so it’s very much NOT YET TIME and I’m in no hurry.  I had fun doing 10 miles with Zliten and not caring about the pace.  I told him I’m ok doing that again during offseason somewhere pretty where we don’t discuss what our watches say and let it dictate what we do.

I rode my race bike for the first time since disaster noob day, and I definitely missed it. I also took my first step towards being less noob-y, I spent 10-15 mins in the back yard practicing the motions of being a confident unclipper.  I’m ready to start making some progress there.  I’m getting tons of guilt that we’re not doing group rides yet and while I’m standing firm that I’m just not ready to go ride in traffic with a bunch of people, I need to start doing things to get myself there.

feb3-1

Too much of this during the winter.  This is not a good way to stoke motivation or run love...

I know winter isn’t really my season to begin with, but I had such a good one last year, I was hoping that my winter blahs were gone for good.  Not so much.  The cold was actually really mild this year, but the allergies were terrible, which actually kept me inside more.  Weather, I can deal with.  The air making me sick for a week, I can’t.  Even if I WANTED to stupidly brave it, with Zliten’s allergy induced asthma, it was a no go.  The treadmill is ok for occasional speedwork or runs in inclement weather, but for 3 weeks of running daily with long runs?  Suck.

The bright side is that next year is completely different.  I’m not running 2 marathons.  Actually, I’m not running ANY marathons.  No trip to Florida.  No insanely quick ramp ups to half ironman or marathon.  No run streaks.  Instead, I’ll be riding my bike just about every day as many miles as I can and hopefully discovering bike love the way I discovered run love last year.  And at the end of it… I’ll be doing a race distance I’ve never done before, so it will all be a new adventure where finishing is truly the main goal and anything faster than 16:59:59 is totally acceptable in my book.

I was worried that I’d be sad about missing spring training and racing.  Sure, I get a *little* twinge when I think about Galveston 70.3 this weekend and the massochist in my head thinks “hey, if we would have ramped up biking this month you TOTALLY could be at that start line”.  And that’s actually progress because if you would have asked me that two weeks ago I would have been like…

nope

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE.

However, it’s truly lovely to enjoy spring in a different way.  Long walks.  Paddleboarding.  Camping.  Little bike rides around the hood.  Hanging out in the hammock.  These things bring tons of joy and a smile to my face and I’m remembering what it’s like to not just be Quix: producer, triathlete, and eater of ALL THE FOOD.  And it’s making me happy to not be that me for a little while.

I feel… free.  I said I felt free at the finish line of the marathon but I had no idea what free really felt like.  I thought the calorie restriction would be terrible, but it just feels freeing to work towards a goal I’ve wanted to tackle for a long time. It feels free to not be stuck somewhere you don’t want to be.

I’ll keep plugging away it until it’s time to do something else.  I’ll start dealing with the training and racing stuff when it’s the season to do so.  I’m far enough away from both last fall and winter’s disappointments, and next winter’s massive amount of WORK to get to Ironman that I feel like I’m on vacation.  I’m in blissful limbo.  I had this weird underlying anxiety thing building all winter and now it’s pretty much gone.  And for the first time in quite a while, I feel light.  And truly happy.

 

750m, 10 miles, and #hammocklife

By

On April 4, 2016

In Uncategorized

After a full month off training and racing, I decided to do the latter twice (sorta) this weekend, while not resuming any of the former.  It was actually a lot of fun!  I approached it like a real life normal person.  Instead of being so focused on time, performance, bettering myself, etc, I decided to frame it like this – hey, I’m going to go be active with a bunch of people – old and new friends – this morning and it’s going to be awesome no matter what the time on the clock says.

Nothing about “don’t take this shit so seriously” really clicked until this weekend.  It took a month of perspective but I think the part of me that was burnt out with the multisport thing is healing.  I can now separate races and my self worth and there’s an option between give 110% and give everything to the course and not bother – it is possible just to go meet up with friends and run and swim (we’ll get to that bike thing again soon…) just because it’s fun.

Apr4-2

Saturday was the start of the swim challenge.  Got to the docks, stuff stuff yank yank tug tug… whew.  Thankfully the wetsuit still zipped, even if I felt like a dark rubber sausage.  I jumped in the chilly-but-not-too chilly water (high 60s? 70?) and got my first wetsuit swim of the year out of the way with 25 other friends.  It always goes like this…

0-100m Holy fuck cold cold cold warm up warm up pleaaaaase (while going about 1:00/100m, aka, way too fast)

100-200m Wheeze, pant, wheeze, I am so out of shape omg why body whyyyyy

200m+ Oh, right, now I remember how to swim in a wetsuit… this is fine.

I knocked off the 1 lap (750m) in a little over 15 minutes.  Certainly not my best, but not my worst, and a good first day of the distance challenge.  A bunch of people got in and did lap 2 (or more) but I was like, nope, done.  Could I have swam another?  Probably.  But I didn’t really want to and since offseason is about only doing activity (beyond my 10k steps) when I actually feel like it, I just hung out on the shore and ate the best breakfast half chicken salad wrap I’ve ever had (swim-gries are real, yo).

Apr4-1

Sunday was the 10 mile Austin 10/20.  Our initial plan was to go easy, then we got a little race excitement going and toyed around with trying to go a little faster.  We agreed to see what the day brought and roll with it.

Turns out in my heavy Hoka Kailuas, on a 750-1000 calorie deficit per day, without actually training in the last month – easy is the only pace there really is.  The pain cave well was incredibly shallow and that’s JUST FINE with me.  We ran the first half easy with Brian around 11’s, and then he took off for the second half, and we puttered up the (very small but totally significant at this point of my fitness) hills for a 1:52, or about 11:13/mile finish.

I may have been grunting a lot at the end, though after the race I could definitely tell that it was more the shock of “wtf, I haven’t done anything like this in a while” rather than me actually being close to death.  No deep tireds, just me being a little bit wimpy.  But that’s perfect.  I’m happy to keep it light and easy for a while.

We actually even stayed for awards and a beer and part of the concert, it was so weird.  Normally we limp home right away after races and die on the couch.  Instead, it was like… this is a thing I did this morning before getting on with my day rather than being completely wayyyyysted from racing hard.  Again, I love giving it all out on a course, but it was really nice not to have it take up ALL weekend preparing and recovering.

The one nice thing about running 10 miles right now was having more calories to play with.  To be at a 1k deficit, I could have about 2000 calories.  Such luxury!  I was able to have 3 reasonable meals AND also drinks.  The only thing is – I can definitely tell my appetite wanted about 5 meals and drinks. 😛  Distance running makes you so crazy hungry, it’s definitely not the best way to take off weight.

However, being smart about making my calories satisfying when is definitely helping this #projectraceweight cause.

Apr4-5

This was Friday night’s dinner – a flatout tortilla with tomato sauce, feta, turkey pepperoni, olives, onions, and green peppers.  I added a chicken patty on the side (not pictured) with buffalo sauce and yogurt blue cheese for a little more protein.  It was pretty filling!

Apr4-6

This was Saturday night’s dinner – grilled chicken on the bbq, half in a bun as a sandwich (extra carb attempt for the race which really was too little too late, it’s clear I will not be race-racing until I quit it with the calorie debt :D), a small potato in 1/2 tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and parmesan for oven fries, and broccoli.  Yum!

Apr4-7

We were craving fish and chips, so we compromised and did the baked version at home instead.  Good ol’ Gordons and Red Robin oven fries right there on the plate.  It definitely scratched the itch for me, not quite sure about Zliten, but it was a nice filling lunch after racing that didn’t completely break the calorie bank.

I’m looking forward to training again to be able to have the real stuff every once in a while, but for now, the substitutions will work.  Enough real pizza or fried fish and chips to fill me up would be a full days calories.  I’m fully aware the fake stuff probably has chemicals and other crap that isn’t great for long term consumption (the flat-out has a BUTTLOAD of ingredients rather than flour, salt, and water like good tortillas), but less than half the calories is huge right now.

As for actual weight loss progress… not much yet.  Partying Camping last weekend really jacked it up early in the week, but I did finally see a 180-something weight (twice so far), so as slow as it’s going right now, it’s going.  Zliten offered, unsolicited, that he thought my face and shoulders looked different (and he’s a straight shooter, so I don’t think he was just paying me lip service).  This is that magic fourth week where I should hopefully see some progress if I keep it on the straight and narrow so keep my hopefully shrinking ass in your thoughts and send me lots of good mojo if you have some to spare, yeah?

Besides the racing parts of the weekend, we had a pretty normal and mellow one.  We puttered around and did a few errands.  Zliten decided to bike to a few pawn shops to look for some disc golf discs to take to his parents’ house (they have an AMAZING disc golf course 5 minutes away and we want to PLAYYYY).

Apr4-4

I also now am the proud owner of a new portable hammock, care of a bunch of birthday gift cards.  It’s probably one of my favorite things right now in life.  I haven’t had a comfortable way to sit outside and enjoy our backyard for a while, since our chair cushions got wrecked (and even then….eh… they were only comfortable when drinking because… drinking).  It was super easy to set up, and I’m pretty sure I spent close to 6 hours in that thing over the weekend just reading and napping.

It did put a damper on my goals to work on my blog this weekend, but I’m pretty sure it was the best option for happiness points.  Oddly enough, the week was a balance of really active without trying to force it (2 swims, 2 runs, 10k steps every day) and still relaxing and soul replenishing.  Perfect.

What’s up this week?

  • Sticking to my plan. 1200 calories per day Monday – Thursday, and doing my best over the weekend. 10k steps per day minimum.  Per ush.
  • The race this weekend reinforced some of the weaknesses I have in my body right now.  Spend some time stretching and GENTLY start some bodyweight training.  Like the kind where you do a few reps during commercials watching TV.
  • I’ve gotten 5 of my 7 days of my Bonaire scuba pics edited.  I want to get the rest of them done.  It should take two casual nights working on it, or just call it my project and really focus one evening.
  • I’d like to get ONE thing on my website to-dos list checked off this week (no, that was NOT an April Fool’s joke).  I’m looking into a mobile friendly theme this week so if I *do* get it done, it will be apparent because we’ll no longer be the default theme! (EDIT: trying this one out for a while.  Images need to be recentered but I’m really liking it so far!)
  • Paddleboardng on Wednesday after work.  Water time!
  • Checking out a new salad place near work for their soft opening for FREE.  Free healthy food is the best!
  • Camping!  We’re going to a place where there’s a beautiful lake for kayaking (and mayyyybe swimming, depending on how warm it is), a super nice place to bike, and some great trails to run and/or hike.  I’m looking forward to another weekend outdoors!

And if I don’t get every single thing on this list done it’s ok, because that’s how we roll here with #projectspring. 3 weeks down, 13 to go!

 

 

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About Me

I'm a video game producer and a lover of anything game related by trade.  I'm a triathlete by hobby.  I live for being on or in the water as much as I can - scuba diving, snorkeling, paddleboarding, water slides... you name it.  The dichotomy between my outdoor and indoor realities are interesting, but they're all mine!  Longer version here...

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