Adjusted Reality

Author: Quix Page 85 of 217

Jack’s Generic Sprint Tri – All Was Given

On August 3, 2015

Taking time off from triathlon is always a leap of faith. What happens when you go back? What if you forget how to race? What if you suddenly suck at it, or it’s not fun? What if you have so much caffeine that you suddenly blast off into outer space? These questions and more will be answered in this post…

Jack’s Generic two years in a row has proved that #offseason over summer is a really great thing and five weeks is definitely not long enough to lose enough fitness to care about.

It was a clash of things over the week:

Rested legs vs lack of training. (obviously)
Crappy sleep during the week vs AMAZING race night sleep. I was at over 4 hours slept debt for the week against my 8-per night minimum, but I fell asleep at 7:45 and slept almost 9 hours Saturday night. Unheard of race day sleep!
Obsessing over the race vs not even thinking about it. It really didn’t hit me I was racing until I picked up my packet. I didn’t lay my stuff out until after dinner on Saturday. I didn’t type up or think about goals for it.
Being underfed vs being a few lbs lighter. I had been at the lower calorie range for the last few weeks, but I was ~5 ish lbs lighter than when I raced last season.

My enthusiasm wasn’t all there this week. Just like last year, I wondered “why the hell did I sign up for this race?”, because who races well after 5 weeks of slacking? But, Saturday, I felt a twinge of “yay race” when I picked up the packet. Coupled with the amazing sleep and the fact that I ingested the proper amount of caffeine on race day morning (see above), I was peppy and happy and had the thought that I was just ready to go for racing hard, whatever that happened to be that day.

Pre race stuff: ate kind bar (going to switch over to more carbs, but I haven’t tried it before AM workouts yet so stuck with what I knew), had purple stuff, set up transition, pottied a few times, ran about half a mile with strides and WOW my legs were feeling great, got kicked out of transition because it was time to go, got a warmup swim, and then stood on the beach with Zliten and B and M and waited for our time to jump in line for the time trial start.

Swim:

Due to the massive amount of Hydrilla in the lake, they skipped the normal course and bushwhacked the nature through this weird out and back. I can’t thank Hi 5 Race Productions enough for doing this – it would have been AWFUL to race through as it was. However, this resulted in a lot of dodging people going my way because the course was very narrow, not to mention avoiding stray swimmers coming toward me that were off course. No head on collisions, but there were a few close calls.

Besides playing crazy swim taxi, I felt pretty strong, passing people left and right, and I got passed maybe… once. I slowed down a little bit coming back. It was into the sun and I didn’t have a good judgment on how gassed I really was without training lately so I tried to stay… moderately gassed. 🙂

Swim was a little long, my time was 1:52/100 yard for 550 meters on the garmin – not my best, but under the circumstances, I felt like it was a good swim for me.

Swim time: 11:14/500m. 6/20 AG, 47/152 gender, 105/283 overall. 1:27 faster than last year. Very happy with the placement and the amount of time I took off from last year!

T1:

Long run over the rocky beach, and my feet just don’t love that, so all these people I passed on the swim went right by me. Ugh. Once I got to concrete I picked up the pace and got to my bike and didn’t fumble too much.

T1 time: 2:49. 7/20 AG, 42/152 gender, 104/283 overall. 4 seconds slower than last year. Eh, whatevs, close enough.

Bike:

Got going on the bike and cooked it as hard as I could and sipped my gu brew because I was REALLY thirsty. Going to have to figure out how to tote around liquid when my start is an hour and a half after transition closing.

My goal was to just rock the bike as hard as I could since I knew the run would be miserable no matter what. I fell in (legally) behind this chick that was going right about my speed for a while, then passed her, then looked for the next person who was going about my speed, rinse and repeat.

The first 5 miles I took down real quick – I was close to 20 mph and thrilled about life and it was hard but I was fighting the good fight. However, the wheels started to come off (figuratively, not literally). I started losing the battle to race hard. I was feeling like I just didn’t have enough juice. I felt kind of nauseous. I was slowing. It was either give in, or take the chance on making things worse in the gut and try rocket fuel. So, rock and roll, I put down a caffeinated gel.

It was a good decision. In a mile or two my stomach settled. I felt like I had a little more to give. While it was a crowded course, I didn’t have too much trouble with people. I tried to ride aggressively as much as I could, but I think this is really where I felt the 5 weeks off more than anywhere. My power numbers vs effort will come back but it was definitely not quite where it was in June.

The power readings were absolutely USELESS during a sprint when you are just riding as hard as you possibly can the whole time, but gave me some nice stats for later: 171 HR AVG (92% of max), 83 cadence (decent with some coasting), 49% L/51% right balance, 157W avg, 161W 20 min power, 173W normalized power.

Bike Time: 43:09/12.9 miles. 4/20 AG, 29/152 gender, 104/283 overall. 44 seconds faster than last year. While I may be a little *meh* on the particulars of the bike, it’s solidly my strongest triathlon leg now in the rankings and I definitely gave all I had to give today. Looking forward to more work over the next 8 weeks to be able to give more.

T2:

My legs were a little wobbly getting out of the pedals but I made to back to my rack and changed without too much fumble or delay. I decided hell to the yes on a frozen bottle, which makes T2 a little slower to navigate, but I believe it may have saved my race.

T2 time: 1:38. 10/20 AG, 60/152 gender, 124/284 overall. 8 seconds faster than last year.

Run:

It was hot, my legs were pretty gassed, and I spent the entire time just hanging on the best I could. The pace was not pretty but I tried to just concentrate on effort. I worked the pace down little by little, and kept an eye on the overall time.

After the first mile, I calculated that I had an overall PR in me, but I had to be careful. Racing in August in the feels like 90+, I know myself, and I know I can blow up and do stupid things like walk during a 3 mile run.

So I tried to find that line, that inch before the explosion, and just hang onto it as tightly as possible. I rode that wave, just chanting to myself “You’re strong, you got this”, over and over and over for at least the last mile and a half. Looking ahead brought me out of the trance I was in, so I looked directly in front of my feet most of the time.

At about a quarter mile to go, a lady with a 60 on her leg passed me and I was like… aw hell no, so I found another gear and followed her into the finish. I couldn’t pass her but I stuck to her like glue. The finish video is hilarious, I look like I’m stalking her but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Stats: 177 HR AVG, 186 MAX. That’s 96% and 101% of my max HR, btw. There was truly nothing more I had to give on this run. Just like the bike, I’m excited to see how this shapes up once I have more to give.

Run Time: 29:31. These gains I’m making racing the swim and bike harder and faster are slowing my runs down a little but if I’m PRing overall every race, it’s acceptable collateral damage. My worst placement of the day, but I’ll take it: 10/20 AG, 60/152 women, 156/283 overall. 44 seconds slower than last year.

Overall time: 1:28:18 (1 min 34 sec faster than last year). 5/20 AG, 41/152 gender, 118/283 overall. Top quarter both AG and gender, and top half overall. I actually beat all these these guys this time, which is NEVER a given!

By FAR, my best placement in a triathlon. If I would have been able to find 2 more minutes on the course, I could have placed 3rd, but I can safely say I did not have 2 minutes anywhere today and raced my ass off. I found the floor of my pain cave and dug it a little deeper. I’ll be happy to take this stuff into the next training block.

After the race, I spent the day eating everything in sight, and went to bed around 8:30 to read and fell asleep around 9. I still feel a little brain-dead today, but not that sore and like some great sleep-healing went on last night.

Now, that I’ve had one last romp with the short stuff, with the 90 minutes of speedy pain, we start the volume build towards SIX HOURS OF PAIN at the end of September. 🙂

Week 5: Micro-vacations

By Quix

On July 23, 2015

In Uncategorized

The first week and the last week of offseason, I’ve tried to prioritize fun as much as possible over the “omg I have free time lets get do responsible shit”.

There’s a big difference though. Week 1 – I was walking around kind of zombie-like, decompressing from season, and was excited to DRINK ALL THE BOOZE since I didn’t have to train. Week 5 – I felt very recovered – but a little stale in the legs from not doing all that much for a while. I’m kind of sick of DRINKING ALL THE BOOZE (sorta) and am looking forward to returning to the lifestyle where I fall into bed at 9 and zonk out quickly (very).

This was the first week where I kind of felt “is it next week yet?” – so just like last year, I’m thinking that 5 weeks off was just PERFECT to get my body and mind in gear for 6 months of 70.3 and marathon training.

I didn’t do a vacation this year, which was probably BETTER on the body and recovery (that’s coming in OCTOBER!), but I am missing a little bit of the getting-away-from-it-all in the soul. I’ve been devoting every possible minute possible to being in the lake or at the water park, so I do feel like I’ve had lots of micro-vacations. So, we’ll see how my head is.

Moving my butt:

Last week was a little more active than I was previously. It’s ok. After each session I felt energized and happy, and that’s where I needed to be.

I did my pushups on Tuesday and actually failed the last set of Week 3 Day 1. I was supposed to do 17, and I kept failing trying to do #14. On Saturday, I decided to just try to do the descending ladder of the dozen (10, 9, 8… down to 1 – which is 55 pushups) on my toes and yup, I was finally able to do it. Honestly, that’s what sparked the pushup challenge in the first place, and I think rolling that full, un-modified dozen into my life twice a week will work. I feel so much stronger, more… sturdy. I like.

I got to SUP TWICE this week. I really need to figure out how to make this part of my life during season. I’m pretty sure it’s amazing core work which you use in, like, everything, plus its SUPER FUN.

I also got to snorkel twice last week and while that probably doesn’t do anything for my training but prevent the “omg I haven’t been in open water in 5 weeks ack nature” shock, it was great for the soul.

I ran a 5k once. It was hot. This is probably the part of training I am least looking forward to resuming but I just ripped the bandaid off yesterday with a 5k run in kitty litter when it was about 50000 degrees (ok, feels like 98, but same diff) and I didn’t die.

Outside BIKING omg! We decided that the last week of offseason was not the time to return to hardcore class, so we took our bikes outside and discovered some really cool new bike lanes just south of our neighborhood that will make for some good interval work if we want to do that outside. Then, we joined up with a no drop group ride and I think I leveled up a bit with my bike handling and not freaking out about riding in town (by the end – there were some terrifying sections where I straight yelled at cars but it got better). Neither of these rides went anywhere north of 14 mph, but that wasn’t the point.

Nutrition:

(I took, like, no pictures last week. Too busy being awesome, I guess. So, you get selfies.)

The increase in activity sort of dragged my calories up a bit without me really noticing. I still fought pretty hard to keep myself around 1500-ish each day, but I lost more days than I did the week before. Though… I logged almost double the activity, so I suppose there’s a good reason.

My appetite is definitely RESET though. I bought two halves of a BBQ chicken breast and a big salad from whole foods. Two months ago, that would have been a meal where I probably would snack later. Last week, it was two VERY FILLING meals. It’s been fun to watch my hungries shrink and soon they will grow to the point where I can embarrass myself with my giant meals again during 70.3 peak training. Fun stuff. It’s cool how your body just knows what’s up if you listen to it.

Average calories per day: 1676. Average weight for the week: 178.2 (which is a full 1.1 lb loss). Solid.

In the last 2 months, I’ve lost almost 5 lbs chipping away at it almost to slow to notice without me tracking the averages. I’ve gone from approaching my “oh shit” weight to being pretty comfortably back to what feels NORMAL (maybe the high side of normal but definitely in the zone) the last few years. I’ve got a few more days here at this calorie count, and then we’ll start ramping up to stuffing my face with (carefully tracked) carbs (at the appropriate times).

I’ve been emailing back and forth with my nutritionist and I think I’ve got my map and my plan in place – through September at least. More on that next week when it really kicks off.

Another interesting tidbit of calorie reduction + last week of offseason – I was curious so I mathed this one out… over 15% of my calories last week were alcohol. I don’t eat a whole lot of junk food, so those are my splurges, but WOW. Now that I’m training again, this will be a much smaller part of my life.

Fun Stuff:

The only responsible thing I did was clean out our freezers. It took us an hour. They’re going to come pick up our garage fridge that doesn’t really work for 50$. Also, now everything in my freezer inside is edible and not 4 year old ground beef or freezerburned crap. Ick. Yay.

We booked our vacation in October. We’re going to flippin’ Bonaire!!! I’m still kind of in shock we were able to do it we had a decent-but-not-sky-high budget to do a dive vacation, and I figured that we might be able to afford Florida, or mayyyybe Cozumel because I didn’t want to stay at a hole in the wall. Not one of the best places to go dive… but I checked it out just to see what’s what.

Well, I was able to book a flight to Bonaire for about the price of a domestic US ticket, and the accommodations + diving package worked out to cost about the same as the vacation we took to Oregon/California last year. So, 8 days in Bonaire is fast approaching!!! Wheee!

Got my running shoe situation for at least the summer/fall dealt with super cheap. Spent all the savings on one dress I fell in love with at Athleta. Oh well. The super genius said it was worth the price with how it fit, so I made him buy it for me because sticker shock.

Did I mention I got to go to the waterpark twice? And the lake? Riding my bike twice outside? Life is good. I <3 summer so hard (just not summer running).

Went to hang out with a bunch of friends at the bar for a birthday party – sadly, we’d been outside all day and the bar’s AC was either broken or on it’s last legs, so we made it all of 2.5 hours before we had to bail to sit on our couch directly under the AC. We did bring her an awesome flying pig, so I think we made up for it…

So, offseason shenanigans are official over for a while, and August is about to get REAL. I think I’m ready for it.

Question: what’s the most fun thing you did last week?

Week 4 – Never Enough Time!

By Quix

On July 22, 2015

In Uncategorized

My deep thought of the week:

There is never enough time to do all the things I want to do. Even when I’m not booked solid with triathlon training. Even when I don’t have to say no to things the day before a race, or because I need to ride my bike for 2 hours instead of going to do something. Even when my schedule is pretty fluid and I’m prioritizing fun.

To maintain a few hours a week of activity for fitness purposes and get 8 hours of sleep a night, and work, I still can’t do all the things I want to do.

And it’s kind of freeing. When I’m back to dedicating those 10+ hours a week to swim, bike, run, weights, stretch, or whatever, I’ll know that it’s not just training making it all busy. It’s just life throwing an abundance of cool things my way so I can hone my decision making skills to pick what venues I’m going to grace my presence with and what’s worth my time.

I was actually double or triple booked with invites three days last week. One day work took over and cancelled everything, but the other two – I had to make the decision and both times I went with the choice that was more of a unique experience (a concert vs drinks with friends, and a volunteer party vs friday night slides at the wah pah). No regrets. I’d probably make the opposite choices if I was exhausted from training so it was nice to make use of some of the fun offers that come my way.

Tidbits from this week:

Our team successfully launched an update to the general public for one of my games, and an update to our test servers for another. This is not trivial in terms of effort and stress, and while we still have a bit to go before things calm down completely, it’s been a really epic and positive culmination of the first half of the year of effort from everyone. Yay! Just a little bit more to go to finish up the summer madness!

We moved what used to be our itty bitty baby tarantula (not so much any more) into her new home – a 4-serving size mac salad size container. She seemed a little skittish at first but after a few days and being fed a cricket, she’s been redecorating by moving all the fluff and seems happy.

We finished (well, as much as we could in a short time frame) cleaning stuff out and had our yard sale. We made ~150$ in about 4 hours, and then gave a bunch of stuff away for free. We took half the clothing bags to Goodwill, we plan to take the extra bedding to the halfway house, and the rest of the clothes to Savers (for a discount coupon – so I can get MOAR things, heh).

Our AC decided to leak under our flooring so it was ~150$ for the service call to fix it and then eventually we need to replace our laminate in that area. Bah. We found this late at night, and tried to sleep with the AC off so it wouldn’t leak any more, but around 4am I relented since I had been up for 2 hours sweating, and turned it on anyway.

Fun Stuff:

Rock Show! We got free tickets to the Summerland tour, which was a very 90s stadium rock show with American Hi Fi (we got there late and missed them – like, when does a rock show ever start on time?), Fuel, Everclear, and The Toadies. Fuel was pretty good, though it was hard to understand him mumbling on the mike even more than expected. Everclear was fun and high energy but the lead singer sounded like he was doing karaoke of himself. He must have a lot of studio tweaks to his voice. The Toadies stole the show – I’ve seen them live before and remember them being MEH, and this time they ROCKED. High energy, fun, singer sounded great… it was a fun night.

Volunteer Party! We normally don’t go to these, but we wanted to go downtown to stop at our tri store anyway and it was right on the way. Or so we thought. When we got to the location where we thought it was, the bar had moved. To the southiest south part of south Austin. D’oh! We got there pretty quickly in the absence of traffic and ate delicious lemon pepper wings, chips and queso, and flautas (seriously, you think a triathlon thingee would have at least ONE vegetable) and some vodka sodas, and mingled with a few triathletes and volunteers we hadn’t met before.

Waterpark! We got there on Sunday at noon and holy hell it was busy. We usually go either in the morning or the last few hours of the day, and we’ll go back to that trend because it was nutzo. But, we did get some slides and lazy river action and wave pool floatin’ so it wasn’t a wasted trip. We also got some kick ass BBQ on the way back that rocked our socks off. Best butt in town – yeah, probably for Pflugerville!

Food Stuff:

Week 2 down of trying to cut calories, 2 weeks to go.

1500 calories is not so hard some days, and almost impossible others. It’s pretty easy during the week when I make my own food (or get selectively healthy/filling takeout), and eat at pretty set times, but sometimes being out and about and the lack of routine on the weekend gets the best of me.

1500 calories leaves very little room for error. If I’m eating healthy food, it’s just enough. If I do something like go to a party with only junk food and booze, I have to set aside a fairly decent amount of my daily intake to be able to enjoy it.

1500 calories means I really have to watch my snark meter and keep my attitude in check. Not training so much, I don’t feel the BELLY HUNGER in the same way, but when everything that comes out of my mouth sounds bitchy, I either need to eat or sleep.

1500 calories flat out does not work for having some beers around noon. By 6pm I was rationing the calories I had left. By 9pm, I was grumpy and just wanted to go to bed – I was already at 1800 calories and I felt like I could have gotten down with a whole medium pizza right then. So I drank some water, went to bed, read my book, and woke up the next morning feeling ok. I was a little cranky until I got food but I ate a very filling breakfast (footlong subway with just bread, turkey, veggies, and mustard) and life went on.

1500 calories means sometimes I eat what has less calories and will make me not want to start eating my desk rather than the best quality of food (see said Subway sandwich). It’s a trade off I’m willing to make temporarily but once season starts I’ll be back to less “diet crap”.

1500 calories seems to be working, though, at least a little. My average calories for last week, as the week before, was 1625. Funny how that worked out. I think that’s my metric of challenging, but not impossibly low food consumption.

In turn, I had my lowest average weight since I started tracking of 179.3 – which was 0.8 less than last week and 0.1 less than my lowest of 179.4 a month ago. It’s really frustrating how damn hard I need to work to take down the smallest amount of weight but it’s better than not trying, I guess. The last two weeks have gone from 180.7 to 180.1 to 179.3 so I’m hoping that trend continues.

Sweaty Stuff:

Pushup Challenges for the week – done. Week 2 Day 2 was 10, 12, 9, 9, max (at least 13, I did 15). Week 2 Day 3 was 12, 13, 10, 10, max (at least 15, I did 17). I took my post-week 2 test on Sunday, and I failed on the 22nd pushup.

In 3 weeks, I more than doubled the amount of pushups I did. That does not suck! I’m also finding it’s much easier on my body – the first week I did it I practically threw out my back, now, while I find the act of it challenging, the after effect is less – just my abs (of all places) are a little sore the day of/after.

Dozen done x2. Stretched once. I REALLY need to be better about stretching once season starts but for now I’ll call this a win for the home team.

I ran two unremarkable runs for a total of about 10k. One was during the noon hours and during feels like 94 and full sun. I went 2.8 miles and that was about all I had in me at those temps. One more week before I really need to start braving those hot runs for longer.

The pool got me with its siren song on a 91 and sunny lunch break. I did ~600m drills with my pool toys and 400m of IM. My fly still sucks eggs but it’s fun to pretend to be a swimmer.

And, besides some walks, that’s it. I only logged about 3 hours of for reals stuff on dailymile. Doin’ offseason right.

What’s up for the last official week of slackitude? Pretty much trying to do the LEAST amount of stuff that I HAVE to do and the most amount of FUN that I WANT to do.

Workout Stuff:

Pushups – Week 3 Day 1, 2, 3
Dozen x 2, maybe x3 if I’m feeling jiggy
At least 1 run. If I haven’t forgotten how to run by now, I’m probably ok slacking this week.
Whatever else sounds fun. Sup, snorkeling, playing on the bikes in the neighborhood, going on an adventure, whatevs.

Life Stuff:

Get up before 8 as many times as possible (2/3 so far!)
One chore: get the garage fridge/freezer empty so we can get rid of it (that means cleaning the other freezer.
Other than that, relax and have fun as much as humanly possible this week.

Fun Stuff:

As much time at the water as possible (lake/pool/waterpark)!
DnD gaming for the first time all month on Thursday!
Hitting Friday night slides!
Possibly a (super chill, no drop family type) group ride on Saturday (if we feel like getting up)!
Friend birthday party hangout fun times!

…and when we speak next, I’ll be transitioning back into being a triathlete. I keep thinking OMG SO NOT READY when I’m not focusing on just offseason ending in general. But… when I think about specifically riding my bike up and down Ronald Reagan, or huffing and puffing after an awesome swim set, or yeah, even knocking out a long run and collapsing with some coconut water and chips and beer… I get a little flutter.

The motivation is awakening. I’m pretty close to ready to start taking this train to Kerrville town…

Week 3: Friend or Food?

By Quix

On July 15, 2015

In Uncategorized

Work was busy, life was busy, but I definitely squeezed in some fun times too.

Pushup Challenge:

I only got in 2 days this week due to a) feeling poopy on Monday (honestly, I thought I was coming down with something but 11 hours of sleep made it go away) and b) slacking + commitments later in the week so I ended up only having Tuesday and Saturday.

Week 1 Day 3 was 8, 10, 7, 7, and max (at least 10 and yep, I did 10).

Week 2 Day 1 was 9, 11, 8, 8, and max (at least 11 and I eeked out 12).

Being that I was able to only do 9 last Tuesday, I’m pleased. I’m totally out of sync on the weeks, but I’m going to keep at them as I can. Better than giving up, right? I may replace this or augment this with other strength work once I’m through the program, get to the point where I feel like I can do a reasonable amount of pushups to maintain strength and stay there (aka 3×20, do the real dozen pushup pyramid of 10,9,8,7…1 from my toes, etc), or replace this with other arm strength work.

But, this is the BARE MINIMUM I need to do this year. I don’t want to be back to 9 pushups and then falling over.

Dozen:

Goal was twice a week and yep, did it twice (Wednesday and Saturday). I’m definitely getting stronger because last week, I wasn’t able to do this on the same day as the pushup challenge, but this week I did both in a row and though the pushups at the end were rough, I made it without being super sore.

Same with the pushups – I may replace this with other core work twice a week, but this is the MINIMUM I need to maintain during season. And this is nice and doable at home, in a 15-20 min window (or heck, throughout the day as I can if need be).

Other Workout Stuff:

I got out for 2 short runs – Wednesday and Sunday. Wednesday, we went for a quick jaunt in the morning before work and I got about 2.3 miles before I had to jump in the shower to get to work. Sunday, I was volunteering at the Couples Triathlon and cheering on some friends, and I had to get there before my shift due to road closures. So, I spent 30 mins winding around Decker Park before I grabbed my volunteer tee and headed to my water stop.

I’m not breaking any records on these runs, but my hokas felt pretty good this week. It is finally getting to the point where mornings are really the only option (maaaaaaybe some short ones at night but it’s getting iffy with the temps), so it’s time to bite the bullet and start becoming a morning person.

I got a 40 min trainer ride that was medium-sweaty on Tuesday. I was not sure if I was feeling 100% recovered yet from they mysterious but very short Monday plague, so I took it kinda conservative (and felt better after, so yay!) I’ve missed cycle class 3 weeks in a row (which is fine because #offseason) but I’m kind of ready to go back.

I couldn’t handle my breakup with the pool, so I jumped in to do 400m IM after strength work and stretching one day. It was my compromise to do something different than normal while still doing laps. Butterfly is no joke, y’all. It’s been awhile.

I got out on the paddleboard on Saturday as well. I’m getting better and faster. My arms weren’t super tired after. And… this was after my epic pushups+dozen-stravaganza. I’ll take it.

Also, not entirely sure if it counts, but we wanted to snorkel at a spot across the lake and didn’t have much time. So, we booked it out and back pretty fast so we could have more time to explore.

It felt like not so much, but, between all that, and various walks we took, it was over 4 hours of activity. I guess that’s how normal people fitness? Feels weird.

Food Stuff:

Longer Nutritionist post HERE.

1500 calories is interesting. When I’m careful, and good, it’s plenty. Other days, when I do something stupid like go out and forget to check the calories of something and end up eating 400 calories of potatoes for part of my breakfast, it’s rough the rest of the day. I really effed up one day and was at 2000, but the rest of the week, I was pretty good.

At about 1625 calories average per day this week, it’s the lowest I’ve been at for a while. This is good for now.

Some things that have been lifesavers this week:

Sandwiches. Turkey and bread and vegetables rock my world and without cheese and mayo there aren’t too many calories there.
Greek Yogurt. So much protein for the calories, and it can be mixed with cinnamon and stevia as a fruit dip, or onion soup mix for a veggie dip.
Soups. Broth is filling, soup usually has protein and veggies, and it’s a great meal. Not that I wasn’t eating them this week, but a bowl of pho saved my life this week when I was STARVING and didn’t have that many calories left for the week.

Going grocery shopping for the first time on my new plan was nice too – I got to buy all sorts of things that were off limits before (like bagel thins!). I think it was cheaper than previous outings. Also – I didn’t have to make a whole crapton of food on the weekend, just one easy tuna dish and a fire and forget soup. I’m enjoying this.

My weight has been all over this week – 177.2 to 182.6. That means things are changing (which they are) so I’m going to give it some time to settle before I decide if the plan is working or not.

Although – this diet is making it harder to play the “friend or food” game while snorkeling… 🙂

Life Stuff:

Work was pretty crazy the first half of the week. All progress towards a good goal, but I’m ready for things to calm back down a bit. Hopefully by next week.

Our neighbor’s mom passed away last week (totally expected but still sad). We ended up spending our Thursday at the funeral at lunch, and closing out the wake at 2am. Her mom was always the life of the party, so it was a proper thing to do.

We got to Friday night slides at the wah pah, and paddling and snorkeling on Saturday in lieu of tubing since we didn’t do that. I had wanted to go back one more time (to either) on Sunday but we were worn-the-fuck-out after being up early and volunteering all morning out in the heat for couples. I think I dreamed about saying GATORADE over and over that night. Also, it confirmed my strategy of saying what I wanted when passing a water stop and pointing at it, that REALLY helped.

I woke up twice before 8am this week. Progress! I’m hoping this week will be the shift to sunny side up morning person.

On Wednesday, I found out that my ninja blender will indeed not blend a metal spoon. Oops. Slightly related: this kicked off the biggest arguement I’ve had with Zliten in years that lasted all of 5 minutes. We are ridiculous. 🙂

Done, done, onto the next one! Only 2 more weeks of #offseason left (and then one ramp up week before season officially begins). I’m kind of ready now and also kinda want more slack time so it’s probably a good head space to be in the middle of it!

Week 4 goals (these might look fairly similar):

Activity:

1 bike, 5-6 miles of running
Dozen x2
Pushup challenge x3 (week 2 day 2 and 3, week 3 day 1)
Other things as gravy, probably involving water because it’s HOOOOOOOOT this week

Food:

Hitting my calories and macro goals.
Trying to limit alcohol consumption to a reasonable amount, so I can hit my calories and macros.
Seriously not breaking down 2 days into the week and having too much to drink and staying up late because I feel rested and this is weird to me.

Life:

Get through this week at work without any freakouts.
Become a morning person. Up before 8am as many days as possible. Go to bed early.
Clean and price all the things for…
Garage sale this weekend.
Nothing responsible on Sunday.

Fun stuff:

Either a concert or a game night Thursday.
Friday night slides!
Make it to the lake at least once to paddle and snork.

And I believe that’s it that’s all. See you on the flipside of the weekend!

Nutrition and Me: The Beginning of Experiment #14385

By Quix

On July 12, 2015

In Uncategorized

As I mentioned HERE, I met with a nutritionist a week ago, and I felt it was worthy of it’s own post and not just lumped into an update. So, here we go.

His first instinct when I was talking him through everything was “why do you need me here?” because I’m pretty knowledgeable about this stuff. However, it was pretty clear I just needed some direction – I had fallen to “paralysis by analysis” over the last few years with all the things to try: grain free, meat free, clean eating, organic, etc. Not that any of those things are bad, but they’ve distracted me from the core of weight loss.

The Basics:

I had forgotten about the basis of calories in/out (kind of) and hitting macronutrient goals (because if I’m not eating many carbs, they’re totally off). I’m going back to tracking to that stuff. Nothing is off limits as long as I’m hitting my macros. That’s kind of a relief after the crazy experiments I’ve put myself through the last few years.

The goal is:

100g protein (about what I eat now)
40-60g fats (a lot less than I’m eating now)
25g fiber per day
variable carbs to fill out my calorie goals depending on training levels

For the next month, while I’m not really training, I’ll be aiming for about 1500 calories per day (my current basal metabolic rate is around there).

After a week I’ve realized that:

1500 calories is the first goal. If nothing else, I need to do my best at stopping my intake once I hit this.
Next is macros. If I am eating super clean, I have no problems hitting this. Days with some booze, or not as clean eating – I just do my best and get as close as I can.
Next is food quality. I’m not completely turning away from organic food, and I’m not stuffing myself with simple carbs, but I’m not avoiding them completely. For example, I went looking for some bagel thins, and the ones with the most fiber were actually the white everything bagels. I’m sure I’ll want to pay attention to this more during season when hitting my macros will be SUPER EASY but at 1500 calories? I’ll take what I can get.

Losing Weight and Training:

He also said that the ability to not lose weight easily while training hard is legit. In fact, he cautioned me against trying to pull the hours I am and try to take down weight. One at a time – either training hard or weight loss. Can’t have both in a healthy way. I tried to eek out the “well, what if I just kept a smaaaaall deficit?” to which I got the eyebrow.

I guess I minimize the amount of training and effort I give because there are so many people that do so much more, but after describing my normal schedule, he was like… yeah… that’s enough that you need to be eating a lot of calories and carbs to sustain that. It was nice to have permission – though it does feel weird – to consider myself an athlete. Without an asterisk.

This will probably be the HARDEST head shift. Since I was… 12… I’ve always been in a state where I have been at least passively or actively trying to lose weight. Make the scale go down. And now, starting in August, I will not be doing anything in my eating or training with intentions to the scale number fall. It will be OK to maintain my weight at whatever it is at for many months. That’s both exciting and terrifying.

The good thing that should keep me from trying to be stupid:

Muscle gains (which I honestly care more about than losing weight) are still possible – and the way to get them are eating enough and weight training. Ok, ok, I will lift heavy things throughout season. Promise. Please yell at me if this falls off.
He said that honestly, my training should be sucking with the levels of carbs I’m eating. I actually had a pretty great year! If this is sucking, I can’t wait to see what fully fueled feels like!

Intuitive?:

He wants me to try some intuitive eating approaches as well to see if that will help me. Honestly, the first two weeks seem to be enough working on the calories or macros, but once that’s second nature, I’ll give this a try (though, Skeptical Quix is skeptical that this will do much for me).

I’m supposed to log the time of day I’m eating, how I feel when I’m eating, and my fullness on a scale of 1-10 (1 = I have to eat now or I will pass out and 10 = I will literally explode if I have one more bite) before and after. I’m not logging this, but I’m definitely keeping it in my head.

The goal with fullness is to eat when I hit 2-3 and stop when I hit 5 when trying to lose weight, and more like 6-7 when I’m in season. For me, stopping at 5 (not hungry but not full feeling) is hard but I’m finding that stopping at 5 sustains me for a lot longer than I think it will.

I don’t think how I feel influences my eating, but I’m willing to log it for a while. I don’t tend to eat my feelings. I asked Zliten too, just to make sure I wasn’t just blind to it, and he said that besides getting angry if I DIDN’T eat, I don’t. We say – “I am sorry for the things I said when I was hungry” and “There are very few problems that can’t be solved by putting food in my face”. I know that while racing a negative head translates usually to not enough fuel, and it’s not that far off other times of the day. I can weather just about any storm much better on a full belly.

Season’s Eatings:

When I ramp up training again, he suggested that I should be at no less than 400g of carbs per day. That is actually based on the very very low end of the athlete scale for the weight I hope to be racing at in the fall (around 170). For reference, I eat around 150g right now and probably have eaten no more than 200 for the last year even on heavy training weeks.

He said ramping up slowly is fine so it’s not a shock to my system but… holy crap. When he was doing endurance training (college swimming I believe) he was training similar hours to me and doing this ratio and he didn’t gain weight. I’ve read that sort of recommendation before, but I figured that was for… like real legit athletes. Not me. Again, head shift.

During training, I should eat about 2500 calories. 1500 of those should be carbs. While this all sounds crazy for ME, it does gel with a lot of the research I have done.

When I joked that I probably need to eat more cake to get to 400 carbs per day, he said that as long as my other macros were in order, there was no problem with cake or sourdough bread or anything else. In fact, if I try to do this with all whole wheat and fiber horkin’ stuff, I’ll probably make myself sick. It will definitely be an adjustment to eat some of that stuff guilt free, but one I’m looking forward to trying.

He said it should cure the hungriness I feel a lot and that when I’m training heavy, I should never be hungry (and if I am I should eat). He did say that when I’m cutting calories, I probably WILL be a little hungry. At 1500 calories, I’m feeling a managable amount of hunger, which means it’s probably the sweet spot right now. It’s kind of nice to know that it’s OK to be hungry when I’m dieting, but it’s NOT ok to be hungry when I’m training.

2015-16 Season and Changes:

Evaluating my year to come, I’ve had some thoughts.

There’s no way to fake my 70.3 or my two marathons. I need to train for them, and if I’m going to train for them, I’m going to train hard and go for PRs.

However, I can fake random shorter races, I’m probably going to ramp wayyyyy down starting in March. I always race a 10 miler at the end of March, and a sprint triathlon in June. I don’t want to skip them, but I think I’ll be ok going in undertrained and just seeing what I can do. I may pepper in another race or two but definitely nothing long and maybe not at all.

I won’t treat it like offseason, I’ll continue to swim, bike, run, and weight train, but I’ll severely limit the hours I do. IIRC, I was able to do about ~5 hours a week and still lose weight, so I’ll peak at that.

And… if I’m going to do that in March – I’m definitely going to make the most of my August – February. To the point where it’s not detrimental to my marathon training, I’ll probably be racing a lot. There’s a 30k and a half marathon in January, I may see about a half at the end of October, and I may plan some shorter Saturday races with a longish run on tired legs on Sunday.

I’ll evaluate more as the season progresses, maybe somehow the weight will just fall off before then, but I don’t expect it to (since it hasn’t before). I just need to look at next Spring as an extended training block with a purpose.

Some other random notes:

When I said I wanted to LOOK more like an athlete, he was like… you don’t think you do? (I don’t – I definitely feel like I have imposter syndrome at some of these races, especially when I come in top 1/3, quarter, even place in my AG, etc). From August – February, I’m going to do my best to treat myself like an athlete physically and mentally.

He is a BIG believer that the current BMI charts are ridiculous. When they were concepted, women did not regularly exercise and were probably malnourished. That makes a whole lot of sense after considering it.

In summary, for 3 more weeks I’ll be at the lower intake and see if I can make any progress. After that, I’ll be interested to see how a mass influx of carbs works for me, and what carbs my stomach seems to tolerate before hard workouts and races (I may just be eating a LOT of potatoes and corn and fruit some days).

Stay tuned for more updates. I’m sure I’ll be talking about this a lot.

Adjusted Reality

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

Author: Quix Page 85 of 217

Jack’s Generic Sprint Tri – All Was Given

Week 5: Micro-vacations

Week 4 – Never Enough Time!

Week 3: Friend or Food?

Nutrition and Me: The Beginning of Experiment #14385

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