Adjusted Reality

Tomorrow marks the one-month anniversary of the little big muscle man hurting me with 5 lb dumbbells and making me realize that this is what was missing in my life.

I can happily report I’ve shown up 3 days a week for the last 4 weeks to the gym to do our workouts as planned. When I can create a routine that feels enjoyable and that I look forward to, I succeed, and this has been the case here. Mondays and Wednesdays at 530 or so, we put down work for a bit and walk to the gym, do our workout, and walk home (Fridays, sometimes at lunch, sometimes after work, or sometimes Saturday instead, for those of you keeping track). Sometimes we just go right there and back, especially if it’s the second workout for the day but it’s still an extra 1.2-mile walk. Sometimes we’ll take the long way home and look for holiday decorations. Sometimes the long way includes a stop to get dinner somewhere. Occasionally, I’ll have to go back to work after dinner, but it’s generally quieter and I get more done at 8pm than at 530 anyway, so it works out.

I also can happily report that my strength is improving. I’ve progress up in weights and/or reps when the exercises repeat very occasionally. Often, though, we’ll do something completely different and it’s kinda fun not to know exactly what I’m in for until I get there. I’m no longer sore for days after these workouts – I’ll feel it a little bit the day after but not so much that I’m unable to function, some days it’s barely noticeable. When I started this, I was worried it would mess with Ironman training (I need to cardio 5-6 days a week) but now that I’m used to it, I think it will be totally doable.

Another perk is that my body feels SO much more stable. I have not done a lick of “core”, focusing on push (arms), pull (arms), shoulders, and legs instead. I’m guessing core work has been a biproduct as my back has not bothered me at all. Occasionally I’ll notice it, but it’s the soreness of muscles on the edge of overdoing it (that are fine later or the next day), not this weird seizing and then hobbling around for days, unable to pick stuff up off the floor. After so many months of pain, a small reprieve, then more pain I’m hesitant to say I’m actually truly recovering here, but all signs are pointing in that direction. Of course, nothing can be perfect, and I’m nursing a bit of a cranky heel, but I think I just need to solve some running shoe problems there. Besides those weird heel twinges, all is lovely!

What I’m not seeing is any noticeable progress in body composition or weight. I know I’m not giving 100% in this area – my food tracking has been spotty at best, and I know I’m not hitting 1500 calories exactly per day or sticking to my macros, and the frequency at which I’ve gone out to dinner lately is obnoxious. I will continue to give this the best I can through the holidays, since halfway trying is better than not trying at all, but I’m ready to give this my all in January. Also, lack of quality sleep and stress is a thing up in here lately, and I’m hoping that 3 weeks off work will be the recharge I need to feel like myself again after a super exciting but stressful year.

During the fall the last few years (pre-2020), I’ve spent it on my bike adventuring. I wish I could say the same this year, but I’ve neglected it badly since the race, doing maybe a handful of trainer rides instead. Fall 2021 has really been about being on foot – last week I put together 16 running miles and 15 walking miles. The weather has been beautiful, I’m up to seven miles (running, not run/walk!), and I’ve loved the return to solving all the problems during the active meditation which is the long run. If I stick with +1 mile to my long run each week from now until 3M (1/23/2022), I think I’ll be able to run 10 miles as my NYE run, and 13.1 miles on 3M day should be the next week’s natural progression instead of a big jump. I have zero goals for this race except I would like to slowly jog the whole thing and feel good after.

I know I will need to become reacquainted with my bike again soon. Once I finish out this last week of work, I have BIG PLANS to go play bikes outside more often over vacation simply because we’ll have the daylight to do so. Swimming – I’m not afraid of it being the 4th or 5th focus (after weights and even nutrition) right now. Yes, I need to swim 2.4 miles in April but whatever. I don’t anticipate any issues getting there, and this shoulder/arm strength I’m building will DEFINITELY be an asset. My swimming limitations were my cranky back and a crunchy shoulder from the bike crash, and both of these seem to have improved throwing weights at the problem, so I’ll keep at it and not worry about actual pool time right now.

Life feels a bit more normal lately. Yeah, I spend my days WFH in pajamas, and it’s weird wearing a piece of cloth over my nose and mouth that fogs up my glasses every every everywhere in public, but it’s starting to feel routine and we’re actually out there in the world a bit and human-ing. In the last week or so, we had our every-2-weeks D&D group over, we went for dinner and saw the opening night of Hamilton on Tuesday, had our ‘rents over for dinner and cards on Thursday, and walked to dinner on Friday as well.

Yesterday, I got my Covid booster (the price for being a human in these times, I suppose). I have been trying to schedule it for some time but didn’t have a weekend where I could do nothing for 1-2 days if necessary (since the J&J kicked my arse for a whole weekend back in April, I wanted to be prepared). I also wanted to get it in plenty of time before vacation. So, I worked up until I had to go for my run, I ran (did I mention seven miles without walking? wheee!), and then took notes on the work problem I was crunching in my head during the run, and then cleaned up a little and Joel drove me downtown to get my jab. On the way home, we celebrated with Easy Tiger (that pretzel was damn delicious) and stocked up on a few things in case I felt terrible.

The head fog descended pretty quickly and is still prevalent (I’m going to guess this is not going to be my most grammatically smooth or even grammatically correct missive I’ve ever put together), and I’ve been a little extra tired the last 24 hours. I had the most INSANE carb cravings last night (like, I needed to keep eating carbs or I was going to die), and I definitely had to vocalize the things wrong with Wheel of Time while we were watching it even though I really did quite enjoy it! However, I experienced no fever, aches, chills, nausea, or sweating through my sheets while sleeping nonsense like last time. I’m really hoping tomorrow I’ll wake up feeling 100% back to normal – I have a presentation to give and a LOT to do – but enduring a little bit of a mood and the tireds this weekend was well below the expectations of my misery.

Regardless of how I feel, the train continues to chug along the tracks for just one more week. Five more weekdays including 2 power point presentations, 1 post-mortem, 6 more reviews, at least 20 meetings, finishing up a few projects, and one holiday livestream to top it off (not to mention 3 weights sessions, a few runs, and probably some walks) and then I’m looking forward to a nice end-of-December slowdown. I am ready.

My last post was cute. Absolutely adorbs.

Here’s how that particular week and the one after it went:

• Start Sunday and Monday with great intentions and hit the gym
• Be heckin over it with work and stress by Tuesday night
• Do nothing but go for walks the rest of the week when Joel can drag me away from my computer
• Repeat

Luckily, we had scheduled the first free session with a personal trainer. Joel made mention of perhaps continuing it, and I scoffed. Pfft, come on, we know how to do all that. We’re (lapsed) certified personal trainers, I’m a triathlon coach, I know more about sports nutrition than a lot of nutritionists. Why would I pay someone to do a thing that I can do in my sleep?

Then, we went to the gym and met with Tim, the little big muscle man. While he does not skip leg day, he DEFINITELY doesn’t skip arm day. He proceeded to ask us about goals and talk through what it would take to get there in terms of diet and training and he passed the first test – it all tracked with me. No crazy diets (just sane calorie and macro goals), no promises of rapid results (1 lb week fat loss and ~1 lb month muscle gain), and just the stuff I knew I should be doing anyway but haven’t been. He did say the typical, “I promise I won’t bulk you up” girl thing but I understand that’s a silly stigma with women and weight training. Good sir, I used to deadlift my weight and looking imposing in a dark alley is on my lifegoals list, do your worst.

Then, he proceeded to absolutely wreck us with a very simple 30 minute 5 lb dumbbell workout. My arms were in pain for DAYS. And then we gave them a lot of money to continue to do this for us for the next year.

We decided on this for a few reasons:

1. Accountability. It’s not been a huge issue for me before, but 2020 just wrecked my momentum. Apparently, I need to feel like I’m going to let someone down beside myself if I don’t do the thing. Also, I have now PAID for someone to feel let down, so it’s both social and financial peer pressure!
2. Decision fatigue. I make a stupid crazy number of decisions per day at work. Not having to think about what I’m going to be doing at the gym lifts some of that fatigue.
3. Variety. I’m a creature of habit, I’ll do the same strength workouts over and over because they generally work. However, with our assessments, it was determined that we did a great job maintaining our large muscles, but could do better with the smaller/stabilizer muscles. This will help with that

We went the first week on Monday and Wednesday with Tim and then Friday with Adrian. Tim was awesome, but I think Adrian is our dude. He does triathlon (sprints), so while he doesn’t quite understand the insanity we’re about to embark on with Ironman, he does get endurance sports a little bit. He’s focused on body composition and injury prevention, which is really what we need right now vs GETTIN SWOLE.

This is week two. Our goal is to stay on the one day per week plan with a trainer, and two days where they write workouts for us and we show up and do them. We do have the option if we start falling off to book more sessions per week; we’ll just chew through our funds a little faster, as right now we’ve prepaid for about a year at the once-per-week rate. For all my skepticism spending money on this at first, I have no regrets. This is what I need right now for all those reasons above.

My big fall goal after Kerrville was to run the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving. No, not the real one downtown with the mass of humanity, but a similar one around my neighborhood. The key goal: 5 miles without walking. I was all set to gradually ramp up to it, but then see above for how my weeks have fared. See below for my training plan:

• October 29th – 1.5 miles
• October 31st – 2 miles
• November 3rd – 2.5 miles
• November 8th – 2.5 miles
• November 22nd – 3.1 miles
• Thanksgiving – 5 miles

This is a “do as I say, not as I do” moment, but it is what it is. The turning point has been I can honestly say the last two runs, for the first time in well over a year, were entirely without back pain. I set out on Monday to run until I felt any slight discomfort or 3.1 miles. Same with yesterday and 5 miles. I’m slow as sh*t, my heartrate is through the roof at what feels like a relaxed pace. However, somewhere between the last chiropractor adjustment and finally adding some strength training, this seems to be the last piece of the recovery puzzle. Beyond just the physical activity benefits, this enables me to do the most wonderful thing I’ve been missing for the last 20 months. I can kick myself out my door with just my running shoes, music, and a head full of thinky thoughts and process them while I put one foot in front of the other for some sizable amount of time. I have been kicking myself at why I have been able to allow all this lovely fall weather pass by without me running in it. I think the answer is above. This week, I finally regained the ability to truly enjoy running instead of faking it.

And running right now should probably be the priority (after weight training), followed by biking and then swimming. I have a half marathon in January. Ramping quickly is doable for me but is sooooo risky for injuries. If I can (sanely this time, please) increase my long run 1 mile a week, very likely I can actually trot along comfortably at my 11:5x pace for 13.1 miles and that would be enough for me to joyfully kick off 2022. I cam build pretty quickly on the bike, but we are eyeballing the normal early February 6 hour race as Ironman prep, so I need to have at least some 3-4 hour rides under my belt before we tackle that one. Swimming is lowest on the totem pole, it takes me very little time to ramp even after a long time away, and there’s very little injury risk. For the rest of 2021, I will be swimming for injury prevention (does wonders for stretching out my back) and enjoyment (it’s another one of those active meditation exercises for me that helps unspool my brain), but no stress in terms of race prep if I mostly ignore the pool until January.

For now, the focus is consistency, establishing good habits, and conquering the stupid voice in my head that says work is more important than all this. And it doesn’t have to be either or. Yes, I need to be away from my desk but I got some DAMN good (in my head focus) work done on the 5-mile run. I’ve mostly worked through a 40-minute lunch trainer ride on my phone. Just like I was playing D&D online or Bloodbowl practice games whilst finishing my trainer rides in 2020 when I was hell bent on not giving up other hobbies for Ironman, I can make this multitasking happen for work as well.

Hopefully this new road I’m following goes somewhere else than hell, and is paved with something sturdier than just intent.

How is it November? I mean, all the things happened, but really quickly, and now we have two months left of 2021. Uh… what?

I intentionally took October a little chill in terms of training. We went on lots of “spookywalks” after work to check out the Halloween decorations in the hood, and I kept up with weights twice a week most weeks, but ignored my bike, my running shoes, and the pool was right out. However, in the last week, I realized that I am a better human when I have some swimming, biking, and running in my day, so I’m working on getting back to that.

I also started tracking my calories and weight when I returned from vacation. The scale was not kind, but it could have been worse and I’m trying to do this thing with the weight through the end of the year, even if it’s during what is normally “the fall stall” (as in, stalling any sort of progress). Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are days, not months, and I shall aim to remember that. It’s been challenging, not going to lie. To be honest, for a few weeks it was going in the right direction, but then a few things happened:

1. Joel wrecked his back, and he’s mostly out for a few weeks. This shouldn’t matter because mine is actually behaving just fine, but having someone else motivating me to do stuff helps.
2. The weather changed, finally. On the positive, I can get outside almost at any point of the day. On the other hand, I’m not forced to get my workout done so some days it’s lead to me putting it off until never.
3. I splurged a little bit Halloween weekend, the scale went up, and now I’m frustrated with it and have been rebelling by “forgetting to weigh myself” this week.
4. I’m in this spiral where I get stressed about something, I sleep terribly, I’m tired, I skip my workout, I’m stressed, I sleep terribly, I’m tired, etc. I haven’t done any sort of training for three days and my garmin watch still says I have 36 hours of recovery due to poor sleep and stress.

Hallo self sabotage, my old friend. I need to fix this. Ironman Texas is in about 6 months and while I’m not ready to have an official training plan, I need to get back out there so I don’t lose the base I built this summer.

Let’s try this. I still need some time to be able to not have a training schedule but I need to go swim/bike/run/weights. So, I’m going to try a list of what I need to do next week. No paces, no assigned times. Just a get-er-done list.

• Run 2.5, 3, and 3.5 miles since we have absolutely gorgeous weather next week
• Bike 30 mins and 1 hour
• Swim twice, and no less than 1k yards each time
• Weights and stretch at least twice

And, just like all my plans until they get foiled, eat 1200 calories + activity each day.

Because I acknowledge I work better with a plan, I’m going to TRY for this:

• Monday: 30m bike, 2.5m run AM
• Tuesday: weights and swim, PM
• Wednesday: spin class at 5:30pm
• Thursday: weights AM (home)/walk
• Friday: off/walk
• Saturday: 3.5 mile run, swim
• Sunday: off/walk

Yeah, this is frontloading the week (when I have more motivation, it seems) and yeah, it’s missing one run (I’ll see if I can figure it out, or maybe two is enough). I know if I can make it a habit, it makes me less stressed, happier, healthier, and I sleep better, and life just continues to improve on whatever the opposite of a vicious cycle is.

Yeah, I could really use the opposite of not being able to relax, not being able to sleep, waking up in the middle of the night, having crappy dreams, and feeling a stress hangover (tired, braindead, head foggy) at the end of each day. And I really want to WANT to get out there and be active. So, I’ll need to fake it until I make it. Starting today.

We realized we needed to remove some friction, so we decided to get a second gym membership. I still love Lifetime, but it’s not convenient while working from home. LA fitness is a little more bare bones, but it has all the basics we need (pool, cardio machines, a huge weights floor, some classes) and it’s about half a mile from the house. I’m hoping this will be a good investment into Ironman training since we will be working at least part time from home through the race. I just have to have the little bit of momentum it takes to get my arse out of the house and half a mile down the road.

I have learned a thing this month, and that thing is never ever ever go back to work for 3 days after a long weekend of racing and then leave again for a week.

I was exhausted and mostly ate, slept, and worked all the hours from the time I returned on Tuesday until 5 minutes before we had to leave on Sunday morning. However, I finished everything I absolutely had to, and closed my office door knowing I gave it my all and headed out on vacation with a lighter conscience, so, worth it, I guess.

This was the Liberty of the Sea’s first official trip out (except for a test cruise the month before) since March 2020, so we were able to enjoy lots of onboard credit and a very refreshed and excited crew at the mere cost of some minor hiccups like the phones not working for the first day or two and dinner reservations being difficult to maneuver in their new system. I expected to be kinda skeeved out by the mass of humanity, but it wasn’t too bad for a few reasons.

#1. Masks were required almost everywhere and they legit hunted you down to remind you if you forgot.

#2 We had a balcony room, which we have resolved to never ever go without again, so we were able to get some fresh air and relax outside without being around other people.

#3 They were at about 1/3 capacity so it wasn’t the crush of humanity I was expecting.

The ship stopped in Cozumel, Costa Maya, and Roatan. We uncharacteristically skipped diving altogether, and just went snorkeling in Cozumel and Roatan, and enjoyed an even less crowded ship on the Costa Maya port day and hung out at the pool. We didn’t want to lug all the gear, and didn’t want to do the boat dive with newbies on the ship thing everywhere, and since we just dove Cozumel months before, we decided it could saved for the next trip. I forgot how much WORK snorkeling is compared to diving. All the kicking and diving down to get pictures was worth it, but definitely tuckered me out after a few hours of it!

Except for those two port days, we kinda got into a pleasant vacation routine. Having natural light in the room meant I woke up pretty close to sunrise. I’d snap a few pictures on the balcony, a few mornings we got breakfast or coffee delivered and I’d enjoy the morning fresh air and sun. If not, I’d crawl back into bed and read and nap a bit before we set out for a bite to eat.

After that, we’d leisurely hit the gym. I have officially sworn off running on the ship because it’s super easy to tweak something with a rocking boat, but I was super happy to play with the elliptical (running lite) and lift weights every other day. Every session ended with a super long stretch. It sounds weird to say how novel it was to hit the gym for an hour + most days, but it truly was. No dragging myself out of bed, complaining because it’s either a workout or some actual rare monofocus time before the day really gets going, and finishing when I actually feel like it vs when I have to pry myself away 5 seconds before the next thing in the day starts. Just… doing stuff. When I wanna do stuff. For as long as I wanna do it. Bliss.

Then, we’d meet my parents for lunch after the daily sweat session. The Windjammer served your typical cruise buffet faire, though they had this killer sandwich station that I frequented more often than anything else, and a killer Indian food section Joel and my mom loved. One difference from usualy – the desserts were actually pretty top notch. I typically pass and save my sweets for one dessert a day for dinner but I indulged. I legit ate too much this trip. I’m happy I didn’t gain a bunch of weight (probably due to the workouts, all the walking, and epic snorkeling trips) but I certainly didn’t lose any.

In the afternoons, we’d play some cards with the parents, sometimes we’d hit the the pool, and occasionally we’d read and nap, or on good days, we’d make time for all three. As the sun set, we’d often have a glass/bottle (hey, it’s vacation) of wine on the balcony and read before we had to get ready for dinner. If I’ve mentioned reading a lot, I finished four books on this trip. Vacation is for voracious reading.

We have been on this ship and had this particular week of dinner menu items before and it’s always a good gustatory experience with lobster night and lots of seafood and other interesting dishes to try. This time though, since we were there on the week of our anniversary, the fam splurged on us and we all went to the steakhouse, Chops, for fancy dinner night. The pretzel bread, greuyere tater tots and delicious cheesecake were carbtastic highlights of the meal. Oh, and the filet mignon was pretty great too. I’ve had better but only on our grill in recent memory, so they did just fine with their signature dish. We found out that the same menu is available at lunch for half the price, so we may try that next time.

I’m not sure if it was our dinnertime was pretty late (7:30) or that we crashed into this vacation super exhausted already or that we’re getting old, but dinner usually ended the day’s adventures outside of the room – pajamas were quickly donned and we either read books on the balcony or curled up in bed. Occasionally there was more wine on said balcony. Occasionally we just drifted off to sleep on full bellies, anticipating another glorious balcony sunrise. Once, I had to dig out the earplugs, but they solved the problem. 🙂

Once, however, we made it to the ice show. Weirdly, the 45 minute spectacle triggered a few deep thoughts (okay, at least slightly more profound than “what should I have for lunch?”) and one of them was whilst watching the cast on their first show back in a year and a half – they fell. A lot. But they looked damn happy to be back out there performing and we were happy to be watching them. No one cared. It was cool to watch a human do exciting things live and we all clapped and smiled and enjoyed ourselves and no one complained except maybe my parents and it’s simply because their happy place is to find all the things that are wrong and talk about them on cruises!

I may not be the same person I was before the pandemic – I am a bit softer (mentally and physically), and I’m out of practice spinning ALL THE PLATES and it’s much harder to hide my failures under a veneer of perfectionism right now. It’s okay. The cast wasn’t the same either. Maybe no one is the same. Maybe it’s okay to have utterly failed at returning my body to it’s early 2020 form just yet and maybe I can forgive myself for losing my words by late afternoon meetings after I’ve been in them all day back to back to back to back and not having the witty retort right on my lips at all times isn’t the highest sin and failure. Maybe it’s okay to fall down in public with everyone watching me as long as it’s with style and I get up and smile, give a cheeky bow, and continue on with life.

I’ve been feeling a touch of the imposter syndrome lately. This year, I’ve taken on some new duties in the position to which I was promoted – though this was just a slight evolution of what I was doing already, just in a more official capacity. Then, I took on more things because of the position which I aspire to next and no one was doing them and I just can’t see something undone and not solve the problem. And then, there’s yet more positions I still need to fill, that I’m subbing in for until I can find the right human. I’m doing none of this at the full capacity in which I could if I could just focus on one thing, even for a week, maybe even for a day. I’ve joked that work right now feels at best like I’m failing lightly at a lot of things, but it causes my inner perfectionist (that jerk) to trigger the thoughts like “well, you’re not nearly as good at this as the previous person who did it” and that just feels bad, man.

About day three, after my brain defragged a bit, I realized that’s nonsense. I may not be as good as the four other humans that were doing the jobs I am doing now in each moment, but I’m what they’ve got, and I’ll do the best I can until I can find someone better to do it.

A little time away from the daily crush of OMG all the things reminded me that all the things I was putting off “until all this Covid crap is over” are probably more overdue than I want to admit. Going into vacation, I lamented that I hadn’t had a real haircut since Nov 2019 (Joel kindly removed about 6 inches of split ends about a year ago but that was it) and I didn’t really have time to do anything about it. I stopped using the 25$ shampoo once I stopped leaving the house and figured I’d get back to giving a crap and that was cute and fine if it was a few weeks or months, but after years, it’s not a reprieve, it’s just what I look like, and there’s a reason I don’t take a lot of non-doctored selfie angle pictures lately – I don’t like it.

My husband, hero, and ignorer of my BS, booked me a haircut on the ship the first full day. I’ve come to realize lately that I am in the fortunate situation where I have more money than time, so I ignored my inner cheap skate whining about the cost and also my inner tomboy whining about spending time in a salon vs almost any other fun activity that would ruin my hair instead of make it pretty and just went with it. When it came time, I sat down in the chair and he actually even upsold me on doing color too. I picked something kinda close to my natural, just a little darker and redder, and he spent two hours taking my hair from the absolute rats nest it had become to this…

Since then, I realized that life is too short to feel bad about yourself in ways that you can absolutely control, so I’m back on the 25$ shampoo. Even if I’m in headphones all day. I need to take baby steps back to normal human life again, and that includes being confident and happy in my meatbag.

All in all, the week away was super nice, though we both lamented we could use another week (maybe with a little less eating and a little more sleeping) because there was no rest for the weary. The moment I returned home on Sunday, I had a Bloodbowl league match scheduled and then I had to work for about four hours prepping for a presentation the next day, and life has been pretty much the normal chaos ever since, which is why I have been attempting to pen this recap for about two weeks during stolen moments of quietude.

I fully did not expect to enjoy this vacation as much as I did, so much so that we’re actually looking at taking another cruise in January, just us. It’s exactly what we need right now. There are a few days we can go adventure in port, but not being in those locations for longer means I won’t feel pressure to MAKE THE MOST OF EVERY DAY like when we go to a dive resort. On sea days, sign me up for a balcony, a book, all the room service I can order, and quiet days with no obligations.

Normally, this focus on survival would be the start of a less-than-stellar race recap, but TBH, survival was really my main goal. So, spoiler alert, mission accomplished!

We set up camp Friday night, and while it was the normal MO on leaving for trips for the year (I work up until the second I am torn away from my desk), I had 2.5 hours of the drive to transition my brain into race mode. We got settled, had our hot dogs, read books, and got a pretty dang decent night of sleep.

Saturday, we did all the pre-race things like normal, and like normal, it took wayyyy longer than expected (I think we were puttering around town from noon until almost 5pm). We met up with our tri team for the first time in over 18 months and enjoyed a pre-race swim and chats, put everything in various bags and dropped them off in the proper locations, and triple checked we had all our gear since we haven’t done this in forever. We shopped for some essentials which included fuzzy halloween pajamas and adult beverages for post-race, and drove the bike course to remind ourselves where all the hills were.

We had all the normal food, replacing usual breakfasts with bagels since we had some leftover, and the pre-race sleep was somewhere in the middle – about 6 hours of moderately restful sleep – and I felt pretty good when I got up around 4:30am. More puttering ensued to use the potty, drink the coffee, triple check all the gear yet again, use the potty, etc happened as usual, and we got to the race with plenty of time to continue the puttering (pump up bike tires, fill bike bottles, use the potty, set up transition, give away the warm clothes, use the potty, pour myself into my wetsuit, curse myself for not using the potty one more time, etc).

With Covid being a thing, we were as careful as we could be with masks and social distancing pre-race. However, once it was time to lose the mask, it was like, ok, whatever, it’s up to the universe now. It was a little weird to tuck into the humanity which was the line to start the swim but also a little bit normal too and then all of a sudden I was in the water and it was off to the races!

The swim was a bit rough. My back is mostly but not all the way better. It’s worlds away from when I could barely get out of bed earlier this year but a few things still can trigger it to be mildly cranky and that little niggle makes it REALLY difficult to sight in open water. I definitely meandered quite a bit because of it and drank a LOT of lake water and had to stop a few times to not choke and die (even had a kayaker ask if I was okay). However, for all these complaints, there were parts where it was rather pleasant as well and I finished feeling refreshed and warmed up, which is always the goal for the first and shortest leg of the race. We’re going to defocus times here, because that’s not what this race was about. Yeah, it was a personal worst by a minute or two, but I expected it and my pace was actually better than some of my lake swims this year.

Since time was not critical, I was pretty casual in T1. I actually used the wetsuit peeler station but in a non-rushed way, walked the hill, didn’t rush through gear change, and got out of there in about 6 minutes. I think a lot of my compatriots were in the same boat, because I expected to see way fewer people and bikes than I did, so I think we’ve all slacked on the swim this year. 🙂

Honestly, I was the MOST nervous for the bike in this race. My TT bike and I have not been BFFs this year. However, the ride today was the absolute best part of the race. I was just… happy the whole time. That’s not normal for me. I usually get angry on the bike and use it to go hard and pass everyone, but today I smiled and sang show tunes and just thought about how grateful I was for so many things that have taken place over the course of 2021, most relevantly that I was here doing this when six months ago I was barely able to ride for 20 minutes. But other things too.

I saw Joel a few times and Matt near the end and other Austin Tri people throughout the race and just hung onto whatever pace felt good and sustainable, pleasantly surprised that it was more like 17-18 mph than the 15-16 I was riding in training. I was chuffed to make it up the big hill in loop one much more easily than I expected (yeah, I was huffing and puffing by the end, but I didn’t fall over or have to walk it or anything), and on the second loop, the time passed quicker than expected. Tons of warm fuzzies on the bike. It truly is my happy place during races even if it was in slightly different, more mellow ways this race than normal. I ended at about 16.7 mph for the 56 miles, which is actually not my worst showing here!

I rolled into transition, thanked Death Star for a great ride, and saw both Joel and Matt. Matt was doing the aqua bike only, so his race was done, of which I was a bit jealous, but I pressed onward after a nice relaxed 6-ish minutes in T2.

Since Joel and I started running at the same time, we decided to hang together for a while on the run. It was nice to have company for the first 5 miles, but we were definitely holding each other back since we pace differently. Near the end of the first loop, I had to fix my sock, and I sent him on to do his thing. I was doing okay both mentally and physically, even if I was at turtle speed (~13 min/mile). However, around mile 8, my legs and back reminded me just how undertrained I am in this discipline and there was probably more walking than running until mile 12, when I hit the spectator area and got that lovely last burst of energy. Personal worst BY FAR (hah, I think it was something like 3h13 mins) but again, I expected this and was just happy to cover the miles.

I was just a minute slower than my previous personal worst from BSLT in 2013 (also an injury comeback race) with 7h42 min today but none of that matters. I climbed what seemed like an insurmountable hill even three months ago. Now it’s time to rest a bit and then climb even more for IM Texas in April 2022.