Adjusted Reality

Hooooly crap guys, life is up to 11 lately.  I’d say I’m looking forward to vacation (because I AM SO MUCH), but I think it’s just going to be a lot of EPIC DOINGS there too.  Ahhhhhhh, I love it.  I may have had a major freakout on Friday and hid in bed for a few hours (and in the process missed a lovely day for a bike ride), but I realized a bit later it was just a product of some misunderstood PMS and got over it quickly, and then had a pretty damn cool weekend.

Scuba Certification:

Back for more.  We were sun-happy, washing out our equipment in the driveway, excited to be newly certified, and our neighbor, a seasoned scuba diver, came to talk to us.  He said our noob certification would probably make the divemasters not let us pair up together since we were so inexperienced, and really, what’s fun about not getting to do this new fun thing you spent a lot of money and time training for with your hubbs (it’s like when they made us dance with other people, I came to learn to dance with HIM, not people :P)?  So, we decided to knock out the advanced class before vacation.  This meant another 500$ in fees, and more schoolwork.  At least we got a month to do this instead of 4 days.

This class was so much fun.  There was no classroom – we went over the book work on the boat.  Related, we got to spend the majority of the weekend on a boat, which made my fishie self super happy.

After the book work, we did 5 dives – the first one worked on being better at buoyancy – which I actually kind of sucked at because I wasn’t weighted properly.  And I had a LOT of weight.  Let me tell you, I think I finally succeeded in taking a little bit of poundage off in March after feeling what extra weight felt like.  Sadly though, it wasn’t enough and once my tank got lighter from air use, I just keep bubbling up to the surface.  The instructor thought I wasn’t using my BCD (buoyancy control device) properly, but on the next dive, I was validated because I put in more weight, and I was just fine the rest of the time.

The second one, which I was the most scared of, was the underwater navigator dive.  Me + compass = not friends.  Folks, north is the way I’m facing unless I really really think hard about it.  However, I ROCKED the out and back part, and made a perfect square.  My navigationally inclined Zliten?  Missed it.  He forgot to count and ended up lopsided.  Probably the only time ever I’ll beat him in something involved with a map, but hey, I’ll take it.  I was also taught the “nestea plunge” entry, and if at all possible, it is the only way I’ll get in the water because it’s just so freaking fun.

The last dive Saturday was a boat dive.  Technically, they were all boat dives, but on this one, they let us go out on our own.  We hugged the wall and checked out the little grottos and saw a sleeping (I say sleeping, Zliten said dead – but it was perfectly preserved).  We got down to 60 feet at one point!

Sunday, the storm was rolling in, so we got an early start and got to business.  First up was our deep dive, he took us to 80+ feet at the bottom of the lake, and around 60, light started to get really dim so we switched on our dive lights, and also around there, I started to sink like a rock so I had to put a bunch of air in my BCD (the further you go down, the easier it is to sink, the further up you come, the easier it is to float).  We finally touched bottom and got reoriented – it was super dark.  I thought I might freak out but I just got… calm.  I really enjoyed the peaceful feeling down there.  Life was good.

Our last dive was a wreck dive.  There was a sunken houseboat and a pecan tree that we checked out, and then the instructor left to prep the boat and left us to enjoy the rest of our air tanks/time/etc.  We swam around and checked out each crevice and nook and happened on a bunch of fish and I kinda connected with one (we bonded).  After my air dropped under 900, we went up, boarded our vessel, and got back to shore just as the weather started to turn sour.

So, so, so much fun.  I can’t wait to dive in gorgeous blue ocean this month.

Training:

Hi, my name is Quix, and I am a huge slacker.

Since I rarely am, I decided I was fine with it.   I did Monday and Tuesday’s easy work as planned, but then Wednesday showed up and I was so unmotivated to hit the gym/pool we skipped it.  Then, I had a freakout about life in general and hid in bed and didn’t get out to ride on Friday.  So – I swam once, did weights once, and ran for an hour (and hauled a bunch of scuba shit 3 days and, well, scuba’d).

I was worried when I was still totally unenthused on Monday, but as soon as I hit the gym and got a dose of swim endorphins, I was happy girl again.  So, I’m good. Ready for build month #3.  Pile it on!

Food:

I did pretty great this week – no crazy high days, appetite in check.  Scuba makes me want SALT and SUGAR.  And usually, I want sugar and fruit does it, and for salt, I’m good with nuts/veggies/etc – but nope, I was craving junk food.  Totally weird.

However, I can’t complain.  I hit a low of 182.2 this week, which is nice, and my normal 2 week spiral of weight gain for TOM and weekend bloat didn’t happen because, well, something is clicking.  It’s sloooooow going, but at least it’s going in the right direction.  While I’d like to be more at about a lb a week, if I can take 2 lbs off per month, I’ll take it.

While I am still eating good food with a pretty high diet quality (in the book, they were saying the 20s is like, great eating and on an average day, that’s where I’m at) – I’ve definitely decided that calories are king.  For some people, they can eat their fill of good, healthy food, and it will automatically adjust their weight to where it naturally should be.  I just need to accept that I am not one of those people.

If you put a bag of carrots in front of me, I might eat the whole thing.  I’ll probably be much more careful if you put junk food there and abide by the servings.  The carrots, to me, are a license to eat as much as I want.  If you put me in a room with only healthy food I liked, and said eat your fill, I would probably still overeat.  The good news is that I love healthy food.  The bad news is that I love healthy food so much, I can’t just improve my diet quality.

So it comes back full circle.  To lose weight, I must count calories.  So now really, to lose weight in a healthy way which doesn’t impact my training, I need to make sure and keep that DQ score high and those calories low.

I’ve also made a decision that while I am loving my trend towards vegan, it’s too much for me to deal with 24/7.  I’m getting sick of beans, and I refuse to make chick’n or soy or tempeh a staple of my diet.  While I will maintain that I believe that I operate best on lotsa fruits and veggies, some grains/starches, and a little meat and dairy and nuts, I think that my body likes some animal/fish protein once a day or so.

Oddly enough, there were some days I was getting more protein as a non-meat eater than when I ate meat.  It’s definitely possible to get adequate protein without meat.  I just don’t think a 100% veggie or vegan life is for me.

This weekend, I’m going to try to keep it under control while camping (though I have planned for some vodka and one key lime smore), and be crazy active (run, bike, swim, hike, kayak, etc) and then eat like an angel in prep for the vacay.

Monday: 28 DQs, 1501 calories
Tuesday: 26 DQs, 1742 calories
Wednesday: 23 DQs, 1627 calories
Thursday: 19 DQs, 2017 calories
Friday: 23 DQs, 1724 calories
Saturday: 14 DQs, 1608 calories
Sunday: 7 DQs, 2023 calories

Average DQs: 20

Average Calories: 1748 calories in, estimating 2142 calories burnt per day, ~400 deficit per day, so about 3/4 lb.

Weight range last week: 182.4 to 186.6 (trending down)

Random things:

-I got a filling done, and have to go back in 2 weeks to get a permanent crown and one more filling.  Boo, teeth.

-Since Zliten was working overtime, he was getting up early to go to work, which got me up early.  Since there was really no point in me getting to work early, and I had to wait for him to be available to train, I ended up having some nice early productive mornings, but felt all weird and out of sorts.  I’m not used to doing anything but getting up and rushing somewhere.

-I like running after work.  Sunset runs are nice.  They are also very rare because it’s either too dark or too hot, you get a month or two in spring and then a month MAYBE in fall.  One last week, one this week.   Love.

-Chocolate muscle milk + frozen cherries/strawberries/raspberries + blender = best healthy desert ever.

-Got to have a game night with an offshoot group of our normal table top roll playing group (dorky stuff here).  We created our characters and sat around and discussed the story to come.  Kinda scary, we’re going to take turns telling the story and I’ve never done that before.

And on that note, now that I’ve recapped, I’ll get on with my week… which has about an hour and a half left until the weekend.  Oops!

Question of the week: What’s the one thing in your diet you’d be most reluctant to give up completely?  Meat? Carbs? Veggies? Sweets? Chocolate?

March was a whirlwind!  Birthdays, fun days, outings, scuba, build month #2 – I’m tired just thinking about it.  How did my goals fare?  Read on, friends, read on…

1.  Stick with my current strategy: approximately 1700 calories (shift up on days that my workout volume reaches the sky).  DQ score: over 20 every day average.  See if this results in any sort of loss.  Low weight of the month: 184.  Let’s get lower.  Accept (and relish) that there will be 3 birthday splurges this month, and just try to mitigate them with good food the rest of the day/week.

Check.  I lost weight!  Just a little but… low of 182.2.  Yay!

2.  Get the leezard to the vet for a checkup.  She’s overdue.  We’re bad leezard parents.

Check.  Got her in today.

3. Bike outside once a week.  Even if you have to do some rides outside after work in the ‘hood with stoplights.  Ride Rosedale on March 23.  Do it in way less than the 5+ hours it took last year.

Check – except for this week.  Rosedale Ride – 4:29, over 45 min PR!  Wheee!

4.  Fix up a March training plan.  Nail it.  Start working in zone 3 more, doing cruise intervals.  Start doing some short all out force efforts.  Get to recovery week uninjured and happy.

Check.  Yes indeed.  Lovin’ the tempos and hills.  Body feels pretty great!

5.  Make pillows for the couch.  This involves: going to the store, picking out fabric, sewing, and stuffing them.  Complete at least one.  Complete four for the gold star.

Check!  Gold Star Accomplished – totally made four awesome pillows!

6. Finish organizing the DVDs and complete the next zone in the house, the rest of the bedroom/master bath/vanity area.  We’ve already half completed it with the new bedroom furniture, but this involves cleaning out and organizing the vanity area, linen closet area, and stuff in the master bath.  Extra credit: replacing the bunk fixures and faucet.

Big Fail.  DVDs done, but haven’t touched the bedroom.  Wah-wah.

7. Finish the sewing book, start a fiction book, for reals.

Fail.  Another dive book inserted.  Also, I realized that I need to have a project to get through to really understand it.  I think I’ll just move onto fiction next month.

8. This one is for the habits again.  No cigs (will have to dispose the Commercial Humidor), no sweets (minus planned splurges, no more than once a week), HR train, batch cook, have a game night.

Check!  Habits are becoming habits, fancy that.

9.  Find my zen in this month in small chunks.  I do not have a weekend that I know of from now until vacation that’s not booked up with at least one event, most have several.  Find some time to relax and veg out.  Carve out a weekday night where all we do after work is go home and relax and say fuck responsibility instead of doing stuff.  At least do what I did on Wednesday and say “though I have things to do, I am sitting on the couch and watching TV for an hour”.

Did my best.  Had some nice mellow mornings, and took some time to relax even when I had other things to do.

10. Take care of my appearance a bit.  Self manicure, pedicure, and eyebrow unfluff.  Get a haircut (or schedule a time before the cruise).  I want about 4-6 inches cut off soon – short hair deals with being soggy from training much better than long hair.  Penalty for not completing: I am required to book this  (mani/pedi/brows) at a salon which actually terrifies me.

Half check – manicure/pedicure done.  Brows not done.  Hair – I tried, but they wouldn’t book an appointment on a weekend and then since I didn’t have an appointment, I decided to eat lunch and drink beer instead.  New mandate – hair and brows must be done by cruise or I have to book some REALLY expensive spa appointments.

11.  Play some damn vidjya games.  I have Monkey Island on the PS3, I keep meaning to log in and play Everquest, I need Zliten to educate me in the ways of Bloodbowl (orcs + football) so I can decide whether I want to join the league at work, I have a tablet builder game I’ve been working through…

Errr… I played bloodbowl once.  So technically yes, but I could have done better.  Bronze star.

12.  Figure out this mojo thing.  I am operating my the numbers and schedules and performing, but my spirit is lacking.  My heart just isn’t in it lately.  Analyze the issue and take steps to fix it.

Felt better this month.  A little weight progress, permission to tempo and do some harder stuff, and starting to get excited for race season.  I’m not sure the legs and lungs are there yet, but the fire in the belly is there and the mental game feels more on.

13.  Drink more water.  I’d like to get down 3 bottles before I leave work each day, and one more at home.

Meh.  It’s not warm enough to really want to drink enough water and I’m just OVER water.  I’m generally drinking the generally accepted 64 oz, but as I like to do sporty endeavours, I should drink more.  Some days I do, some I don’t.

6 checks, 4 sortas, and 3 fails ain’t too bad.  Let’s move on…

April is the month of being on vacation a lot.  So, these goals will mostly be centered around not fucking up while not on normal routine:

1.  While not on vacation, eat like an ANGEL.  Keep with the  Quixitarian diet (mostly vegan, with greek yogurt, fish, and muscle milk, with some meat whenever I’m supercraving it).  At the end of the month, I want to weight less than 182.2.  I would love to break 180 before I go on vacation.  Continue tracking daily weight and stats in Training Peaks, oddly enough, I have had WAY less freakouts about weight when it’s a number I measure and record daily.  Continue to pre-track weekly, that shit helps!

2.  While on vacation, I will be trying to enjoy in moderation.  Lots of strategies in my head, some include taking a travel scale (that’s a good check if I’m really being obnoxious with my consumption), having a one-desert-per-day maximum, trying to make a one-plate-per-meal maximum, tracking diet quality, and/or trying to figure out some way to not gain 10 lbs right before my next two months of big races (like I did last vacay).  Let me assure you – I would not take these steps if it was an offseason trip, but I was very much in shape a month before last year’s A race, and I ruined it with a 10 day vacation of pigging out.  I don’t want to do that again.  This vacation is about spending time with family and scuba and hitting every beach for as many hours as I can.  I’m going to try to make it not about stuffing my face.

3.  April’s plan is made – I need to focus on getting in the hours.  A few workouts got cut short or skipped in March due to various reasons, and while it’s not to the level that I think my overall race prep suffered, we are doing the last build month.  On vacation, I’ll be flexible with the composition and type of workouts, but I want to match the hours.  Also, run in a different country!

4. For sewing, I just want to mend everything that has holes in it on the pile of things that I want to bring on vacation.  Amazingly enough, staying about the same size for 2-3 years means clothing gets holes in it before I can ship it back to the thrift store.

5. Read some books on vacation.  Not textbooks.  Not triathlon books.  Relax-y sci fi space fun books.

6. Catching up: cut my hair, do my brows, and refresh mani/pedi before vacation.  Put the “organize the house” initiative on pause, but any steps that can be taken to finish the bedroom would rock.  I’m going to drop the no cigs, HR train, batch cook, have a game night, etc, because they are just happening now.

7. Relax on vacation.  Don’t come home feeling like it was 10 days of crazy gogogogo and now you’re back to life which is the same.  Conversely, try to relax enough before vacation that you don’t feel like you just want to shut down and not do the cool things you have planned.

8. Bathe the ‘guana every day possible (at least every other) and get her a humidifier.  She’s doing great, but she is a little dehydrated because she’s not very smart and forgets she has water.

9. Use these two races this month – the 10 mile running race and the second century as good (head and body) training.  For the 10/20, I want to dig deep.  I want to find that place where it hurts, but my heart rate says I’m handling it physically, and just claw my way through the end and not relent.  Also, I’d really like to sub-10 min/mile it.  Because I have a really stupid dumb secret goal this year that is probably unobtainable, but still fun to entertain, and this would be good progress to check how that’s going.  Also, there is no reason that I should finish century ride #2 slower than #1 unless the weather sucks, but either way, its 60+ miles of outdoor riding, and motivation not to make an ass of myself on vacation (since it’s the day after I get back).

10. Buy some fun t-shirts from the ports.  Since I love wearing my Alaska cycle shirt, I need at least one with a diver.  Bring back some souvenirs for my leads and something that makes noise for my sound guys.

11.  Keep a journal of vacation – even though it can be a pain to write every day, I love rereading these and it helps me remember all the fun timez had.

12.  Not buy a whole mess of random things for vacation because we might need it (I guarantee I have everything I need right now to go, and whatever I don’t have I probably don’t need).  Exception is I’m out of travel deodorant (which will immediately go into my gym bag after) and I want a damn necklace charm to go with these gorgeous earrings I got that don’t match a fucking thing I own.

13.  Not spend a billion dollars on vacation.  I’m sure there will be a day or two we have some drinks, but try to limit it to just a few because we can get drunk at home (way cheaper), and getting drunk with access to free food equals getting faaaaaaat quick.  Don’t buy 20 billion pictures because the ones from the last two cruises have never been scanned and are just sitting somewhere in the office.  Spend on experiences (scuba, transport around areas, entry fees, etc) and not on stupid stuff that doesn’t matter.

And on that note, I’m going to try to not already be on vacation…. normal weekly wrapup coming up soon!

When I was composing this post in my head, on the first half of this ride, the subtitle of this post was going to be “not whining but stating a lot of facts”.  And some of those facts where things like “why the fuck did I sign up for this” and “shorts were an unfortunate choice” and “it’s cold and I don’t like it”.

But let’s back up about 12 hours previous to the ride start and I’ll tell the story, which actually ended pretty happy.

Friday, we decided to buy a car.

Y’know, no big deal.  It’s how we roll (actually, we’ve been eyeing xterras for about 6 months and there was a deal this week we couldn’t pass up).  We got there after work at around 6 and they didn’t let us leave until like 10:15… it took WAY too long.  By that time, we were ready to bite people’s heads off since we hadn’t eaten since lunch, so we went and got some whole wheat pasta and salad (and oops, two crack-sticks, I was weak) at olive garden.  We jumped on the waitress and as she asked for water we pleaded for the salad first because we were so hungry.  Needless to say, we didn’t get home until after 11 and got in bed at midnight… not good for the night before a race.

We had packed up everything the night before so we slept in as late as possible, just enough time to wake up, poop, and make there and get set up and hit the potty again.  This year, we didn’t make it to starting with the 60 milers like we wanted, but we didn’t start back with the families either, starting with the 40 milers worked out just fine.

However, what didn’t work out just fine was my poor choice of attire.  The weather at the start, as checked at midnight when I went to sleep said feels like 60 and overcast at the start, and about 77 and sunny at the end.  I figured it would be just a little chilly at the beginning and be fine, so I went with my pearl izumi white sleeves, my p.i. bike shorts, and my rookie jersey.  At the last minute I threw my green jacket in just in case.  Thank the dear fluffy lord I did – because at race start it was certainly NOT 60, more like 50 and super windy.  I didn’t want to get out of the car.  When I did I wanted to curl up into a little ball.

It got better as we started with the mass of humanity sheltered by the Samsung building, but then it got way worse.  The first 10-20 miles, my knees were frozen, it was crowded, the wind sucked, and I felt weak and had no idea what I was doing there.  I cursed myself for not riding outside or doing any work with resistance this winter.  I wrote off tri season as a loss because my bike skills sucked.  I only rejoiced a little when I passed the first two spots I crashed last year (and didn’t), but my head sorta went to a bad place and I couldn’t eat anything because it was too crowded to get stuff out of my bento without taking down other cyclists, and my nuun didn’t make it into my camelback and I was cold and everything really was just all fucked up.  Zliten was having fun though…

However, as rides tend to do for me, things got better.  First chance I got, I stuffed my face.  We stopped and I got gatorade and cookies and peed.  My knees went from frozen to not-quite-as-frozen.  Things started hurting less.  Happy, delirious Quix came out and started singing and making up lyrics to songs (“I ride your grandad’s bike, I hit the podium, at that triathlon down the road” and to everyone who had bike shoes on… “awww, he got the velcro”) and my cycling balls started coming back and I went from whimpering at hills to growling and charging up them.  An awakening of sorts.

Last year on this ride, we definitely positive split it.  I think we took the last half around 9-10 mph because we were so unprepared and finished about 5:15.  This year, we sped up the second half.  At the halfway point, we were at 12.4 due to the misery and the wind.  We finished with an average of 13.6, which in and of itself isn’t great, but being that we picked it up that much in the second half was encouraging.  We finished in 4:29, in much better condition than last year.  Last year, I had almost an out of body experience the last 5 miles and collapsed on a curb for about 5 mins.  While I definitely had sore spots (wrists, lower back, quads), I was walking fine and ready to go get on with my day when we touched down after.

One thing I realized was this year is that maybe I’ve not retained all my fitness from last season (who actually expects that?) but I have retained muscle memory.  I may not be in the shape to be riding (or running – swimming is just magic right now) as long/fast as I was at certain points at peak, but I have a little more faith that it will all come back, and better than ever and it’s not something I need to be able to do at every moment of the year to be a good athlete, as long as I time it well with important races.

One other realization – I’m going to restructure my training.  That outdoor ride was at least 10x more worthy race prep than a trainer ride to fit.  On Saturdays, doing our run, ride, and swim might be 3 hours, but it takes a lot longer than that (getting ready, training, cooling down, rehyrdating/fueling, slacking, possibly driving to the next place, etc.  Next month, I’m going to restructure our time to include more long blocks.

Last thought – I’m really proud of how I didn’t let a downer first part ruin my ride.  I really was having fun with this one after I got into it and got over being freezing.

And that being said, time for a quick recap of the rest of the week…

Food:

Holy crap, some progress here!  I had a low weight of 182.2 last Thursday, which I haven’t seen since before the marathon.  I’m going to credit finally having some self control with calories and eating mostly good food, and tracking things very very carefully.  I’m hoping that Saturday’s calorie fest didn’t screw things up but… I burned about 2k calories on the ride alone so I think 3k calories eaten is probably about right to maintain a deficit, but it still feels like a lot.

Next week, I’m trying an experiment.  Last year, during hard training, I turned my eating to vegetarian before dinner – mostly vegan when it made sense.  It was an experiment that started while Zliten was working OT, and it took about 3 weeks, but helped me lose a meaningful amount of weight (about 5 lbs in a month).  Then, I went on vacation and ruined all that and then never went back to it.  So, I’m going to give it another try.  But this time, going full hog (or opposite of hog).  I’m attempting to do the vegan thing all day, adding fish (because… fish!), and greek yogurt, and some muscle milk for added protein for meals, when I eat at home.

No particular reason for it (I love animals, they’re delicious), besides it worked before and it’s something to try, and I’ve always felt better straying towards the veggie side, especially when my training hours are up at the ceiling.  I’ve made some awesome pesto white bean veggie pasta, black bean soup, and have Mediterranean veggie pitas and black bean tacos at the ready.  And Zliten has some chicken and beef ready to add to the foods so he doesn’t go meat dry.

Either I’ll be at race weight by next weekend, I’ll crash and burn, or somewhere in between (most likely).  I’ll report in next week.

By the numbers:

Monday: 27 DQs, 1534 cal
Tuesday: 27 DQ, 1977 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1612 calories
Thursday: 21 DQ, 1827 calories
Friday: 26 DQ, 1811 calories
Saturday: 4 DQ, 3212 calories
Sunday: 21 DQs, 1477 calories

Avg calories per day: 1921.  Guestimating burn at around 2500 average per day.  That leaves a deficit of 579 per day, which means just a little over a lb I should have lost this week.  This week was just about exactly where I want it to be.

Average DQ: 21.8.  Again, pretty much perfect.

Weight fluctuation: low of 182.2, high of 188.8.

Training:

4.5 out of 10 hours (of 10.5 planned, oops) was the Rosedale ride, so this should be short.

Run: I loved this week of running.  My Tuesday run, I was in a pissy mood to start with, and then Zliten and I snapped at each other over something silly at the beginning of the run so I just put in my headphones and ran my stress, which resulted in a solid 25 minute tempo run at 10:07 pace – y’know, just slightly slower than my all out pace in January.  I felt wonderful after, and don’t worry, my marriage is fine, I finished up 2.47 miles, went back to get him, we reconciled, and ran it in easy.  Thursday, I got my first double run day since the marathon – a combo of 8.2 happy easy low HR miles (with 3 solid hill repeats at lunch) at mid-11s in perfect weather.  Bliss!

Bike: I biked on the trainer.  It was trainerific. I tried to do a tempo but I’m having trouble getting my heart rate up on the trainer at 3/5 resistance.  Next week is all easy, but the week after, I’ll be cranking up the resistance on tempo days (also, more outside).

Swim: I had a great easy swim on Monday, but had a crappy swim on Wednesday and it was mostly due to my head.  I was trying to use Zliten’s watch and it was frustrating me, I did two 300m-ish (or more since the watch confused me and was in yards) repeats, and it looked as if it was really slow and my mp3 player kept falling out of my ears, and then I ended up getting forced into the middle of the pool in the middle of a rep with two dudes being splashy and I sucked a lot of pool.  Then the nail in the coffin is someone actually showed up at 8:10pm for their lane and I just got out and said screw it instead of trying to share a lane with Zliten.  Oh well, I’ve been all stars and rainbows with swimming lately, I’ll take one bad one every once in a while.

Weights: Last heavy week.  I’ve ended at these maxes: 205 lbs squat (bodyweight goal was 230, but I definitely hit my limit) x4 reps, 330 lb leg press (bodyweight goal was 450 but I’m not sure if anyone but Superman can do that)x4, 120 lb rows x5, and 95 lb pulldowns x7.  Feel pretty dang good about having built strength this year, and now it’s time to maintain it generally, and build sport specific strength.

By the day…

Monday: Weights: MS Day 7 + Stretching /45 min, Swim: Easy Laps + Drills 1860 m/45 min
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Video Game High School 25 mi/60 mins, Lunch Run with 25 min Tempo 3.36 mi/ 35 mins
Wednesday: Weights: MS Day 8 + Stretching /45 mins, Swim: No Good Very Bad Swim 950 m/20 mins
Thursday: Run1: Morning Trash Day Run 3.8 mi/45 mins, Run2: Lunch Run – Hill Repeats 3.4 mi/ 39 mins
Friday: off
Saturday: Bike: Rosedale Ride 61.1 mi 04:29
Sunday: off

Looking forward to recovery week – sorta.  I felt like I handled this build period pretty darn well, I feel really strong right now, and I’m looking forward to another one.  It’s one of those weeks where I actually really want to not do a stepback week and keep building and not take it easy, but this is particularly the time where I should.  Lock in the amazing things I’ve done this month with a little rest, and move onward and upward.

Other stuff:

I sewed pillows!  They look awesome, and it wasn’t even so hard!  I made 4, and now I’m going to make more because they are awesome, pillows for everyone!

And as we said above, we got a car.  The xterra was built for us, bikes fit nicely in the back, and we’ve taken out the back seats and will probably not putting them back in very often.

Aight, that’s about it for this week… that’s plenty.  Way too much awesome.

Question of the week: what do you drive?  Do you love it?  What’s your dream car?

Food:

This week I have learned that sacrifices must be made to make progress, and that I can’t have my cake and eat it too.

I partied pretty hard twice this week.  Both times, to justify the calories, for the most part, skipped dinner (I had small snacks both days, but not a meal).  While I don’t typically drink to that level very often, I did remember days of having to shelve half my dinner or more if I wanted to indulge when I was losing weight.

The good news is that remembering this made me stop bitching to twitter about poor little Quix who had to much to drink and is getting her dinner taken away and just enduring it.  I’m a big girl and I make those choices.

The bad news is that I will need to remember that when I do alcohol instead of the food I need to eat, rather than alcohol + the food I need to eat makes training days suck.  My gas tank felt like I was running on empty most of Saturday because my gas tank was full of crap, and I didn’t do much better by myself the rest of the weekend.  Today I feel sluggish, tired, I’ve been peeing all day getting rid of water, and really looking forward to NOT indulging in junk food for quite a while.

But, I remember there were sacrifices on the way down from 20000 billion lbs.  As much as I remember it with rosy colored glasses that it was just effortless once I got going, I went to bed hungry sometimes.  I had vodka for dinner because I chose those calories over good calories.  I went into workouts underfueled.  And y’know what?  This far away from season?  That’s ok.  I honestly believe 10 lbs down would help me much more than feeling awesome for each training session.  90% of my meals are awesome, healthy food.  I just need to remember that the 10% crap needs to be INSTEAD of the 10% healthy, or I’ll continue to end up with 110% me each year like I have been.

However, there are exceptions.  This weekend, I’m riding a metric century.  I expect that I’ll be burning about 2000 calories doing that alone, so probably eating 2500-3000 calories that day is not too out of the question (and luckily, I have a wedding to go to that evening, so I should have no problems with that).  There is underfueling and there’s stupid.  I aim to find that line and not cross it.

That being said, here’s the numbers:

Monday: 22 DQ, 1608 calories
Tuesday: 26 DQ, 1747 calories
Wednesday: 27 DQ, 1530 calories
Thursday: 2 DQ, 1977 calories (vodka for dinner)
Friday: 13 DQ, 2097 (ren faire catered meal + drink + desert)
Saturday: 3 DQ, 2696 calories (birthday fest)
Sunday: 13 DQ, 1403 calories

Average Calories In: 1865, estimated calories out 2285 (estimated deficit 420 per day or 2945 total, or about 3/4 lb)

Average Diet Quality Score: 15 (low low low)

Weight: low 183.2, high 188.8.

No wonder I’m getting frustrated, there’s no way to tell if I’m losing 3/4 lb when I fluctuate almost 6 lbs per week :P.

Oh well, onwards and upwards.  Hopefully, there will not be vodka for dinner this week.  My body would be thankful for that.

Training:

I shorted myself a little less than an hour, which sucks, but oh well.  It really wasn’t intentional.

Swim:  I cannot say enough good things about swimming.  My slow pace is pretty not slow, I’m enjoying the speedwork, and I have a wetsuit to play in when the lake is cold.  When my form is good, I feel like a spider crawling on top of the water, being pushed by the current.  Isn’t that weird?  I was bummed that I couldn’t get our first open water swim in this weekend (planned for 30 mins but only made it 10 mins breaststroking out and back to the first buoy) – but it was nice to know that when the lake isn’t like a wave pool, the wetsuit will work just fine even in 64 degree water.

Bike: Eh.  The wind made riding really unsafe, so we cut what should have an hour ride to 37 mins, and that was less than 9 miles due to WIIIIIIIIND.  My wheel kept singing me the song of it’s people, which was an eerie whistling sound I’ve never heard before so loud and so often that it was really just unsafe to ride.  The bike is my meh sport right now, but hopefully that will change once I get out and ride hills more and get my quad mojo back.

Run: This sport is definitely coming around for me though sometimes I just want to say SHUT UP HEART.  The great thing about recognizing zone 1/2 running is that I can knock a 10 mile run (when I haven’t even run CLOSE to double digits since the marathon) and my legs are like… did we just take a long walk?  Also, I did 2 amazing tempo miles in the middle – miles 7 and 8 – and the pace wasn’t that great (read: the wind), but I felt like I wanted to run that effort forever.  So if I’m doing that around 10:45s in the wind, at the end of a long run, and on a day where I kinda felt like crap, I certainly can get uncomfortable and sub 10 on race day, right?  Also, I did hill repeats and made the lunch run crew do them with me Tuesday – that will probably be a regular thing – they loved to hate it with me.

Weights: Increased weights on some stuff.  I can definitely tell I’m either where I’m supposed to be or at the top of my capacity right now.  I’ve had fun with heavy weights, but I’m ready to move onto strength maintenance, and starting the harder “force” workouts actually on the swim/bike/run to build more specific strength for sport.

Honestly, I’m a little terrified where I am at physically in relation to tri season on the bike, run, and body composition, but I’m also feeling super strong, and very confident in my swim and most importantly, my head game and strategy.  And, I have a month and a half until the first race I sorta really care about (Rookie Tri) so anything can happen.  Hell, a month and a half ago, I would have told you I was an awesome cyclist, mediocre swimmer, I had torn up my running card, and weights were the best thing ever so… yeah.  Things – they change.

By the days…

Monday: Weights: MS Phase – Day 5 45 mins, Easy Swim + Drills 1200 m/30 mins
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Futurama The Wild G… 26.02 mi/1h15m, Run: Lunch Run Hill Repeats 4.35 mi/50 mins
Wednesday: Run: Treadmill Run 1.76 mi/20mins, Weights:MS Day 6 + Stretching 45 mins, Swim: Speedwork Day 1800m/ 40 mins
Thursday: off
Friday:  Futurama + Trainer 13.05 mi/37 min
Saturday: Run: Lake Pfluger 3+ Laps 10.1 mi /2 hours, Bike: Lake Pfluger Out and Back 8.7 mi /37 min, Swim: Lake Pfluger Wetsuit Test 175 m/10 min
Sunday:  off

Total: 8h30 mins (supposed to be 9h30).  It was really due to missing out on about 25 mins of bike and 20 mins of swim on Saturday, but oh well.  Can’t control mother nature, and really really wanted a rest day Sunday.

This week is super build week (10.5 hours) for the Build 2 cycle so I just want to get through it alive.  4 hours of that, at least, is the Rosedale Ride.  I’m super pumped to ride another metric century and looking forward to getting lots of supported outdoor ride time.  Goal is sub 4 hours of time on bike (not counting rest stops).  Hopefully the weather cooperates.

Other stuff:

We had Brazillian Steakhouse for lunch on Thursday (Zliten’s birthday) and took a half day off work and enjoyed some time in the beautiful sunny day on our patio drinking frozen drinks.  I actually ate responsibly at an all you can eat salad bar/meat place, are y’all proud of me?  Then, I had vodka for dinner as I said, so don’t be too proud.

And for the last birthday celebration of the year, we headed to our favorite bar with about 20 of our friends and enjoyed an afternoon/evening of sipping cocktails and soaking in the sun.  And, apparently, we had a long rap concert going on inside, which made for some awesome people watching.  While again, I had vodka for dinner and looked longingly at all the greasy bar food that got ordered (I did snack on some fries though), I had a blast that day!

However, I’m definitely ready for things to go back to normal.  I’d like some solid time of good food, hydration, and normal human levels of alcohol consumption going on so I don’t feel like a lump of excrement.

Question: what was the biggest sacrifice you had to make to reach a goal?

This week started out a little rough – after a stepback week, you’re supposed to be rarin’ to go because you got so much damn rest.  Well, instead, I did a shit ton of Scuba that weekend, and then partied for my birthday on Sunday night with decadent food and drinks.  So, Monday, I woke up to a body and brain that was not sure it was really ready for another 3 week build, but… spoilers… I handled Week 1 just fine.

Food:

I said a lot of what would go here last week.  I did go a little overboard on Saturday night with food (another 3000 calorie day), but I definitely earned it with what I burned that day.  All the other days were pretty much the picture of clockwork.

Last week we sorta did the “leftovers of the batch cook” thing and threw together meals and ate out a few times (at healthy approved places).  Calorie counts and DQ score seemed about on par with last week, but activity was way up, so in theory, I should be losing weight.  I hopped on the scale very sporadically so I don’t have a great reference point (the highest was Monday with the triple whammy of bloated from TOM, bloated from Scuba, and a 2000 calorie birthdayfest for dinner, and the lowest was Thursday – but I think that may have been the only scale hopping I did this week).

This week we have a menu and schedule and have batch cooked for the week so lets see how things go.  Two planned splurges: birthday Brazillian Steakhouse for Zliten on Thursday, and catered pasta lunch out with the company.  Thursday, I plan to just enjoy and make that the majority of my food that day.  Friday, I plan to have a big breakfast so that I’m not super hungry and overeat on refined grains and fatty sauce.  Saturday, we are celebrating our birthday with friends at the bar, but will have a 3.5 hour training session and healthy lunch that day, so I’ll have earned it.

That being said – 3 days in a row where I won’t be eating completely clean.  So I don’t have high hopes for the scale, but who knows, miracles could happen.

Last week, by the numbers…

Monday: 28 DQ score – 1726 calories
Tuesday: 26 DQ score – 1724 calories
Wednesday: 26 DQ score – 1744 calories
Thursday: 21 DQ score – 1982 calories
Friday: 22 DQ score – 1641 calories
Saturday: 15 DQ score  – 2971 calories
Sunday: 24 DQ score – 1405 calories

Avg DQ Score: 23

Avg Calories: 1884 calories consumed.  Don’t have great burn stats because I lost my fitbit. 🙁 (Average from this time last month was 2261).  So, average deficit was 377, so about .75 lbs I should have lost.

Weight: fluctuated from 184.2 to 189.0 (triple whammy day).

I really really may need to do some daily weighing and charting to see any sort of pattern here that might make me not want to tear my hair out, when my deficit is about 25% or less of the fluctuations I see during each week.  From my tracking here, it looks as if I’m scratching and clawing to get a small deficit and it will take me weeks if not months to see meaningful progress even if the numbers are indeed matching up with what I’m doing.  I’ve been starting to play around with Training Peaks, and I’ll track my weight there.

Training:

Like I said, I went into the week a little unsure, but I feel pretty great about rocking out the first week of Build 2.

Weights: Back to heavy weights – Monday was rough and I didn’t increase any weights (frankly, had trouble with some of them I was doing 2 weeks ago), but I set either weight or rep PRs on each thing on Wednesday.  Two more weeks of the heavy stuff until I move onto maintenance weights for the rest of the year.

Swim: Swim is my favorite this week.  I had an easy swim Monday that just felt like butter.  Scuba definitely was the equivalent of drills in the water and I just felt long and lean and awesome.  Wednesday, I did my first speedwork in a while – 6x300m, aiming for as close to 2 min/100m as possible with 75m recovery in the  middles.  I am really finding some love with hurting myself looking at that black line.  Then, on Saturday, after swim, bike, and lunch, we did our March swim test.  After a warm up, I got going and am finding that with swimming fast, the pain comes in 3 stages – 1) I start going fast, I feel great. 2) I keep going fast, I feel like I’m going to die and OMG I have about 9/10ths of the workout left, how am I going to do this.  3) About halfway through, the pain dulls to a sustainable level of uncomfortable, my stroke really settles in, and I FEEL like I’m going slower because it’s easier, but it’s not.

But, my super happy was: I finally broke the 2 min/100m barrier (1:51/100m).  My swim test: 19:30 for 1050m.  Beat my time last month by 1 min 15 seconds.  I know these increases are going to stop being so epic each month, but for now, I love it.

Bike: Trainer rides are trainer-ific.  I’m liking using oranges for fuel instead of jelly beans (at least at home).  Having trouble getting my HR up on the trainer.  I’ll try it next week.  My happy is I DID get to ride outside.  Confession: if you gave me the opportunity and if it would properly prepare me for the race, 99 out of 100 times I’ll chose the trainer.  There are no cars, no weather, no stoplights, no clipping and unclipping pedals… and I don’t get a chance to watch awesome action movies.  However, we are going to do two metrics this spring, and the trainer doesn’t really do much for preparing one for hills, so it’s back to braving the outdoors.  But I did enjoy it.

Run: Now that I have been cleared to do some zone 3 running, it’s ALL I want to do.  We did two runs with a 15 min tempo in the middle.  Then, Saturday’s run was supposed to be an easy Zone 1/2 run, but we were both feeling good, and my HR monitor was not really working properly, so I definitely was running at the top of zone 2/a little into zone 3.  This week, my goal is to cool it on the easy runs.  One fully easy, one with a 20 min tempo, and one with some hill repeats.  Although, it’s nice to have finished with a total pace in the 10s.

Monday: Weights: MS Phase – Day 3 + Stretching 00:40Swim: Magical Fishie Day 1590 m/35:00.
Tuesday: Bike: Trainer + Hellboy 16.1 mi/45:00. Lunch Run + Tempo 3.25 mi/37:15
Wednesday: Weights: MS Phase Day 4 – 45:00. Swim: Speedwork 3×6 min sets 1350 m 00:32
Thursday: Bike: Trainer w/Tempo: Futurama: Be… 17.72 mi/45:00.  Run: Lunch Run + Tempo 3.1 mi 33:05.
Friday: off
Saturday: Bike: Shoal Creek Loop 14.24 mi/1:00. Run: Neighborhood Loops 5.17 mi/01:00. Swim: 1050m Speed Test 1050 m/19:30.
Sunday: off

Other things:

We got to fulfill our monthly allotment of gaming by playing games with the ‘rents early in the day Saturday, and games with the neighbors that evening.  I only won one game.  Sadface. 🙁

We may have already signed up for Advanced Scuba class on March’s stepback week.  Because we are addicted and also insane.  This time we get to go down to 85 feet and also go diving at night! Fun!

Sunday was an awesomely productive day, while also being relaxing because I was home all day.    These are the things I did:

• Laundry
• Batch cooked
• Gave myself a pedicure and manicure
• Shopped for Zliten’s presents (and myself – 2 for him, 3 for me is about right, yeah?)
• Made necklaces (see the pictures in this post…)
• Started this blog post
• Watched a bunch of Downton Abbey

I did not get around to doing any sewing yet, but I will (I just ended up finding my beads again and getting enamoured with them this weekend).  Zliten also got through organizing the DVDs mostly, but we have to finish the center console and the mantle to call the living room done.

This week, I want to do these things:

• Finish the living room.  Also, start thinking about what to do with all the bedroom stuff and when that gets done…
• Try to get that dang pillow made.  It can’t be rocket science to do.  I think I’m pavlovianl
• Read a few chapters in my diving book so I’m not cramming the week before the class.
• Sign up for the two century rides I keep putting off.
• Do some pre-cruise planning and do the online check in if I can.
• Pre-track my food again.  That seemed to work awesomely.
• And now, I’m going to check off thing #1 on this week’s to do – make a blog post.

Questions of the Week: What’s on your to do list?

Also, I’ve considered in the past doing a shop on Etsy with the necklaces.  Would you buy them?  If so, which one is your favorite and how much theoretically would you pay? (Not looking to sell anything right now, just data gathering)