Adjusted Reality

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

Tag: cycling Page 1 of 34

All’s well that ends well, redux (Windcrest Triathlon)

Guys, I’m not sure I’ve ever delayed a race post this long, but let’s chalk it up to racing twice in 8 days, camping, three insane weeks at work thus far, and a little bit of ennui.

Let’s take a trip in the way back machine and recount the events around the Windcrest triathlon. The week previous, I was a cranky sonnuvab*tch about many various things, but I hoped beyond hope it would clear up before I toed the line. Since this was a Saturday out of town race, so we left work a little early the day before, finished packing, sat in traffic, got to packet pickup a wee bit earlier than last year, and then, the Xterra DIED. At packet pickup, which was outside in 95 degree heat. Not optimal. We got it jumped fairly quickly, but it wasn’t looking like it would hold well, so we rolled into camp a little apprehensively, not knowing if the car would start in the morning to get to the race.

Our prep went much better after that, including our camping neighbor being a mechanic that helped us fix the car!!, but we ended up not having dinner ready until after 9pm, and went to bed kinda late, but I slept really really well and woke up feeling pretty okay on 6 hours of sweet sweet camper sleep. I slept well because the Kenkoh Massage Sandals I’d worn were really soothing and gave me a good night’s rest. The morning was uneventful, I ate two caffeine beans, drank some coffee (this is new, but has worked really well lately!), ate an everything bagel thin. Before the race, I sucked down another caffeinated gu and some nuun and I felt highly ready to GO RACE NOW once things kicked off at 7am.

One thing about the morning – over the last year or two, I’ve oscillated between unbridled apathy and aggressive, chaotic confidence before races. This morning, I found myself in a state of quiet competence. It felt like I’d finally found the perfect fit even with the lack of mental management in many of the moments before this one.

Swim:

I positioned myself properly and started pretty early in the pack, and I was lucky enough to find a nice little bubble of clear water the entire race – in a snake pool swim, if you don’t seed yourself properly you either have to swim over people or be swam over, and that was not the case. However, my same goggles that flooded in March’s race flooded again – twice – but clearing them was fairly quick. I supposed that they weren’t meant for the pool, because they had been just fine in open water last year.

Swim time: 4:28 (2:14/100m, but this included a bit of a run as well). 1/8 AG. This was fine. No issues here besides the goggles debacle.

T1/T2:

I don’t have much to say besides my transitions seemed efficient and without issue, so I will combine them here and leave it at that.

T1: /T2 times: T1: 58 seconds 1/8 AG; T2 50 seconds 3/8 AG (my shoes take a few extra seconds but they’re worth it…)

Bike:

I hopped on my bike and got ready to chase, and chase and pass I did… until I got to a spot in the course that was weirdly marked. I almost turned, but I questioned myself at the last minute and dug into my brakes to stop my bike, and the back wheel came up a little at the force. I waited for someone else to pass, going straight, and then I followed. It cost me a little time, especially as it was on an uphill, but at least I wasn’t off course.

Zliten started right behind me on the swim, followed me into transition, and out on the bike. He apparently had me in his sights the entire ride and caught me about mile 8. I let him pass me and coasted down a hill just outside of draft range, and then passed back a mile later when I found my effort a little lacking.

My head stayed much more positive this year, as I knew what to expect on the course, all the turns, all the (not steep but definitely present) hills didn’t faze me. I knew this course was about quick acceleration and cornering so I aimed for that the entire time and moderately succeeded.

Bike time: 33:04 (18.1 mph) 1/8 AG… and actually 2/45 female – the master’s winner beat me by 14 seconds. I still retain some of my QoMs here on strava but not all of them. This was ~30 seconds worse than last year but I believe the stop and start on the hill can account for most, if not all of that nonsense.

Run:

Zliten beat me out of T2 but I passed him as he pulled up to the water stop immediately outside the racks. I found the effort I wanted, though it wasn’t the pace I was hoping for. I stuck with it, and found myself passing more than being passed, so I continued the one hair below red line pace, working my way up the hill, knowing the feeling of wanting to hurl cookies would subside a little once I started heading back down, even accelerating my speed. And it did. And I did.

I almost reeled a lady in I had been following, but I knew she started significantly before me, it would have been a sprint to the finish, and she wasn’t in my age group, so I avoided the jerk move at the little local triathlon and cruised into the finish just enough behind her to not feel like a arsehole.

Run time: 19:19 (9:12m/mile though garmin said 9:00 exactly). 1/8 AG. I still don’t feel like I reached the peaks I’ve found off the bike in practice, but this found me fairly close.

Total time: 58:37, which was good enough for 1st in the 40-44 age group, as well as the shortest on the podium. I was the second masters finisher (first was about 90 seconds ahead of me), and fourth female overall. Over 1 minute faster than last year, to boot.

I was pretty proud of my finish (and punching my ticket to Nationals again, even though I’m not actually going this year), but I was so, so proud of Zliten, who obtained his first triathlon podium, coming in 3rd of 9 in his age group by just a few seconds!

We spent the rest of the day celebrating with good food, adult beverages, and enjoying the outdoors of the San Antonio KOA before heading back home the next day to unpack (and work).

The pursuit of success and the fear of failure

Yadda yadda yadda, using my words in other places lately, excuses excuses, and *scene*.

Check my insta feed for the hilarious outtake on this one…

It’s good to know that some things stay constant around here, even if those things are the asshatery regarding my consistent stream of extenuating circumstances. Ahem.

Let’s recap. Since I last graced this digital space with my presence, I’ve spent an inordinately long time recovering from laryngitis. I spoke less than a dozen words over that initial weekend of infirmary, which was a feat akin to the most introverted person in the world getting in front of a sold-out auditorium to give an improv performance – very much against my nature. I got by with a text to speech app and lots of interpretive dance to communicate with my husband that weekend, but it was not easy. It was worth it, though, as on Monday, I had some of my voice back and by mid-week, sounded almost entirely like a human being again.

However, some minor effects lingered for quite a while. I’m still not exactly 100%, as I determined last night, when I completely bowed out of singing the high notes at the end of Phantom of the Opera instead of making an arse of myself in the attempt, but I’m about at that 99% mark – mostly unnoticeable, even in sport. I’m okay with this timeline.

It’s a good thing I don’t know the lyrics to Hamilton yet…

It took a frustratingly long process to get there. I’m not used to being knocked out this long, which was exacerbated by the fact that the week I got sick had JUST kicked off the Finally Not Being A Petulant Child and Following A Schedule and Training Again initiative, which got highly derailed by feeling and sounding like a pile of hot garbage. I ditched all workouts that weekend, and spent the entire next week laying off both swimming and running, only riding my bike super easy peasy lemon squeezy.

By last weekend, I figured, I *had* to be recovered, and I mounted my steed for the FTP test I had missed the weekend before. While I’ve had good FTP tests (the bar for a good test is feeling like absolute detritus as the last seconds tick down, but being pleased with the number on the screen), and I’ve had disappointing FTP tests, I’ve not had the issue where, with 8 minutes to go, my body just SHUT DOWN. I went from pushing my ~190 watts to ~130 with little perceivable reduction in effort. Folks, I become intimately acquainted with The Man With the Hammer at that moment in a way that I have not in some time (FYI, I just finished the Velominati book The Hardmen and if you enjoy cycling humor, or cycling, or humor, you should give it a read).

The ride home was a bit slower after the feast but playing bikes and BBQ made for a splendid extra day off!

It was ultimately frustrating, but a clear sign of a few things: 1) I was not yet recovered, I definitely felt some crud remaining in my lungs and 2) my brain felt a little broken as well. It’s been too much serious around here all the time. I needed to go play bikes. So, I rested up Saturday and Sunday, and on Memorial Day, I slept in and then went for a joyride around North Austin in the early afternoon. It was peace and love, and kicked off a week in which I did not entirely follow a plan, but I did FOUR WHOLE HOURS of intentional triathlon training. Two of these were in the morning before work. This is progress, people!


Before Thursday’s brick-with-a-wee-bit-of-spice on it, I felt like it had been three years since I gave anything in the zipcode of maximum effort, but I had a doozy planned for the weekend. Yesterday’s workout was the first triple brick in quite a while, that is, a 10 minute warmup, and then 10 minutes on the bike transitioning quickly to a 1 mile run, both at a moderately painful pace, and against all odds, do this two more times, each faster than the instance before. The first bike felt pretty good at approximately 150 watts, the 8:57/mile run felt like a jog, and then ish started to get real. I actually tanked my power in the last bike segment (holding 149W instead of the 160+ goal I had) simply because my legs wouldn’t turn over for the first five minutes, and I just narrowly missed my run goal of 8:30/mile or lower for the third mile, but at 8:34, I’ll call it close enough, especially since it met the secondary goal of being faster than the second mile.

Finally feelin’ it again. Diamonds help!

All in all, I’m back baby, physically and mentally, just in time for the next two weekends of racing – Windcrest Tri and Pflugerville, respectively. Then, we begin to lay the foundation deep and wide, but that’s a topic for July.

One thing I’ve been ruminating on lately (care of The Passion Paradox, another recent read, which I talked about last time as well) is the difference between these two motivations: the fear of failure and the desire for success. They are both means to the same desired end, and they might seem similar on first blush, but I’m finding that they feel oh so different on inspection. Fear of failure is running scared out of transition two, hoping no one will chase me down. It’s compromising a little too much at work knowing I’m up for a promotion. Pursuing success means running with heart and courage, conscious of triathletes ahead and behind me, but only invoking meaning in those circumstances if I can use it to my advantage. It means making the choices at work, boldly, that I believe will benefit my project and my team and therefore my company in the long term, and letting the chips fall where they may.

The first step in transformation is being cognizant about behaviors that you wish to change, and I’m there now. I’m hoping to take this knowledge into the next two weekends to practice chasing down success instead of running from failure, and at the respective finish lines, let the results separate themselves from the processes.

A crack to let the light in – Austin Indoor Tri

I feel like I say this every week lately, but it was a heckuva week.

The day before, I wasn’t sure if the cracks were letting the light in or just breaking me.  But you have to toe the line to find out…

A thing I’ve pondered on lately is that when you really and truly want to change, when you really want to transform into something different, life tends to present you the opportunities to do so.  Over the last few months I’ve been really delving into my creative side, developing my leadership skills, and then this week, I got pulled right by the nose into some left brain analytics and logic and pattern recognition work.  I still maintain that it’s EXCITING and I feel STRETCHED vs STRETCHED THIN, so it’s all good.

However, it’s not optimal when you wake up at 1:30am on race day contemplating the future of your project and how it relates to the four quadrants and applying that analogy to triathlon and triathletes as well.   I watched the clock tick over from 1:59 to 3:00 am (daylight savings… wheee?) and after a while just gave up and read my book until my alarm went off at 4:30am.  Great night of pre-race sleep, check! (as Borat says… NOOOOTTTTTT!)

Always looking for silver linings, being awake already made it easier to do all the pre-race things and I got in a foam roll, boots, and a spin before we had to leave, besides all the other normal things I put in my body (caff beans, two earl grey teas – hot, everything bagel + cream cheese).  We arrived with plenty of time, we got the lay of the land, and holy crap, we then had 3 minutes to get situated before the race start.  Scramble!!!

First jaunt in my new #teambss kit.  I’m a fan!

Swim:

As I started the swim, my goggles completely flooded. I had to doggie paddle to the end of the lane and stop to clear them. Then the same thing happened as I submerged again. SIGH. I took the time at 50 yards in to remove them entirely from my head, fix and adjust things, and yank them tight. I had some droplets bouncing around but they were holding so finally my swim began in earnest!

I resisted the urge to start sprinting and instead held the same uncomfortably comfortable pace I had planned and noticed I was gaining time on the clock each lap from my expectations.  Later I discovered the pool was 25 YARDS not METERS, so that was expected, but it did the job to buoy my confidence that this wasn’t going to be a complete shitshow after all.  I ended at the far end of the pool at 21 lengths (525 yards) in just under 10 minutes, which wasn’t horrible, considering the goggle drama.

Bike:

I’ve done this a few times now so I was able to transition quickly and was set up and ready to go in the spin room well before it was time to start.  Once we got going, one of the volunteers told me that we were supposed to stick on a specific resistance – which for me is the equivalent of pedaling slightly downhill.  Okay, not my favorite, but if that’s how the rules go, I’ll work with that… thirty minutes of extremely high cadence drills coming up!

Felt weird, man.  Spinning at 110-120 cadence for that long taxes your system in completely different ways than I normally ride.  My power was suuuuuuuper low (120-130W), and my legs got sore in places they don’t typically, and I wasn’t breathing very hard but my heart rate was up there around 165 bpm average.  To pass the time, I calculated the most efficient way to finish – each tenth of a mile was taking me about 20 seconds, so I did some really fast spinning to line that up with the moment when the minute ticked over to x:00, and then held my pace.  Sure enough, I went from 8.8 to 8.9 right as the clock struck 30.  Pacing win!

Pressure makes diamonds…

Run:

This was probably the thing that mattered most to me.  I’ve really been working on my running, both physically with good form, turnover, and speed, as well as mentally with not being effing intimidated by a pace on my watch or moments where the effort starts to feel slightly beyond me, because, oftentimes, it recenters within my capabilities if I simply let time pass.  While I was worried that doing other difficult stuff all week month might have worn down my will here, I found it was actually the opposite.  We are what we repeatedly do.

I started at the same 7.0 (8:34/mile) pace I did last time, and oddly enough… it felt good.  Not easy, but not outside of the realm of my capacity.  Someone at work recently called me tough as nails and that permeated my mind during the run.  Tough as effing nails.  No surrender.  Don’t back down this time.  There was a moment where I started to falter my mind pleaded with me to decrease the pace a little, but I talked myself out of it and when I got to the second half of the run, I thought, Okay, you made it this far, time to crank it.

I’m sure I looked like a crazy person mouthing the words to whatever was on my music at that time and flashing myself the horns when I made the choice every so often to INCREASE the pace instead of backing down, but I’ve gotten over that.  Triathletes, we’re all a little mad here, we all look a stupid in wet spandex, why not go full straight jacket, right?  With five minutes to go, I found a wall when I ventured into 7 minute mile territory, and had to halt my progression a little, but I kept on turning over those legs, trying not to hurl.  I found something extra with about 90 seconds to go and willed the time to pass before I had to surrender.  And it did.  And I didn’t.

As I reached 20 minutes, my treadmill ticked over to 2.39 (8:22/mile).  This is ludicrous speed for me – well below my 5k PR pace from 10 years ago.  I thought 2.33 (8:35/mile) was insurmountable in January.  I beat that by 13 seconds per mile today and if I’m being honest, I wasn’t dry heaving at the end so I probably could have found just a little more in me somewhere if I looked hard enough.

Matchy matchy…. this one also had a pretty superb race himself…

After cheering on the other waves, we had a little informal awards ceremony.  I tied for first on the swim, was first on the bike by almost half a mile, and came in fourth on the run.  They didn’t say anything about overall placement, but it’s very likely, unless someone tied me on the swim, came in second on the bike, and then got first or maybe second on the run, with the points schedule Lifetime Tri uses, that I came in first overall.  I definitely at least podiumed.  Third race of the year, a swing and a hit!

Let’s be fair, this is a triathlon aimed at beginners, so I’m not expecting that I’m going to be finding the top step overall when I start racing larger races outside, but maybe it’s not THAT far away at the sprint distance.  My swim is pretty solid, I can tear it up on the bike, and maybe, just maybe, with some continued progress, this is the year I can hold my own on the run or maybe even make up some ground – aka run those beetches down.

Or software… the medals were rubber!  It was neat!

The way I get there is continued (and maybe a little less half-arsed as of late, if I’m being honest) attention to body composition, and lest I sound like a broken record, confidence in my growing capabilities, courage to stick it out when it gets tough (as nails), and the vulnerability to lay it all out there even when I’m not sure I can hold the line. Because my racing so far in 2019 has shown me that I CAN.

On the Precipice of Forty.

Warning: I’m about to get at least three different kinds of nerdy here.  

This is (almost) 40.

When I was a kid, I was smart.  Like, crazy smart.  When I entered kindergarden, my elementary school wanted to skip me immediately to the first grade for the first half of the year and then straight to fourth for the rest at five years old.  I declined, because I thought it was much more fun to play with my new friends and that sounded scary.  When I was actually in fourth grade years later, I turned in all my math homework for the year within the first month, so they sat me at a side table during math with a book of fairly advanced logic problems.  

I’m convinced the only thing that saved me from getting swirlies was the fact that I also was fairly athletic, rather buff for a kid my age due to sports.  However, I didn’t make a whole lot of close friends in elementary school, I’m fairly convinced the ones I had were probably due to mothers conspiring behind the scenes saying, “Yes, you HAVE to invite her, be nice.”  Between fifth and sixth grade, in the transition from elementary to middle school, it hit me that I had the opportunity to reinvent myself, and NOT be the girl sitting out of math because she was better at it than everyone in the room.

Sure, I still did all the honors things, and got what felt like “safe” grades, mostly A’s with a peppering of Bs, I didn’t start smoking under the bleachers during P.E. or anything, but I learned where the limits lie to be tolerated by your peers.  You can be good, you can be great, but to pursue true excellence in something, that makes you a target.  I pushed the line by showing up to my sixth grade book report with Gone With The Wind (having really and truly read the whole thing in a few nights), but then I got a C in home ec, so it all balanced out.

Slowly, it became less of a strategy and just a part of me.  

Just a few months before my brain got the best of me and I quit gymnastics…

The great thing about not pursuing excellence is that it makes life really quite comfortable.  For what it was worth, I always felt like sport was a much more accepted way to pursue excellence, but the habit was already engrained.  I never pushed myself to any sort of edge of glory, and if I got close, I tended to either self-sabotage or quit.  I easily qualified for just about every honors thing that crossed my path.  I got into every college I applied to with scholarships.  My first semester was a bit of a challenge, but it just necessitated learning the rules to a slightly new game, and I was back in business on easy street before long.  I got straight As my senior year while doing a ridiculous amount of partying and on a ridiculously small amount of sleep.  

I participated in so much self-sabotage, and it wasn’t even enough to bring me down.  I left college exhausted and fat from how I treated myself, but still Cum Laude with Honors.

Finally, I thought.  It’s time to be an adult.   No more playing around, this is for my livelihood.  However, I found the real world similar to my classroom experiences.  Being a competent employee was good.  Being an exemplary employee, as a peon, was sort of frowned upon and didn’t really garner a lot of favor with the team or even managers.  Instead of getting praised for breaking video games in really weird ways, at times I was told, “the dev team says STOP IT”.  I turned in a 150 page binder applying for a design job.  I didn’t even get an interview – though they did steal at least three things from it.

I have had some brief periods of laying myself out on the line over the years – my last two years of gymnastics, my first actual design job once I finally got the interview, losing 115 lbs, and I’m starting to see the beginning of a similar renaissance right now in a myriad of arenas.  I look back on all these times fondly – not because I want to work 100 hours right now or fight my body for a few years to let go of half od it’s precious resources, but because it felt amazing in those moments to just give it my all.

One of the moments where it actually clicked…

I’m sure that everyone in the world would have considered me an athlete before I considered myself one.  When I first started racing, it was all new and fun, but then I spent so much time with so little belief in myself when it got a little difficult to produce results.  I put a lot of limits on myself, at least subconsciously, because I didn’t find myself perfect yet.  I let my head get the best of me – a lot – and so many times backed down in competition and felt terrible about myself.  

After finding the place which Calm the F*ck Down calls “the fed up athlete”, I found I needed to do some of the hardest work yet.  No, not the swimming, biking, and running.  I’ve never found it difficult to pile on the miles because it feels worthwhile, (pseudo) confidence building, and frankly, numbing.  The most difficult things were to step back and acknowledge that I needed to work on my mental game, my body composition, and addressing form imbalances.  None of these feel sexy at all.  None of the processes were anything beyond frustrating, messy, and felt highly unintuitive, especially because some were at the COST of swimbikerun.  With already flagging confidence and performance, it feels like sport suicide to decide to dial back the hours.

But dial them back I did.  I lifted when I wanted to run.  I stretched and did pre-hab when I wanted to be biking for hours instead.  I took days off and studied sports (and regular) psychology books.  I refrained from numbing out and built a race persona.   I kept my calories lower instead of making excuses about my body composition.  And y’know what?  After a while, it started paying divedends.

The last year has been night and day.  I envisioned winning my age group in my first triathlon of 2018, and then HOLY SHIT I did it.  I dared to dream a little, and then I dreamed A LOT.  Not all of them came true, but I had the most wonderful season because I let myself believe, sometimes just for a moment, that I was worthy.

My bardic muse…

There is a HUGE culture of playing tabletop roleplaying games at work.  For so long, I resisted.  I told myself it was because I wanted my husband to have something that was HIS hobby, but as I’ve unpacked a lot of emotions and insecurities lately, I’m pretty sure it was also the fact that I thought I’d be terrible. I got coerced into a session and I fell in love with it, even though, YEP! I was indeed pretty much shite.  For quite a long time. I picked safe choices of classes that I knew and found my little niche, allowing others to really drive the games while I just piped in to contribute a little and then let everyone else run the show.

Here’s where I probably lose anyone here for triathlon insights, but I press forward.

I’ve been playing these types of games for almost two decades now (just online previously), and I’ve gravitated towards one specific character type: the caster.  One who’s weaker in body, but strong in mind, who hangs back at the edge of the battle and slings spells, hoping not to attract too much attention.  However, I’ve always pumped up the Constitution/Stamina statistic, which provides a little extra armor if I DO indeed attract that attention I seek to avoid.  This is usually at the cost of being truly excellent at the slinging of spells but it feels like a worthwhile tradeoff for extra protection.

This is incredibly telling of my own personality.  Unless I push myself, I tend to hang back in life and not really go for things.  I would rather play defense to hedge my bets rather than, yet again, pursue true excellence.  I’d rather be moderately good at some things rather than really good at something, even though I’d be better served pursuing where my talents lie.  If I start getting too good at something, it scares me.  I’ve always found myself pacified by being decent at a lot of things, because being decent at something feels much better than sucking at something (and to be truly good at something, you have to accept that you’re going to suck at a lot of other things as we only have a finite lifetime).  

This last campaign, I picked something different that stretched my legs a little because it sounded fun.  I didn’t realize the psychological implications at the time of becoming a bard.  From the start, I felt awkward playing this character, and then after a while, I was called on to be the face and the leader of the party in matters of diplomacy and persuasion.  For someone who tends to hang back and say “whatever y’all want to do is good with me”, this has been terrifying and uncomfortable.  I tried to just show up and wing it halfheartedly but it doesn’t work for me.  I just pissed myself off with my incompetence and stopped having fun.

Thinking about the backstory of all my characters, they have something in common: they’re hiding a big secret, they’re running or hiding from something, and they have a BIG PROBLEM being who they really are.  Again, if this isn’t telling, I don’t know what is.

In my thirties, I spent the decade being the person who I wanted to become, at least on the surface.

I wanted to become an athlete.  I may not have exactly known that at thirty, but I knew I wanted some sort of motivation to keep myself fit and also, I had this ridiculous competitive drive that’s been with me my whole life that was being utterly unindulged.  Enter racing.  It. was. awesome.  And humbling.  And SO SO SO HARD.  But it was exactly what I needed to scratch the itch which evaded me in my twenties.  Over the course of the decade, I finally got to the point where I could call myself an athlete without an asterisk.  Or a sheepish grin.  I stand at almost fourty as an athlete and no one can tell me otherwise.

I wanted to learn how to be a strong leader.   If I was to really and truly pursue what I do as a lifetime career, I wanted to learn how to lead and inspire a team towards greatness.  At thirty, my hands shook and my voice faltered when I had to lead a meeting even though they called me Producer.  That instinct to hang back and keep my voice down doesn’t do anyone in this role service, so I had to continue to push myself to be confident, strong, have the tough conversations, and stand up for both the folks that work for me and the ones I work for.  I had to learn that my instincts are to be trusted.  That I should have faith in my ideas while also being open to the fact that I can absolutely be wrong and admitting such was not weakness but indeed strength.  It’s my job to nurture the best ideas into the light, no matter where they come from.   While I’ll never stop learning day by day how to do all this better, at almost forty, I feel worthy to stand and lead my team and represent my company and products with confidence.

I wanted to be outdoorsy.  I used to joke that I was the embodiment of the meme, y’know, the one that says “I’m outdoorsy, as in, I like drinking on patios”.  I learned to love and revel in the elements.  I will still complain incessantly about mosquitos, but it doesn’t stop me because I have the best mosquito hat with me.  I’ve learned to embrace the sweat and the exhaustion of our brutal summers.  I’ve found a cheeky smile in the chill of a run in the coldest weather Austin has to offer.  I’ve found beauty in the scenery of the barren trees and the scorching noonday sun as well as the temperate falls and the overly beautiful spring days filled with wildflowers.  I find peace and joy both in the woods and underneath the waves, in ways that I can’t describe to someone that remains indoors.  I find utter quiet and stillness in nature at almost forty and I can’t imagine a life without now.

I wanted to stop being so one-dimensional.  I had already made strides into two-dimensional-ness by thirty with both work and also sport.   Honestly, who could fault me for having a job and also a hobby?  However, it became pretty apparent halfway through this decade that it wasn’t enough for me.  Once we had a shakeup at work, it rocked my world.  I wanted to make sure I had a plan, one which at this particular moment, I have no immediate timeline to enact, but it makes me much more confident that at almost forty, I have about seventeen different business plans, some with the proper certifications and all with much more knowledge than I had in my early thirties.

I sorely missed my creativity.  Even when I had the opportunity finally to delve into it more at work, I realized that also wasn’t enough.  Many of my previous hobbies I stopped in my twenties and early thirties because I was scared of not being good enough with them.  I’ve had to work to bust through those barriers one by one but I can now say that I’ve picked back up with most of the creative pursuits that meant a lot to me as my younger self: writing (actually putting words together I care about, sometimes deeply), painting, photography, singing and music, and I’ve dabbled in making movies as well.  I have to keep catching myself saying, “ugh, I’m almost forty and I’m still not good at this, why am I still trying” but still I persist.  I have to remind myself that the joy is in the process, and as Jake the Dog says, “Sucking at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”

So, forty.  I’ve been trying it on for size for the last few months.  I’m not thirty-nine again or thirty-nine and three hundred and some days, I’ve been forty for a while in my mind and I actually quite like it.  

Forties are the decade where I let the unbridled confidence shine.   I’m sick of playing small and masking my intelligence and capabilities.  I don’t give a flying fuck anymore of my perception of how it makes anyone else feel.  I want to use the big words and the strong thoughts and the swelling emotions in the way that makes me the best human I can be and make the poetry and magic.   I’m ready to tell the haters to take a backseat to the cheerleaders and just GO FOR IT, whatever IT may mean at the time.

Forties are the decade where I will fire walk confidently into external criticism.  I’m tired of not pursuing opportunities or paths that can improve me as a person because the haters in my head deem me not worthy to even begin to tread the path.  If something excites me, and threatens to develop me as a person, I’ll let someone else tell me I’m not worthy instead of having that come from the dark recesses of my own brain. I’ll be open to trying and failing and getting back up and going for it again and again if it’s something I really want, instead of convincing myself I don’t actually want it simply because it’s safe and nice and easy to not try hard.

Forties are the decade I will lay it all on the line on the race course.  I will not show up to a start line indifferent and apathetic, I will shed all my defenses and pursue each opportunity as a true offensive exercise, and I will experience each battle to my fullest.  If circumstances lead me to less than excellent performances, I won’t let it shake my confidence.  Forty is not the time anymore for running scared anymore, hoping either someone else, or mostly my own head won’t catch me, it’s the decade for running those bitches down until I literally give out or find the finish line, victorious either way because I gave everything.

Forty is the year I become the person who my inner bard wants me to be.  I wish to build on my confidence and courage, discover what it means to live with vulnerability and uncover what it means to really be who am I am and what I am meant to become in the next decade.  

Deep thoughts now cease.  Time to drink some whiskey and eat some tacos to celebrate the changing of the decades!

Swords, Shame Monsters, and Too Many Analogies

Guys.  Guys… GUYS!  Holy crap it’s been busy over here.

And all I am is a girl, standing in front of a bicycle, wanting to go playyyyy…

However, I like to make time to do at least a quick weekly check in, and I don’t want to break that habit, so here’s some stream of consciousness fun-and-games for posterity about January and what’s next.

Athleting:

While I had almost no leadup to my two races in two weeks, pushing that hard mentally seven days apart took a bit of a toll on my motivation for training after.  My brain needed and felt like it deserved a tiny little “offseason”, so I’ve taken the last two weeks fairly light.  Last week, all I did was ride my bike three times at no pace which could be considered fast.  Fast forward to today, Thursday, and I’ve swam ONCE on Monday and I’ve had my running stuff laid out since then, ready to go, and no dice.  Hoping to break that streak today, but the struggle has been real, y’all.

I’m not stressing about it, though.  My first triathlon this year is May 5th, and I actually plan to mostly soldier through the full season this year without much of a mid-season break.  I will still obviously periodize my training with shifting focus as the months go on, and schedule in recovery weeks, but I don’t plan on any extended month long breaks like I’ve planned in the past.  This means I’m not in a huge hurry to pursue peak form in March or anything, so this lazing around in early February is just fine. 

Next week this changes.  While I’m not ready to sharpen the sword just yet, it’s now time to mold the clay (how many different analogies can I use today? let’s find out!).  Two three-week periods of lifting heavy (hypertrophy) and then heavier (maximum strength) with a week rest in between did me was so beneficial last year I plan to repeat it.  My main focus in February and March will be lifting 3xweek, and swim/bike/run (1-2 short sessions of each per week) will supplement this, rather than the opposite the rest of the year.

Of course when the weather is amazing I’ll duck out for a smile paced ride with my camera, but not at the expense of picking up and putting down heavy things.

The Scale:

January was a rough start to the year, I did *okay* the first two weeks, and then racing always throws a wrench in the diet, and then a camping weekend… let’s just say I have made no progress.  I think I’ve done well enough that I’m not backsliding further, but I’m not quite back to that consistently under 170 where I was in early December.  I have yet to transfer everything to trendweight (busy and also, if it doesn’t change maybe my weight doesn’t change? is that how it works?) but it really helped me last year so I really need to do that.

Definitely haven’t gained everything back I lost, but it needs to trend down now, kthx…

But, I’m back, baby.  Since Monday, I’ve had a really good streak with my eating habits, and I’ve declared February a month of no deserts.  Everyone and their mother (and literally my mother as well) is trying to eff this up for me, but I will just take their offerings, put them in my freezer, and break them out when I’m at a higher training volume.

So, the plan and the goal is the same as it ever was.

  • 1500 calories per day, slightly less on days I can get away with it, to account for 1-2 days closer to 2000.
  • Mostly snap kitchen meals, supplemented with perfect fit meals since they are a little different/cheaper, with a small amount of bath cooking when I’m motivated to do so.
  • Salads for my mid-afternoon snack so I get in ALL THE VEGGIES (since the prepared meals are small portions, they’re not very veggie heavy).
  • Watch the booze calorie creep – but this is the year I’ve accepted that if I am to only allow myself one splurge overall, it’s probably going to be whiskey.  I just need to make sure it fits in my plan 1-2 times a week.

I know that my weight is collectively what I have done in the last month, and I haven’t been kind to myself.  I’ve been eating things I shouldn’t (and slacking on eating the things I should like those mid-afternoon salads), and probably more importantly, I haven’t been a good sleeper.  I *think* life is starting to calm down a little bit, and I’m hoping that my idiot nights of laying awake thinking about (mostly good exciting but still) stuff will be fewer and further between.

Between lifting and REALLY BUCKLING DOWN FOR REALS in February, I think the scale and I might start being BFFs again.

Life/Deep Thoughts:

Over the last few months, work has provided me a great growth opportunity (sadly without the title, YET, but let’s focus on the good parts).  Essentially, this is the thing I’ve wanted to do since I started here almost twelve years ago, and have gotten to do in smaller quantities as I’ve scratched and fought for it, but finally it’s all happening.  Sort of.  However, I really have to fight for this one since I have to forge my own path here and it takes ALL THE CONFIDENCE AND COURAGE I have built up thus far.

At a crossroads.  Literally.

The self-study I’ve done and have continued to do in the background on these ideals has helped me immensely with this.  I feel like I’m walking a tightrope with no net, one hundred feet above a pit full of hungry sharks, but instead of terrifying it’s exhilarating and exciting and I love the way it makes my emotions swirl, but I also recognize that it is indeed DANGEROUS and RISKY.  This time last year I might have shied away from this, but I spent the 2018 seeking out the dark places, and believing in myself enough to take what I wanted with the tip of my sword.  It’s a different me situation right now, and I’m quite good with dangerous.  It’s miles above boring.

I have about 2031537 essays I want to write about Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly and I’m 25% through the book.  I knew this would be a game changer, but I didn’t realize to what degree.  It’s definitely contributing to my sleepless nights but in a way that’s starting to connect and codify a lot of disparate thought fragments, so it’s worth it.  It’s made me feel a lot less weird about some of the things I’ve been cranking on in the old noggin’ lately. 

I will never think about vulnerability and shame the same way.  Her writing shows me the reasons why I have turned away from putting my full heart and soul into racing in the past.  It makes sense why I can say “I want to be a published author” and fully believe it, while simultaneously spending almost a year ignoring the draft I’ve written and spinning up other projects instead. 

I’m terrified of being vulnerable.  I’m not a weak person, and I believe in myself, but for things I really care about, I tend to keep them close to my vest.  My writing is good if no one else can read it and cut me to pieces with criticism.  My singing voice is great if no one else can hear it.  I explored that feeling a lot HERE before I actually knew what it was.  As I wrote the words it sounded super stupid, but now I know that’s the shame monster coming out to attack.

The shame monster says “who are you to dress like this”, and I give it this look.

Fear of shame dictates how I hold back sometimes.  If I share that I’m really going for it during a race, and then I blow up or just mentally fizzle out miles from the finish, what will people think of me?  “Oh, there she goes, talking big about her racing and then just failing again and again, yawn.”  If I share the deeper, more vulnerable thoughts I have on social media, what if it gets no attention?  Even worse, what if someone posts a haterade comment?  What if people wordlessly think I’m weird and unlovable?

The crazy thing is that I LOVE other people’s deep thoughts and long, personal posts conveying who they really are.  I value people that share themselves more freely.  However, as it is with most everyone, vulnerability is AWESOME in others and TERRIBLE in ourselves.

So, I’m working on being the courage and confidence I see and want to see in other people.  It’s heavy work, but each time I push myself further into the danger zone which is vulnerability, it feels REFRESHING and REAL and EXCITING and I think I’m even ready to combat my first haters if they show up outside of my own head. Maybe. 🙂

In the wake of all of that noise, I ignored most of the way-too-large to do list I wanted to do in January.  I needed much more downtime than I expected, and it’s okay.  The organizational projects will be there when I’m motivated to do so.  At some point, my book will come back into focus, when I’ve done the sidework I need to do to be ready for it.  I’m thoroughly enjoying tooling around with some different writing styles and it’s all towards the good and betterment of my command of the written word. 

I think my February focus will be to take the stress off myself here.  I would really, really, really like to complete one small organizational project, it will make me feel like a better human.  However, I’m going to leave my hobbies up to my own whims.  If little writing projects and reading and photography take up most of my time, that’s totally fine with me.  I need a lack of clutter in the To Do List and some freedom to focus on whatever it is that brings me down the unclear and unpredictable path I need to walk right now.

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