Adjusted Reality

Now that I’ve spent some time pouring out some of the negative, let me put a more positive spin on things.

Y’know what doesn’t suck?  My commute is now an excuse to ride bikes for 1.5-2 hours instead of drive for 40-50 mins. 

I always forget what it’s like to be a person and not just an athlete training for an event after months and months of doing that.  While it’s a lot of work, it’s also very simple.  Checking off the training schedule, eating every five minutes, and maintaining the rest of my life to the point where my friends and family don’t feel completely abandoned and my job doesn’t fire me.  There is a zen in ignoring every ‘effing thing else in the world.

One thing I need to face is that I’m kind of sort of training again even though I don’t feel like it.  Doing workouts to just survive a century ride and sprint triathlons don’t feel like much in comparison to earlier this year, but when I add everything up, two out of the last three weeks have been approaching double digits and this week will likely be the same. 9-10 hours a week is actually equivalent to the beginning of 70.3 training (this is just much less intense).

So, here’s some sunshine.  My legs are starting to come back, y’all.  Definitely on the bike.  I’m generally stuck to my husband’s wheel again like glue and urging him to go faster if I don’t pass him (except on steep hills where I’m convinced he has a hidden motor somewhere).  The swim and the run are just showing inklings of improvement from rock bottom, but it makes sense because I’m mostly abandoned them to bike and work on strength.  We cannot be good at everything all the time.  I’m looking forward to retraining my legs for speed but first I had to recover, and now I need to build my endurance back.  Working on it!

I race this weekend, and I’m not even going to bother with a long, drawn out anything.  My goal is to have fun with my friends and teammates and enjoy maxing out my heart rate as much as I can for about 90 minutes, because I haven’t had that luxury in a while trying to stick close-ish to MAF heart rate.  We’ll see!  I have no expectations because I’m not really swimming, running, and I haven’t spent much time on my tri bike.

Last week:

• Running – 8 miles, all approximately 12 min/miles at MAF HR
• Bike – 100 miles on the dot – one work commute of about 24 miles, and one hot hilly long ride of 76 miles.
• Swim – 1600yd around the lake in about 34 minutes.
• Weights – 1 double dozen (2xall the other exercises except the 55 pushups), 1 DDR session

Seriously, I’m listing this out and can’t believe it’s over 10.5 hours, but it is.

This week:

• Two bike commutes
• One double brick workout (10/1/10/1)
• One pool swim, one lake pre-race swim
• 2xweights
• 1xDDR
• Race!

This is looking like about 9 hours.  One of those swims is in jeopardy if it keeps with the raining tonight, but I’m good with it either way.

The rule is: anything eaten while working out does not count negatively against diet quality.  I’m not sure Matt Fitzgerald anticipated athletes biking for 5.5 hours fueling only by fast food and pizza. (by the way, that temp wasn’t even the hottest part of the ride – which was 106 feels like 110)

Let’s start with the nubmers and go from there…

• Weight: 188.7 (+0.6) lbs
• Avg cal per day: 2091 (+91) calories
• Avg deficit per day: -1014 (+142) calories
• Macros: 78 (+16)g fat, 202 (-1)g carbs, 106 (+5)g protein, 32 (+8)g fiber

Besides the weight going up and the fat bomb over the weekend, the other numbers look ok.  The deficit is definitely harder to manage when you’re doing stupid things like 5.5 hour long rides.  I was 2000 in the hole on Saturday and then 2000 over on Sunday.  It actually worked out pretty well overall though it made me reaaaaaal cranky about my weight Monday and Tuesday.

DQ score: Monday: 26.  Tuesday: 25.  Wednesday: 24. Thursday: 20.  Friday: 26. Saturday: 10.  Sunday: 13.  Average comes out to approximately 20.5 (out of 32).

Hey, look at this, this is WAYYYY better than what I was doing.  What I need to do now is to bump up those weekend numbers a little more with good nutrition before I subtract the points for the inevitable alcohol and junk food splurges, but this is a good start.

There’s a least a little sunshine here.  I’m frustrated with how I look and feel and the number output on the scale, but I do know that last year I needed like a month of true consistency before I saw any results, so I will stay at it and be patient.  My goals this month:

• Eat a giant rainbow salad every day (even weekends) to get my four servings of fruit and vegetables easily.
• Eat fruit and nuts as snacks instead of crap (and on weekends, BEFORE I reach for anything that’s crap).
• Aim to get my diet score over 20 every day (even on the weekends).
• Measure out my drinks BEFORE I drink them at home.  It honestly worked SUPER well when I did it.  I just got lazy and didn’t do it on the weekend and then had more than I expected.
• PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I PUT IN MY MOUTH ON THE WEEKENDS.  Sigh.  This is my downfall.  I can be perfect all week and once I’m not on a routine schedule, it all goes to hell in a handbasket.  There’s obviously some wiggle room for fun food and drinks on days where I burn 5000 calories like Saturday but also that means I have more than enough calories to get in all the good stuff before I spend the remainder on booze and junk food.

Are you sensing that weekends are my downfall?  Now that my weekdays are pretty rockin’ with the fruit and veggies and whole grains and nuts, I just need to bring the plan to Saturday and Sunday too.

This has to has to has to has to has to work.  I can’t even figure out how if I ate this well consistently and minded my calories to keep a deficit like this through August, that I could not start taking off weight unless the universe is absolutely and truly against me.

I call this one “Works in Progress (and a cat)”.

Dear me.  You have five months until the end of the year.  Stop stressing about the to do list so much.  Love, me.

That week where I wake up and realize I should be a well rounded person is always fun.  Especially when I’m trying to do it while work is being extra demanding and I’m in denial that I’m actually training again for just a little 100 mile ride (yes, I know I’m ridiculous).  So, while I want everything to be just done already I’m trying to take a step back, look at the big picture, and chill the eff out.  It may only last a few days, but I’m feeling better about things right now so we’ll go with that.

Let’s talk about the start of last week though.  We purchased a shed from a road show in Costco.  It was an amazing deal, the lady who took our order was super nice, and assured us they installed on weekends and it would be about a week or two.  When the company called to schedule, they absolutely DID NOT work weekends, and it would be almost two months.

THEN the morning of the shed install, they were supposed to be there at nine.  9:20 rolls around, and my husband calls and the guy hasn’t even shown up to work yet to pick up the materials to build the shed.  And they are in San Antonio, over an hour away.  When work was a 10 minute trip this would be no big deal, but now that it’s 25, we could not just run home to let them in.  Instead, we arranged with work that we would come in later and spent the morning cleaning out the office and the office closet.  It actually worked out fine, but it was quite stressful at first.  I just don’t understand how someone would think it was appropriate to be 2.5 hours late and not call.  Sigh.

Last week’s goals:

• Caulking the shed (DONE).
• Painting the shed (first coat, still need to do the second and trim).
• Transport all the things into the shed that are supposed to be in the shed (in process but not done).
• Getting my online stuff set up with my doctor (in process, I’ve sent the fax twice with no response, so I suppose the next step is to call).
• Finish the second half of the chapter I started (didn’t even touch it).
• Bonus points: office work (YES! due to that impromptu morning at home care of tardy shed installers, we actually got two hours of work done on this)

So, since last week was obviously too ambitious, my goal is to finish that before I move onto more goals.

• Second coat of paint and trim on the shed.
• Put all the things in the shed that need to go in the shed.
• Clean up the workout room now that the only thing left in there is workout things.  Doesn’t have to be perfect, but the floor should be clean and there should be room for the treadmill and two trainers.
• If I have not heard back from the doctor by Friday, actually use the phone and call and find out what’s up.  If I have to use the phone, also inquire about my ears and when I might be able to get in one morning.
• This is already in progress, but my goal is to spend at least 5 hours focused on my book this week.  1h45 down!  Then, I can sort of plan how long it should take me based on what I get done vs my plan.  Specifics should help me stay motivated versus just the general “I should work on my book at some point for some random amount of time”.

Notice the office is not even on this list.  I think if I can knock the workout room and the shed off my To Do list in one fell swoop this weekend (which is absolutely reasonable), I will feel much better about life and the office work can resume next week.

The next few days are filled with fun stuff too – tomorrow our game night resumes for the next chapter after some downtime, and Friday we have tickets for one of the last showings of Wonder Woman (yay, finally!).

What’s the most awesome thing you did in the last week?  Tell me your accomplishments and cast some more sunshine on my day!

Back to life, back to reality.  Plenty of things to catch up on, so let’s roll!

Unintentional planking cleavage and rainbow planks coming full circle last Thursday.

You’ll hear “it was my first week” a lot in this post.  While I always try to take care to not overwhelm myself with changes, a new start sometimes does provide the opportunity to change your routine a little more than normal without it feeling like a hassle.

Last week was my first week with a workout schedule that is not just a suggested whisper.  It’s not x-weeks until a big race, it’s not a build to anything impressive, it’s just time to start doing something more regularly than just whenever I feel like and hitting all 3 sports (and returning to lifting heavy things, even if those heavy things right now are my body).

Ironman has completely fubar’d my perspective, because in six weeks I’m going to ride a full century, and I’m still sticking with “not training for anything big”.  I suppose the difference here in perspective is that I’m training to SURVIVE it, not hit a number, not to swim before or run after, and I did it plenty of times earlier this year.  And it’s flat.

This weekend I rode 63 miles with about 3k of climbing, with the second half in feels like 100+ (and ended in actual 100+) temps and full sun.  While I was complaining a LOT about the heat, there’s still a little bit of Ironman left in my legs.  Besides the deathball trying to stomp on my lungs all day, my legs felt remarkably… fine.  This did not feel like a long ride.  If it would have been 70 degrees I would have been smiling the whole time and been ready to ride it all over again after.  I spent the next day completely active and I had no real residual fatigue.  I think I’ll be able to survive a few more hours on HHH day just fine.

First, though, in three weeks I’m going to race another sprint triathlon, and I do not have high hopes on having any sort of breakthrough performance, but I am open to it.  My joke is that to podium, I need to come off the bike in 1st place and hopefully not let more than two people catch me with my sloooooow run.  But that’s a pretty honest assessment of my fitness right now.  When I ride with cyclists, I feel like the low side of intermediate, but apparently that’s pretty good for recreational triathletes because I typically place pretty highly in my age group on the bike leg.  My running is no better than it was last month, it maybe even be worse if that’s possible, but my hope is that some residual endurance carries over from increased biking and helps out there.

That being said, here’s last week:

• Run: 3 miles MAF run.  Skipped one 2-3 mile run.
• Bike: 14 miles easy, 1.5 hour cycle class intervals, 63 mile El Diablo Poker ride
• Swim: 1000m in the pool.
• Strength: 2x Oiselle Dozen sessions (I’ll do these until they feel easy and then maybe start working with weights).

This doesn’t sound like a lot but it amounted to 9.25 hours.  That’s plenty.

This week:

• Run: 1 hour run (as close to MAF as possible)
• Bike: 2 rides.  Hopefully one with some sort of effort.
• Brick: Bike/Run/Bike/Run at the gym
• Swim: 1 x 20-30 mins, 1 x slightly longer because it sounds fun.
• Strength: 2x Dozen

This is wayyyy less training than my brain says I should be doing but it adds up to 7 hours and that’s also plenty so we’ll just move on.

All the veggies.  All of them.

This week was a first FULL week of trying to do all the new things:

Since I no longer have my own mini-fridge at work, I’m packing my lunch into coolers.  While I was a little cranky at the extra prep time at home, I’ve been doing it while prepping dinner the night before so it hasn’t taken *that* long and it’s really convenient to not have to spend 10 minutes in the break room cutting veggies.

Part of that packing is a giant salad with all the veggies every day with avocado oil and vinegar dressing.  This is AMAZING, you guys.  I eat my lunch, whatever it is, a soup or a sandwich or something, and then for the rest of the afternoon I end up grazing on this thing.  Previously, I’d usually end up having some produce go bad, but last week it was all gone by THURSDAY.  This week I’m taking it a step further and making sure my salad has a full RAINBOW going on.  My salad today had romaine and carrots and cauliflower and purple cabbage and shaved brussels sprouts and beets and tomato and cucumber and green olives and goat cheese.  And I’m going to guess it’s about 6 cups of veggies total.

I’m also trying to push fruit and nuts as snacks.  I have a serving of fruit for breakfast, and sometimes, that’s all I’d have before.  I’m trying to keep around at least 2 other small fruits.  I’ve been starting on them as soon as I’m done with the giant bowl of veggies.  For some reason, I gave up nuts unintentionally, and I’ve reversed that decision.  These are now my salty snacks at work.  I have been working my way back with one serving per day and trying to get back to 2-3 some days.

With this, and my normal yogurt or smoothie for breakfast, I’ve not had to adjust my actual lunch and dinner that much.  I’ve been attempting to stick to whole grains instead of whatever sounds the best whenever possible, but I’m not trying to be a complete crazy-person about it.

These all seem to flow pretty naturally.  Somewhere further down the list is booze – bringing my intake closer to the recommendation of 7 drinks per week.  This one is tougher.  I can avoid cake and chips and white bread decently when I put my mind to it because it’s just food.  It’s a momentary pleasure.  Whiskey and wine are my stress relief.  Not my ONLY stress relief by any means, but definitely one of them.  If I could have only one vice, that’s it.  I was all proud of myself that I had cut back last week and then Sunday I had a few unplanned drinks and yesterday I stayed up until FOUR AM polishing off a big bottle of wine with my husband planning and dreaming about vacations.

This is probably a whole separate thing with deeper issues and feeling a little stuck in some areas of life right now.  Wouldn’t it be great if we all were brave enough to do all the things we wanted to do and damn the consequences?  It sounds so simple, but it feels like jumping off a cliff, and I think I’d be less scared of the ACTUAL THING than the metaphor.  That’s a whole book post in and of itself, but for now, I’ll just be happy that I’m eating healthier food and let this sleeping dog lie until I’m ready to wake it.

Anyhoo, here are the numbers:

• Weight: 188 (+2) lbs <- this is a bit inflated due to TOM.  Earlier last week it was 186-187 but I instantly gained 3 lbs that are just coming off now.
• Avg cal per day: 2062 (+251) calories
• Avg deficit per day: -907 (+225) calories
• Macros: 66 (+8)g fat, 199 (+29)g carbs, 100 (+10)g protein, 29 (+0)g fiber

Suuuuper solid by the overall numbers.  I’ve been making a conscious effort to increase my good fats, so I’m not that worried about that number going up a bit.  Let’s delve deeper.

DQ score: Monday: 25.  Tuesday: 21.  Wednesday: 18. Thursday: 25.  Friday: 16. Saturday: 2.  Sunday: 15.  Average comes out to approximately 17.4 (out of 32).  Much better than before (which was 13).  This was three great days, three good/ok days, and one crappy day – but that crappy day was after a 4.5 hour ride.  *shrug*  I’ll take it.  A four point increase is plenty good for me right now.

Hot AF, but we got it done!

Zliten and I had some differing opinions about what’s left to do in the office.  In his eyes, the room just needed a few touches and it was ready to start being a room to do work.  In my view, it’s got the majority of a full weekend left before I could even BEGIN to concentrate on creating anything in there.  I think we’ve come to a compromise about what’s left to do and we’re hoping to tackle it in the next few weekends.

#1 – finish getting everything in the office that’s not supposed to be in the office proper – namely the leaning tower of bookcase, all the extra monitors, all the storage boxes, hats, other junk.

#2 – finish getting everything in the office that is actually SUPPOSED to be there – the sewing cart, the monitors in the right spots and getting rid of the old ones, etc.

#3 – clean out the closet – maybe not completely, but enough that we can store everything we need to in there and close the doors (and perhaps have a little extra space so the next time we acquire something, it will have somewhere to go instead of on the floor or cluttering a surface).

So, yeah.  Clean floor.  Closed doors.  I’ll call it done (for this offseason) and then we can move onto the next stage which is dedicating a certain amount of hours in there actually working on projects.

The shed comes in a week.  I’m SO excited for this, it’s been so long since we ordered it and a lot of tetris pieces fall into place once we have that storage.  Once it’s built, we can move all the random things we have in the workout room out to the shed and start setting that room up as well.  The dream of four useable bedrooms is within my grasp.  This means future offseasons can be dedicated to things that are much more FUN than uncluttering full rooms of our house… maybe… someday…

Last week, we did these things:

• It’s finally bulk trash week, so we fully cleaned out our side yard and got the camper in it’s backyard home. Ahhhhhh…. we’ve wanted to do that for months!
• We finished getting all the camping junk and the old office junk out of the garage so there’s space for the Xterra again.

This week’s goals:

• Hosting people for our second game night while staying chill AF instead of being neurotic hostess.
• More work in the office.  I’d be happy if we can get the in-office surfaces and the entire floor clean.  That would step #1 done!
• Getting the DDR pad out in time for the party on Saturday.
• I want to be in a lake at some point this week.
• Clothes shopping.  All I want to wear lately are long dresses/skirts, so I’m going to get more of them so I stop wearing the same 5 over and over.
• Finish How to Win Friends and Influence People.  I’m almost there!

And that’s plenty of goals.  I’m out.  Peace!