Adjusted Reality

Tag: Food Page 10 of 27

Baby steps

On May 22, 2017

I went and did things on a boat last week.

Let me show you how much it sucked.

And we’ll get to that, but now that today marks 30 days since doing THIS THING, it’s time to take baby steps away from being a slothy mc slotherpants. It’s Monday, so it’s time for some goals up in here. However, just like it’s a bad idea to go directly from tallying how many pieces of bread and butter you ate as an appetizer before your appetizer before your second appetizer at dinner (answer: a lot) to eating chicken and quinoa, we’ll be taking some time to get there from here.

Oddly enough (or not so oddly with the three days at the gym and then three days of between 2-4 hours chasing fish with cameras in the water), I seem to have stabilized around the same weight I was at before I left. I think I’ve *finally* figured out how to not gain the 5-7 lbs typical on a cruise. That doesn’t mean I’ve got all the answers to life because I’m still looking at about ~35 lbs I’d like to be rid of, but at least I haven’t doubled that in a week somehow. Baby steps.

So, this week looks like kind of a slow start because these were a lot of things I was doing before. At least kind of. But for now, going back from *margaritas the size of my head* to *things that feel like normal healthy life* is plenty enough. This is the week of baby steps.

You thought I was kidding right there. #senorfrogsdrinkingteam

Movement goals:

Unfuck my poor back. On day #2 of the cruise my back started hurting and you wouldn’t have guessed it, but a bunch of whisky on the rocks as painkiller and traipsing around in heels all night did not help things. Day 3-6 it was out of alignment and SUPER cranky when I was not horizontal (swimming or laying) or actively stretching it. I have a chiropractor appointment today, but since it’s been out for a while, I expect it will not be immediately better and there will be some muscle carnage. The focus of this week is to stretch and roll for 10-15 mins per day, and do anything else she wants me to do to make it happy.

Status quo. In this light, I’m going to lay off the weights and running and anything serious for ONE more week. I plan to ride bikes on Wednesday and maybe once more this weekend and swim as much as I can and MAYBE do some bodyweight stuff or yoga or something fun like playing in the lake later in the week if I feel better. Or none of this if I don’t feel up to it.

10k+ steps per day. Normally on cruises this is no problem at all but for some reason, we walked much less than normal (perhaps the back thing, perhaps our room was more conveniently located, perhaps I took my watch off sometimes when I wanted to look fancy so it didn’t count all my steps). I definitely need to make sure this doesn’t fall off because this is a big part in weight loss when I’m not training as much. Steps matter!

Fun fact – it counts as training if you wear your IM shirt to the pool even if you don’t actually swim laps.

Consumption Goals:

On the record. I’ve finished my Ironman. I’ve had some downtime where I enjoyed myself a bit. Now, it’s time to get serious about trying to get down to *race weight*. To this end, tracking food each meal when I eat it (not 2 days later) and daily logging on the scale starts TODAY. This week, we’ll start with the goal to eat approximately 500-750 calories less than fitbit says I have burned. If I do better than that, great.

Water water water. At least 4×24 oz bottles before I leave work for the day. I’m really bad about this if I don’t pay attention and I think on the cruise I lapsed on this pretty hard. When beer and bottled water cost the same in Mexico….you know what I’m going to choose, right?

Detox… but just a little. Booze must fit into both the parameter above (calorie deficit goals) and below (sleep goals). Let’s not go crazy with any further restrictions. It IS Memorial Day weekend. 🙂

Beer 4$. Water 4$. I choose beer.

Life Goals:

All the shut eye. I’m going to say 8+ hours of sleep a night is something I’ll put out there as a priority this week. I’m feeling a bit run down after playing hard on vacation and my own bed felt SO AMAZING last night. So, this week, I make sure I get lots of sleep.

Non-fiction reading. While I’m relaxing in bed, I’ve got a few books I’d like to work on getting through (the big yellow Maffetone endurance training book, finally cracking something regarding online marketing and PR, etc). For the next month, I probably need to hold off on reading more “marines in space” books even if they are actual physical paper books and not on my kindle.

The office. I’m not saying we need to finish it, but so many other things hinge on getting this one space cleaned out that I want us to spend no less than *THREE* hours on it this weekend. I would love to be able to move the table that’s been sprawled over the side of the guest bed for a year into there.

The kind of non-fiction reading I *don’t* want to do. Seriously. We’re a joke everywhere.

And while I have so many other things on my list (financial planner! doctor! hiking! comedy club! creating a business plan! book outline!), these are the things I’m willing to tackle this week. Laying out ALL THE THINGS like #projectspring last year seems overwhelming and exhausting right now. I’ll focus a little smaller and revisit the plan again in 7 days.

So I ask… what’s YOUR plan for the next 7 days?

8 reasons why being a prissy pants and a triathlete don’t mix

By Quix

On May 11, 2017

In Uncategorized

Triathlon is super fun and awesome, but it’s definitely not a world for someone who doesn’t like getting dirty. Here are eight things you’ll have to get over if you want to triathlon.

A lovely long row of porta potties is a triathlete’s best friend around 6am race day…

#1 – Porta potties. You’re going to have to use them at some point. They may not be QUITE as bad as the ones baking all day at an outdoor music festival but by the time the gun goes off, they’re usually pretty, erm, full and usually out of toilet paper. Also, there’s not generally a place to wash your hands after. That’s what the lake is for.

#2 – The gauntlet of urine, aka, the swim. Speaking of the lake, the open water swim is definitely not for the weak of heart. Besides the fact that you’re going to get hit, kicked, and shoved, you’ll also probably (accidentally) drink some of it. And people have been peeing in there all day. You might be swimming in a slipstream of pee at any point.

About to go swim in a lake with a non-zero amount of pee in it and I’m doing just fine, thanks!

#3 – Public indecency. You’ll have to stick your hand down your pants to apply something called Deez Nutz or Hoohah Glide or Butt Butt’r before you bike and depending on how long you’re riding bikes, during it. You’ll learn what a snot rocket is and how to properly do them without (regularly) getting boogers on yourself. In the Ironman, you’ll get buck nekkid to change in front of hundreds of people in the changing tent. If you have any modesty, go ahead and throw it out the window right now.

#4 – Anti-beauty queen. If you washed your hair every time you worked out, it would fall out. So, get ready to accept SWEAT as a valid hair product. Also, since you’re going to be showering at the gym (and at work) more than your house, you’ll need to keep your beauty routine short and to a minimum. People will probably recognize you better with wet hair than dry hair after a while.

Laying in a park eating a cold cheese sandwich about 50 miles into a bike ride. This is fine.

#5 -Jack’s utter lack of give-a-shit about appearances. You’ll get to the point where you just DO NOT CARE what you look like to anyone else. Goggle eyes and looking like a drowned rat coming out of the swim. Pain faces on the run. I’ve laid down on the side of the road and shoved food in my mouth a non-zero amount of times in the last year. You’ll walk into a restaurant sweaty in your clippy cloppy bike shoes, and full kit for a meal and a beer (though it helps to have your whole team with you there). You’ll learn to own your spandex proudly even in inappropriate places.

#6 – Body problems. You are going to have a lot of conversations about peeing, pooping, stomach aches, blisters, saddle sores, crotch pain, chafing, road rash, and probably other disgusting things that I haven’t even thought of. I happily use the bathroom behind the bushes if need be. Also, the likelihood is that sometime in your career, you’re going to poop your pants. It’s not happened to me yet, but I’ve had a LOT of close calls so it’s probably going to happen someday. I’ve made peace with this.

These will absolutely replace your Jimmy Choos. Or in my case, the Shoe Carnival sale specials.

#7 – Say goodbye to cute shoes. Heels will not be worth it anymore. I have so many cute shoes that I just look at and sigh while I choose to wear either running shoes, flat super padded sandals, or flat boots on the daily because I cannot be arsed to walk around on sore and tired legs in anything that doesn’t feel like a pillow giving my feet a hug.

#8 – “She gets too hungry for dinner at 8”. Yep, Frankie is right. It’s hard to coordinate meals with other people. I need to eat, I need to eat a lot, and I need to eat right now, and I’m not going to be polite about it. If you mess with any of these things, we’re probably going to need to have some words and you’ll see my nasty side. Also, I’m going to be probably be picky about how healthy it is. I want a giant side of vegetables, some whole grain options, and some protein that isn’t covered in a bunch of fat. Unless I want the opposite of those things. And that can flip at any moment depending on the weather, my training, or my whim.

The one thing I will never just “get over” though? The early morning wakeups. This priss needs her beauty sleep.

What have YOU given up for sport or fitness?

Invisible Things

By Quix

On May 8, 2017

In Uncategorized

If something exists that bothers me, but I don’t really want to prioritize doing anything about it, I can usually make it disappear. This works on objects, like the dirty half spilled cat litter box in the garage that had been sitting there since when it was cold enough to put the cat inside at night.

Lumpy space princess is not a good look for me.

This also works on mental things as well – for example, during heavy training cycles, I can almost completely ignore the emotional attachment to what’s going on with the scale. Once you remove the “so there’s a few lumps but we’re going to go bike 100 miles today so who cares?” aspect about life, it’s really hard to not look in the mirror and be really negative and nasty to myself about it. I’m trying to be patient, I’m trying to be kind, but everything just feels so far away from where I want to be right now.

And oh, the patience part of it is SO HARD. At least when you’re doing a super tough multi-hour run, you have the direct power to progress it forward. You’re doing something. Right now, my body feels and looks like such a mess in so many ways it’s just not cool and the BEST thing I can do isn’t something, but NOT do something. I can NOT eat a bunch of crap and fill it with too much alcohol. I can NOT just jump back into multi-hour efforts and keep my workouts short.

That’s ok, I thought, I’ll just convert all that volume over to speed. Short and NOT so sweet. Then, I tried to do a splash and dash at the gym expo thingee and I was busting ass to keep my run speed in the 11s for 1 kilometer. ONE. I’ve ran marathons that felt less difficult at about the same pace. In fairness, this was after a little man kicked my ass in 45 minutes with some drumsticks in a class, I did a 750m all out row (3m13sec, not bad!), and then tried halfheartedly to do some standup paddleboard yoga on shaky and tired legs, but STILL. I honestly thought my garmin was broken.

Scenes from #pureaustinexpo17 – I want that bowl for breakfast EVERY DAY.

So, I really did spend all my cash on race day and now I’m living paycheck to paycheck and I need to calm my shit if I ever want to have a savings account again. This is SO different than last year’s offseason where I didn’t want to touch a bike for 2 months, I am just so mentally fired up to DO STUFF that it’s excruciating that my body is taking so long to get with the program. I’m unfairly comparing myself to where I was last year this time – after two months of offseason. I’ve now just passed two weeks.

One of the coaches at our gym also did IM Texas and looked at us crazy when we told her even the little we’ve been doing. She said she’s on pizza and beer for AT LEAST another two weeks. So, fine. I’m done with the pizza part of the equation, I need to watch what I’m eating because I refuse to gain any MORE weight, a reasonable, healthy human amount of light-moderate activity sounds like where I’m at right now. Walking for an hour. Riding bikes to work or on our recovery ride. Swimming a lap or two around the lake. Paddleboards and kayaks. Lighter strength workouts. Longer and harder efforts and I need to take some time apart, for our own good.

And I need to have faith that my body will let me know when it’s ready for more. It’s killing me to have my season end just as tri season is ramping up and watching my teammates and friends crush races just stokes the fire to get RECOVERED already and back up and out there. However, Saturday taught me it will not end well unless I give myself the time and space to do this the right way. It’s just hard and I feel like such a weenie.

At least I’m an Ironweenie.

So, last week I did these things:

One rowing/weights/stretching session (45m)
One 18 mile BSS ride (1h30m)
One mile swim in the lake (30m)
All the crap at the expo (2h30m)

I also walked at least 10k steps each day (an average of about 14.6k actually).

This is definitely the maximum effort I want to be at right now and I’ll probably be dialing it back a little bit this week. I’m not going to put up a plan because I’m not there yet, but I’m sure I’ll ride bikes a bit, I probably won’t be able to resist the lake being perfect right now at least once this week, I’ll continue to completely ignore running (we’re definitely not on speaking terms after Saturday), and if I feel good later in the week, some light strength work.

Let’s also talk about the realization about how that silly little sticks class kicked my ass. Of course I’m probably not going to do stuff like that regularly during season, but it opened my eyes a bit. Ironman training makes you super strong in so many ways, but it makes you so WEAK in others. If I want to be a more well rounded human and overly stronger, more stable, and functional athlete, I need to do things besides all the miles of run/bike/swim. To that end, I’m hoping to incorporate some of those types of activities that move my body in different ways over the next few months.

With the nutrition side of things, I’m feeling kind of the same way.

At least I’m cooking up some real foods now that have plants in them, so that’s a step in the right direction.

My mind is ready to cut calories down because oh my stars, I’m ready to start trying to shed some of this unfortunate weight, but I have to make sure I’m allowing myself to actually recover as well and trying to completely underfeed myself would not help me accomplish this end. I started tracking my food last week, and it went… okay. I managed to keep approximately a 5000 calorie deficit per fitbit with minimal pain and suffering and my weight stabilized at 189.5. My appetite is beginning to behave itself, with moments of rebellion.

I’m trying to stay away from a barrage of junk food, drinking plenty of water, and actually quite trying to slowly replace all the carbs all the time with more fruit and veggies, starting with snacks. I’m back to desert being described as something you have a small amount once or twice a week vs multiple times per day. I’ve had the same bag of pretzels for two weeks now and there are no other salty snacks around. My meals are similar, but I’m only eating three of them per day and I’m trying to gravitate towards the more filling ones for the calories because other than plant type snacks, that’s it for the day.

The last thing on the list is our friend alcohol. I was actually able to celebrate Cinqo de Mayo with tacos and margaritas (homemade for both so they were lower calorie) for the first time in years because I didn’t have some sort of crazy training reason I had to be up super early. It’s been nice to have a glass of wine here, a beer there, and not worry about how I was going to utterly fuck up tomorrow’s training. If I actually want to make weight loss progress, I’m going to have to ration this eventually, but we’re still in the “hang loose” phase of this particular adventure for another few weeks. Track and healthify the food, but enjoy some drinkies.

Sunday was a full on triathlon with volunteering, cleaning up, and a movie. T1 was chillin’ on the couch with a beer and T2 was dinner and some wine.

My mood and energy level definitely perked up a bit this week. There was gaming with friends. We went to go see a movie (Guardians of the Galaxy 2 – which I HIGHLY recommend and think might be my favorite Marvel movie so far). We volunteered at Rookie Tri. We had an early Mothers Day celebration with the in laws after busting our butts at the expo. The week before, I think I left the house ONCE on Saturday for a few hours but that was it for plans besides a recurring date with my couch and netflix. It was exactly what I needed, but it’s too pretty outside to make a habit of that!

We also reached the advanced beginner level of adulting! I didn’t get that haircut, but I was able to finally CLEAN THE EFFING CAR and we got it washed and I’m dropping it off tonight to be serviced. We finally made a Costco trip, and bought and installed outdoor lighting we’ve been talking about forever. Additionally, we did a pretty good job picking up of the house, and cleaned out and blew the leaves out of the garage. We cooked garlic shrimp pasta with asparagus and spinach, cilantro cajun turkey with rice and veggies, and chicken tacos.

Next week is all about moi. I can’t do much about my body feeling lumpy, inflamed, and bloated, but I can make myself the best version of me I can.

Haircut! …and after I get it done, consider using hairdye for the first time in about 15 years. Part of the BLEH I look terrible is my hair and the cut will probably take care of it, but part of me isn’t sure about the Frankenstein’s bride thing I have going on in the front with the grey streak.
Pluck my eye caterpillars.
Redo my toes and maybe even my nails.
Pick up after sun care stuff, because my beloved Clinique is almost out after 4 years of using it…

Maybe more if I get antsy but I’m definitely not ready to graduate to Intermediate level adulting just yet.

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The Aftermath

By Quix

On May 3, 2017

In Uncategorized

The week after the Ironman was not quite what I expected.

Always expect margaritas though…

I expected to be more tired and sore. Not to say that I wasn’t, but it was maybe like third-or-fourth-worst-sore-marathon level and not get-me-a-wheelchair level. Steps were hard for about 2 days, but that was it. I was more mentally out of it… the day after, I spent 4 hours sitting by the pool kind of staring off into space, not reading, talking much, or anything, just sort of existing. The extreme tireds caught up pretty quick once the caffiene in the coca cola, the race excitement, and the booze benders wore off. I have spent quite a few 12 hour+ nights in bed with reading and sleeping combined.

I expected to spend the week sort of in a happy, post-IM bubble. The day we got back, we had to say goodbye to our little old man schneider skink Lump. It wasn’t a surprise because he’s not been doing so well, but he went way downhill while we were gone and it was time. That, plus a bunch of other shitty shit happened last week and I felt like I needed a do-over. However, the weekend combined leisurely lunches out, getting a few things done that were nagging at me (but not too many things so it didn’t feel like a hassle), and a whole lot of vegging on the couch binge watching Netflix. We finally drank our post-race champagne on Sunday and I wore my damn medal and screamed YOU ARE AN IRONMAN a lot. I felt redeemed.

I expected to be a LOT hungrier. I definitely didn’t limit my portions and may have wanted a full ‘nother meal after my reasonably sized lunch two days after, but I felt less compelled to eat like an asshole because Ironman training actually let me kinda eat that way already. I actually had vegetables and fruits last week in decent quantities. By three days out, I split a burger between two meals because it was too much food. I know when I nail my nutrition in training I’m way less hungry afterward, so this is perhaps confirmation I did just that at the race.

Plenty of foods but I wore my wetsuit and my bike helmet as well.

I expected to want weeks away from my goggles, my bike, and my running shoes. We rode bikes with the group on Wednesday and it felt good, but 18 miles was PLENTY. We swam with the tri team in the lake on Friday, but once around the quarry (750m) was enough. 25 minutes on the cruiser to lunch and groceries on Saturday in the heat and the wind tuckered me out. The will is there, but the body is definitely saying that short bouts a couple times a week are the way to go.

I expected my knee to hurt more. It’s not been completely pain free, but since the day after, it’s hurt less than any point 2 weeks before the race. I have no idea what brought it on, like AT ALL, and I have no idea why doing an Ironman made it feel BETTER, but I’m still giving it enough space (read: no running or heavy lifting until after vacation) to repair itself.

I expected some weird body stuff, but not quite what I’ve experienced. I still feel like a bag of water, literally almost sloshy, STILL a week and a half later. The inflammation is real with this one, and this week I’m going to take steps to actually try and FIX it instead of probably aggravating it more with junk food and drinking beer and whiskey like water (and forgetting to actually drink water). I’m hoping its working it’s way out because I have to pee like ALLLLL the time and it’s getting old. Also – doing an Ironman makes you hair grow. Literally. I had an INSANE amount of stubble on my legs the day after, like a week’s worth, and it had been 2.5 days. Weirdest thing ever.

I might have bought all the merch like I’d never be back but… hurrrr…. I *really* want to do another one after I get ~~all~~ some of my life shit together…

I expected to be more one-and-done, or at least not wanting to do another one of these for a long time, but then again, I haven’t at any other race distance so I’m not sure why. I really do feel a draw to do this one again. That finish line is addictive. Not next year because I have other priorities, but maybe 2019? 2020? Definite possibilities.

I expected to have a little more oomph to get stuff done last week, but I always expect that and it never happens. I was lucky to just do a basic level of adulting. I might be an advanced beginner adult this week. I’m adjusting my expectations here and I’ll work on getting to the intermediate/advanced level (read: the big to do list with appointments and house stuff and other projects, oh my) once I’m back from vacation.

So, it’s been about a week and a half. I am definitely feeling a little of the post Ironman blues because I had absolutely zero things scheduled starting April 23rd. This was totally intentional for a lot of reasons, but I expected to welcome the break a little more than I actually am right now. It is completely unreasonable, but I kind of wish I was ready to jump on the swim/bike/run train. The Ironman marketing team are evil geniuses because today I got an email telling me to NOT let my training die and sign up for IM Boulder this summer. Argh, yes, that sounds great!!!

But no. I need to face some other things. As weird as it sounds, it sounds WAYYY more comfortable right now to jump right back into 12-15 hour weeks and ignoring the rest of my life. Hopefully, that will pass soon as I remember what it’s like to have my identity not tied to Ironman for a while. As I get over the hump of “I’ve eaten healthy and counted calories for 24 hours, why have I not lost 15 lbs yet?”. As I remember that it’s actually pretty awesome to just be a person who is active for the fun of it (and maybe sometimes to earn a little extra food) and not just because it’s on the training plan.

So, week one was really just surviving + a small amount of activity. How about week two?

Definitely bikes. Because always bikes.

I’m back to tracking food and weighing myself. No specific calorie goal this week, just get back in the habit and try to keep it reasonable for my activity level. To be honest, I logged my weight the last three mornings without my glasses on so I couldn’t see it, but I ended up checking it out today and it’s not *quite* as bad as it could be (189.8 which is about 3lbs up but also 5% more bodyfat/bloat than a month ago). It’s time to shift my eating to mostly fruit and veggies and lean proteins and some grains and eschew the things that have fake orange coloring and come in a plastic tub or crinkly bag.

Water, water, water. I know this will help with feeling like a water weenie, it’s just haaaaaaard when I don’t really focus on it. My goal is to have four 24-oz Polar bottles independent of anything I drink while/directly after exercise. So far this week I’ve done pretty well.

Still on the “whatever, whenever” plan but I’d like to do some of these things:

Ride bikes with friends.
Get to the lake to Sup or kayak or even maybe swim.
Foam roll and stretch a few times.
Spend 15-20 mins doing some bodyweight exercises 1-2 times this week
Attend the Pure Austin Expo and play.
But most importantly, 10k steps per day. I slacked on it this week. I need to be taking my 2-3 walks per day at work and maybe one in the evenings if I don’t have enough steps.

In terms of goals and to dos, I’d like to do a little bit more than surviving I did last week:

Get a haircut. It’s time. I waited until after the race so I didn’t have to worry about an awkward cut that wouldn’t ponytail, but I am definitely in need of my annual shearing.
Clean out the Prius and get it washed (or wash it ourselves). It’s been on my list since January, and we did the Xterra last weekend. It would be nice to tick this one off the list so we can…
Schedule an appointment next week to take it in for it’s 60k service. It’s only 2k overdue. 😛
Gaming on Monday, early mother’s day on Saturday, volunteering for Rookie Tri on Sunday.

Since I’m still operating at the advanced beginner level of adulting, however, I’ll cut myself some slack if I don’t get to everything.

Austin 10/20 weekend in review

By Quix

On April 10, 2017

In Uncategorized

I like to write up race reports to capture the moment in time. However, this one was a little… different. I can’t really break it off from the rest of the weekend because it was all in the name of IMTexas training. Also, in and of itself, the race was slow and unimpressive so I feel like I need to qualify it with what was going on all weekend.

Swim, burger, bike, run. Not usually in that order…

Saturday morning, we had set the alarm for omg-wtf-early to be out at Lake Pflugerville to swim race-ish distance, bike 40-ish miles, and run around the lake – and in the middle of it, be around to say hi to our tri team doing a newbie clinic at the same place. The siren song of sleeeeep got us, and we didn’t get in the water until almost NINE THIRTY (oops), and we were gifted with some pretty rough conditions in the lake, caused by 20+ mph winds with 30+ gusts.

I have not had a more challenging swim in my recent recollections. It was like swimming in a choppy ocean fighting the tide. I almost quit at least 20 times in the first mile. The direction of the chop was probably the most challenging part. I can roll with some side chop, literally by rolling almost onto my back to breathe, but half of each lap was directly into it. Every few strokes it was so high that I’d go to breathe and *nope* as a wave crashed over me.

My safe swimmer orange floaty thing acted as an anchor going into the chop, and on the way back, it want to be RIGHT BY MY HEAD, so I had to adjust my stroke to keep my arm from getting tangled in the cord. Not bringing my arm out of the water was incredibly inefficient and took the fun out of the payoff (swimming fast with the current). I actually intentionally inserted some breaststroke in there so I could actually sight because I often couldn’t see the buoys over the waves.

I wasn’t super physically spent in that 1h45+ to go just under race distance, but I was mentally spent for sure. We decided to cancel the TT bike ride out there for not just that reason, but it was also borderline unsafe on those bikes on traffic-y roads. We briefly flirted with a run around the lake but I was wet and cold and over it so we got some In-N-Out Burger instead and ran an errand.

It worked out that we had to be back to pick something up in two hours, and it’s along one of our normal bike routes, so tooled around town on our road bikes instead of banishing ourselves to the trainer. The wind continued to be incredible, making downhill against the wind feel almost more challenging than uphill into it, but we got in almost an hour and a half. Not quite the 40 miles we were hoping, but again, fighting the wind should count for something extra, right?

Because I’m a triathlete, and I also had new shoes to break in, I ran a mile and a half off the bike. I felt a little knee twinge, and then it went away, but it still made me nervous. We showered and had some recovery shakes, ate some dinner, crawled into bed with our books, and set our alarm at wtf-oclock again for the race.

This night of sleep was rather fitful. Sometime during the night, my knee had convinced me it was broken (ah, tapers) and I was up less with the actual pain and more with the worry that I had 10 miles to run with a bib the next day. I didn’t want to wreck anything for April 22nd but I also didn’t want to quit. I woke up and everything seemed to be in working order (if maybe a little stiff), so I got up and did the morning things and we rode bikes 3 miles to the start line.

Morning race day shenanigans. Also, I’m pretty sure I’ll never be able to spell shenanigans without a spell checker.

We had originally been prodded to sign up because a lot of our BSS team was racing, but a lot of people dropped out and most of the folks there, we just didn’t connect with. We ended up seeing our friend Rikki who randomly found us right before the race, but didn’t end up seeing any of the other 10 million people we knew that were there.

The race started late, and an extra 20 minutes of standing around wasn’t helping leg-things so I took off VERY slowly. I could tell Zliten was frustrated and I told him to go, and he said, nope, he need to go about this pace anyway. Itold him to give it a few miles, I’ll probably warm up and feel better, and through the first 4, we stayed really easy and I turned a corner (literally and figuratively) and my stride changed and all of a sudden it felt better so we picked it up by 15-30 sec/mile.

This race is awesome for many reasons besides the convenience. The first 4 years, it was a great place (and a great time of year for my fitness) for me to lay it all out on a flat and fast course and I improved every year by a minute or two. It’s close to home and work and I run in this area all the time. I get a kick of running down the middle of busy roads I drive all the time. There is almost always a band within earshot (the first four years I was hidden in my music trying to PR, so I didn’t appreciate it as much, but the last two years I took it easy and rocked out and it was super fun). They hand out cold towels halfway through and at the finish, which is always refreshing.

The hill that is always terrible wasn’t that bad (when you’re running easy pace), and then the last half mile uphill into the wind finally got me near the finish, my knee twinged while Zliten was speeding up, so I said “nope, walking a sec”. A spectator, bless her heart, was trying to encourage me, and instead of explaining the situation I just started jogging slowly again (and it felt fine) and then we crossed the line of the last Austin 10/20 EVAR (unless some political-sounding things get resolved).

After the race was for putting things in my mouth or showing things where to go (by opening my mouth), apparently.

Garmin time: 1:54:57 which is about 11:30/mile. Which is almost exactly what I would like to aim for in (eeek!!!) 12 days on the run, so there is that. While I would have liked to put on a little more gas (maybe 10:30-11s), my knee feels fine today so mission accomplished!

It was humid and windy and we were dripping during the race and quickly chilled after. The beer tent had a block-length long line. The food offerings (rice krispies treat and fruit) were great for a snack, but I definitely was ready for something more substantial. So, like almost every other year, we skipped out on the post race party and fought the wind home on the bikes and had better beer with no lines, ordered a pizza and watched sci fi movies all day.

Besides the mental energy going into worrying about my knee, I felt a marked lack of tiredness and soreness (and still do today) with over 6 hours of training in the last two days. I’m taking today off (maybe some weights, but more likely catching up on the chores I blew off yesterday) because that’s in the plan, and I’m super stoked to visit the chiropractor tonight because I think part of the knee issue is I’m out of alignment, but training did it’s thing and taper is doing it’s thing now and life is good.

Adjusted Reality

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

Tag: Food Page 10 of 27

Baby steps

8 reasons why being a prissy pants and a triathlete don’t mix

Invisible Things

The Aftermath

Austin 10/20 weekend in review

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