Adjusted Reality

It must be summer.  At work, lately, I feel like a kid waiting for the last school bell to ring so I can go play.  I make video games, and we’re in a period where everything is going rather smoothly (crosses fingers), so it’s not as if I’m being asked to mine salt or anything.  There’s just something about OUTSIDE lately, even now that it’s hot as balls, that keeps calling me to go frolick.  At least for a little while.  Until I skate the line of heat exhaustion and need to go die back in some glorious air conditioning, rinse and repeat.

Riding in 100 degree heat for an hour and a half with the crew definitely resulted in a large dose of AC after.

Friday was a day of water.  While there was that whole work-y thing wrapped around it, I spent my lunch doing gloriously stretchy thinky laps in the outdoor pool under the sunshine.  There are not many finer ways to spend a lunch break.  After work, we hit the water park, and floated the lazy river for an hour and a half, talking through stuff, solving problems, figuring stuff out.  And… it was punctuated with a fantastic fireworks show on our last lap!  I <3 the wah pah.

Saturday, I think I learned a neat trick with salt.  See, we got out much later than expected- it was almost 10am and hot hot hot hot hot.  I popped a salt pill as we rolled out on the ride.  I’ve been meaning to try it to see if it fixes my issues in the heat but for some reason, it’s just felt SO WRONG to take a big capsule full of salt when I eat so much of it already.  The ride was scorching, my soul still died a bit rolling up and down the hills of Ronald Reagan in the hot sun, no shade, and brutal wind.

Still smiling at mile 20 of the bike.  Only a little bit of my soul is gone.  This is good.

However, when we started our run, something weird happened – I was not nearly as bonky as normal in the heat.  We did have some cloud cover, but I seemed to actually start improving instead of fading as I went along and I finished the 2 miles feeling strong, not half an inch away from death as per usual.  I’ll have to do more experiments (like our evening brick workouts), but this may be a small part of the key to not dying on the run leg of triathlons, perhaps.

We’ve downloaded this silly (awesome) game called Pokemon Go.  It’s essentially a geocaching game if you’re familiar with that, but with a popular video game theme.  You walk around your neighborhood (or work or wherever), and it becomes your game world.  You can visit a store (which will actually correspond to a landmark in the real world – like a park, a school, or even a store), go out looking for pokemon to catch, and when you find eggs and you have to walk to hatch them (my current one is a rare 10k distance egg, I’m half way there and hoping to hatch it today).

We walk a lot already, but I noticed that we stepped it up yesterday both in distance and in pace since we had a purpose (hello 21k step “rest” day).  The cool thing I noticed this week, tons of people I know who would NEVER go on a random walk are out pounding the pavement.  We even have a neighborhood group for it, intended for sharing where we found rare pokemon and scheduling meet ups. There are tons of articles about how people might actually get into shape because of this game (kinda like DDR for me so many years ago).  It warms my heart to see people getting active and also just getting out of the house!

This week is bulk trash week, and we had an old BBQ grill to get to the curb.  While we were prepping to do that, we realized we also had 8 years of junk in our outside workshop area that we’ve never cleaned out.  Usually, we have all the excuses on bulk trash day – it’s too hot, it’s rest day, we’re tired from training, we’ll get it out for the next one, yadda yadda.  Yesterday, it just came together and we spent an hour cleaning out SO MUCH junk.  The level of rat feces on my person by the end was definitely a non-zero amount.  It may be psychological, but I am still itchy from SOMETHING this weekend.  Itchy, but accomplished at least!

We are the trashy neighbors.  Not pictured: a giant rusty double barrel grill on the other side of the driveway.  Thank goodness it was all gone this morning.

Sunday was a very productive, active rest day.  The kind you almost need another rest day from… oops!  Good thing it’s recovery week, which means  I should be alright.

This week’s training was spot on, while it was a little crazy logistics-wise at times, I hit every session I set out to do, after rearranging due to Monday’s gym closure.  I got in 8.5 hours of training, which is just fine for the first peak week of many.  As I said Friday, I feel like I don’t *need need* a rest week, but I’m totally okay with having it.

• Monday: Home weights
• Tuesday: 2 mile run AM, 1200m lunch swim with a few 50-100m pickups in there, and endurance cycle class after work (ended up being a short one at 60 mins).  It happened to be a max endurance power test – I got 320 watts, which was one of the better results in the class.  Yay for not losing too much cycle prowess!
• Wednesday: 2 mile run AM (I may not be a morning person but I can’t find an excuse not to run 2 damn miles ), lunch weights at the gym, and a 90 min 18 mile beginner (recovery) ride after work
• Thursday: hot 3 mile run after work.  I was going to go to the gym and do this inside, but I was running short of time and convenience outweighed being comfortable.
• Friday: 1500m swim, mostly just steady, but with a few spicy 25m pickups at the end
• Saturday: 22 mile hot hilly ride on the tri bike in about 1:18, 2 mile run after.
• Sunday: 10 miles of cruiser bike riding

This week is about a few key sessions and a lot of freedom.

• Monday: 1000m swim test lunch (1300m total), weights PM
• Wedensday: brick workout PM with the crew (~14 mile ride, 2 mile run fast)
• Thursday: weights
• Saturday: 5-6 mile track workout.  Warmup, then ladders (200m, 400m, 800m, 1600m, 800m, 400m, 200m w/appropriate rest in between), then cooldown to round out the mileage.

That’s it.  I’m hoping to swim at least once more if I can and ride bikes some more miles but I’m going to leave it up to whimsy when I go.

Ode to a beautiful morning.

The best feeling is when you’re totally in sync with your other half.  I started really craving food from a place called Taco Flats, which we’ve only been to once (in February).  I asked Zliten if we could bike there for lunch on Sunday and he said he was actually going to suggest the very same thing.  Our psychic links have been on and off lately, so it was nice to have a perfect connection. 🙂

We rode bikes the 5 miles to get there, and I chose a picadillo beef and a mahi taco, both were amazing.  One MUST have a Pacifico when it’s on draft, it’s just science.  The specific formula is Tacos + Pacifico = AWESOME.  After our bellies were full, we coasted up the street to get groceries and I think we may have found our limit.  I’ll have to look and see how many items we bought, but I’m pretty sure it was over 30 and barely fit in the bike bags and basket.  We took the same way back, which was longer than our normal route, but ended up being much more pleasant with our large haul.

Hello, lover.  Get in my belly.

Last but not least, I made these amazing savory oatmeal breakfast muffins from my brain.  Ok, I did my normal thing and took inspiration from a few recipes on the interwebs, but they are SO GOOD, y’all!  The muffins have transcended oatmeal and taste kind of like a dense cheddar bay biscuit from Red Lobster.  But as a filling, healthy breakfast muffin with bacon and onion and peppers and scallions.  I’ve already dreamed up about 7 variants to try in the coming weeks.  Recipe here.

As for last week’s progress in #projectraceweight… ehhh?

The good:

• Breakfast muffins.  Seriously, I get so excited when I find something new I can incorporate into my breakfast routine.
• I was only 97 calories over TOTAL for the week to stay at -1000 according to fitbit.  Fitbit also said I’m -2.3 down for the week last week (though some of that is water weight lost from TOM).
• I actually tracked my weekend food.

The bad:

• I’m still staring at that 5 lbs that I lost last summer.  I’m evening out a bit (all my weights are generally 183-185 instead of wildly swingy), and less fluctuation usually means I’m about to drop some lb-age.  Maybe this is my month to see the 170s if I don’t screw up!
• I kind of forgot vegetables a lot of last week.  And there was a lot of sweets, probably more than I would have eaten in a month before.  More activity gives me a little leeway, but I’m hanging myself with that rope, unfortunately.
• I may have tracked my weekend food, but I did it today. 😛  I’m just lucky it ended up working out well.

This week’s goals:

• 5 fruits and veggies per day.  Part of this is actually eating vegetables for a snack instead of pretzels (at least first).
• Track all days of food, staying as close to -1000 calories as possible.
• Hit my 100g protein, 25g fiber, and 40-50g fat macros.  With extra food calories from workouts, it should NOT BE HARD and I didn’t really hit them last week.  How do I do this?  More freggies, less junk.

And on that note… I’m off to play with some kettlebells and learn about injury prevention.  Just another day at the races around here!