Adjusted Reality

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

Tag: navel gazing Page 1 of 29

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.

Who am I to dare? (Texasman Race Report)

Once again, race week was not ideal. Some random baloney at work hit me kind of hard and I sucked at sleeping and had a minor nervous breakdown – which for me, doesn’t really look like much outwardly, but I was probably a little more curt and cranky than my best self by the end of Friday.

Saturday morning, though, I woke up feeling fresh and renewed and ready to go play in the woods for the weekend. The first thing on the agenda was hitting the Roka warehouse sale on the way out of town, in which we spent hundreds of dollars on thousands of dollars in triathlon items. Score! Then, we made the long drive to Plano for packet pickup, and then Lake Ray Roberts to camp and race. We left the house for the Roka sale before 9am and listened to my epic classic rock playlist for many hours, pulling into camp just short of 5pm. It’s a long trek for a sprint triathlon for sure.

I was a superb eater Saturday. I’ve been at a pretty decent deficit lately, but I fueled well. I had a protein bar for breakfast, a footlong subway turkey for lunch, jerky and watermelon to snack on, and a salad, potato, and chicken for dinner. I hydrated DECENTLY well without needing to stop every 2 minutes to pee on the drive up.

While I had been utterly lacking in training the week of the race (I ran once for 2 miles easy, biked once for an hour fairly easy to make sure I remembered how to do that), I eased into the water about 6pm to remember how to swim and make sure my swimskin was still intact and fit and found a nice stroke and pace and figured that would have to do.

I slept only about 6 hours, but for a 5 am wakeup, that’s not bad, and it was the opposite of fitfull, I crashed hard. In the morning, I had my two cups of earl grey tea, my gluten free everything bagel, and two sport beans. When I hit the restroom, I looked at myself in the mirror, and for a moment, I believed that the person looking back at me looked like someone that could actually win. That is something right there. I’ll remember that one.

At the race site, I set up my transition, hit the potties, ate my rocket fuel gel, and found my confidence start to waver. I felt like all the fit girls I saw had a 40-something age marked on their calf. This wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. “Who am I to dare,” I thought to myself in a moment of insecurity, “everything last year was just a fluke.” I knew that was my irrational brain trying to nope out of being tough, so I reminded myself of the process. The population of the day didn’t change my strategy. Get out in front on the swim and find feet. Don’t eff around in transitions. Chase on the bike. Run your ass off.

As you’ll see below from the age group vs overall placement, 40-44 was indeed FREAKING STACKED, it wasn’t simply my imagination.

Swim:

I got to a spot on the beach in the front and high-kneed into the water and got to swimming hard. It’s not often I find myself in a mass start these days, and there was a lot of jostling with my neoprene-clad friends. I held my line and hit my tangents pretty well even going directly into the sun. I had someone tickling my feet (dangit, *I* was supposed to find the feet, not you, mysterious stranger!) half the swim but I could never really find anyone to return the favor ahead of me. I settled for finding some clear water and swimming smooth, and I was actually pretty pleased when I saw the time on my watch when I crossed the timing chip.

Swim time: 9:17 (1:51/100m). 15th F overall 5th AG. I’m actually really proud of this pace, but the placement sucks. Spoiler: only one of the girls who placed in my age group beat me on the swim and not by much – some people went out a little hard and faded. However, I’m kind of glad I didn’t know how far I was back in placement at that point, I might have been cranky about it.

T1:

It’s a long run and the pavement is very rocky, so I took two seconds to grab my sandals under the tree. While I ambled quickly up the hill, I took all the swim things off my face and peeled my swim skin down to my waist. Everything went fairly smoothly except the couple extra seconds it took to get the swim skin over my hips. I’ll peel it down a little further when running next time.

T1 time: 3:06 13th F overall 5th AG. I dunno. Maybe I could have done better but I don’t feel like anything went wrong or there was any faffing around.

Bike:

Even if I’m a little less confident and feeling a bit untested on the bike this year, going hunting on two wheels is my favorite. I mounted my steed and got. to. work. There was a nice, fairly steady uphill but not too uphill section out of the park and I just pass, pass, passed. My goal for the race, but especially on the bike, was mostly extrinsic motivation instead of oogling my own power numbers, so I literally just put targets on everyone’s backs and readied my arrows. Ready, aim, fire, repeat.

Because I tend to think in Dungeons&Dragons terms these days, my thoughts went to barbarianism every time I had to make a difficult pass – rage and reckless attacks. It made a little more sense in my race brain than now when I’m relating the actual mechanics, but to make a successful pass, you need to not only get ahead, but you need to drop the person behind you and make them think that they don’t have a chance to catch you (rage). I needed to have the oomph to not only get ahead, but fly by them at a speed much higher than they were maintaining (reckless). It worked, as I only got passed back ONCE going up a hill I decided to spin easy, and I never saw them again after I bombed past as soon as it flattened.

Very close to the turnaround, I started counting girls and they were all pretty much bunched up within a few minutes of each other (and me). I picked off three before I made the last turn, and thought I might have been in third at that point.

I took it a little easier on the way back into the park, I spun a little lower resistance higher cadence to hope to ready my legs to run because I felt a little tension in my left hamstring (which is not a place it’s supposed to be on the bike) and I didn’t want to cramp. I wasn’t peeping my power *too* much, but the average I saw was damn near close to my FTP, which was both impressive and a little worrying as that effort shouldn’t have been a thing I could do, and certainly not one after which I should be able to run well.

Bike 50:52 (19.6 mph) – 5th F overall 2nd AG. 174w average, 188w normalized. I am more than happy with the process and the output, it was a tougher day than last year (to the tune of 10w higher for the same pace when I’m ~12 lbs lighter). I might have done a little better to let up a little less the last few miles but maybe it saved my run so… *shrug*. I’m peace with this.

T2:

Uneventful. I was sad they weren’t calling out places like last year but I focused on getting my gear changed expediently and ready to run. My new hokas are a little troublesome in transitions, the tongue likes to slip back and takes a little adjustment but it was but a few seconds to fix. I headed out to see if my hunting prowess now extended to this next leg as well.

T2 time: 1:17. 18th F overall 4th AG. Okayfine.

Run:

Quickly, I found my legs forgot themselves as we set out up the hill. It felt like a repeat of last year when someone blew right by at the beginning with a 49 on her calf and I could not figure out how to go with her. She wasn’t going that much faster but it was uphill and my calves were whispering rumors about potential cramping if I abused them too much too early, so I let it be, hung back, and resolved that if that was the masters win, I would waste it all to catch her on the downhill.

Then, I had another girl blow by me. She also had 40-something on her leg. I stuck with my effort, but I was really demoralized by the end of mile 1. As I approached the turnaround, I counted women – no one was that far ahead but far enough and going fast enough that I had no confidence I could catch them. So, I went strategic. I would maintain my pace – the two gears under redline I had right then, and if anyone faded, I would save my kick to attack then.

Sadly, that meant one more girl blew by me at a pace I couldn’t answer to on the way in, and I never ended up catching anyone. If I have one regret, the thought that was playing in the theater of my mind during the run was that I just wanted this sh!tshow to be over, I went to the bad place. I had 49-year old within my sights the entire time, but there was absolutely no advantage to me catching her besides perhaps some pride recovered and some practice to see if I could actually do it, but I decided to let her have her finish nine seconds ahead of me and save the fight for another day.

Run: 27:59 (9:01/mile) 17th F overall 4th AG. Let’s talk about the good – this is a great pace for me in a race (if you ignore that I’ve been running off the bike in the 8-something minute miles, though not after a bike with this level of effort, for sure). I placed higher on the run than the swim which is a huge thing for me. However, I think I could have pulled this pace down a little and I’ll talk more about that below.

Total: 1:32:30 8th F overall 3rd AG. Honestly, I only lucked out because the OVERALL winner was 41 and MASTERS winner was 43, and they took them out of the age group awards. I would have been 5th.

The encouraging part is that the winner clocked a 1:28:44. That’s less than four minutes faster than me. That’s fathomable in the future or maybe even a magical unicorn day – which this was absolutely not. My age group winner was 1:30:48. That’s less than 2 minutes faster. That’s even more doable. Our paces were really close, she just had a bit more on the bike than I did and she was 90 seconds ahead of me on the run already, otherwise, I may have been able to find the motivation to beat her 8:50/mile pace if we were racing side by side. I had cards left to play if I found myself in the position to play them, I fully believe that.

One one hand, I’m at peace with the run. Yeah, I didn’t quite accomplish what I was after – the pace nor the feeling nor the process, but I made a strategic decision in the moment. I’m left wanting, I’m left feeling like I missed an opportunity for growth as an athlete, but I’m also left with less wear and tear. Even so, I need to remember that if extrinsic motivation wanes, turn to intrinsic. I think if I would have seen how close I was to 8-something minute mile pace, I would have increased my effort just enough, and maybe THAT would have been enough to catch Mrs. 49.

On the other hand, the mad passionate irrationalist is left wondering what would have happened if I would have given every inch to that run. The realist keeps coming back to the fact that I don’t think I had the runway to chase down first within my capacity, the rest of the race being the same. I could have practiced the chase, but I think that’s all that it would have been – practice and still coming up short.

Luckily, I have some more chances at this practice in 2019. My next race is Windcrest, where I hold a bunch of Strava QoMs on the bike course and also have a nice shot at first again. It all depends on who shows up, including my own legs, lungs, head, and heart.

Elsewhere…

I have been using my words in other places lately, but far be it from me to be reticent here on my little soapbox.

It’s almost time for vacation and to quote my lovely husband, “I can’t possibly check out at work, so I’m checking out with workouts.”  To be fair, I spent the greater part of this week with a cold, so I had an excuse for a while, but this weekend I’ve spent in my sweats instead of my spandex even though I feel most of the way better.  I. just. can’t. right. now.

There are two thoughts on my mind.  First, my brain is just elsewhere besides running, biking, and swimming right now, and it’s taking a lot of my mental effort and enthusiasm right now.  It’s all good.  I’m starting to find my confidence and stride in some things that felt utterly over my head before, and once I adequately conquer these things, I know it will all come back around.  Ten days away from everything should shake loose some cobwebs.

Second, if you’ve met me, you might know I have a propensity for overdoing it – *it* being anything and everything under the sun.  I’ve found some success in sport lately by not doing a whole lot of sport.  When I do venture out I’ve been doing amazing things – I kept up with people at the last brick workout who usually beat the crap out of me.  I felt a little sheepish about my bike fitness until I knocked out my best FTP test (181W) ever last weekend.  I PR’d my bench press Monday (105#).  It feels like while I’m doing a whole lot of nothing, whatever I’m doing is beneficial.  It’s really weird but, okay, let’s go with it.

I mean, I know I can’t do this forever, but as they say, stress is stress is stress and the last thing I want to do is go over the edge right now because I pushed myself too hard in too many areas.  Been there, done that, don’t want to go back and do it again.

Besides work, which is definitely a thing but not a thing I generally talk about here, I’ve dug deep into various writing projects.  I’ve actually found it very relaxing lately.  I’ve been practicing writing fiction for the first time in many, many, many years by delving into the backstory of my Dungeons and Dragons character.  I’ve been writing a recap of our adventures in a very ridiculous, overly flowery style of prose.  It’s been crazy fun to write over the top drama, looking up every third word on thesaurus.com and picking the most esoteric and enigmatic one (see what I did there?). 

I happened to connect with someone, incidentally, commiserating on the fact that we both struggle with asking for help, someone who’s writing I really respect.  I had a moment of gushing vulnerability regarding my fears and insecurities about my book draft and the whole process.  She encouraged me to send it over and I found at once ALL my old inclinations.  I almost just said no, I wasn’t ready yet.  I gave a multitude of excuses about how rough it was and how I didn’t want to waste her time.  Yet, after all that, she still wanted to read it.  

I’ve given myself until I leave on vacation to get my shit together.  And then, instead of scrambling to actually do something about that, I wrote and edited thirteen pages of my D&D character’s backstory.  I felt compelled to finish it before I could even open my book draft.  Talk about self-sabotaging tendencies…

The happy end to this story is that I did indeed open the draft a few nights ago, and I’m through a first editing pass of the intro and the first chapter.  I’m glad I found my writing voice, but man, it’s rough to go back and revise stuff I penned before that.  There’s no way I will be able to get through the entire book before I leave (yes, the irony of me wasting time here is not lost on me, but I need to decompress a little right now).  However, I figure delivering the first few chapters in a slightly-less-than embarrassing state will at least show the beginnings of my capabilities. 

I’m excited, not so much because I believe in my draft yet, but that I believe enough in myself to take this first step.  That’s been prevalent so far this year in my choices and actions, and I’m super stoked to see where it leads.

However, while performing all these terrifying feats is invigorating, it is also kind of exhausting.  I’m looking forward to just letting it all go for a while, and I hope that when I transition from life to vacation life, I can do just that.

 

Talking the talk and walking the walk.

Recaps haven’t felt like the right things to write lately, so I haven’t been doing them.  2019 is the year of different, I suppose.

New leggings, new decade, who dis?

I feel so… engaged with everything in life right now.  I’m drowning a little, failing a little bit at everything, but I don’t mind in the slightest.   Ok, I mind, but it’s EXCITING!  Forty, and the months slightly before and the days after have felt very new.  It’s like turning the page into a new decade has come with some fresh perspective and renewed vigor that had been lacking lately.

There’s this curtain of fear that had been hanging heavy over my head, that feels like it’s been lifted.  I mean, shit, I’m still afraid of things.  However, because we are what we repeatedly do, it’s getting easier to analyze what I’m feeling and move on.  Yes, I’m afraid of a thing.  Yes, it’s either for a stupid or actually good reason.  Yes, it’s still something I want to do, even if I’m feeling that friction.  Yes, I’m going to effing do it anyway.  And I do.

Early this year I was offered an opportunity to talk at the big SXSW gaming convention on a panel about Building and Maintaining Online Communities.  I pushed away all the haters in my head telling me how scary that would be and how maybe someone else would be better to represent our company and instead jumped at the chance.  It’s easy to do that when it’s two months away.  As the date approached and I started writing notes and meeting with other folks to help solidify what I wanted to say, it started to become real.  And real is scary.

I told anyone that asked that I knew words would come out, but it was up for debate whether it would be the right amount of them and the right ones.  To that end, I wrote many pages of notes, figured out what I really really wanted to express, and practiced by actually talking about these things out loud, which I’ve found helps me when I have to give big talks in front of people.   Three days before the conference, our moderator had reswizzled the questions and I spent time studying and rewriting my notes.  I showed up to the conference with 5 pages of highlighted points of discussion.

When I got to the venue, it was not a table with chairs on a stage as I expected.  It was a collection of oversized chairs, raised, on a stage.  I had nowhere to place my notebook and I couldn’t rely on the crutch of reading from my notes.  I started to freak out.  A lot.

Riding a wicked post-panel high.  Exhaustion followed.  It took more out of me than I expected.

But, eventually, I settled into a mindset of que sera sera.  I just had to prepare differently.  I translated my five pages of notes into a one page crib sheet I could glance at from a side table, and I also spent an hour before the talk reviewing what I wanted to say queueing off THAT sheet instead of my “script”.

The panel started, and for the hour, I felt in the zone.  Competent.  Comfortable even.  The haters in my head were banished from the room, and I was charismatic, and smart, and even occasionally funny when the moment warranted it.  There are so few times in life where you get the opportunity to walk away from something so very important and feel like you just EFFING NAILED IT, and on March 15th, I got that opportunity.

I’m attempting to bring psychology principles back to the forefront of my life again, and it made me think of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.  So very rarely do we get to feel the top of the pyramid, self-actualization, realizing one’s full potential.   And to be honest, I’ve not gone back to watch the talk (though YOU CAN if you want) because I have such a rosy glow from it.  However, I’m really proud how I took a situation that caused me a little strife and overcame it, and actually found a new “gear” in my public speaking capacity.  If I really find my center, I can actually present without notes, or at least, many of them.  I don’t need lines, I can actually improv if it’s a subject I’m knowledgeable and passionate about.

Pic unrelated, but proof that I still actually wear stuff that’s not skirts and boots these days.

If we’re delving further into things that go bump in the night in my brain, asking for help is a big huge scary monster for me.  While I enjoy helping other people, for some reason, when I think about asking, my brain lambasts me with doubt.  “Why would anyone help you?  What can you give them?  Nothing?  Then why would anyone waste their time?”  With my theme this year of feeling the fear and doing it anyway, I’ve reached out no less than three times in the last month, expressing vulnerability (so terrifying) and asking for help.

Oddly enough, because humans are inherently social beings that want to be connected to other people and asking for help is indirectly expressing “I recognize you are COMPETENT at this and I want to be like you”, three out of three times so far have been incredibly positive interactions.  This is news to no one but me.

While I don’t feel like my exploration into confidence and courage have ended because, damn, I can’t imagine that’s not a life long pursuit, my focus has translated into COMPETENCY.  I talked about how I’ve either subconsciously or consciously played down my abilities most of my life.  I’ve decided that playing small is not a service for me or for the world, so I’ve attempted to reverse the self-deference which is my natural habit, and be who I truly can be.  That sounds so trite and weird, but it’s been a big thing for me lately.

I’m delving into things I am not experienced at with work and when I make mistakes, instead of feeling a HUGE shame response and disengage, I’m just asking how I should do better next time and working harder.

I’m using the big words again.  I’m sounding like someone who knows their shit instead of doubting myself.  I’m asserting myself in the areas in which I know I’m experienced instead of shrinking down.

I’m setting out at paces on the swim, bike, and run that scare me, and I’m finding that if I get out of my own head, I can back them up without fizzling.

This was a good day where I went faster than I ever have before.

I wrote this down in a scratchpad late last year – “Think of all the things I could do if I didn’t let fear stop me.  If I just hit each roadblock, and instead of stopping and pouting because it was a little hard, intimidating, or scary, just strategized about how to get around them and to the next checkpoint.  Think of where I could be then!”.  I feel like I’m making strides to actually live this in reality.  I’m not only talking the talk, I’m starting to walk the walk.

My life right now is incredi-busy and kinda stressful and overfull and brimming with challenges.  And I am loving every minute of it.

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.

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