Adjusted Reality

Tag: swimming Page 19 of 27

No Regerts

On March 20, 2017

In retrospect, I should have known I was in a bit of trouble when I crashed into rest week at 9:30pm on Sunday night, finishing up my last to do – passing my Tri Coach test. Sometimes I feel guilty about bitching that I have too much to do, because, really, at least 87.3% of my life is stuff that I really do enjoy doing. I don’t dig ditches for a living, not even close. I choose to triathlon in my spare time because I love it. I appreciate that I have a great big circle of awesome people in my life. I love learning new things. Most days knowing that the busy-ness is a product of my own choosing is enough.

New kits and rainbow socks and bike friends and finally getting to ride outside after work and totally mediocre but wonderful-in-the-moment food. Who could ask for a better Wednesday?

Once in a while though, even the good stuff gets overwhelming.

The rest of the week was alright, but Thursday, I felt like poop mentally and physically. I’d been dealing with fatigue, which is actually kind of normal the first part of rest week, but it was lasting a little longer than I would have liked. I was stressing about the events of my day. Work was being… work. I slept late because I was tired and that meant I’d be home super late and I’d be packing the camping stuff super late and it would be another day where I didn’t get to bed on time and I’d have no time to relax and blah blah blah blah.

So I did something I don’t normally do. I cut my swim and weights that day. Not attempted to reschedule. Just cut. I could not with the idea of squishing into my wetsuit and jumping into a freezing cold lake so I just didn’t. I halfheartedly brought a change of clothes and the bands the next day to make up weights, but lunch came and went and we just DIDN’T. So, apparently, I took THREE whole days off last week and I have NO REGERTS about it.

Then, I suffered through quite possibly one of the more miserable 10 mile runs I’ve done. Most of it is totally on me but not everything. It’s true, we stayed up drinking at the campsite until well after midnight, that’s on us. The people making noise until wee hours, making it hard to sleep when we did retire? That’s outside of our control. The fact that I only brought one small bottle of half strength gatorade and ate two chews (not two packages, two chews) is on me. The fact that the weather decided to be INSANELY humid and sunny? Not my fault.

Pre-run smiles. Post run I doubled over, hugged the AC in the car for about five minutes, and drank 3 full bottles on the way back to camp. By the selfie in the fourth panel there had been food and beer, so smiles returned.

However, all these things combined to make it a good mental training run. Zliten may beg to differ, but I dealt with all these issues with minimal whining considering the facts at hand, and made it back to the car without dying at a pace I would absolutely respect for an IM finish (11:45/mile).

It wasn’t all bad though. Earlier in the week I had two LOVELY bike rides, and one of the nicest lunch runs in a long while. Am I thrilled with under 6 hours last week? Not really, but I think under the circumstances, missing 1.5-2 hours of training on a rest week isn’t the end of the world, and isn’t going to be the deciding factor on how I perform on race day.

Runs: 10 miles in 1:57, 5.4 miles in 1 hour
Bikes: 9.8 cruiser miles in 1 hour, 17.6 miles in 1:23 (BSS recovery ride)
Swims: none (missed 1 hour lake swim)
Weights: one ‘bells and bands workout (missed the second planned one)
5.75 hours total

One more two week training block and it’s taper time. This weekend is the last feat of strength – long day #2. I’m really ready to find out how this one goes. It’s the full distance swim (2.4 miles), full distance bike (112 miles), and hour run (/walk if needed). I’m ready to get my second 100+ ride under my belt, test out race day fueling, and confirm with myself that I haven’t lost the ability to ride my bike even if it’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a more-than-half-a-workday ride.

Also, the forecast right now is 82/58 with full sun. The last long day just happened to fall on a nice, crisp day. This is more like what we can expect race day, so it will be good to be out in it.

Runs: 1 hour lunch run, 75 minute run, 1 hour run (long day)
Bikes: cycle class, BSS recovery ride, 112 mile TT bike Shoal Creek loops (long day)
Swim: lunch pool swim (DONE), 2.4 mile lake swim (long day)
Weights: one down already, one to go!
Total: 15.25 hours as projected.

Life stuff:

This is from last year but all the things are kind of the same except the weather was too hot for hats and scarves.

Going camping (especially party camping with a giant group of people) is an interesting choice for an IM training block. If I was looking for pure recovery in the sense of the word, I was barking up the wrong tree. Two days of drinking with a really dehydrating 2 hour run in the middle of it. 33k steps. Dealing with that lovely time of the month in the woods (and the exhaustion that comes from it).

However, I’ve been feeling a little bleh mentally, and I am much better now, thank you. My soul is refreshed. I spent two nights playing in the woods, sans phones and screens, and experiencing fun things. It’s almost as if I had a little mini-vacation. The best thing about camping close to home? We were back well before noon on Sunday, and I got to have the lovely day of napping and watching Star Trek, so it almost felt like a long weekend.

Luckily, yesterday was both super restful AND also productive. The house is pretty well picked up and the camping stuff is put away. After realizing that my few green toes that still had polish on them that matched my St Patrick’s day outfit were actually left over from Christmas, I made some time to fix that and also fix my ~~caterpillars~~ brows.

Besides one non-negotiable to do this week(getting both the cars inspected over lunch and paying registration), my goal is to eat, sleep, work, and triathlon. This isn’t for forever, but I really do need to mind my rest and recovery and stress levels if I want to be successful at this. I’ve been skirting the line lately and now it’s time to go back to ignoring the world for a bit. Everything else needs to go on hold.

I tracked my food Mon-Thurs, and then went camping. Back to it today, but that also means no useful metrics. Same with weighing. I weighed twice, and with those weights I was 0.4 lbs down (187.2), but that’s not weighing REGULARLY. I’m going to keep trying, and I’m happy I’ve made it this far without saying “fuck it”, but for some reason I’m subconsciously rebelling against it. I don’t know what to say except brains are weird.

Either way, it’s clear to me that my body is not capable of losing weight during Ironman training with the attention to detail I’m willing to put into my diet and tracking it. That’s ok. It was a long shot to expect it. I have gained a lot of muscle, a lot of endurance, and a healthy respect for this distance of racing. I can work on the number on the scale (and maybe not eating cake daily) after the race.

Tomorrow I will be the oldest I’ve ever been…

By Quix

On March 2, 2017

In Uncategorized

Tomorrow is my birthday. Normally I get all sorts of introspective, but with all this training, that part of my brain is kind of asleep so you’ll get a little less than normal, but indulge me a bit.

37 was the year I would finally not feel like an imposter wearing this shirt…

A year ago, both my body and spirit were pretty broken training for The Woodlands Marathon. I spent a lot of time last winter believing the way out was through, but sometimes, as I learned, you just need to strategically retreat and live to fight another day. I don’t regret suffering through a 6+ hour marathon to really hammer that lesson home, but would it have been smarter to cut my losses and run the half? Probably.

Right now, I’m really enjoying the process of watching my body transform into someone capable of calling themselves an Ironman soon. Is it hard? Yep. Do I have moments of despair and doubt? Absolutely. However, each workout I conquer gives me confidence that I’ll be able to pull from on April 22nd. It’s fun watching my body do things it’s never done before and when I check in, it’s like “that was ok! I can’t believe that was ok, but it was!”.

A year ago I was terrified of being a cyclist. I’m still not intentionally heading out to those crazy cycle races where you can touch 5 bikes from your own while riding, and things like pacelining and riding my TT bike in the pouring rain still give me pause, but I’ve made big steps. I can ride my bike with the clipless pedals in traffic with other people confidently. I’ve got the hang of commuting and running errands on my cruiser bike. For my birthday weekend, I’m going to go play bikes with people (and run off it because I *do* have to train for a race and March is for bricks) because that’s what is fun to me now. All of this would have sounded like greek to me 365 days ago.

A year ago I didn’t weigh much more, I’m a few lbs down from March 2016 depending on the day, but I’m a lot more sturdy now. I’ve spent (most of the) year being a good student at weight training, and it’s helped me be successful and relatively uninjured once my hip recovered. I lost some weight and gained some back and now I know how to do both and I’m going to try to do more of the former than the latter this year.

A year ago, I was kind of content just doing what I was doing. In the last year, I’ve become certified as a personal trainer, a sports nutrition specialist, and I’m about to be a certified triathlon coach. I revamped this space and I’m starting to learn the ins and outs of social media, PR, and marketing. No matter what I end up doing with this knowledge, it’s helped awaken the part of my brain that grew up loving learning because learning shit is awesome.

37 was definitely a year of discovery. What will 38 be? Who knows? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Training updates:

Bike->Run->Bike->Cake.

7 weeks, 2 days to go.

I will definitely say that I’ve found an edge, but I’m still hanging on. I know that I have five more weeks to build fitness, five more weekends to do the long stuff, and then it’s time to shut it down and taper. Light, tunnel, and all that.

I detailed my long day in REALLY FINE DETAIL here, but, in other training news, last week was definitely one of the peaky ones this cycle. It included both a) a long run of 19 miles and b) a long day workout (1 hour swim, 5 hour bike, 2 hour run). Luckily, they were separated by 5 days because I had the day off Monday. I had a really lovely solo 19 miles in beautiful weather… well, ok, I had a lovely 15-16 miles, and then toughed out the rest of them when my legs started to cramp a little, but it was still definitely the best long run I’ve had in well over a year.

During the week, I kept it pretty chill. I did find that my body needed a little more time to recover after the 19 than I’d hoped, but not beyond rational expectation. I had to cut a 90 minute cycling session to 30 easy minutes instead, but there was just about no choice in the matter. As soon as I hopped on my bike I instantly had a headache and felt gross. That was my body slapping me on the wrist and saying “NO!”. So, I ate some soup and went to bed at 7pm and felt just fine in the morning. Listening pays dividends.

Last week:

2 runs – 19 miles (3:39), 11 miles off the long bike (2 hours)
2 swims – 15oom in 27, 3100m in 1:01
3 bikes – easy 30 mins, 60 mins high/low, 5 hour TT ride.
2 weights sessions – 1 conference room body/bands session, 1 dozen/kettlebells session

And that makes about 14.75 hours. More if you count my ~45 min recovery walk on Sunday but I didn’t log it. So there.

This week’s plan (mostly complete):

Runs – 1 hour easy (48 mins DONE), 1.5 hour with some pickups (80 mins DONE), 30-60 mins off the bike
Swims – one lunch swim (DONE), one long swim (in the lake, if possible)
Bikes – 4+ hours (more casual, playing bikes on the road bikes with the only goal as saddle time), cycle class or similar effort ride (DONE), easy hour and/or commuting (DONE)
Weights – 2 sessions (one DONE, one happening in about an hour).

As planned – about 13 hours or so, but as you can see, I’m not quite hitting 100% on some of the workouts. Technically, the long day is supposed to coincide with a rest week next, but my schedule didn’t line up, so I’m playing it by ear and listening to what my muscles are telling me.

The goal this weekend is just your standard sort of volume training with a few pops of intensity. I want to run off the bike again (and take less than 90 minutes to transition this time), and I’m hoping that the weather cooperates for a nice long lake swim.

Life Stuff:

It’s nice to have some actual rest days with gorgeous weather so I can take long walks and sniff flowers and pet neighborhood kitties.

In other news, last week I did actually finish chapter 16. I’m done! This week, my goal is to spend at least a few hours reviewing all the chapters. I won’t quite make certification by my birthday, but it will be close… and mostly because I don’t want to spend my birthday weekend taking the test…

This is a total estimate since I had to go back and track from Thursday to Monday all at once, but on average, I ate 2632 calories per day with a 647 calorie deficit. I know I missed some snacks in there. It was really weird dealing with the long day + two days completely off around it. Some better planning will help keep things a little more nutritious and even for next time.

To round out my ratios – 78g fat. 331 carbs. 106 protein. 30 fiber. Not my finest nutritional week but life will go on. This week it’s back to planning and moar carbs and less fat and veggies and fruit and stuff.

My average weight is 188.0 (up .8). Bleh. I’ll attribute the two long days to a lot of water weight. I am enjoying this cycle, but I really can’t wait until my workouts allow for more predictable weight tracking. It’s really weird to see your weight fluctuate 7 lbs in 24 hours…

I did better with drinks but also a little worse – I stayed up WAYYYY (read: 3am) too late on Thursday drinking WAYYY too much wine. The good news is that I had 14 drinks overall (better than last week), and I had enough of a hangover that I won’t be trying that again any time soon. Bleh.

My sleep was a little less awesome than lately, but still more than adequate with 8:15 average per day and almost 4 hours of deep sleep. I’ll take it. I’m adapting to this training and it’s zonking me out a little less.

Last week I took the week off other responsibilities, and it was nice. I’m going to do the same this week because it’s my birthday weekend and eff if I’m going to spend it doing any more chores than I absolutely have to.

Off to enjoy BIRTHDAYMAS, aka March, the most wonderful time of the year!

Save

Sunrise, sunset – a long day of training.

By Quix

On February 27, 2017

In Uncategorized

Let me tell you what’s a trip: waking up at sunrise to start your training for the day, and heading out with headlamps to finish it off (with very few breaks in between).

14 hours of swim/bike/run in pictures. First picture is heading out to the swim in the 7-o’clock hour. The last picture is me waiting for food to drop from the sky into my face at about 9pm.

I had read about Long Days in preparation for an Ironman, and I knew I had to put some on the plan. I’m always tempted to over-prepare for races, and this seemed like a great way to simulate the feeling of what I’ll go through on Ironman Day without the massive recovery needed of trying to do something stupid like a 100 mile bike/20 mile run brick.

Part of the process is you’re supposed to wake up early and start like it’s race day. I failed at that one. Two nights of uncharacteristically bad sleep meant that 5am was NOT a good idea. So we slept in until 7:15. I can’t believe I’m using that phrase and time in the same sentence, but it is what it is…

The good part about sleeping in was the gym didn’t open until 8 and it would have sucked to show up at 7am. The bad part about sleeping in was I didn’t get to fully practice race day breakfast, so I wolfed down a cliff bar an hour an hour before I swam. I hope to NOT do that the day of, because I was burping up chocolate peanut butter and it wasn’t super pleasant.

The day before at the lake – super nice and like 80 degrees. Saturday morning? Freeeeezing…

We wanted to hit the lake, but it was 40 and windy, with a lake temp of 62, I decided I didn’t want to jeopardize my day being chilled to the bone since I’m a cold water weenie and played it safe. Other than that, the swim was totally fine. I managed 3100m in the pool in an hour at a relaxed pace which felt like a warmup the whole time. I remain unworried about this portion of the race, minus a little nagging at the back of my head about getting some open water time before April 22nd.

The plan calls for 90 minutes between each segment, and with my first break, I ate the rest of my breakfast (english muffin and some fruit and coconut water). You’re supposed to stay off your feet and relax, but we had to get everything ready, so we didn’t do a great job at that. Different personalities are different – I was enjoying EVERY moment of the 90 minute breaks, Zliten was so antsy and just wanted to get going each time.

For some reason I was SUPER dreading the bike, and when we got to our loop, they had changed the flow of traffic and it made me super grumpy to start. However, after a lap, it seemed do-able, probably even better the way it ended up. Nothing fell off my bike for the first hour, my legs stayed on my body, traffic was less annoying than I expected. I realized I had to ride one less hour in much better weather on less hills than Pace Bend. My mood actually stayed on the up and up most of the time!

I did have some back and neck issues with aero later in the ride, but I think I just need to come to terms with the fact that I’m going to be adjusting my position a lot on the second half of the bike. The good news is nothing that ends up sore at the end of the bike are running muscles, so that will be a major reset for me. It was a super pleasant ride for most of it, and more comfortable bibs would probably have solved most of my issues. I did 80 miles in 5 hours with some MAJOR wind. Looks like, at this pace, I’d finish in about 7 hours, so hey, only 2 more to go on race day!

I think I had less crazy eyes going on Saturday than I did here. Progress!

It was really weird to face the fact that I had just spent all afternoon riding, and I still had a 2 hour run on the plan. During my second break, I took a shower since I did not want to sit on the couch with my nastiness, sucked down a coconut water and a recovery shake and used the recovery boots and around 6pm, we headed out for a 2 hour run.

Something magical happened. I don’t know if it was pixie dust, or my fitness actually coming together, or the cooler weather, or maybe the drinks and the massage, but we were both running about 10:45 pace and it felt… good. I mean, good in the sense of “I’m on hour 7 of the day” which meant nothing was falling off, but holy hell NOTHING WAS FALLING OFF and it even felt mildly conversational. I kept waiting for the point in which I would have to slow down and it just didn’t happen.

Around mile 7 it started getting hard. Around 8.5 I kind of wanted to die a little and I definitely wasn’t seeing 100% straight. But my legs kept with it and we ended at just over 11 miles for 2 hours running. Let’s talk about this. At that pace… I’d PR my standalone marathon by 15 minutes. Off the bike. I know I probably didn’t have 15 more miles at that pace Saturday, I don’t expect to hold this pace at all, but this 26.2 miles off the bike may potentially be a little less of a shit show! Let’s also put out there that this was 5 days removed from a 19 mile long run. Hi endurance fitness! It’s SO FUN to be BFFs for a bit.

It’s nice to fiiiiiiinally be at a point where the runs feel like this instead of ><.

I definitely feel like this helped prepare me for the race. I have continued confidence in the swim. I need to keep reminding myself the bike isn’t going to be so bad even if dang, that’s going to be a long time in the saddle. I keep showing myself that my run fitness seems to be peeking it’s head out at the right times to give me confidence that I probably can survive this little 26.2 mile cooldown jog, and maybe possibly kick it’s ass if I have one of those magical pixie dust unicorn days.

I learned on Monday night (after my long run), I need a certain level of booze, not too much but also not too little (or I guess ibuprofen would work, but that’s WAYYY less fun) in your system to sleep well after a super long effort with sore legs. Thanks, vodka! I also spent multiple hours in the recovery boots and used the stick. The legs seem to remain firmly in tact. I was able to get out and walk ~45 minutes yesterday, and today I plan on *something* for about an hour after work, super easy-peasy.

There was no way I was eating back the 6k+ calories I burned in one day. Even eating them back in 2 days is a challenge. My first real meal was at 9pm Saturday. It was Sonic – because that’s what was easy – a burger, boneless wings, and a few cheese sticks. The next day, we ate a tub of family size mac and cheese, taco shop delivery and wing shop delivery. My stomach feels pretty gross today and I’m up like 6 lbs of bloat again, but my body DOES feel like it got the calories it needed back to keep on chugging through the week.

Next time, we’re going to plan ahead and have slightly healthier fare ready to go. The mac and cheese was actually PERFECT (easily digestible and palatable carbs with a little protein and fat). I was dreaming about wings so getting them once was fine but I actually ate three different types. I think I had 6 different types of fried food in the span of 24 hours. Lesson learned. Today, I’m back to fruits and vegetables, and life will go on.

This would have been an appropriate thing to have handy this weekend.

As a reminder for myself for next time:

Before:

Pre-race dinner of sketti, meatballs, garlic bread, and salad worked for me.
Get to bed earlier, get up a little earlier so you can try race day breakfast again.
English muffin/cream cheese/bacon good. Cliff bar… meh. Coconut water: <3. Hopefully the watermelon at the store looks less like it will spoil any second, and try that.
Have EVERYTHING packed up and ready to go so we get the full rest intervals (which are actually shorter)

Swim:

Remember the gym doesn’t open until 8am.
Try to do the next swim at the lake if the temps allow.
Pacing was perfect.
Plan is to do the full race distance (3850m, or maybe a little longer, as the loops dictate).

Bike:

I had my base layer, jersey, sleeves, and a fleece jacket on well into the 60s with the wind. I definitely am going to have to consider my wardrobe depending on the weather.
The bike went really well. The 3.5 mile loop of Shoal Creek simulates the toll road part of the course really well and having the car with an aid station (and a porta potty right next to it) was great for quick refueling stops.
Pacing was also perfect at about 16 mph/120W. I never felt like I was huffing and puffing and I built speed over the whole 5 hours. It was probably even a little too conservative but TBH? I’ll take a little less output on the bike and a strong run.
My plan for next time is to do the full distance (112 miles). *shrug*, if I’ve done 5-6 hours of little loops, I can do 7, right? 🙂

Run:

Chicken broth right before was awesome. As soon as they start offering this on the course start taking it.
Running at night was fun. I think I enjoyed this run MORE because it was right around sunset.
I meant to run/walk this, but honestly? If my legs are ready to sustain 10:50s, I’ll take it, even if it’s just through the first half. I know how to run/walk when things get tough, I think just the *permission* to get through this race however I need to is fine. And if that’s running faster than expected, that’s great!
Push the calories as much as possible as long as I don’t have stomach issues. I definitely felt the calorie deficit by the time I was going out for this and I needed every calorie I could stomach. Blocks were awesome because I could spread them out but they were problematic because I would forget to take them.
Next time, if we do the full swim and bike distances, we’ll limit this to 1 hour instead of 2.

After:

Have a plan and some forethought. There needs to be a bunch of easy meals available. I need to be more amenable to eating anything in the house, even if it’s for another day. The tortellini soup I just ate for lunch today would have been AMAZING post-run.
The planned food needs to be easy on the stomach. While I didn’t need to go with such a junk food takeout orgy, I know my body is NOT into something like chicken, quinoa, and kale after a long effort. I need to split the difference.
Food needs to have ZERO barrier to entry. For example, I was craving a salad. I didn’t order it to go because I couldn’t justify spending the money when I had it at home. However, it needed to be washed and cut up. Guess who didn’t eat a salad all weekend?

Hopefully I can end the day this happy and this upright…

A lot of words about one day that wasn’t even a race, I know, but it was such a new experience, I wanted to record it all.

As a side note – I feel SO ready with this amount of training to rock a 70.3 race. I’ll have to remember that for future cycles.

So, long story short? Confidence? Riding pretty high. April 22nd is going to be a long day. It’s going to be a hard day. There is nothing I can do with this body and the remaining 8 weeks to change that. I can improve my tolerance for hard, but it’s still going to be a beast of a day. But… if I got through this, I think my training is on the right track to deliver me to a finish line in less than 17 hours, as long as I keep problem solving and shoving calories in my face. And that’s what matters.

Stitching it all together

By Quix

On February 21, 2017

In Uncategorized

Three day weekends are kind of the best. We didn’t do anything crazy special, but since this one happened to fall over rest week, we got to do a few things above and beyond normal.

And one of these things was cheering like ridiculous people for the marathoners!!!

Saturday is normally for a long ride/run and then dying on the couch. Instead, this week, we slept in, ran for about 45 minutes to warm up and then do our zones test. After all this long and slow stuff… running 30 minutes at lactate threshold is ROUGH but I managed about 9:20 pace with my heart rate about 171. That’s a little lower than expected but good enough for now. Then, we logged a longer-than-race-distance swim. Zliten hates the pool with the passion that I hate the treadmill for long efforts, so he went to the lake. 62 degrees is a little too chilly for my blood so I watched the black line for about 90 minutes and was just fine with 172 lengths of the pool.

Sunday, the only activity we did was 2 miles of bike riding down to the Austin Marathon course to play cheerleader. It was super fun, and somehow I got a TON of steps just walking back and forth in that little area, but the rest of the day was split between batch cooking for the week and flopping on the couch. It was glorious to have a rest day.

Monday was MY DAY. I had been waiting for a nice, cool, overcast morning to rock a long run and this was it. Zliten wasn’t feeling great, so I went out solo and had one of the best runs I’ve had since… maybe October 2015? The first 15 miles were just me lost in my thoughts. Around 16 my legs started to tighten up and the last few miles were a little painful, but the weather was amazing and I clocked 19 miles in 3:38. Nothing amazing pace-wise, but it’s the first run in a LONG while where my mood hasn’t been in the toilet at some point. I really needed that.

#mfw I finally crush a long run instead of mentally limp through it. Hopefully next week will go just as well!

Let’s break it down. Rest week:

Swimming: 1500m, 4300m (skipped one due to… rest week.)
Cycling: 16 miles commute/social ride, 11.5 miles commuting
Running: 12.5 miles (3.2 fast, the rest warmup/commuting)
Weights: 1 conference room weights set (skipped one due to scheduling)
Random: 10 mins paddleboarding
Stretch and roll ALMOST every day (I missed Saturday)

This doesn’t look like much, but it adds up to 7.5 hours. And it was exactly the break I needed to get back to it this week. And this week’s plans are:

19 mile run (done)
1500m swim
1 hard ~90 min cycle, 1 commute/hour easy
2 weights sessions
long day: 1 hour swim, 5 hour bike, 2 hour run (90 mins rest in between)

This long day is the first of two Ironman test runs. I’m going to be getting up super early, eating what I plan to eat race morning, swimming at race start, practicing my race nutrition, and all in all, spending the whole day doing triathlon. It’s a little daunting, but I’m excited. I feel like I’m ready right now to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112, and run a marathon… separately. Now it’s time to start stitching them together over the next two months. Maaaaaybe it would be better to start with a shorter run, but my plan with this one is to run/walk as much as needed. Time on feet is much more important than pace here.

Life Stuff:

#mfw it’s been super warm all week and the day we plan to ride bikes, it’s freezing and windy all day. But at least… pizza!

Rest week also allowed some social-ness, which was a refreshing break from ironman work eat sleep. On Tuesday, we went on a Valentine’s Day ride with our team, Bicycle Sport Shop. It was actually SUPER cold and windy so we bailed when we got close to our house instead of going back north with everyone, but it was nice to roll with the group again. Can’t wait for the time change to do more of these!

We also were able to catch up with friends and have a very decadent steak dinner at Austin Land and Cattle on Saturday night. It was super nice to eat good food, drink French wine, and chat about life. We were supposed to head to a party after, but we were WAYYYY too food coma’d and enjoyed playing video games on the couch instead.

Last week, I started Chapter 16 – and it was super long and confusing. I’ve studied up on the triathlon stuff for years, so that was all almost review. This is 51 pages of business stuff, things I DO NOT know well. It also seems like it’s organized poorly – good information, but like someone just crammed a bunch of blog posts together and called it a chapter. Long story short – I’m going to need at LEAST this week to sort through it.

Lots of veggies this week. That’s a win!

I tracked my calories for 2054 average each day with – 761 deficit. My ratios were 99g protein, 63g fat, 18g fiber, and 204g carbs per day. Definitely more of a rest week, with the carbs lower (I didn’t have any really long workouts, so this was totally sufficient). My appetite was definitely LOWER but not quite matching my training. As per usual, the weekend really tanked my fiber and raised my fat. Someday I’ll learn how to eat like a human being 7 days a week but apparently not yet.

My average weight was 187.2, which is 1.1 down from last week. I didn’t weigh regularly, this was only 3 days average, but it’s still encouraging that it’s going downward. I had a big swing up today, but that’s to be expected with long run inflammation/rehydration/refueling. 7 lbs to go to 70.3 weight!

Last week I had 19 drinks over 4 days. I’ll excuse some of this with the fact that it was a rest week and part of that is MENTAL recovery and letting loose a little, but even with that caveat this was a little much. This week should be MUCH better.

The good news is that hasn’t messed with my rest. I’m sleeping 9:15 average per night and averaging over 4 hours of deep sleep. I feel like this is the ONLY way I’m making it through this training, so it’s a good thing!

Last week I did 2 out of 3 things (wouldn’t you know, I didn’t clean out the cars – shocker). However, Zliten was awesome and made some progress on the workout room while I was out on my long run – we have a computer and monitor hooked up right at treadmill height. Also, we made it to Costco, and found some of the most WONDERFUL instant pho bowls, which make a perfect snack.

This is a short week, and I expect to have my weekend 100% sucked up by our long day (doing, and then recovering), so I’m taking this week off other goals besides the normal laundry and cooking chores.

…and now, off to conquer the short week. I’ve got a good head start with all sorts of healthy meals and snacks at the ready, and all my run miles until Saturday done. Let’s hope I can keep up!

The Middle

By Quix

On February 8, 2017

In Uncategorized

This is the middle. The newness of “wheee, I’m actually training for this Ironman race” has worn off, and I still have 10 and a half weeks until the race (thankfully), so the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t quite there. Zliten and I are a little snippy at each other. I have given my scale a STERN talking to on several occasions like it was a real person. The training sessions JUST DON’T STOP COMING because dang, it’s hard to fit in another part time job when you already have a full time one, and want to do fun things every once in a while, and also have family and friends that actually want to be in your life and stuff.

Sometimes looking at the light is dangerous. Just ask my iguana.

I’ve figured out a few things:

a) this is NOT the time to be cooking anything fancy. I don’t have the oomph right now to spend half of Sunday in the kitchen. Easy meals that multiply out well, crock pot food, this is what needs to be happening. I DEFINITELY, even if I convince myself otherwise because food is better fresh, don’t have the oomph to cook food at night when I get home. We tried that last night and there was yelling and rude words and one of us just had to leave the kitchen because dinner took 20-30 minute to cook after we got home at 8:15pm. “I’m sorry for the things I said when I was hungry” is a phrase that is on repeat around here lately.

b) this is also not the time for a shit ton of commitments. I have to use the word NO liberally. In May, I get to use the word YES more often. In February, I have very few slots on my dance card. If we hang out between now and April 22nd, you probably either a) also swim/bike/run or b) you are very special to me.

c) midnight is absolute bedtime on weekdays and 2am is pushing it on Saturdays. Once I pass that 10 hours/week training mark, I either sleep or my body just shuts the hell down.

Want to make your Monday awesome? Bike to work, eat amazing food, run home, and then eat more amazing food!

It’s not all bad though, in fact, mostly great. Last week was pretty stellar. I hit every workout I planned (besides the wishy-washy “maybe a recovery ride or run if I feel like it” plan Sunday when I haven’t had a full day off in 36 days… I mean DUH, I’M NOT GOING TO FEEL LIKE IT). I only shortened one bike. Almost 13 hours of quality training in the bank. Rock on.

2 swims – 3150m in 59 min and 1350m in 25 min
2 hours easy riding and a 6 hour long hard ride (87 miles/5k climbing)
15 miles running – 10 mile long run in 2:03 on super tired legs, 5 mile in 57 mins on fresher ones.
2 weights – one dozen set, one bodyweights/bands session
Stretching/rolling every day

Nothing particularly fast or impressive here, just a bunch of solid work at a steady pace. It’s not sexy at all. And that’s exactly where I need to be at this point.

This week, I’m ditching the long ride in favor of a long run. Now, my longest run so far is 13 miles (14 if you count as far back as October) so going straight to aiming for up to 20 may be crazy, but the cool thing about endurance is it DOES indeed transfer between sports, so we’ll see how it goes. I have one more crack at the 20 later in the month so this first one is just to see where my comfort zone ends on legs that aren’t *completely* wasted.

25-30 miles of running with 15-20 long run.
5-6 hours of cycling broken up into 3 rides – one hard ride, one interval ride on the TT, and one recovery ride (plus maybe some errand/commute riding)
2 swims – one shorter 1200-1500 and one longer 3k-4k. Hoping for at least race distance, but we’ll hit that next week if I don’t.
2 weights workouts. Gym once, either dozen or something else once.

The balance hangs somewhere between the swim and the salad and the burger and fries.

Life stuff:

I did Chapter 14. This week, it’s Chapter 15 (and actually already done). Next week is my last week of class, and then it’s time to study…

I didn’t social media much. I’m kind of stuck and bored with it TBH. I think this might need to take a back seat until I can really attack it.

I tracked my calories for 2367 average each day with -673 deficit. I’m actually surprised this was as good as it was, considering I overate even my total burned calories on Sunday. My ratios were 89g protein, 76g fat, 29g fiber, and 276g carbs per day. Wrong way again on fat, I upped my fiber and carbs (yay), but my protein wayyyy down. Honestly, I just ate like shit all weekend and that threw my ratios off. Same deal as every week it seems. More carbs, less fat, and now keep my protein on track (which has been MORE than fine since Monday *shrug*).

My average weight was 189.1, which stayed the same from last week. Still 9lbs to go back to 70.3 race weight. Inflammation from these long weekend sessions (and then the calories I’m eating back) is real, yo. I swung from 192.8 on Monday to 186.7 this morning. My body fat reading is up too. It’s going to be a hard fight while training, but I’ll keep chipping away at it, because that’s the only alternative.

I drank quite a few drinks last week – 8 over 2 days during the week, a bunch after the race and I didn’t keep count, honestly. Whiskey on the rocks was divine but a few of them and I was tipsy and also falling alseep. I figured I would have a little bit of a crazy week with the beer only embargo finally lifted and some social events, but I don’t want this to become the norm. This week, I’ll aim to go back to where I was in January.

Rest and recovery and sleep are going well. I’m averaging over 3.5 hours of deep sleep per night, with almost 9 hours average total. Even with the extra drinkies, I ended up with lots of sleep. This is a good compromise.

This week, I have some errands to run so I’m not going to set a bunch of other goals:

Pick up new glasses (DONE!)
Exchange Christmas present shirt (all the way across town and only available select days from noon to 5. :P)
Pick up Valentine’s Day dinner food and have a super awesome grilled steak and lobster love fest.

And, that will wrap it up. One foot in front of each other. One workout, one mile at a time. Keepin’ on keepin’ on. Nevertheless, I shall persist (thanks Elizabeth Warren). Rest week is imminent.

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