Carrying on

I wrote a tiny bit here about my best friend who had cancer.  She passed away earlier this week.  She had been sick for two years and although we knew she was dying, I had not fully accepted that she would one day be gone forever.  The past couple of days have been very difficult.

The last time I saw her we just hung out and talked about so many things.  I told her that I was going to be doing a triathlon in a couple of weeks and she was so impressed and proud of me.  I'll be carrying that with me as an incentive to do this race and to give it my all.  I'm going to race for Lora.

I've been feeling very depressed and kind of lackadaisical all week, so I was not exactly enthusiastic about having to jump in the pool today.  But I suited up and got myself into the water and began my laps.  The more laps I did, the easier it felt and I really started to get into a place where only breathing was on my mind and it felt good to feel empty for a change.

I think all of those hours of watching Olympic swimming on tv have paid off a bit because after scrutinizing their techniques and kind of mimicking what I thought they did, I got into a groove that felt really natural today.  Gosh, I may have even felt like a swimmer.  Dare I say that?!

Oh!  And I really had to laugh at myself today...
There is a sign next to the pool with all kinds of reminders and rules.  It also states the distance of the pool:
Each lane is 25 yards.  33 laps or 66 lengths equals one mile. 
Guess who read that as 66 laps equals one mile???   This guy!
This whole time I've been thinking that I needed to do 33 laps to get in a half mile.  WUT??
And that is after I had calculated everything out at my desk at work weeks ago!  I had a cheat sheet on my desk that told me that I needed to do 17.6 laps for a half mile.  But I'd go to the pool, see that sign and somehow that cheat sheet was completely erased from memory.  I know, I'm a weirdo.  Sheesh.

Soooo - last week when I said that I had gone a little over a quarter mile...yah, I actually swam a half mile.  Doh.  Hello confidence booster!

I did the Tour de Tonka this weekend and ended up just sticking with the 26 miles.  It was for the best.  I was so ready to be off of my bike at ohhh...mile 11 that I knew I had made the right choice.  The weather was perfect for the ride - overcast, cooler and a bit rainy.  I had some technical problems though - my front tire was nearly completely flat for the first 5ish miles.  Thankfully they had bike mechanics at the rest stops who filled up the tire for me.  Then somewhere around mile 10, the screw came off of my shoe cleat so I couldn't clip in.  The same thing happened to me at the Saint Paul Classic last fall and I was able to get another screw at a rest stop.  I stopped at the rest stop around mile 16, but there was just one guy working on bikes there and he didn't have any extra screws.  He straightened out the cleat for me and tightened it the best he could, but at some point it became crooked again and I couldn't clip in for the rest of the ride.  It wasn't so bad, but I made a major mental note to pack an extra wrench and screws for my next ride (race)!!

Half Mile

Today is one of those - oh my god, what am I thinking!?? - kind of days.
The triathlon I'm now racing includes a half mile swim.  I've been assured by others that I will be able to do this, but I haven't been convinced myself yet.  I swam a little over a quarter mile today at the pool and felt really great, but to do twice that?!  In open water?!  OH.BOY.

Aaaand we're back to being scared again...

This weekend I'm doing the Tour de Tonka, which is pretty much right out my parents' front door.  I am pretty sure I'm going to do the 26 mile route, but that 43 mile route keeps calling my name...might be a race-day decision (haven't registered yet).  I just keep thinking back to the last 40+ ride I did last fall, which was emotionally very tough on me.  I've no guarantee this ride will go the same way though.  That one could have just been a bad day for me.  I can't stop imagining how awesome it would feel to conquer that distance again with much less strife.  Darn my competitive nature!  Plus, those Olympians who I find on my tv constantly these days really make a girl want to kick some booty!!

Aaaand we're trying this again...

(No pun intended) I am back on a training schedule after a tumultuous past couple of months. Long story short I was not able to finish training for or run the race in June. It is amazing how quickly life can smack you upside the head and suddenly you're spinning into a new atmosphere.

I've had to go through some big changes in my personal life, which make it even harder to find the time and energy to train for something like this. However, my motivation and my desire to do a multi-sport race this summer are still very strong. I'm not sure how much training I'll be able to get in before race day, but rest assured I will be at that start line (and finish line, hopefully). I can't have a third race turn out to be a DNS. Heck, I'd take a DNF over that this time around. But I won't DNF either. I'm going to finish this bad boy.

August 19th.
Saint Paul Triathlon sprint race.
I'm registered, my race outfit is being shipped and I am R-E-A-D-Y.

Oh boy.

Piecemeal

Training is coming along piece by piece.  I'm feeling faster and stronger lately and when I take a break, it doesn't feel as much of a distraction as it once did.  Of course, take anything I say with a grain of salt because tomorrow I might be in a lousy mood and might feel completely different.

Running on Monday nights has become a regular thing for my schedule lately, but last night when my husband came home from his own hill cycling workout, I just wasn't feeling it.  Luckily he's never been one to let me slide by without doing what I've promised I would and he forced me out the door.  Stepping out the door, my plan was to run for 20 minutes and be back to watch our dvr'd episode of Smash (our guilty pleasure show).  However, once I got out there, I felt myself being drawn to keep going forward.  So instead of my usual propensity for cutting the run short because I wasn't feeling it, I was encouraging myself to go just that much further.  This is sooo not like me, but I so desperately want this race to go smoothly and to walk away from my first triathlon wanting to do another one.  I ran 2.34 (or so) miles in 30 minutes for a 12:39 pace.  While it pleases me to see pace numbers other than 14 or 15, I can't help but feel like I am missing out on my potential to do better.  I want to see 11's and 10's and I know I need to do some work to get there.

My swim today was good as well.  I am a complete airhead in the water though.  I am never ever able to keep count of how much I am swimming.  I am completely distracted by other swimmers and things going on outside of the pool.  I am extremely self-conscious about myself in all things athletic, but there is something about the people swimming on either side of me that brings out that horrible voice of self-doubt in my head.  It isn't even about my body image since that is under the water.  I'm sizing up their stroke, their speed and how effortless they look in comparison to what I think I look like.  It gets inside my head and gets all twisted up until I'm convinced that I look like a cat in water and that I have no business swimming in this pool.  The thing I have no business doing is letting all of this garbage in my head.  Triathlons need to include emotional training as well.

This reminds me of this awesome comic from The Oatmeal:

Smelling the flowers

What's the old saying? "Stop and smell the roses?"

Life can be such a whirlwind.  Sometimes I (and I'm guessing actually most of us) get so wrapped up in everything that goes wrong in life, all of the stresses, all of the uncontrollable things that drive me crazy, that I forget to stop and appreciate all of the wonderful things.

A person that I love very very much has been dealt a very bad card.  It is something that is on my mind constantly, something that is so completely unfair and infuriating and I nearly always forget to see beyond the pain and sadness and realize that there is world out there moving forward in-spite of the cancer killing my best friend.

I used to ride my cruiser bike to work just for fun, fitness and to leave my car in the garage for a while.  Since I've been triathlon training my beautiful orange cruiser has been collecting dust in the garage and I've been finding my exercise elsewhere in the pool or on the trails.  My orange trek only has 3 gears.  It is a slow, heavy beast of a bike, but those things provide me with a slow, purposeful ride to work that allows me to "stop and smell the roses."  On this bike I am more likely to notice the gaggle of geese in the river making a racket as I ride by, the beautiful blossoms on the trees that blow in the wind like confetti and I tip my helmet to my cohorts on the trail with a smile.  It makes me feel better.  It brings me life.

I dusted her off today and tacked those additional 15 minutes onto my ride so that I could gain a little more perspective and feel just a little bit better.

A little push

My son began his spring break last Friday, so my daily schedule is a bit messed up.  I wasn't able to squeeze a workout in on Friday or all day Saturday and by 8pm I was really feeling lousy because I needed to move!  I posted this on Facebook:

That's my sister-in-law there commenting on my status update (names and faces have been deleted to protect the innocent, haha).  This is the important part: "(I have you to thank!!)"  Yikes!  Right there I felt like I had an expectation to set and it really kicked my butt into gear.  By 8:38pm I was in the garage grabbing my bike and heading downstairs to set it up on the trainer.  I had two new episodes on the DVR of New Girl and I biked through both of them.  I biked hard, like I had something to prove.  It was great!  Note: I did have a little trouble with the trainer set up.  I missed a key part and when I got on my bike I was convinced there was something seriously wrong with my gears.  Nope - I just forgot to tighten up the resistance wheel on the back tire.  Doh!

I also made it to my regular Sunday evening swim at the gym.   The pool was surprisingly full for that time of day and I shared a lane with two separate people.  Sharing a lane made me once again feel like I had something to prove because, my goodness, STRANGERS were watching me!  I swam hard.  I got overheated easily and although I got in just over 500 yards in a fairly short time, I was hot and felt icky afterward.  I was so hot that I had to skip my usual 5 minute dip in the hot tub post swim.  :-(

My son is staying with my parents for a few days, so we took advantage of having only one child who is easily transportable in a stroller and Sunday evening my husband and I busted out an invigorating 3 mile walk!  It was awesome.

Pain in the...

My back is at it again.  I really wish I could pin point the source of the pain, but I have no idea what the cause could be.  I had been thinking it was picking up my daughter, but she hasn't been that interested in being picked up now that she's spending more and more time outside exploring.  I do find that I notice the pain mostly when I am sitting or laying in bed.  Maybe that is a sign that I need to be up and moving more!  I'm also thinking that my desk set up at work isn't very ergonomic and I may look into having someone come and assess my set up.

Thankfully it doesn't hurt when I swim.  I took yesterday off both because I need a day off in my training schedule every week and to rest my back a bit.  I plan to swim today and am looking forward to it.  I've been doing some reading and video watching on technique and am excited to try some new things out.

Weigh-in went very well yesterday.  I'm down another 2 lbs.  I calculated what my total weight loss would be by race day if I lost on average 2 lbs per week and I would be down 50 lbs total since I started this whole process one year ago.  Now if that's not motivation to give it my all, I don't know what is!!!

BRICK.

I'm still coming off the high of completing my first brick workout (bike + run) today, so I figured I'd blog while the happy cells are still alive in my body. The Expresso bikes that I had used earlier this week were all occupied, so I tried out the LifeFitness bikes. I liked it, didn't like how comfortable the seat was. I want to try to mimic my road bike as much as I can on these training rides and if the seat doesn't have me in pain for days, it isn't like my road bike! Otherwise, the program was kind of similar. I just did a flat course for 4 miles at a pretty moderate to hard resistance. I don't know the technical terms for these things, so hopefully I'm making sense. I pushed it today, much more than I did on Monday. Did my 4 miles in just under 15 minutes. My goal for my 11 mile race course is 50 minutes, so it seems as though I'm right on track. Of course, this wasn't after swimming, but I am at the beginning of my training. I have room to improve.

During my ride, I was feeling the burn in the old legs and this song came on:
Gave me just the push of energy I needed! Love Walk the Moon.

Now...
Running...
Oh running, you jerk.
We've met many times before and I didn't like you then.  I think for me, running is like that one (or more than one if you're particularly unlucky) family member who you just cannot be in the same room with, but who sometimes you just have to put up with for the sake of your other family members - at birthday parties, graduations, weddings, etc.  Running eyes me up from across the room, I see him, he sees me and we both pretend the other is invisible.  For the sake of my beloved biking and my new friend swimming, I will allow running to join the party.  But I'm not ready to speak to him.

I did about a mile and a half on the treadmill at 5-6 mph run and 3.5-4 mph walk. I walked more than I ran.  Here's my problem...I know I can do better.  I KNOW I can.  But I am much much too easy on myself.  I need to find my inner Dolvett Quince (anyone watch Biggest Loser?  I don't.  I just happened to catch last night's episode while folding laundry) and kick my butt into running more.  But how?  Any suggestions??


 

Feeling Good

Exercise and eating well give me a natural high.  Even in knowing this I still don't always find it easy to keep it up.  There are good days/weeks and there are bad days/weeks...months.  January was a very bad month.

Once late fall came and my schedule forced me to hang my commuter bike up, I lost all of my motivation.  Last spring and summer were momentous for me.  I started working with a Wellness Coach at my gym sometime in April 2011.  Jason worked with me to create goals, both short-term and very long-term.  I met with him weekly and through this process I reintroduced myself back into exercise.  First I took some intro classes, then I started "running" again, I began biking to work almost daily and I participated in a nine week women's strength training class.  By seeing my coach, I had accountability because every single week I set goals and when we met the following week, I needed to tell him which goals I met and which I didn't.  I hate admitting failure, so I just did whatever I could to make sure that I met those goals each week.  With his guidance I began to also change my eating habits for the better and I eventually rejoined Weight Watchers.   Between April and September I had lost about 30 lbs and I was keeping up momentum very nicely.  I did the Saint Paul Classic Bike Ride (26 miles) in September and then the Mankato River Ramble Bike Ride (42 miles) in October, but once October was into full swing, I stopped.  I was having back pain from carrying my daughter and from weight lifting, so I saw a physical therapist who was no help at all.  I was so afraid of the holiday season and what it could potentially do to all of the progress I had made so far.  My coaching had ended in September, but when I told him how scared I was for winter to come, he said that maybe I should look at winter as a maintenance time.  He said long as I wasn't gaining weight, I would still be meeting my goals.  So, I took on this mindset.  I made it through Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years without gaining more than a pound.  I was really happy with myself, but then somehow January began taking its toll. I was back to my old eating habits (not horrible, but not great) and I wasn't exercising AT ALL.  Every time I stepped on the scale, the number was creeping up and up and up.  In total, by the time I snapped myself out of my funk, I had gained 8 pounds.  8 pounds of stupidity, basically.  Now I have to lose those 8 again.  I have 4 left.  It sucks.

I woke up this morning excited for both my swim lesson yesterday, which went very well and for the workout I have planned for today.  I feel good.  I am happy to be in this place, but I know that there could be a bad day just around the corner and that's hard.

Yesterday's swim lesson was so good for me.  Amy gave me a few things to work on with my front crawl and suggested I work on flutter kicking and bilateral breathing.  I'm excited to get some practice in on these two things tomorrow.  Today's workout includes a 4 mile bike ride and 20 minutes of running.  Last time I biked at the gym, I used an Expresso bike, which was pretty neat.  There are  treadmills right across from the bikes, so I plan to dismount the bike and immediately get onto the treadmill.  Hello "brick" workout!  Here I come, jelly legs!