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.

Keep on Truckin'

Here I am in the ninth week of my training with six more weeks to go. Whenever I think about the race, I get a knot in my stomach and my heart rate goes way up. The "trust your training" mantra plays out in my head in response, but it does nothing to quell the nervousness. Last week I attended a beginner's triathlon clinic which was put on by the Trinona race people. There wasn't really anything in it that I hadn't heard or seen before, but it was fun to go and hear about the race.

Since I last blogged, I've done a couple long bike rides, a few swims and one run. My schedule with work and the kids hasn't been ideal for sticking to my schedule as much as I'd like, but I'm trying to make it work.

My husband bought me a bike computer and I used it for the first time on a ride this Sunday.  I am desperate to get faster on the bike and I have to say that this little fella was a big help in that quest.  I watched the mph like a hawk and tried very hard to keep it up as high as I could.  I rode for about 13 miles with a pretty strong tailwind on the way out, which means I had a pretty strong wind in my face the whole way home.  For my race my plan is to do the 11 mile ride in 50 minutes or less, so I'll need to average a pace of about 13mph.  I'm very confident I can do that at this point, but I'd honestly love to do much better.

Last Friday while swimming I noticed first some tightness and then pain in my shoulder while doing the front crawl. I continued on with my laps thinking it would work itself out, but it only continued to hurt more as I swam. I haven't been in the pool since then, so I am hoping I've given it enough time to heal. I plan to swim tonight if I can fit it in. It is a big day at our house, my son has a performance tonight at his school and we're all very excited!

It didn't suck

I ran last night.  Outside.  It didn't suck.
Workout(Run / Jog) : Distance 2.34 mi, Duration 30:00, Pace 12:49, Speed 4.7 mi/h

It was cold and windy and I didn't want to go.  I was either going to pack up my bag and drive to the gym for a workout that probably would have ended up being yet another swim because I wasn't in the mood to run or bike or I was going to throw on my running shoes and head out the door.  I chose wisely.

I have run this route many times in the past and it has been painful for me.  As soon as I settled into a jog, I had the feeling this run was going to be different.  My breathing was easy and I found myself running much further without a walk break than I had in a very very long time.  In fact, I would say that I definitely ran a greater percentage of the route than I had ever been able to before.  I can tell my overall fitness is so much better.  I took quick, short walk breaks and picked up with running again without needing to convince my brain to follow along.  I really prefer running in the dark not only because no one is watching me, but also because it gives me less distractions than daylight and I am able to concentrate on the task at hand so much better.

My shins didn't hurt one bit, but I did have a side cramp early on that I worked through and my left foot was slightly uncomfortable.  None of these issues were enough to keep me from moving forward.  It felt great.  I needed it.

Yesterday was a very rough day and this run not only let me pound out some of my aggression, but also gave me a way to end my day on a high note.

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.

Fantastico

I had a dish at the cafeteria today called Pasta Fantastico (penne, spinach, sun dried tomatoes, red pepper and parmesan cheese) and I really enjoyed the name of it.  It was tasty, too!

Things are going well these days and I feel like I've fallen into a nice regular routine with my workouts and even with my eating.  This past Friday my husband and I took the day off, mostly to catch a matinee of The Hunger Games, but also to sneak in a bike ride while the weather was nice.  We did about 13 miles on trails through town and it was very nice.  I'm getting to know my bike more and more every time I ride it and that helps with making me feel comfortable about racing on it this summer.  I finally kind of know which gear does what and where I need to be on big hills, downhills, etc.  Since I came to biking from a 3 gear cruiser, adding the extra gears and knowing what to do with them has been tough.

I wasn't able to get out and do anything on Saturday because we had our two nephews over for the weekend.  We played outside and I cleaned the garage, so I did get some movement in.  On Sunday I had a glorious day at the pool. I had been looking online at some swimming videos, just to see what those who really know what they're doing look like. My husband had been in some swimming classes with a coach at our gym that is really into immersion swimming and I decided to check that out:

 

Did you see how fluidly that guy moved?! I feel like I look like a cat that somebody threw into the water when I swim. That video got me thinking - what could I do to begin to move more like that guy? We also have a few books laying around the house on the subject, so I paged through one Saturday night while the kids were playing. Some things really stood out to me, especially the idea that swimming as hard and as fast as you can every single time you swim will not help to increase your speed, efficiency or endurance. This book was telling me to swim on my side and extend through my glide as much as I could and I would then feel like you're swimming downhill. Huh. So when I got into the pool on Sunday I had all of these thoughts running through my head and I really tried to concentrate on moving fluidly, extending my strokes and spending more time on my side. It worked! I used the pool buoy for a bunch of laps and I was feeling like I could swim all day. Even when I took the buoy out, I found that I was moving so much better than I had been before. My breathing was slow and constant, it was great! It felt like zen swimming and I was beginning to feel like that guy in the video (who knows what I actually LOOKED like though!). I was able to continually swim more than I ever had before. Yesterday I was able to get to the gym during work and get in a one mile run on a treadmill and about 200-250 yards in the pool. My swimming was once again so much more efficient than before Sunday.

Even my running was better yesterday.  I only did one mile because I was bored and couldn't wait to get back into the pool.  I tried pushing my speed though and felt really comfortable at 6.5 mph for short periods - um, that's a 9:17 min mile!  That is unheard of.  Of course, that was coupled with running mostly at 5mph and walking at 4mph, so it all basically worked out to be a 13 min mile.  But it is a start!

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!!!