A week in the life....

I was amused to see that one person found my blog by typing in the following search phrase "person holding a book and jogging at the same time." HA! I wonder if they were trying to figure out if that is possible or find a logical explanation for something that they saw.

Not a very popular image. "Person holding a book and jogging at the same time."

Anyways, I am sitting here getting caffeinated and ready to hit Cadence for a four-hour Computrainer ride. It is cool and windy outside, and the thought of riding indoors, with friends, to boot, is much more appealing than braving the elements. 

I thought I would entertain the three readers of this blog with ‘The deep thoughts that go through my head in a week of Ironman training.’ I’ll use this past week, since I can’t remember much before that!

Monday- DAY OFF.

Happy. I need this. Legs actually don’t feel that bad. I’m kind of bummed that I can’t go to swim practice. I actually miss swimming. Huh. What to do after work? I’ve got a million things that I Could/Should do.. how about some laundry for starters. Think I will just take the girls for an extra long play time.

Tuesday-SWIM, WORK, TRAINER RIDE/BRICK

Just a little swim. Keep in mind you were missing swimming yesterday. Why is it so hard to swim after a few days of not swimming? I don’t know how people do it that only swim like twice a month.

 For some reason sorer today than yesterday. Will be glad to get back on the bike tonight.  On the bike…. ..OUCH! Guidelines say not deep, but they all feel hard to me.  Why does this never get easier? I’m going to train myself to watch ‘Dance Moms’  while maintaining a heart rate in the 170s if it kills me! The extra psychological pain of crushing yourself in your basement for 90 minutes – 3 hours regularly has to count for more time on the race course! Okay, just a little T run here, only 15 minutes. Wow, this 15 minutes feels hard. I can’t believe I did it, again!!

Wednesday- SWIM, WORK/TREADMILL HILLS

5:30 AM. Something is wrong! My alarm is broken. Oh yeah, masters swim. How long does it take to get to Mercer again? Surely not Really thirty minutes.  I need to pack an extra swim suit because I’m afraid this strap might break mid-practice. Whatever, here’s a safety pin.. I guess that will work with a swim suit. I need to stop at Starbucks for an grande black coffee.

Workout looks not so bad.  Lots of mixed faster stuff then 15 x 100 on the 2:00. Laughably easy.  OH, I forgot. Auugh… there’s enough lanes for us to each have our own.  Why is a set like the the hardest ever when there’s people there to ‘race’ but you also can’t draft. I’m drowning, drowing, but still falling behind. Dang, Jamal is getting faster at swimming. Ted is way faster than me now.  I’ll drown before I take a breath- through though.  DONE! This pool is a lot faster than the LA Fitness pool. Practice done, only 1000ish additional to make my yards.

Treadmill hill intervals. These are the worst pain of any session I do, I think. 3-4% grade sounds sooo innocuous on paper, but it’s truly evil. No watching Dance Mom’s… I’m too nauseous to even listen to my IPOD. I’m going to fall off the back at this speed and this grade.  I always get whupped running up hills… someone somewhere is doing the same thing though and not giving up.  I’m going to do this even if I literally fall of the back of the TM.

Thursday- 5300 SWIM, WORK/ TRAINER

Can I do this swim? Even though I do 4500-5000 on AT least one swim a week I still always wonder if it’s possible for me to complete it. Secret is to not take any breaks or think too much. Thinking is the enemy. 24 ounce coke is my secret weapon. 6 x 800 YIKES!! Okay, using the snorkel here. How do people actually swim more than 25-50 without having to stop and get the water out.  Man, I look cool with my simultaneous band, buoy, and snorkel use.

Don’t think, just do. Lalalalla. Had my stroke videod Wed and my latest stroke fix causes my to cross over so much I am flopping back and forth like a fish. Don’t flop. Don’t flop.  How are my arms supposed to go anyways?  I need to watch some youtube videos on swimming.

Guy making eye contact when I am at the wall. Try to look focused and out of breath so he won’t strike up a conversation. No, dude, I’m not rude but can we please talk, like, later or never? I swear that looks like Peter from the Real HouseWives of Atlanta. I can’t picture him coming to LA Fitness and kicking aimlessly for an hour with giant fins like this guy, though.  Can’t believe I did it..one of my longest solo swims yet.. maybe!

Trainer ride- Nothing on tv. Have a migraine so can’t listen to my IPOD. There are no thoughts left in my brain, just do. It’s strange how much longer two hours is than 90 minutes.  FTP went down slightly after the break…. Everything is  5 watts easier and it feels like I’m cheating. I Hate it. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I did it… I hit everything on my plan! It never fails to amaze me.

I got a lot of flack for showing this pic as my trainer nutrition. It's usually a lot better than this, but this particular day I must have been running on empty in several ways

Friday- WORK, EASY JOG

Easy jog on the trails with Sadie after work.  Why does this jog feel impossible after all the other stuff I’ve done this week? I have the never ending migraine and I can’t take meds again. Okay, I need to hike some of these steeper grades my quads are shot.  Okay, I need to hike some of the steep downhills my brain is shaking around too much. No worries hopefully will feel better for tomorrow.

Bailey's tired after all this training! 10 psi, the perfect amount of inflation for napping.

Saturday- GROUP RUN

Group run. Nothing too hard. Just 90 minutes of running. Thank goodness for company, finally. John and Jared are fun to run with because I can just listen without having to talk myself. Leg’s feeling surprisingly good, let’s pick it up!  I see Rich running back towards me. Huh, that’s not on plan. Yea, he must be feeling okay, because I can tell by looking at him that he’s running under seven minute miles. Oh there’s a cute dog.  I must be getting back in good run shape, because my brain feels very happy. Wow, almost there already. Great run! 

P.S. Please check out the chipin link and consider donating to Sadie's rescue drive to build an doggie adoption center in Atlanta. We need every bit of help we can get!!

The next big thing

When I was a kid, all I wanted was to be an Olympic gymnast. I would stay up late at night watching tapes of meets. Every day after school I would go to our local gym and stay there for hours. There was a series of books somewhat like the babysitters club, only about gymnasts, and I would read them over and over, literally hundreds of times. Sure I was six inches taller, six years older and many pounds heavier than the successful gymnasts, but that wasn’t stopping me. Surely heart would get me there.

 So how did I end up? Heart didn’t get me .. nothin’. I started as a beginner and ended as a beginner with a fear of flipping backwards. The girls I started with were, by the time I quit, practically elite gymnasts, while the greatest distinction I ever achieved was being the first in our gym to do a cartwheel on the beam. When I was in high school my obsession turned to cheerleading. I decided on a whim to try out for the high school team in eighth grade and holy moly, I made it!

For six years, I spent nearly every day after high school and college practicing chants, dances, and stunts. After that, I would go to practices at night for an All-Star competition team which meant more gymnastics, dancing, and stunting.. But what I really wanted was to be a flyer. You know, the girl that gets thrown up in the air and gets to do the cool stuff… scorpions, heel stretches, basket tosses etc. Unfortunately for me, just as in gymnastics, the most popular choice for flyer is not the 5’7 1xx lb girl. Turns out, when we briefly had a coed squad, I was actually not the Worst flyer in the world, but I was Surely the one that my base and spotters most hated to pick up!

Pic of my Samford cheerleading days!

Of course the most obvious thing to do in this situation was to diet my way down to where people didn’t moan and groan picking me up, but that didn’t work out either, no matter how hard I tried. Stopping every morning for breakfast at Mcdonalds and every afternoon at Taco Bell or similar probably didn’t help either. Again, lots of heart, little success.

The coolest thing I did as a cheerleader was wear the cute outfits and occasionally get to ‘fly’ in a stunt while my support team cursed me from beneath. I could tell similar stories with pole vaulting, pageanting, (Although I DID win the titles of Miss Teen Polk County, and Miss Winter Haven… hello big time!!) and a gazillion other activities.

If only I had spent all that time working on something that could actually help me now, say running, or swimming? I wasn’t smart enough to realize at the time, that you should look for something where the odds aren’t completely stacked against you. I thought running was something one did to avoid getting fat, and I thought swim team was dorky. Well, the swimmers I know now sure are getting the last laugh now!

All that brings me to present day, where, I like triathlon so much that I am writing a public blog where I mostly philosophize about triathlon. I spend a lot of time training (duh), I have a coach, I got certified as a coach, I spend my time reading, thinking, and talking about triathlon.

I’d say I’m pretty entrenched. I’m entrenched yet concerned. How is this time any different from before? You see when I first started all those things, I was truly naïve enough to believe that I might be able to succeed at gymnastics, cheerleading, diving (yes, that one was quite short-lived. Let’s get the tall, tubby girl who’s afraid to flip backwards for the varsity dive team!) despite all the odds that were against me.

In the beginning you see progress, but after a few years, you realize that the progress is a lot harder to come by. Success comes in many forms and there’s plenty of people who never made the cheerleading squad, or could do back tucks, etc. who would look at my foray into those endeavors as successful. And there are many other people who were ten times better than I could ever dream of being who were in turn comparing themselves to the people just ahead of them!

Bailey.. she ain't worried about progress!!

I was thinking about this whole process in the pool. I feel frustrated right now, because as much as I’m swimming, I’m not seeing any progress. To someone a few lanes down, I’m probably ‘fast, ‘ to me, the person leading our lane is ‘fast’ and that person knows that their swim is laughably slow compared to a ‘real’ swimmer.

For where I’m about to go, let’s stay focused on SPORT as I’m close to getting mired in the deep end here. Thinking about this logical progression and where it eventually ends, I was wondering if it’s ever truly possible to be satisfied for a certain personality type to be satisfied with ‘the status quo’. When do you just say ‘ wow, I did good, I am happy with my progress/performance’ and REALLY mean it.. without any caveats or little voices you don’t admit to that say ‘If I could just do x,’ then I would be Exactly where I want to be? Food for thought 