Cha-ching

Done!

By way of numbers...

2 bottles of Fruit Punch Accelerade consumed
2 bags of Sport beans consumed
2 gels consumed
1 frantic bathroom trip, 3 stories up
4 fast transitions
0 wasted time
4 times I wondered why I was watching Keeping up with the Kardashians
2 episode of Keeping up with the Kardashians watched in the entirety (chickens? like, really?)
3:10 training in the bank
1 Lance Armstrong movie watched
2 times the remote fell to the floor and split open
1 time I came deese close to falling off the back of the treadmill
12 cuss words spoken at Z4 run interval, a mere 2:25 into the brick
2713 calories burned
0 shortcuts


which leaves us with...

... 1 well earned burger and monster salad to be consumed by yours truly.

Peace out, girlscout.

Like Normal

I'm a little thrashed, trashed and cashed.

Today is a nice little break at the end of the third build week. A nice, solid 11:40 effort and only 0:45 short of a perfect week.

(As always, the pool was my downfall -- I went for the ez swim yesterday and found full lanes and lacked the patience to stay. A better triathlete would have stayed and waited. I was not that triathlete. I was too distracted with the house that needed to be cleaned and a huge bike on the horizon of my day. Sigh.)

And for once, I feel totally normal about it. Yeah, I have some serious aches (quads, calves, hammies) and pains (how exactly did I bruise up my ankle so badly on Sat's long run?), but in general, I feel normal.

Which tells me something.

I finally got the formula. I got the right amount of sleep. I got the right amount of food. I stayed healthy and balanced. And came out the other side feeling, well, NORMAL.

Some interesting training experiences to share from the week...

• It's a great feeling when, after being on the bike for 2:30 and managing 4 kind of monster Z2/sometimes Z3 intervals, you don't feel miserable. It's nice to not dread that last 15 minutes of a long bike.
  

• Dialing in nutrition takes a long freaking time. But it's worth the effort. I'm starting to put the pieces together, in the hopes of never having to throw-up in the water again or take pukey pitstops along the road.

• The irony of proper training nutrition is that you can't justify eating a whole pizza afterwards. For example, I did a pretty killer 2:45 ride yesterday, but I also consumed about 1200 calories along the way. No way a large thin crust will work with that math!

• If you go out mad, you'll blow your zones. Mighty M and I fought on Saturday morning. (Don't worry, all healthy couples do occasionally.) I walked out the front door with a 130 heart rate. Over double my resting rate! It took me over 4 miles to get it even remotely under control, and I still ended up with a run that was farther into Zone 2 than I was comfortable with. Don't go out mad.
  

And here's the most important point I learned, which is kind of a follow up to last week's thoughts on missed workouts. When you work with a coach, it's really, really, REALLY important that you follow their plans for you.

If you can hit each of the sessions and do the effort they describe...well, you'll end up feeling normal at the end. A little beat up and a little sore, but normal. There's no over-doing it because you're adding on missed sessions, there's a lot less stress, and it makes sense. Knowing this will help me stay "in line" more in the future.

And now...it's time for a rest week. Two whole days off. Itty bitty little sessions that have lots of Z1 and EZ in the description.

Which is good, since my Dad is coming to stay at the house for a whole week. And Saturday is our "meet the family" brunch, when Mighty M's family and mine meet for the first time. LOTS of things to attend to that don't have much to do with training!

Why bother?

If you're anything like me, you're just learning about what benefits there are to training with heart rate zones. For me, I never used to use them because I never bothered to do the benchmark test to get the right zones. Everything seemed (and would have been!) silly without that.

So the HR strap and Garmin collected dust in the closet.

But, now that I'm working with the Elf, I've taken the steps to test myself and get those elusive zones. Painful? A little. Useful? More than I ever knew.

But seriously...

...what's the point?

What's it all about? Why bother?

If you've ever asked yourself that question...like in the last day or so, maybe...then check out this article on the Multisport Mastery website (Elf's company). It makes an awful lot of sense to me!

Eclipsing The Lists

Christmas has eclipsed my existence for now. In the form of lists.

I make lists on an hourly basis. There's the list for the gifts purchased and wrapped. The gifts outstanding. The schedule this week for where and when I'll buy the things on that second list. There's a list of groceries to make cookies for the office and what to pack for my trip down south.

The lists are on 5 x 8 cards on my work desk. They're jammed in my driver's side door pocket, with an attached pen for good measure. They're folded in my purse.

Oh. There are Lists. They are everywhere. But such is the holiday.

So far, this is the strangest Christmas ever for me. My father has moved from our family home of 20 years (in our home town of 35 years) to Williamsburg, VA.

Beautiful at Christmas, but a god awful long trip away.

So instead of our normal holiday festivities in our normal home with the normal good cheer and heart warming feelings, I'm packing everyone's gifts Thursday morning and driving for 8 hours to a brand new home. Erg.

We're going to have to make it our job to craft some warm and fuzzy moments in the new house. Pronto.

This year, Mighty M and I decided to not put a tree up, which has made me a bit sad and kind of curmudgeonly. There was simply no time to get it up before it was time to attend our relocated holiday down south. No sense in having a tree up in an empty house, right?

Right?

(Sigh.)

You can see why I'm a little grumpy.

BUT. It's still the holiday and I've been exceptionally blessed with not one, but TWO great families, so I'll stop my grumbling about a tree and the travel.

What I have found that will eclipse the list making and taking and stashing is training.

Training is the answer, folks.

My big weekend last weekend was almost shmushed by the holiday spirit, but I managed to wrangle my BIG brick on Sunday out from under the wrapping paper and broken tape dispensers.

And I know I've said it before and at some point I'll just shut up about it, but having a coach plan my training is like the best present EVAH. A year ago I would have done the brick like this...

Sleep the night before would have been marginal, at best. Why? Because I always knew in the back of my mind that the next day was stoptional. If I stopped wanting to do it, I just wouldn't do it and fashion some reason why I skipped out of the training ether.

But when I would do a brick, I would pop on the bike, put it in a gear that was a challenge but tolerable for a long time. And then go...just in that gear...for the whole time. Period. Almost as boring as this post is.

And then, hop off for a run. Likely I would slug it out with sloppy form and focus on the distance and time, rather than the quality of the exercise.

Afterwards, I would feel accomplished but achy, likely because I didn't hydrate properly during and was working off of an "eh" diet. I may have finished a long session, but I didn't really build my engine all that much.

It wasn't the worst training in the world -- I built some level of fitness with that time -- but it was far from smart. And I want to be smart. S.M.R.T. Smart. So, with the Elf's help, now my training is a little more like this....

I wake up from a full night's sleep because I know I'll be doing the brick the next day and I know there are few excuses that count anymore. And, yes, I hem and haw about it for a while. Just getting a coach did not make me a training angel -- sometimes I still have hours when I bounce around the house dreading the impending pain. The big difference now is that I don't barter with myself on ways to skip. I just bounce until I give up and justtrainalready.

I hit the bike with good nutrition in my belly and hydration for the ride. (In fact, this is a newly acquired habit after I saw the crazy increase in heart rate for rides that I would do without fluid. Who knew my little basement would cause all that sweating!?) On the aero's, I have a detailed sheet with my tasks -- warm up for 30 minutes with some spin ups thrown in there, 20 minutes in a big gear @ 90 rpms, spin it out, 20 minutes in a bigger gear @ 85 rpms, spin it out, remaining in small @ 95+. You get the picture. An hour and a half of solid work.

I hop...I mean HOP...off the bike and take the transition seriously. Why? Because I want to make sure my legs have the benefit of as many bricks as possible. Why? Because I want to win next year. Nothing fancy like age group, but I want to win. And PR. And I do that by not messing around in my basement doing transitions in December. PERIOD.

Then it's time for the treadmill. I watch my heart rate carefully, because I have zones to stay within today. It means changing up the intensity when my ticker gets a little excited. It means slowing to a walk by the end to make sure that I stay in my proper zones. It's NOT about the mileage or the pace. For this brick it's about other things.

So, that's what my Sunday was like. And I lurved it. Every moment. And for that lovely 2 hours, I forgot all about my Christmas-tree-less living room covered in wrapping paper bits. And I forgot about the tapped checking and savings account. And I forgot about the Lists...the many, many lists.

You gotta love training during the holidays!

Did ya miss me?

Okay, folks.

I'm back.

And even though I'm sure that I have only, like, three people who still read my blog, I kind of miss writing here. Not that the vacation hasn't been fun...cause it has.

But, for the sake of my future marriage, I think I should blog again.

Cause Mighty M may just kill me if I don't.

No, don't get me wrong. He doesn't READ this anymore...nah, he gave that up a while ago. I could divulge his deepest secrets here and he have no idea until someone randomly came up to him and pointed accusingly at a race next year.

No, it's more like I talk too much. WAAAAAAAY too much. And now it's not just about triathlon. Now it's about weddings AND triathlon. And Mighty M is breaking under the pressure.

So I'm going to need to get some of this out in blogging again. Beats payin' for therapy.

So. Things I've been meaning to say and haven't yet....

(1) I've decided that swim paddles are like cocaine for pool rats. The moment you put them on you're bigger, faster, stronger, and will nevereverever stop swimming. The down side? The moment you take them off you have T-Rex arms that barely drag you down the lane any faster than a sea slug. Paddle hangover, I guess.

(2) Cadence is all relative. All relative. When I started up with prep for my 2008 season, I thought 95 rpms as a "warm up" for 20 minutes was some crazy fast nutty stuff I should only do on the trainer outside of the watchful eye of the public. Now? 115 and I are friends. FRIENDS. Go figure.

(3) Single legged drills? Still suck.

(4) I've decided to get my own custom designed shirt for racing next year. People tell me all the time that I wear my heart on my sleeve and I'm an open book. (Apparently, I'm also a walking metaphor.) So I've decided on the coolest of coolest designs for a new custom race jersey. I'll reveal it dramatically at a later date. As in the later date when I have time to just put the graphic into electronic form. I'm a weeetle slow like that.

(5) I've decided to take my writing to a new level. I had a very sad loss recently -- a friend who I will dearly, dearly miss. And in my sadness, I have been searching for a way to manage this loss and convert it to something useful, for myself and others. I don't do many things well, but I know my way around a paragraph. So I've decided to turn sadness into words in a big way. A very big way. More to come for this, but it has been on my mind for weeks now.

(6) I'm still training...a bunch. My coach has been building me up slowly from the bottom and I'm starting to feel -- really feel -- the change in my confidence levels. I'm simply stronger in the pool and stronger on the bike. My running comes easier, too. And that's never happened before. I always tend to have one hiccup each week that messes with the schedule, but I'm being really good about sticking to the plan. And it's paying off. More to come on that, but it's all good.

and,

(7) I'm still getting married. (YEAH FOR ME!!) I'm still in total bliss and gush over Mighty M each day. Our future is so full of hope and joy, I can barely contain my excitement. It's exhausting, of course, finding the right place and managing the budget. I mean, who knew that photographers were that much money? My budget is good on some things and baaaaad on others. We'll figure it out, but the planning is an emotional minefield. So far, no major explosions...well, there was that one, but let's just not talk about it. Cause WE'RE GETTING MAHWEED!!

Okay, that's all from here. More thoughtful, non-bulleted writing to come. But for now, just know I'm back and thinking up crazy things to say here while Mighty M absorbs every second of televised hockey at his disposal.

Training Update

I'm making a tee shirt that says "My Coach Made Me Do It" or "Blame it on my coach...I do" Seems apropos somehow. May make up for the psychic scarring I'm experiencing trying to breast stroke with a pull buoy between my knees (I simply don't BEND that way!) or finishing 4 x 50 of butterfly kick with a board (oh my abs oh my abs oh my abs).

But back to the update.

I still love it, even when I take pot shots at my coach. She keeps me honest and I've been more excited about triathlon than I was when I first learned about this crazy little "activity." (Pshaw...activity...more like obsession.) Every single stinking day I look forward to seeing what's on deck for me. I log onto my Training Peaks multiple (multiple!) times a day just to review my week and check my progress. And the mileage isn't high yet and the frequency of sessions isn't crazy, but the MOTIVATION to engage in the process is huge.

For example. Last week I had a day that was 100% craptastic. In fact, I've had a number of them recently that I won't bore you with (I mean really, is every single wedding reception venue booked from here until the end of time? I waited 34 years to get married and you're booked??). But I hit the water BECAUSE SHE TOLD ME TO and I fended off the umpteenth swim coach who wanted me to move for the umpteenth time so her girls could have more room. And I was cranky and focused.

We've all had those days, right? So, I did my drills and it cleared my mind. I kicked and played the catch up game and kicked some more. And I launched into my descending 100s and I ABSOLUTELY.ROCKED.THE.HIZZOUSE in that nice leetle lane in that nice leetle Y in my nice leetle town. Dropped 4 seconds off each one. Each one.

Training helps. Doing what your coach says helps. And, as the Elf said when I reported my little coup de grace in the pool... we haven't even started yet!

Anyway, I digress. Here's the stats for the past two weeks, to keep me honest. I may be taking some time off from blogging, but public accountability (read: shame) is an excellent motivator. Plus, I may not be writing a lot, but I'm still making sure that the guest bedroom is covered with stinky, wet clothes. Mighty M is thrilled.

Month: November
Week: 3rd

Monday
Run (0:40/3 miles)
Flat, fast feet drills

Strength (0:40)
AA phase, low weight/high reps

Tuesday
Swim (0:20/1000)
Drills only -- kicked out before finishing session

Wednesday
Bike (1:15/30 miles)
Spin ups, cadence drills

Thursday
Run (0:40/3.5 miles)
Rolling course

Friday
OFF

Saturday
Run (0:45/3.5 miles)
Rolling course, push hills slightly

Swim (1:00/1900)
Drills, IM drills, Descending 100s

Sunday
Missed Bike
Needed rest day and feeling exhausted.

Month: November
Week: 2nd

Monday
Run (0:35/2.6m)
Flat, focus on cadence

Tuesday
Swim (1:00/2000)
Drills, golf, steady swim

Wednesday
Bike (1:15/27.5)
Spinups

Thursday
Run (0:40/2)
Drills

Friday
DAY OFF

Saturday
Bike (1:30/37.75)
Intervals

Sunday
Swim (1:00/2000)
Drills, 100s


Totals:
Swim: 13,200 yards
Bike: 98.91 miles
Run: 20.1 miles
Actual time: 17:39

[Oh, and btw, this may look like blogging and it may smell like blogging,
but it's not blogging, because I'm still on va-ca-tione.
As you were.]

My coach made me do it...

I should have done this a long, long time ago.

Really. At the very beginning it would have been a good idea. Last year it would have been uber smart. And now that I've done it, I can't imagine training without one.

Having a coach ROCKS!

I've finished up two weeks under The Elf and am really happy with the setup. Each week, I get a complete plan uploaded to Training Peaks, with tons of details about the drills and the goals. And for me, I've actually been excited about training! I look forward to seeing what new thing is at the next session and I'm having lots of fun learning new drills and focusing on the minutia of how I'm moving.

And motivation? Way up there. It really has made a huge difference to not be patching together my plan by myself. I feel like my time is building towards something, rather than a nebulous deposit in general fitness. I wasted a lot of time and attention last year to figuring out what I needed to do, and it left me drained when it came time to just plain ole' doing it. This year is about the doing, folks.

When does it make the most difference? Those Saturday's when I would rather sit on the couch and watch FoodTv all afternoon instead of spin for an hour and a half in the basement. Cold mornings when I would MUCH rather stay nestled in bed than run drills in the local church parking lot.

I just feel more committed. More on. This investment has made a huge difference and I'm actually looking forward to the long 6 months ahead before I actually get to take my fabulous new bike to a race and see what I've got under the hood.

Oh, and speaking of the bike? Freaking love it. LOVE IT!! My future parents in law were over last night and I dragged them (bless their hearts!) down to the basement to look at it. I was like a proud mom, showing off the carbon fork and aero wheels. We've had more miles on the trainer than not (ahem, by far), but I already know I'm in love. Big time.

So...the last two weeks? Pretty killer from the training perspective. (And, to be honest, with our little engagement news? Pretty killer from all perspectives!) Lots of vigor, lots of enthusiasm, lots of gear purchases.

{Oh yeah...you know it! In the last two weeks I have "rewarded" myself with a cyclocomputer, cycling gloves, booties, a new pair of Asics, extra Asics socks, swim paddles, and yet another long sleeve running shirt. And, yes, I fully intend on blaming that on the Elf, too.}

Oh, and one of the coolest things is that I've been learning new things. Like backstroke. And new running drills. And new swimming drills. I finally learned how to do a proper spin-up and I'm actually going to attempt fly the next time I'm in the pool.

Yes. You heard me.

Fly.

I am *sure* there will be a story to follow on that one.