Sometimes I need to listen to my body more

[Day 153B]

So there are these two completely conflicting things that I find myself saying to myself a lot:

"Start where you are, not where you want to be." - for when I get too aggressive and try to do too much too fast.

"Bite off more than you can chew and chew it." - for when I'm scared of what I have planned and I need a little jolt of motivation.

I'm really bad at toeing the line between these two sentiments though. Inevitably I just spend all my time swinging too far from one end to the other and the balance seems like it's never there. But I think I'm starting to realize that balance isn't a thing anyone has perfected from day 1 when they draw up their plans. Every time I make plans I find myself changing them precisely because things feel off-balance and I need to get myself back on track. Today was life reminding me that I'm veering too far in one direction and I have to center myself again.

I'm not recovered. You'd think that'd be obvious to me given the fact that I don't really sleep through the night because of the nagging pain in my legs but no. I gave what I had to that tempo run and boy was it rough. The first 2 miles at HM pace were actually pretty solid, legs felt heavy but the pace wasn't hard to find or hold. As soon as I tried to hit the 10k pace mile though, things just fell apart. To the point where when I did finally decide that there was no way I was going to be able to do the rest of the workout and I should just run home at whatever pace I felt like, I couldn't even keep myself running at faster than 10:30 pace AND I was taking walking breaks. It was a rough day. I got ambitious this week with the residual soreness from the weekend combined with adding swimming back into my schedule and it wasn't prudent to be doing what I was doing but I did it anyways. Now I know I have to step back. And I have to go back to my calendar for the summer and re-plan things out in a way that will allow me to get the most out of my job and my training and the time I have here in Boston. And the way to do that is definitely not the way I've been going about it right now. Will have to figure out where the right balance is.

Today's PM Workout: A planned tempo run that sort of devolved into do whatever you can, logged as 6 miles in an hour, there was a good 2 mi pick up at HM pace (~8:20) in there.
Hit Rate: 20/25 (80%)

I needed a wake up call. Life gave it to me. Re-vamped schedule for the week involves not doing stadiums tomorrow and taking an easy short run with Henry in the AM instead. Then swim practice and an interval workout on Friday, Saturday off, and race day Sunday! Yay!

Much love,
Jess

It's cold outside

[Day 10]

First plan change of the year! (Unless you count last Wednesday? Which wasn't so much a plan change as just a "nope not gonna do that today".) Anyways, Tsehay and I decided this morning that as much as we are total badasses who can take on anything, it was too cold for either of us to want to run outside today (-13 C, feels like -23 C, I may be Canadian but without something to cover my cheeks I'm not going out in that temperature to run for an hour...). xD Side note: props to one of my hardcore cyclist friends for going out and riding today. Beast mode much? Anyways, as a result, I pulled up a planned trainer workout from later in the week and we rescheduled our run for Thursday afternoon. So this is what I did instead today!

Today's Workout: PM trainer ride, 80 mins
Summary:

• WU: 10 mins easy, 5 x :30/:30 spin ups 
• Pre-set: 4 x 2/1, fast/easy spinning (100+ rpm), focus on smooth pedal strokes 
• Main Set: cadence work, 95 rpm/80 rpm/95 rpm/105+ rpm/recovery pattern 
• 4/4/3/1/2 
• 3/3/2/1/2 
• 2/2/1/1/2 
• 2 mins easy 
• Technique set: 10 x :45/:15 single leg drill 
• WD: 8 mins easy 
• Total: 17.44 mi, 1:20:06, 13.1 mph average

Hit Rate: 9/9 (100%)

The notes/thoughts:

• Regarding the workout: I did the pre-set and main set on the same gear, which was about threshold at 95 rpm and probably a bit higher than that at 100+ rpm (except for recovery, which I dropped down a gear for).
• The single leg drill is steadily improving. On like number three I was thinking I wouldn't be able to hold out on the gear I was in but surprisingly enough I got through the entire thing without having to drop down. I think I'm learning the efficiency, slowly but surely.
• I still need to work on upper body position on harder efforts. When things get hard I do all manner of weird things with my upper body which is totally not how real life riding would work. Have to focus on that more. 
• Today was sort of a crazy day? I had a lot on my plate for some reason, and Sundays are always stressful because I feel a lot of pressure to get my life put together before the week starts, but I think I did alright for myself given it all. 
• Oh this is random but I have to share: I bought cookie dough (which is not a thing that I do) and I made myself a small batch of mini chocolate chip cookies that I ate after my workout (yeah, I know, not real recovery food) and it was delicious and amazing and it made me really happy. And the best part is I still have like 4/5 of the thing of cookie dough left so there will definitely be more cookies to come. Good decisions past-Jess (:

Only one session on the books for tomorrow, a lift in the morning with a short treadmill run, probably much the same if not identical to last Monday. Hopefully it'll tear my body apart a little bit less this week because I would really like not to spend all of it really sore. We shall see. Fingers crossed!

Much love,

Jess