Falling short

[Day 133]

I had a rough night last night, had a late start this morning, had to cut my run short so I could still make it to small group/lab. Disappointed that I wasn't on top of my sleep schedule, disappointed that I didn't suck it up and get up early enough to get my entire run in anyways, just generally disappointed with myself.

Today's Workout: AM easy run, 4 mi (planned 5 mi)
Summary: 4.05 mi, 39:31, 9:45 pace, 178 spm
Pace splits by mile: 10:23, 9:55, 9:23, 9:25
Hit rate: 7/7 (100%) - I honestly don't even feel good about giving myself credit for this run but I know that dropping a mile on an easy day isn't actually as atrocious of an offense as it feels like to me...

Notes/thoughts:

• That mile that I dropped this morning is probably going to haunt me for a while, especially if I fall short of my goals/expectations this summer. I'm not good at letting things like this go. It's probably a terrible trait of mine, but I can't help it. Cutting things short or not giving all the effort I want to give just doesn't sit well with me. I can't help it. 
• I started out real slow but was surprised that after about15-20 minutes my legs seemed to get into it and I actually felt real strong and smooth on the way home. It reminds me of in-season swimming. I need insanely long warm ups to get my body into it but it will perform if I give it time to warm up. Apparently this may be a thing that holds true for the running as well.
• Freaking out about tomorrow. The run is gonna be long and tough and ends on some real fast running and I just don't know what to expect of myself and the level of effort it'll take to hit all the paces right. And the thing is, I really don't think I can mentally take another disappointing day. I need a good day, I really need a good day, but I have to make those good days with my own two hands (or I guess legs in this case) and the pressure feels really crazy sometimes. I don't know if I can do it, but I know I have to try and I know that if I try and I fall short, Friday night will be a long one and I don't want that. Pressure pressure pressure.

Have a good Thursday folks (:

Much love,

Jess

And we keep coming back for more

[Day 79]

I didn't post yesterday because I ended up swapping workout days and sometimes I'm bad about posting on off days and it's exams so honestly this isn't my priority, sorry single human being who reads this blog lol. I had a pretty crappy workout today, crappy workouts tend to get me really emotionally riled up, and I was thinking about how I like got through many years of my life like this and I realized that it was because I always knew that I would be right back at it tomorrow. It just never seemed like an option that I could quit or walk away because it was frustrating, I was just gonna go back to the pool and do my thing and fail over and over again day after day until I had a breakthrough. And more likely than not, after my little breakthrough, I would go back to failing again day after day. But I think I always knew that as long as I kept showing up there would be progress eventually so I just kept showing up. I dunno how that really worked out for me long term. I wasn't the most successful swimmer. But I got to race and I loved it and honestly I'm a stronger person for it. I don't feel strong today. I don't feel persistent today. I feel like I had another workout in which my brain let me down and I'm just not where I want to be. It sucks. But I also know we'll be back at it tomorrow and the day after and the day after so one of these days it'll come together and not be horrible. Doesn't really change the fact that all I want to do is sit around and cry about it right now, but I guess it makes the long term not look so bleak.

Today's Workout: PM trainer ride, ~120 mins
Summary:

• WU: 
• 10 mins easy spin 
• 8 x :30/:30 spin ups 
• 2 mins easy spin
• Main Set: 
• 3 x 5/5/5 (you know the drill by now), no rest between rounds as written, in reality I broke for 5 minutes between rounds 2 and 3 and went 5/5/1 min easy/4 mins fast on that last one because honestly I just quit, it wasn't pretty
• 5 mins easy
• 3 x 8/2 with effort as 3/1/3/1, base +4, 60-65 rpm, +10 or more on pick up minutes, easy spin recoveries for the 2 mins 
• Extra 2 mins rest 
• 2 x 3/2 of 105/90, low resistance, focusing on the high cadence 
• WD: 8 mins easy
• Totals: 28.75 mi, 2:05:38, 13.7 mph average

Hit Rate: 83/91 (91.2%, no points off for yesterday because I just swapped that workout with this one, though it is worth noting that I'm also adjusting tomorrow's brick to just be a base run because I need time to study and that's the priority)

The only thought I have is I should work on that whole low gear high cadence thing some more, because I do struggle with smooth pedal stroke mechanics and I think it would be a really meaningful thing to work on some more. Gonna go back to my disappointment hole now and go do that. Yay.

Much love,

Jess

A little mix of disappointment

[Day 69A]

But also a little bit of faith. I skipped another workout this morning. Missed another blog post yesterday. I had time to do the blog post in the evening, I was just tired and used that time to veg out on the internet instead. That was on me. I missed the workout because I was at the tri team appeal last night and didn't get home until after 11 pm. The 4:30 am or even 5:00 am wake up wasn't going to happen. I actually did wake up at around 5:15 am and thought about doing what I had done Monday and just sucking it up and going anyways, but I only have two workouts in bold on my calendar this week (meaning they were planned as key sessions) and those are today's trainer ride in the PM (because my only other rides are outdoor moderate rides as the first half of brick sessions on the weekends) and Friday's long run. I knew that the combination of the physical work on my legs from the gym session and the inevitable afternoon crash from not having enough sleep would have inevitably cut into the quality of my trainer ride this afternoon, and I wanted to prioritize that (as well as my health and sanity, which sometimes requires that I get enough sleep). So I slept a little extra.

It's a bummer because it means my only gym session this week was a poor showing on Monday, and I don't like to leave things like that. But at the end of the day, I also know that's not my priority right now and that's okay. This is where the faith comes in: it puts a bit of pressure on to nail the trainer ride this afternoon (and hopefully not crash in the afternoon? Although even with the extra sleep I definitely didn't get enough sleep lol). But that's how these things tend to go isn't it?

Anyways, to make up for missing yesterday, here was the swim:

Yesterday's Workout: CSP Practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU: 2 x 300 swim, last 25 kick
• Main Set:
• 4 x 250 free @ 3:40-3:45, as 200 mod/50 faster, broken at the 200 for 5
• 4 x 50 free @ :45
• 4 x 200 free @ 3:15, as 150 mod/50 faster, broken at the 150 for 5
• 5 x 100 kick w/ fins as 75 choice/25 free kick on side @ 1:30
• 4 x 150 free @ 2:15, as 100 mod/50 faster, unbroken
• 100 back easy
• 4 x 100 @ 1:45 negative split
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 4300 SCY

Hit Rate: 72/80 (90% - includes this morning's missed session)

I felt really crappy yesterday to be honest and my swimming was pretty subpar. I was just exhausted. It was hard. I struggled. I got through it. Lots of rest time between yesterday morning and today's afternoon workout, so hopefully my body has had a bit of a chance to sort itself out. We'll find out later I guess.

Much love,

Jess

Hitting reset

[Day 49]

There's a long one coming. And it's pretty damn personal. Brace yourselves. Let me just get the boring half of the post out of the way:

Today's AM Workout: CSP Practice, sprint free day
Summary:

• WU: 400 swim, 250 swim (as written was 2 x 400 swim)
• Pre-set: 10 x 75 free @ 1:10, RB 6/4/2 (I did 6/4/3 because I can't breathe every 2...)
• Main Set: 
• 4 x 50 free @ 1:00 build to a sprint, no breathing last 12.5
• 8 x 25 free breakouts @ :30
• 50 MAX
• 6 x 100 kick w/ fins @ 1:30, 25 fly on back/75 choice
• 3 x (4 x 50 free @ :55 ascend 1-4), 100 easy between rounds
• WD: 400 swim easy as 100 back/300 choice 
• Total Distance: 3650 SCY

Hit Rate: 52/55 (94.5%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Kate is trying to get me to bike race. And ride with groups. Um both of those things make me uncomfortable but I guess I'm willing to try out either? (This thought is here because we talked about this on the car ride back, after she took me to a cafe to get delicious post-workout scones, mine was cheddar chive and it was so yummy.)
• There was a point where I was like, I just wanna go home. I'm so done with this. But Hap makes swims manageable, he always makes me laugh at some point and it brings me back to life a bit. 
• My underwaters/breakouts are terrible. Ugh where did my pool swimming skills go.

This afternoon's workout was interesting...I guess. I'll tell my story first and put the details at the end so they make sense. I was planning a redo of that one continuous effort ride that literally broke my spirit a few weeks back. I had Henry to see me through that one (I've actually had Henry around to see me through a lot of the rougher rides recently) and so I sort of saw today as an opportunity to see how I'd fare on my own. It didn't go well.

I think right from the get go the entire concept of that workout freaked me out. It's hard to look at a set that long and say "I can get through this" when you're hurting 10 minutes into a 75 minute set. I don't get beat by distance. You can tell me that I have an hour left of something and as long as the only requirement on me is that I keep going, I will keep going. But when you add a pace requirement to that all of a sudden it totally breaks me. I'm not great with the whole intensity business. There was a time in my life when I was and I'm not really sure what happened or how I lost it, but I find myself in the position of knowing that I really struggle with maintaining intensity. And that's tough for me to face because I feel like you have to have that kind of mental resilience to be good at this and I want to be good at this and I don't know how to be tougher other than by just doing it. Which I haven't been doing.

Anyways, the gist of what happened was that in the 5 x 5/5/5 progression, I broke in the last 3 minutes of the first round. The first round. I got to three rounds at my target gearing last time and took the last two rounds a gear down which was already kind of disappointing but at least I did something vaguely resembling the workout. This time I got 12 minutes into the main set and I just couldn't. And it was incredible because I was so active about evaluating how I was feeling and yes it was a rough pace and yes my legs burned but it wasn't an outrageous level of effort. Logically speaking I knew that I should be fine but my brain was panicking the whole time and it just felt like I couldn't and I couldn't and so I didn't. It was so incredibly disappointing to just quit on myself like that. And I wanted really badly to just unclip and go shower and put it behind me but I couldn't, so I brought the gearing down one and thought, okay, let's go at this effort level. I know for a fact that I can do this a gear down. But same thing, 12 minutes in, I just couldn't. My brain just couldn't handle it. 

It's weird, but I really do feel like the last time I did this it was just so hard and so incredibly painful that I really didn't gain any confidence from the workout. I remember just sort of being kept awake by it at night that day and the next few days and feeling like I could never do that again, I could never put myself through that again. No workout has ever really done that to me before, including like the terrors that were New Years Eve or New Years Day workouts from my age group swim club days. Usually getting through a tough workout gives you confidence but honestly that workout just broke me. And even now I really can't shake that feeling and I think that's a part of what's holding me back. 

The other part is that accumulated fatigue is a thing. I can feel it every time I run and every time I ride, it takes me normally 30 or 40 minutes to get into it and feel okay instead of the usually 15 or 20. Even on the trainer, I tend to feel best a few repeats into whatever set I'm doing because it just takes forever to get my legs to loosen out. So in a way I know that had I just gotten a little bit further through it it would have probably eased up a bit. But I just couldn't, even after I dropped down a gear, and I ended up feeling so stuck and frustrated and disappointed with myself. 

I ended up getting off the bike and taking a short run. I felt like I needed to run. The only time I ever ran in high school was when I was really upset. Sometimes I'd get into a fight with my parents or I would get really emotional over drama at school and I would just need to run. Need it like I needed air and nothing could stop me, I'd be out the door and I'd find myself x number of miles from home too tired to keep going and not really sure how I was gonna get back. The only time I ran during my first two years of college was after exams. I only ever ran when I had something to run from and today that feeling hit me full force while I was sitting on the bike. I just very literally had to run away from my problems.

The run did some good for me. I had a lot of negativity I needed to shrug off before I could really think about what was happening and getting outside and feeling like I could escape some of what was going on back in my apartment was good for me. And I had a long conversation with myself that basically went like this: So you're angry and frustrated and upset with yourself, what are you gonna do about it now? Quit? Never set foot on the trainer again? No. So what are you gonna do? Work harder. Well that's easy to say now seeing as you just ran away from the work you were supposed to be doing. That's not a good answer. Try again. Make a new plan. Okay what is this new plan. I don't know. Tell me why this isn't working for you. The set is daunting. I'm scared. How can we make it less daunting? It's sort of like goal setting. The end goal is always daunting, you have to break it up to make it manageable. Okay so how do we do that here? Well I obviously am not gonna hit the workout as written right now so why don't we make this set an ultimate end goal and work up to it. Great, more details. The number of repeats is scary. The fact that there's no rest is scary. Let's try and break the set up along those lines and work on building confidence with one of those things at a time before trying to put it together again as a big set. Okay that sounds good. Are you missing anything? Yes, I need more warm up time. I'm willing to sacrifice the sprinting at the end of this workout in order to make sure I hit this main set and can fit in solid warm up time. That all sounds good to me. Let's make it happen.

I was actually really amazed with where my brain took me on that run. That's not to say that I'm not still angry/upset/frustrated and that I'm not still sitting here berating myself for not just being tougher (I am, can't help it, it feels like I should be able to do this and the fact that I can't kills me), but I do know that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I can't get this set done for fitness reasons or for mental reasons, it all amounts to the same thing: I'm not doing quality work, I need a plan to fix that. So the plan is this. I'm going to do three variations of this workout in the next three weeks and on week four, I'm going to try to hit the main set (the 5 x 5/5/5, no finishing sprints) as the main portion of a 100 minute trainer ride brick (tack on 3-4 miles of running to the end of that). That starts tomorrow, where I'm going to do just 3 x 5/5/5 with 2 minutes of rest between each round and one set of six 45 second sprints. I just need to prove to myself that I can get through those last 5 minutes on each repeat and the reward of rest will hopefully keep me going past 12 minutes and we will build from there. 

Is it sort of silly that I'm really hung up on this workout and am willing to build my entire trainer progression around it instead of working on other things? Yes. It's extremely silly. It makes very little sense in the grand scheme of training. But I also know myself and I know I need to get this monkey off my back if I want to continue enjoying what I'm doing. I can't let this beat me because so long as this hangs over my head, I'm going to feel like I don't have what it takes. I have to prove to myself that I can work through this, so I'm going to work through it, even if it comes at some sort of expense to whatever the ideal training plan is. And the crazy thing is, even at a very reasonable 3 x 5/5/5 with rest breaks, I'm still scared. It still scares me. But I'm gonna give it my best tomorrow and hopefully prove to myself that if I work at it, I will get there. Wish me luck. In the meantime, enjoy what happened today.

Today's PM Workout: An unexpected first brick of the year!

Summary:

• Trainer ride: 10.60 mi, 45:21, 14.0 mph average
• Outdoor run: 4.18 mi, 39:28, 9:27 pace

Hit Rate: 53/56 (94.6%)

I'm going to go shower now and continue to be disappointed with where today left me. It doesn't feel good to feel like I'm not moving in the right direction, but that's how these things go. It would be great if training and progress were linear but it never is. I did this a few weeks ago and today I couldn't do it, so now I have to look forwards and figure out how to get back to where I want to be. Gonna keep working for that breakthrough. Swim tomorrow morning, edited trainer ride re-do in the afternoon. Let's get it. (:

Much love,

Jess

I have a lot of feelings.

[Day 46]

Fun facts: I don't handle myself very well. It takes a lot for me to be satisfied with myself and okay days or even good days generally don't make that mark. I had a rough time this morning at the gym and I'm still figuring out where I am given that. I wasn't as mentally present as I like to be, but sometimes it's just hard to be fully mentally present at 5 am and I'm willing to cut myself some degree of slack for that. The problem though is that I think honestly I've been falling back on Henry a lot these past couple days, I've really let him take the mental burdens for me because it's so much easier than stepping up and taking responsibility for my own efforts. As much as I know that having him around makes me better in a lot of ways, I also know I'm doing myself a disservice if I let that become an excuse for me to be less tough on myself because I know he'll pick up the slack. I wasn't 100% there and 100% committed this morning and I don't like that.

I definitely also totally psyched myself out this morning. I had such a mind-blowingly great lift on Thursday and to me all of that was from the kick I got from getting to take that lift fed and in the evening when my body was warm and ready to go. It scared me so hard to be getting back into the gym this morning because I felt the weight of wanting to hit those numbers again but knowing that I was going back to being fasted and cold. I was telling Henry about this on the way out there, some people feel a lot of pressure going into races/events, but I typically don't. I mean don't get me wrong, I get nervous and I'm hungry to do well but I think everything that I can possibly control about the race is already out of my hands. I build those races in the months that lead up to it and the day of is just a matter of execution and the right kind of luck because there are always race circumstances that are out of your control. But I feel pressure every day that I'm training, every time I lace up to run and every time I clip in on the trainer and every time I dive in the pool and every time I get under a bar at the gym, I feel so much pressure because those moments are what are going to make or break my races and every single workout feels so valuable and so important and so heavy sometimes. It sucks to fall short in those contexts, it really does, and that's where I feel the nerves and the pressure the most.

One of the things I've noticed about my benching especially is that what's going through my head on my first rep normally has a way of determining how the rest of the set goes. I've been trying really hard to tell myself that it's easy weight on that first rep, I just repeat that to myself over and over no matter how that first rep actually feels because I know it makes a difference in how many I end up being able to hit. I think today I was expecting everything to be harder because of the whole being fasted/cold thing and I think it definitely played into me not performing quite like I wanted to be. I'm bad at the mental game and I hate that because it seems like such a simple thing to fix. Just don't think like this. It's frustrating today.

The other things worth noting today are that I had a pretty rough morning post-workout. I felt fine immediately afterwards but after about an hour and getting some food into my system, I felt genuinely awful. I ended up taking about an hour nap just in Henry's lap on the couch trying to get put back together and I've been doing much better since, especially after lunch. It was not the start to my day I wanted though. I also sort of felt shitty because Henry was obviously going about his life being a perfectly functional normal human being but I was such a mess. It was just one of those situations where I felt awful for not being able to pull it together and just suck it up and be normal because someone who literally did the exact same workout as I did this morning happened to be sitting next to me and was perfectly fine. That's the kind of thing that makes me feel weak in an extra special way. -Sigh-

I should also comment on the swim meet yesterday. It was meant to be a dual meet with the SLU club team, but they dropped out due to weather (it was snowing yesterday) so we ended up holding a time trial instead. My swims were super slow, but also I was getting like a couple minutes between each swim so what was I expecting really. Regardless, it was a blast. I love racing, like deep down at the core of who I am I love racing. It didn't matter that the context was a casual time trial, my body goes places it would never go in practice when I'm racing and I love that feeling so much. There was a distinct point in the third 50 of my 200 free when literally everything in my body hurt and I was just like, awwwwwwww yes this is what I live for and I dug a bit deeper. Which made me feel sort of like a total weirdo, but hey, it's what I love to do. So I'm going to summarize yesterday and today!

Yesterday's Workout: WUSTL Swim Club Time Trial
Summary:

• Meet Warm Up:
• 200 free, 200 kick
• 8 x 50 sprint down/easy back 
• 8 x 25 IMO
• 2 x 25 breakouts off the blocks
• Swims: we were hand timing, so I don't have exact numbers
• 200 free: 2:20 low
• 100 back: 1:17 high
• 100 IM: 1:16 high
• 50 back: 35 mid
• WU/WD yardage: 350
• Total Distance: 1850 SCY (I counted this as 30 mins on my Garmin)

Hit Rate: 49/52 (94.2%)

Today's Workout: AM Lift w/ Henry

Summary:

• Back squats: WU 12 @ 65#, working 5 x 8/8/8/6-2 @ 105#, 1 x 8 @ 95#
• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 55#, working 3 x 8/8/6-2 @ 85#
• Deadlifts: 3 x 8 @ 125#
• Pulldowns: 4 x 12/12/9-3/12 @ 7 plates alt. wide/narrow grip
• Legs giant set: 3 x 
• Goblet squats: 15 @ 45#
• Weighted split squats: 15/side @ 15# DBs/side (these got split pretty heavily, they were real rough)
• Reverse lunges: 15/side @ 15# DBs/side
• Superset: 3 x
• BB push press: 12 @ 45#
• BB row: 12 @ 45#
• Superset: 3 x 
• Bicep curls: 12/side @ 15# (I should like probably be doing more weight but I'm always afraid I'm going to destroy my wrists or something...)
• Skull crushers: 12 @ 15# (I think I normally do these a bit lighter but it was fun to try and get through these at this weight. It was hard, I didn't do a great job, had to break them up a lot and had Henry spot quite a few of them, but it was fun to try.)

Hit Rate: 50/53 (94.3%)

The only note I have to say about this is that I repeated the set I did with Fay that one time, but after having back squatted already and subbing normal squats in for goblet squats and I would like to say that this set will f*ck you up. I honestly didn't even push super hard today because my brain was just not in it, but I can almost guarantee you that if you do this right and really fight to get the reps in consecutively it's the kind of metabolic work that would make you vomit. I'm gonna keep working at this, I wanna be fit enough that this set at this weight gets easy.

Okay end long post/rant. Need to get back to studying for physio. Happy Monday! (:

Much love,

Jess

"Carry on"

[Day 12A]

At some point during today's swim, I was thinking about "Carry On" by Fun. and how that was really the soundtrack to my morning. Last night was sort of rough for me. I just wasn't as productive as I wanted to be and I was sort of getting in my own way because I was frustrated and tired and the emotionality really killed all my chances at being meaningfully productive. Eventually I did settle down and get some stuff done, but it felt like too little too late. It was disappointing. I was disappointed with myself.

Anyways, sometimes those feelings carry over into the morning, sometimes they don't. Today was one of those days when they did. I had such good momentum this entire past week and it was sort of disappointing to wake up and really feel like I lost that. So while I was in the pool, I was thinking about this song and how there are sort of two ways that people deal with these days. To me it's either the mellow Fun. version of carrying on or the more aggressive Kansas version ("Carry On My Wayward Son") and I'm sure people go back and forth between them, but today I was the Fun. version. That's all I wanted to say. Even very early in the morning, apparently the only thing my brain can do is think in terms of songs.

Here's the workout!

Today's AM Workout: CSP practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU: 300 free, 4 x 50 free (I got in a bit late b/c the ride took long today b/c of the wind, missed the 200 swim and 100 swim sandwiched in the middle of warm up)
• Main Set:
• 4 x 100 free @ 1:30 descend 1-4
• 4 x 150 free @ 2:15 descend 1-4
• 8 x 75 kick
• As written was 50 choice/25 fly on back w/ fins, I don't know what the pace time was
• I did 4 choice w/ fins and then 50 choice/25 fly on back w/o fins on third person rest because my lane is strange (I led the kick today)
• 4 x 25 kick (no fins) FAST @ :30
• 4 x 200 @ 3:20 (I have no idea where this pace time came from)
• 1 - broken every 50 for less than 5 SR
• 2 - broken at the 100 for less than 10 SR
• 3 - broken at the 150 for less than 10 SR
• 4 - straight through fast
• 100 back easy
• 4 x 75 @ 1:15
• 1 - ALL FAST
• 2 - last 25 fast
• 3 - middle 25 fast
• 4 - first 25 fast
• WD: 200 easy
• Total Distance: 3600 SCY

Hit Rate: 11/11 (100%)

Notes/thoughts:

• So today's practice was an interesting adventure in our lane really not caring about assigned pace times? Or being weird and arbitrary with them? I don't really know. I just feel like we used the assigned pace time only like twice today...it was weird.
• It was less cold today than it was over the weekend, but it was really really windy, which was sort of obnoxious. That combined with a few minutes of dawdling before I left my place this morning put me in about 5 minutes late, which I feel awful about. Late is just something that I don't do, especially for practice, so -sigh-. Gotta be better about that. 
• I generally felt really slow and unmotivated today. I don't really know if I was ever even like...breathing hard today. I don't know. I knew it wasn't gonna be an aggressive push the pace day so I just tried to focus on technique. Still working out what the deal is with my freestyle recovery. It's changed a lot in the past few years and I'm still figuring out what the best version of it is. Also trying to work on that body position, which is not where it used to be and definitely needs some work.
• I was happy though, towards the end I realized this and it was nice. Even when I'm not doing great, I love being in the pool. It makes me happy. It's worth it.
• I was lucky enough to have a teammate volunteer to drive me home today. She even had a bike rack so things worked out perfectly. I might hit her up more often for rides. Biking out to practice probably wouldn't be bad with warmer weather, but it's cold right now and I definitely wouldn't say no to a car ride. I'll have to remember to get her a gift or something for helping me out. She also coaches Saturday practices and it sounds like they do some cool things at those. I might think about going on Saturdays to check it out. We'll see. She also says she's going Friday this week. I had been planning to swim on Thursday, but she can't make Thursdays so I might consider adjusting my schedule so I can swim Friday and get a ride to practice. Again, we'll see. 
• Quick update on the body: Definitely nowhere near as sore as I was last Tuesday. Tight mostly in the upper body (around my shoulders, through my back), but my legs feel good (which means upping the volume next week?), my wrists/elbows don't feel loose and weird like they did last week (lol have I even mentioned that yet? I kept feeling like they were going to pop out of their joints whenever I picked anything up), and my back is a bit sore/tight but in no amount of actual pain so I know I didn't hurt myself. All in all good progress, means I'll try and hit it a bit harder next week and see where all of that goes. 

It's gonna be a long day. I'll be back with an evening post because I've got a trainer ride planned for the evening. I'll probably do it right before dinner, after my respiratory physiology simulation lab ends at 5 pm. Yay...or something like that...

Much love,

Jess

Slow and steady wins the race

Today I am working on being patient with myself and not forcing progress when it's not yet meant to be. I tackled the workout that I didn't see through last Wednesday and once again I didn't see it through. I got further today though and it felt like a better effort all in all, but it was still not what I wanted it to be. I think there are a combination of things at play. I think my body has the ability to crank out this workout but my brain hasn't wrapped itself around it yet. It's still daunting and scary and it feels harder than it probably is. But much the same way as how you can't force physical progress, sometimes you can't force mental progress either. It takes time for brains to adjust to the harder sessions and if I beat myself up for every day where my mental muscle wasn't where I wanted it to be, I would be a really unhappy person. (And honestly, there are times when I do get really harsh with myself about workouts like today's, but I'm trying to be a little easier on myself about it right now.) So here's the summary.

Today's Workout: AM treadmill run and short dryland finisher
Summary:

• WU: 10-15 mins @ 6-6.5 mph
• Main Set: 400-800-1200-800-400 pyramid @ 8.0 mph w/ 50% recovery intervals between @ 6.0 mph
• WD: 10 mins easy @ 6-6.5 mph
• Treadmill numbers: 6.05 mi, 53:45
• Garmin numbers: 5.54 mi, 53:18, 9:37 pace
• Dryland: 3.5 x
• Bodyweight squats w/ band: 10 wide stance 10 narrow stance
• Push ups: 10 narrow/elbows tucked, 10 wide, split as necessary
• ~ 10-15 mins

Hit Rate: 13/15 (86.6%)

The goal had obviously been to build the pyramid up to 1600 m and come back down, but that evidently did not happen. It's a step in the right direction though and we'll come back to this one sometime in the next two weeks and try again. I'm willing to grind to get to where I want to be, I'll just keep pushing at this workout until I crack it. It'll happen. I believe. And in the meantime, I'll accept that there's still work to be done and that today just wasn't the day yet. 

Much love,

Jess