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

A note to sad/tired/upset/frustrated/discouraged Jess

[Day 34B]

I've definitely written letters to myself on this page before, but I'm too lazy to go look up what those contents are so I'm starting fresh right here. Days like today are a big part of the reason I even keep this log: there were valuable things to be taken from this day and I want to be able to look back on this during the moments when I really need it. Disclaimer: this post is going to be long and possibly too touchy-feely, so if you're not about that, you can stop reading (all I did was run a boring slow 5 miler this afternoon, you're not missing out on anything I promise). But if you're curious about some of the things that go through my head on a good day, read on! (And if you're future-Jess, having a rough day for whatever reason, please be willing to really hear these words from past-Jess. They're important and they're honest and I want you to listen and believe and find your spark again.) Let's start with the recap:

Today's PM Workout: Easy run, 5 mi
Summary: 5.01 mi, 51:28, 10:16 average pace
Pace splits by mile: 9:46, 10:23, 10:21, 10:32, 10:19
Hit Rate: 37/38 (97.3%)

Run specific notes (and some random details about my day):

• It's been a long day. I started the day at 4:50 am, spent some time studying, hit up the pool, showered and dealt with emails, went grocery shopping, came home, ate lunch, studied some more, had my clinical mentoring session, immediately went out for a run, ate dinner, interviewed a (super impressive and lovely) Princeton applicant, and now I'm here. It's been a crazy day. As such...
• I was tired on the run, the kind of tired where even though I was running, my eyes kept trying to fall shut and stay shut. My body has also honestly felt a little bit off the past day or two, but that's not really my point. I was tired. 
• Given that I was tired, I ran based purely off of effort. I checked my watch, I knew how slow I was going, but the heart rate and the breathing told me I was in the right place so I just stuck with it. I'm definitely coming to terms with the fact that the next few weeks will be strictly easy (aka slow) running, just looking to build some base running fitness so my joints can handle the harder things to come (which may or may not involve speed work but will definitely involve brick work, so I have to strengthen everything up bit by bit and make sure they can handle that when the time comes). It's not super satisfying to do this kind of work, but like I was telling Helena yesterday when we were talking about her 5k plan, it's important to get the right kind of base at that easy/moderate effort before you go looking for more because it's the foundation of everything else that you do. You can't cheat the basics, so even though there's nothing glorious about them, I'm going to keep doing it and doing it right. 
• Cadence is still looking good, 172 spm average today, so I'm happy about that.
• It was cold. And windy. I'm just complaining. There's no real point to this bullet point.
• My knees felt good. While we're talking about joints, it's worth noting that my right elbow was giving me the business during my swim this morning and I bit the bullet and went and got a supplement to try and deal with that. (And a note about supplements: I do take multivitamins daily, along with usually half a dose of B100, and especially the past few weeks, the difference between the time blocks when I am good about supplementing and when I'm bad about supplementing are pretty stark. It makes a big difference to my energy levels so I figure it must have something to do with the repair stuff going on in my body. I have had a few different things for joint supplements in the past because I have a history of joint issues, I just went for an easy over the counter low dose glucosamine chondroitin complex that I'm taking at even lower doses than the maker recommends because in general my policy is the less supplementation I have to do the better. Better to get your nutrients from food than from a pill I figure. But it's helped in the past so I'm giving it a go to see if it makes a difference now.)

The mushy stuff:

• For when you are feeling discouraged: I am so insanely proud of myself and this day. I feel so incredibly blessed to be where I am and doing what I'm doing. I had a stretch of time in the afternoon after lunch and before my hospital session where I was exhausted and I knew I had to get studying in and the rest of my day seemed so daunting and I just sat at my carrel with a cup of coffee and wanted to cry about everything. But then I got to go into the hospital and practice my history and physical skills and found myself in an environment where I really feel like I thrive. I have a lot to learn and a long way to go before I'm good at all of these skills I have to master, but just getting to interact with patients is such a powerful reminder to me of what I get to spend the rest of my life doing. I get that wonderful sense that this is exactly where I belong, this is what I was born to do, not because I'm good at it necessarily but because it makes me come alive and I feel so lucky to have found that and to have the opportunity to work towards being the best that I can be at it. That was specifically hospital related, but honestly it applies to training too. I'm not a great athlete, but I don't feel like I was born to do this because I'm good at it, I feel like I was born to do this because it makes me come alive. I am so lucky to have the opportunity to work towards being better at these things that make me come alive on a daily basis. The work, the opportunity, that's the blessing. Don't ever forget that.
• On confidence/frustration/slow days/trust: If I had taken this run session yesterday morning, I would've been upset because it was so slow. It was almost 2 minutes a mile slower than my half marathon time, and it's only a 5 miler. But a lot of things happened between yesterday morning and right now. My whole conversation with Helena about why base training is important happened, my swim this morning which gave me such a huge confidence boost happened, and all of a sudden I find myself very comfortable with just doing the very mundane and non-glamorous work that is running slowly until I get my running groove back. It's the kind of thing that I would have been ashamed of in the past or gotten flustered and nervous over because it would make me feel like my running was terrible and was never going to get better and I didn't have any of that today because I had a kind of trust in the process that I think I've been lacking for a while. It's the inevitable reality of still feeling somewhat new to the sport and still learning what works and what doesn't and not knowing if I'm going to see the results that I want. But I'm starting to trust in the training a little bit more and I'm starting to let my ego go and it's helping me be okay with the reality that right now my only focus is on getting back into running without reaggravating any injuries. That's going to involve some very slow running and that's not something for me to be worried or ashamed or scared of. It's just another day in my schedule and it doesn't have to be any more emotionally loaded than that. 
• Let's talk about my relationship with food: I've been stressed out about food recently. If you know me, you know that's weird, I'm normally more of a "see food and just eat it" sort of person. But triathlon is annoying because it's gravity involving and therefore for the first time in my life my weight matters to me. In August the pounds honestly just sort of fell off my body, I didn't even know what was going on but I got super lean and it was kind of cool but also kind of disconcerting. I sort of thought the same thing would happen when I picked up with training this time around, but that's really not what's happened all of January, so I think I've been a bit flustered about that because I don't know the first thing about trying to drop a few pounds. I think it's made me really weird about food and that needs to stop. Pretty sure I'm tired because I've been slightly undernourished these past few days. Pretty sure I need to be better about controlling blood sugar swings by eating more frequently seeing as I can't eat very much in any single sitting. I need to be better about eating right after I workout. I need to be better about ensuring quality when I'm snacking because my body is definitely feeling the need for wholesome nourishment between real meals and I haven't been giving it any of that. I also need to relax about indulging, it's not going to kill anyone, but the stress is probably really bad for me. I'm gonna try to be a little bit more laid back about this, because honestly I think my body might think it's starving right now and I don't want it to think that. Trying to reframe the dialogue around food not in terms of quantity but in terms of quality. As long as I'm eating good quality food, I will let my body have its way in terms of quantity. It knows what it needs, I need to be better about listening.
• On a related note, body image: I had an awesome swim this morning, which can largely be credited to all the parts of my body that I can't stand (i.e. my arms and my lats). Like sure, they're sort of ridiculous looking, but they are also the reason that you get to fly in the water. I want you to think about any breakout off the start during any race ever. Is there anything that you wouldn't give up to have that feeling? Adhering to terrible and incredibly not meaningful beauty standards? Would give that up in a heartbeat. Just think about it.

That's all folks! Bedtime.

Much love,

Jess