The spring training post-mortem

[Day 129]

There's so much data from the past four months that the idea of going through it freaks me out. So know that I'm writing this as I'm looking through everything and I expect the post to be way sloppy because it's so unplanned. But honestly, if I had to put more effort into it than this, the reflection would never happen so I'm gonna do this and be satisfied with it.

Here's what the full schedule ended up looking like (if you click on the images, they should get bigger):

And here is the month by month breakdown via Garmin:

• Swimming: 
• Jan: 9 swims, 19.13 mi, 11:10 total hrs
• Feb: 9 swims, 18.52 mi, 10:15 total hrs
• Mar: 5 swims, 11.08 mi, 6:15 total hrs
• Apr: 9 swims, 14.82 mi, 8:21 total hrs
• Biking: 
• Jan: 9 rides (all trainer), 172.43 mi, 12:21 total hrs
• Feb: 10 rides (4 outdoors, 6 trainer), 250.59 mi, 17:59 total hrs
• Mar: 6 rides (5 trainer, 1 outdoors, 2 bricks - 1 trainer, 1 outdoors), 163.01 mi, 11:17 total hrs
• Apr: 8 rides (2 trainer, rest outdoors including 1 brick, 2 races), 185.08 mi, 10:59 total hrs
• Running:
• Jan: 10 runs (6 treadmill, 4 outdoors), 41.44 mi, 6:37 total hrs
• Feb: 10 runs (1 treadmill, 9 outdoors), 67.68 mi, 10:43 total hrs
• Mar: 15 runs (all outdoors, 2 bricks), 93.47 mi, 16:04 total hrs
• Apr: 11 runs (all outdoors, 1 brick, 2 races), 56.74 mi, 8:40 total hrs
• Other: 
• Jan: 11 sessions (6 lifts, others were core/rowing/etc), 8:50 total hrs
• Feb: 6 sessions (5 lifts, 1 other), 7:10 total hrs
• Mar: 6 sessions (5 lifts, 1 other), 6:57 total hrs
• Apr: 3 sessions (2 lifts, 1 other), 3:15 total hrs
• Total time by month:
• Jan: 38:58 hrs
• Feb: 46:07 hrs
• Mar: 40:39 hrs
• Apr: 31:22 hrs
• Totals: 
• Swim: 32 swims, 63.54 mi, 36:01 total hrs
• Bike: 33 rides, 771.11 mi, 52:36 total hrs
• Run: 46 runs, 259.33, 42:04 total hrs
• Other: 26 sessions (18 lifts), 26:12 total hrs
• Time: 156:53 hrs

Okay that was actually sort of cool to compile. On one hand, the numbers are too large for me to really comprehend so it's like, oh apparently I worked out a lot. On the other hand, it's cool to see what the swim/bike/run distribution looked like.

Overall thoughts:

• On the goals from back in these days: 
• Consistency w/o burnout towards the end of the big training block: Somewhat accomplished? I think I definitely did way better than I did in the fall and managed to keep up what was for me a very high volume of work both in terms of training and school and somehow stay on track for almost four entire months. There were some off days/weeks towards the end both because of inevitable schedule issues relating to travel and just mental things (some weird mix of burnout, anticipation, and anxiety) but it was a margin of error I am more than happy to accept. I feel like if I can hit serious training blocks like this every time I went for it, I would be in a fantastic place. Sure, there's always room to improve when it comes to consistency but given the constraints of reality and the fact that there's much more to my life than just this sport, I am 100% satisfied with what consistency looked like this block.
• Picking up the slack on the biking and swimming: Biking yes! Swimming no...Which I'm sort of okay with honestly. I think there's still room to improve on the biking. That's something that I want to continue working on moving forwards. My swimming hasn't been improving but it also hasn't been getting significantly worse and for now I'm willing to accept that while I focus on upping my game in the disciplines I'm weaker in. I've gotten a lot better as a cyclist these past few months and I really hope to keep that moving in the right direction as time goes on. I will say that the lifting supplement to my swimming did go phenomenally well this block, something else I hope to keep up as time goes on.
• Run mileage: goals were 20-25 miles per week which turned out to be waaaaay ambitious. I had a few kinks in the early parts of the year involving my knee and my IT band that kept that from being a reality, but I was there in that range in March (which was my highest volume month) so I would consider that a success. I'll be running a lot between now and July so we'll see where the weekly mileage lines up in the upcoming weeks/months. 
• Core/stability/mobility/stretching/recovery: Um no. Fail. I have always sucked at this and pretty much continued to suck at it this cycle. This is something I'm going to try and work on more in the upcoming months. 
• Being more present: I think I'm getting better at this. I think I still have a long ways to go before I am where I want to be. I think what has improved is my acceptance of myself and the things that I feel and the way that I think. I think I'm more okay with being who I am and having the quirks that I have and accepting that one of the consequences of just being me is that I'm maybe not going to be as happy as other people are sometimes and that's okay because it is what I want and what I choose. I think I'm better at being thankful for having the ability to do what I choose to do. That's valuable. Do I still have to work more at being present? Yes, but in terms of my mentality as a whole, I think I'm moving in the right direction. I hope the people who have been reading this madness agree.
• On the future:
• Honestly training is going to be way less serious in the upcoming year because I know I need to focus on other things like school. There are plenty of things that I want to work on because there are always plenty of things that I want to work on, but I think it's important to take it one step at a time and remember that it has to take a back seat compared to some of the bigger things happening in my life right now. So for the next few months, the two main things I'm going to be working on are as follows...
• Running: Most of my races are running races in June/July, so I'm going to focus on running for now. (After that, there'll be a mix of different races from August through October so I'll probably get back to a more balanced tri training schedule. By the time the winter rolls around, I expect to be switching over from endurance work mode to strength work mode because I've always wanted to put some work in at the gym just getting stronger. I've never really had the chance to focus on that specifically because I've always been doing one endurance type race or another. Since there really aren't races on the calendar after October, I expect to have some time to just hit the gym and have fun focusing on something that is normally more of an accessory part of my schedule.)
• Core/maintenance/stretching: I suck at paying attention to this and doing this and I really need to make it a more habitual part of my schedule so it's something I'm going to try and really tackle in the next few months.

There is so much more I could look at and so much more I could talk about and over-analyze when it comes to this stuff but honestly, I want to leave it at this: I did something in the past four months that I didn't think I was capable of doing. I think I've worked harder than I've ever worked in my life (not necessarily just in regards to training, but in regards to literally everything else too) and I've learned a lot about myself and my limits and my strengths and my weaknesses. Most of all I've learned a lot about how to make this life and my passions work within the constraints of reality and I've learned that I have the best support person in the universe who does so much to give me the best chance I have at reaching my goals. I couldn't have imagined any of this would go the way it had when I first laid out all my crazy plans at the beginning of the year. I couldn't have imagined that it would be so hard. I couldn't have imagined that I would realize that it is so hard and keep going. I couldn't have imagined that anyone would support my crazy crazy life and my crazy crazy dreams. I've been so lucky just to experience the things that I've been able to experience and come out the other side. Sure, there are a billion ways in which I've fallen short along the way but I really couldn't be more satisfied with my decision to try. I couldn't be more thankful to have had Henry standing beside me every step of the way. I couldn't be more proud of how far I've come. 

The lofty goals are getting laid aside for a little bit. You can bet I'll keep training and keep working and hopefully keep improving, but the priorities are definitely going to shift in the next few months and maybe even years. I'm going to try to be a little less uptight and a little more forgiving and a little more focused on school. I'm sure everything that's gone into these past four months will only help me even as things start to change. It's just another adventure and I'm sure it'll take me to just as unexpected places as this one has, even with all my overbearing planning. I hope you'll stay with me as I take it on. Happy Sunday everyone!

Much love,

Jess

PS - It was a rest day today. I didn't do much of anything, which was fairly glorious. Long run tomorrow! (:

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

"It will settle"

[Day 13]

Title quote is from Chrissie Wellington, retrieved from a magazine I was reading over breakfast this morning. Pretty much sums up how things felt during the workout today so I thought it was fitting.

Today's Workout: AM treadmill run (one big long continuous hill) + core
Summary:

• Run:
• WU: 1.5 mi @ 6.0-6.2, 2% 
• Main Set: all at 6.2 mph, 1.0 mi @ 3%, 0.75 mi @ 4%, 0.50 mi @ 5%, 0.20 @ 6%
• WD: 1.0 mi @ 6.0, 2%
• Treadmill summary: 5.07 mi, 50:05
• Garmin summary: 5.24 mi, 49:56, 9:32 pace
• Post-run core: 
• 50-30-20 shoulder touch planks
• 30-30 leg lifts
• 10-10 PT lying leg extensions (R/L)
• Plank series: 1:30/0:45/0:45/1:30 w/ 30 SR b/w
• 10 four count sit ups

Hit Rate: 13/13 (100%)

Notes/thoughts:

• It will settle: every time I upped the incline today I had a moment where my brain was just like, ugh I have to do how much more of this? And then we're gonna bring it up again? But the beauty of endurance work is that you always settle into it, you just have to give it time. I really felt that today. It's a good mantra to keep in mind when things feel off kilter early on in any workout/interval/whatever it may be. 
• Definitely still overreaching every time I plan a workout. I was like, oh I've never really done hill work on a treadmill before (other than that one dabble into a preprogrammed hill run on the treadmill the one random day) so let's try something new today. Let's not do actual intervals because I don't want to be too aggressive. And I found this cool thing that was like a continuous hill pyramid and thought, yay perfect for the base weeks! Except I'm totally not a good enough runner to do this as a pyramid yet. xD Sooooo instead I took it as a ladder. Worked my way up today. Will hopefully be able to work my way down too next time? And then we can work on inching up that pace? We'll see. I've got things to work towards.
• I really need someone cracking the whip on the core work. I did some amount of it but honestly I didn't put in that much effort. Really lack discipline with the core stuff, especially when it comes to planking. It's one of those things where I need someone else to be holding the stopwatch and pestering me about form otherwise it just doesn't get done right. (Notice that I went for a 1:30 based set instead of the typical 2:00 based set...yeah...) It sucks that this is actually important to me being better at the other stuff because I dislike core work so much. I am trying and I guess not doing as much as I should be is still better than doing nothing...but I still really just need someone to glare at me and tell me to actually do the work when it comes to this. (Henry? Sunday after we get back from Killington? Just make me do it?)
• Henry had to do some work to kick my sorry butt out of bed this morning. I really just wanted to sleep in. But he made me get up and got me to the gym where I subsequently got to do my thing so that was nice. 
• My right knee was bothering me a bit today again during the run, and it's been intermittently painful throughout the morning, so that's something to watch out for. Especially seeing as I'm skiing over the weekend, the knee health will be pretty pivotal to everything.
• Did Garmin update their software? Because my accelerometer numbers this week have looked really different than they used to look and nothing has really changed about the treadmills or my running I don't think...we'll see if the change trends continue. I reserve judgment until a later time. 
• Cadence was still low on average today (169 spm). I had some good stretches in the middle of higher cadence running though, so that's a step in the right direction. Probably taking a run outside tomorrow so hopefully those numbers will give me a better indication of what the deal with cadence is right now. 

In other news, I took some time for myself this morning. Just like didn't do anything I was supposed to do, took a bath, watched some random videos (including this which got me real pumped about skiing over the long weekend), laid around in bed, it was fantastic. I haven't done much of that the past week and a half, low pressure me time was much needed. Some days I don't take well to needing down time and like spend the entire time fretting and being a little crazy. Today though, I felt like I deserved it and it was time well spent so I'm not living with as much angst as I usually am after blowing off responsibilities for an entire morning. Now I have to actually go address the realities of my life though lol. At least I'm already done with all the training I have to do today? And it was a short workout at that?

Two sessions on the books for tomorrow: a morning swim and an afternoon run (hopefully outdoors). Fingers crossed for warmer weather and NO WIND (because I have to bike out/back in the morning). Okay gonna go get my undercut trimmed up now. (:

Much love,

Jess

Looking ahead to 2016

[Day 2]

Continuing on from yesterday's post, I'd like to talk about what my goals are for this year and how I plan on working towards those goals. A lot of my goals this year are more process goals than they are performance goals. The main reason for that is that I'm not a great athlete, I don't really do what I do because I'm good at it, I do it because I really enjoy it. I find performance goals can sometimes be somewhat limited because honestly I don't yet have a great grasp on what reasonable goals are speed/pace wise and what level of work is necessary to achieve them. I have a lot of experience with regards to time-based goal setting in competitive swimming, but in the world of triathlon, I'm way out of my depth. That said, I do want to improve and be better this year than I was the last, but I think at my level, the best way to go about improving in the context of race performance is by focusing on improving the details of my training process. The gains will follow the work, so rather than focusing on how fast I want to be, I would like to focus on how to train as best as possible.

As yesterday's post indicated, the biggest improvement I would like to see this year is more consistency and no flaming burnout towards the end of a bigger training block the way I experienced this year. Going into 2015, I hadn't really put any amount of thought into what the grand scheme of my year was going to look like, and as a result, I hit many unexpected road blocks because I wasn't looking out for them. I'd like to try to prevent that this year.

My big overarching plan is to have a quality 3-4 month build up into my two main spring triathlons (Collegiate Nationals and Wildflower), then take May through July as sustained plateau months. I don't necessarily want to take them off or take them easy, but there is a lot of turbulence during those months (finals, June preceptorship in Boston, the wedding in July, moving Henry from Boston down to St. Louis) so instead of stressing myself out about forcing out training time when it's not there, I will just try to maintain fitness without too much emphasis on structure. Late July into early August will be another big but short build into the Chicago Triathlon at the end of August and whatever fall races the club does (including our nationals qualifier for next year). I will still be going straight into a half marathon build for the Rock 'n' Roll half, then I will take the rest of the year as an actual off-season (instead of trying to push another training block for another race in there and burning out). I would like to litter small road races and maybe swim meets throughout that just as low key fun situations to compete in because I think competing more is generally better for me, but we'll see what my life budget looks like and make those decisions as opportunities arise. Hopefully starting the year by separating the important months from the maintenance months will help keep me on the right track throughout the year in terms of mentality, intensity, and volume.

Another one of my big goals this year is to pick up the slack on biking and swimming. I've made a lot of improvements to my running, but at the expense of my swimming, and my biking has always not really been going anywhere. I'm going to try to get out for more group rides when it comes to biking and I'm going to aim for more consistency with regards to swim practices and lifting (which benefits my swimming enormously). With regards to run mileage, I'm going to try and get consistently above 20 miles per week with the ultimate goal of being consistently around 25 miles per week. That might be ambitious given everything else I want to do too, but I like setting my bars high.

I also really want to put more focus on the more peripheral parts of my training, like core/stability work, mobility, and stretching/recovery. In making my training plan for the spring, I've tried as much as possible to explicitly place these things into my schedule in order to make sure that they actually get done. We'll see how good I am about following through on my plans.

The final goal that I have is to be more present. Henry pointed something out to me the other day (as he often does), which is that I have a tendency of living x number of days/months/years in the future (or occasionally, in the past) but I'm really bad at just taking it one day at a time and focusing on the here and now. That's something I'd really like to work on. I think a certain amount of always looking ahead is necessary in order for me to stay on track but I think in order for me to execute on any given day, I do really need to try and focus on being present. Now the rest of my goals are easy to work into a plan or schedule, but this one is a little harder. (Although I did try to work it into my schedule by setting aside a block of time each weekend to plan, which will hopefully minimize my need to double check my scheduling compulsively during the week.) I'm not sure what the best way to go about this is other than to just do it. I might leave myself sticky note reminders around the house so I have a constant presence (past-me) to remind future-me to stay on track and just focus on the day at hand. I'll try to report back about how this one goes. (And if it goes poorly, I'm sure Henry will let me know.)

So those are my big goals for 2016! The real fun starts tomorrow with the first workout of 2016, can't wait! (:

Much love,
Jess

New Years Resolutions

I know it's not quite the New Year yet, but since I'll be in China with what will likely be limited access to blogging websites (thank the Great Firewall for that), I figured it would be better to write this sooner rather than later.

I'm not typically a resolution setter. Or at least not a New Years Resolution kind of resolution setter. I think I like to set resolutions at whatever random time of year they are convenient to me and am about as good at following through with them as typical New Years Resolution setters are (by which I mean they tend to last in the range of 3-10 days). I want to try it this year though, because this is something that I really want to do, and like maybe if I set a resolution and tell people about it they'll hold me accountable for it. So here goes.

I want to log blog every single day of 2016. (Which is 366 days because it's a leap year!) The reflection that I do here carries a lot of value to me and the therapeutic effects of this crazy shout into the void are totally real. The blog really helps me stay in tune with what's happening with my body and in my mind and I think it'll be important to helping me maintain the balance that I have still not really found. 366 days means blogging even on the off days or weeks or months (who knows what will happen right?) because those days are just as integral to the process as all the training days. I want to be motivated to use this tool, I figure the resolution might help.

I would also like to share my blog for the first time. Literally nobody knows that this thing exists. Not even Henry, I haven't even told him about it and he's my number one in life. I think I have a lot of anxiety about people finding out what it is that I really do with my life in as many details as I know it in. For one, I'm not a great athlete. I may have been swimming my entire life, but I don't have much by way of athletic talent and I'm really new to running and cycling. The idea of other people knowing exactly how little I know about what I'm doing and how slow I really am on a day-to-day training basis sort of freaks me out. For another, I'm not one of those people that's perky and motivated all the time. There are a lot of ups and a lot of downs in training and I'm very open about the low points here, which is not something I object to sharing necessarily but is something I'm a little bit self-conscious about. I also don't want the downs to be misunderstood. I love what I do and I don't want anyone to take the downs in the process as evidence that I don't. And finally, I think anytime you open up about experiences like this, you welcome commentary. I understand that commentary can be productive. Listening and learning from others helps you grow, sometimes other people have a better sense for your strengths and weaknesses than you do, blah blah blah etc. etc. etc. But as someone who is pretty insecure about a lot of what gets recorded in this blog, it's actually really scary to think about opening up the space to allow for others to comment and critique.

Given all of that, why is it that I still want to share this? Because I don't want to hide this part of my life. It's actually a weirdly isolating experience to not be able to share this part of my life with most of the people who are a part of my life. When I swam competitively in my younger years, the experience of training was so entirely different because I was always surrounded by teammates. Having like-minded people that run on your schedule and face the same challenges that you do really pulled me through all of those years. My teammates were my second family and we always joked that between practices and travel and meets, we probably spent more time with each other than with our real families. I don't have that same sort of training support network here. I race as a member of the Wash U Triathlon Team based out of the undergraduate campus, but as a medical student, I run on a completely different schedule and generally don't train alongside my teammates. (Also, not gonna lie, they're all really fast and some days I get intimidated out of going to intense run workouts led by the fast boys.) I swim with a master's club, but not often enough that I really feel integrated into that community yet. I cycle with groups occasionally, but my cycling skills still need work which makes me reluctant to do group rides more often even though I probably should. The gist of it is that I don't have the same kind of community to share my experiences with that I used to. It makes training a little bit isolating, which is what I would like to push back against. I feel like making an effort to share my experiences this way, even if no one ends up reading it, is meaningful because at least I've tried to make that connection and put myself out there.

That having been said, I really hope people are kind. I'm not a very interesting person and I'm not a great athlete but the things that get recorded here are some of the things I hold nearest and dearest to my heart in life. I hope people respect that.

So. On January 1st, I'm going to be starting this new journey. It will be interesting because I believe both the 1st and 2nd will be travel days for me. I will write blog posts likely on planes or something of that sort and retroactively post them after the fact. They will likely be boring and devoid of real meaningful content because my training cycle doesn't start until the 3rd or the 4th, but whatever! It'll be the start of what will hopefully be a great year and a great new adventure. I hope you'll join me on that adventure! Wish me luck!

Much love,
Jess