Longest workout of the year to date

[Day 66]

Oh no I missed another blogging day! Yesterday was so hectic it completely slipped my mind that I hadn't blogged. This is what happens on rest days. I forget stuff. Okay well let's do a recap of yesterday and a recap of the week before we get into today's workout log.

Rest day: Yesterday was a pretty good day all in all, got some studying done, went to Schnucks Screenings, performed in the Vagina Monologues, had fun focusing on non-training related things that made me feel like I had a life again. I actually had a great day just being a normal person. That was probably why I forgot to log lol. The body felt pretty good most of the day, a little bit of residual exhaustion from the run on Friday but nothing super notable. Good stuff all in all.

Weekly Recap:

• 2 swims, 2 runs, 1 trainer brick, 1 gym session, 1 core session for a total of ~10 hrs in 7 sessions.
• I missed a swim this week and took 3 rest days which sort of made it not the week I wanted it to be but for what it's worth, I think I put in some great efforts during this week's sessions, especially with regards to running.
• It was nice to finally hit some harder efforts with the running. I'm pretty slow but it's coming along really well I think in terms of finding speed while tired. It's really shown through in the bricks, where I've been taking much faster efforts than I typically do. Makes me think I could pull out a pretty good 10k time in the next race. We'll see.
• I haven't done great this week with the sleep. I think that's worth noting. I've had to take afternoon naps twice and I think it says something about my sleep habits that needs to be fixed. Gonna really try and fix that in the upcoming week because it'll be a big week and I'll need to try and keep my energy reserves up. 

Okay time for today! Here's the weekend brick update:

Today's Workout: Brick (30 mi ride + 4 mi run, moderate effort)
Summary:

• Bike: 29.66 mi, 2:00:30, 14.8 mph (Geyer-Adams-Ballas route)
• Bike speed splits by 5 mi: 14.4, 14.7, 15.2, 14.5, 14.7, 15.2
• Transition: 2:30.60
• Run: 4.24 mi, 38:07, 8:59 pace, 178 spm cadence (flat half of the park)
• Run splits by mile: 8:36, 8:56, 9:13, 9:08, 9:11 

Hit Rate: 69/76 (90.7%)

The ride felt really good. I took it pretty moderately and honestly felt way more energized in the second half than I thought I would. Was mostly pretty calm too, wind started up towards the end but it was very manageable. I spend some time out of the saddle in the first half but pretty much tried to keep my climbs seated in the second half because I need to work on the steady seated climbing (Collegiate Nationals and Chicago should both be flat courses so it makes more sense to just stay seated rather than amp up heart rate with standing climbs when there are small hills). The run felt pretty rough today, not gonna lie. Didn't have the same spring in my step I usually expect and I felt outrageously slow, but the splits came out well and I got some good practice forcing myself to focus and stay positive and finish strong. It's just as important to work on the mental side of things so I'm glad there are days that really challenge me in that department. The only other thing worth noting about the workout is that I took two gels on the bike and had most of a bottle of Gatorade. I didn't eat breakfast beforehand, just had a Clif Bar, some water, and 3 Shot Bloks. It seemed to meet my calorie needs pretty well though, so it's good to feel like I have that part of the game plan down. Will probably stick to a similar pattern for the rest of the workouts that clear 2.5 hours in length. 

It's pretty cool to note that my longest workout last summer in the lead up to September racing was a 30+5 brick and a 24+6 brick and I've hit a 30+4 and we're still 7 weeks out from racing. I'm feeling super fit and super pumped to keep working towards putting together a good race in April. Excited to see where this goes. 

Lifting in the morning tomorrow and taking a nice easy run lap of the park in the afternoon. Seems like it'll be a light day in terms of school hours which will be nice, give me a chance to keep trying to catch up on lectures and things. Big week of training coming up, 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