Sometimes I need to listen to my body more

[Day 153B]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Much love,
Jess

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! (:

...And we're back

[Day 87]

I think I passed all my exams! I think we're in the clear! Lol I have so much I want to write about now that I'm back on the bandwagon. Let's get to it!

Life updates:

• I'm in Maine w/ Henry and his family. The rest of break will involve some mix of Boston and Princeton (for wedding planning). The training this week is pretty arbitrary - whatever I get in is whatever I get in. I'm trying to be consistent the whole week so I can put in a big 7-10 day push once I'm back in St. Louis before taper, but that's really the extent of goals.
• I basically opted to take the whole week away from training to focus on school. It was the right call. I have probably studied more this year alone than I have in my entire life prior and it's so amazing to feel like I'm learning things and getting this whole medicine thing figured out. Like by the time I got to the end of exam week and sort of looked back and took stock of everything I'd managed to shove in my brain during the week, it blew my mind. It's really nice to feel like working hard pays off in the end. It makes me feel a lot more reassured about this training too - I haven't given it a chance to show me what it's worth yet so of course I'm swimming in self-doubt but I think exam week made me feel like there are great things coming in the next few months. I've put good time and effort in, I trust that it'll pay of. It's nice to just feel steady and confident for once. 
• Taking time away really makes me appreciate swimming/running/biking/lifting/generally being active for the sake of loving the feeling of moving. I just missed being active. I didn't care about racing or getting faster or whatever, I just wanted to get out and do what I feel like bodies are made to do. Bodies are made to move. It made me really sad to feel like I didn't have time for that. It really puts things in perspective. Sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself to work hard and to succeed and it makes me forget that I just genuinely love doing what I'm doing. Time away always puts that in perspective. I think I need that every once in a while.
• Being still is sort of a physically horrible thing. I had some back pain (lower and upper) and knee pain (left) that nagged me all week and it was just like, ugh why I haven't been doing anything but sitting all this time. But I guess that's what happens when you sit all the time. Yeah it's awful.

Anyways, I'm in Maine now and I took two runs, one yesterday and one today. Yesterday's was nice and quick and I really enjoyed that. Today's was a little bit slower. One of the things I really like about running here is that the terrain is nice and rolling, just gentle longer uphills and downhills which we don't really get in St. Louis. I'm enjoying playing with the effort on the slight terrain. I've also been running without keeping track of pace live as I run (time of day stays on my screen throughout and I get mile splits as they happen but that's it) which is nice. It's good just to focus on the feeling of running instead of worrying about how my running actually is and trying to compare perceived effort to what I think perceived effort should be based on pace. I'm just happier when I trust my instincts and don't feel the need to have the clock validate those instincts. And it tends to work out really well for me in terms of overall pace anyways, so I'm real happy with it. 

It's worth noting that I've had some naggy come and go foot pain (not soreness/achy-ness, actual pain) which worries me a little (which was also why I opted for a shorter slower run today). I think the plan of action is to continue with what I'm doing and just keep distances short (under 6-7 miles) so long as I can handle what that feels like during my runs without compromising stride form and hopefully with the consistency things will ease up day to day. I'm also hopefully gonna be back in the gym tomorrow. The weight work typically helps with my foot strength/balance so maybe that'll make a difference as well. I'll keep you updated. In the meantime, here are the workout numbers. I'm also going to include a fun little exercise at the end: I need practice with my H&P write ups, so I'm gonna do one for me and my foot! Hope you enjoy that little tidbit. Here we go:

Yesterday's Workout: Base run, 6.5ish miles

Summary: 6.74 mi, 58:44, 8:43 pace, 178 spm

Pace splits by mile: 8:56, 8:27, 8:22, 8:51, 9:00, 8:43, 8:42 

Hit Rate: 85/93 (91.3%)

Today's Workout: Base run, 5.5ish miles (w/ Henry for the first 3.5 miles)

Summary: 5.66 mi, 51:08, 9:02 pace, 176 spm

Pace splits by mile: 9:11, 9:19, 9:16, 8:54, 8:54, 8:26

Hit Rate: 86/94 (91.4%)

Jess's H&P: We're going to pretend I'm presenting to a walk-in clinic in Maine w/ foot pain.

• CC: foot/ankle pain (R)
• HPI: Miss H is an otherwise healthy 22 yo Asian female presenting with pain in her right foot/ankle. This began yesterday during a run in which she felt the pain come and go a few times throughout the run. She had a similar experience on a slightly shorter run today and states her pain today as worse than yesterday. Her pain is localized to the area under her medial malleolus and the arch of her foot and does not radiate to any other locations. She has no pain when the foot is resting but experiences pain when the ankle is bearing weight or with movement (e.g. rolling her ankle, pointing/flexing her foot). While she is running, she feels that the pain increases with uphill and downhill running, but tends to fade away on flat terrain. When she is not exercising, the pain is more mild than it is during her runs and does not interfere with her activities of daily living, although she does not limited range of motion in her right compared to left ankle, which concerns her. At the worst, she rates the pain a 5/10 and otherwise on average a 2/10. She denies any trauma precipitating the onset of the pain. It is worth noting that she is a triathlete and recently took a week away from training on account of exam week. She reports that her current training mileage/intensity is lower than what is typical for her training. These two recent runs are her first runs back from her break. She reports a history of MSK problems (previous ankle injuries/pain/weakness, knee injuries including a right ACL tear, ongoing lower back pain) that have largely been managed through PT. She has not tried NSAIDs or other pain medication. She has iced the ankle which does appear to help with the pain and slightly improves her range of motion. 
• ROS: Negative for symptoms outside of those reported in the HPI.
• PMH: No significant past medical history.
• PSH: Two major dental surgeries in distant past (8+ years ago). 
• Medications: None reported.
• Allergies: Tylenol (acetaminophen - hives reaction, unclear at the time if the true cause was Tylenol but avoids the medication anyways)
• FH: (redacted)
• SxH: Pt is from St. Louis, MO, lives alone in an apartment, attends medical school, is currently visiting fiance's family. Denies any history of tobacco or recreational drug use. Reports occasional alcohol use. (Sexual history redacted.) 
• Physical:
• VS: (not actually available, but let's assume they're normal because they probably are)
• General: Well-appearing young female in no apparent distress, sitting up and breathing comfortably on room air
• Mental status: A&O x4
• Cardiac: RRR, no S3 or S4, no murmurs/rubs/gallops
• Lungs: CTAB, no wheezes/rales/rhonchi
• Abd: Normoactive bowel sounds, soft, non-distended, non-tender to palpation, no hepatosplenomegaly
• Neuro:
• CN I-XII intact (symmetric where applicable)
• 5/5 strength in all four extremities, normal passive motion and tone
• +2 biceps, triceps, brachioradialis, quadriceps, and Achilles reflexes
• Soft touch and vibratory sensation intact and symmetric in all four extremities
• MSK: Pain with touch pressure on medial arch of right foot and below medial maleolus. Slight +1 edema on posterior aspect of right ankle joint surrounding both sides of Achilles tendon. Pain on active inversion of right foot reported, no pain reported with passive inversion. Marginally reduced range of motion on plantarflexion and inversion of right foot when compared to left. 
• Aw yeah, I did the thing. Without looking at a template. And you know what? I feel like I'm doing okay for myself given that I'm an M1 that really doesn't know what I'm doing. 

Okay I'm gonna go rejoin civilization and be a normal social person now. Yay! Happy Easter friends! (:

Much love,

Jess 

Friends make you better (:

[Day 71]

It's late so we'll keep it brief today.

Today's AM Workout: CSP Practice, IM day
Summary:

• WU: 
• 400 swim
• 4 x 150 fly/bk/br by 50 @ third person rest
• 1 - kick (w/ board)
• 2 - 25 kick/25 swim
• 3 - drill 
• 4 - 25 drill/25 swim
• 300 free pull w/ paddles
• Main Set: straight through, breaks indicated
• 3 x 100 IM @ 1:45/1:40/1:35
• 3 x 100 free @ 1:40/1:35/1:30
• 3 x 100 stroke @ 1:50/1:45/1:40
• (break)
• 2 x 100 IM @ 1:40/1:35
• 2 x 100 free @ 1:35/1:30
• 2 x 100 stroke @ 1:45/1:40
• (break)
• 1 x 100 IM @ 1:35
• 1 x 100 free @ 1:30
• 1 x 100 stroke @ 1:40
• (break)
• 3 x 200 kick w/ fins @ 3:30 (I think we did more like 3:00/3:15, it was sort of arbitrary)
• 1 - 25 fly/25 free
• 2 - 50 fly/50 free
• 3 - 100 fly/100 free
• I did the fly kick on my back, free mostly on my side with some lengths on my front
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 3800 SCY

Hit Rate: 75/83 (90.3%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I didn't feel like going when I woke up this morning, but for the first time in a while, it was a very normal kind of lack of motivation. It wasn't catastrophic or devastating, I didn't feel too emotionally over-involved, I was just tired and I didn't wanna go. I wanted to stay in bed and sleep. Obviously I didn't, but it was interesting to just feel a normal emotional response instead of the overblow emotional responses I generally have. I feel like I have a much better handle now on the difference between my mentally low days that I should try and push through and the mentally low days that are probably indicative of bigger things at play that I should probably respect and rest through. It was an interesting perspective shift.
• It took me a long time to get ready to swim fast today. I really went in with the attitude of, "I have made it here, that is the most you can ask from me today, if I swim poorly then whatever", but because the set eased into the faster efforts, I found that by the time we got to the end of the main set and had to be swimming seriously, the rest of the set had already prepared me for that and gotten me fired up to go and hit those repeats fast. It was good. (:

Today's PM Workout: 10 mi building long run

Summary:

• The pattern was 3 mi @ 9:30-9:45, 3 mi @ 9:00-9:15, 3 mi under 8:45 pace, 1 mi easy
• 10.14 mi, 1:32:34, 9:08 pace, 172 spm

Pace splits by 1.5 mi: 9:21 (14:02), 9:39 (14:29), 9:11 (13:46), 8:58 (13:27), 8:37 (12:55), 8:33 (12:50), 9:45 (1.14 mi in 11:04)

Hit Rate: 76/84 (90.4%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I ran w/ Brian and Tsehay today! Having friends was super key for the pace in the fastest 3 miles, I think it was much easier to mentally attack those miles with friends who were fasting than me leading the way. Just focusing on keeping up instead of focusing on pushing harder makes a lot of difference for me mentally. I guess this is part of why I have an easier time racing than I do training. 
• Cadence was a bit low today, definitely felt that happening but also couldn't do too much to fix it. Just gotta keep working on it more. 
• The paces were all pretty on target, a few of the earlier splits were a bit faster than the target range but it all played out okay today. 
• I honestly put out a much better run than I thought I was going to. My body didn't feel great and I was exhausted today so I actually took a nap in the afternoon that I think helped give me enough juice to get through this. The fastest 3 mile block was rough, but I definitely managed it way better than I thought I would and I didn't drop off over 10 minute pace for the warm down which makes me pretty confident that it was a good effort level and I wasn't over-extending or anything. I'm really happy with how this particular run played out, I think I'm gaining more and more confidence in my running with every workout of this nature that I manage to hit well in terms of pace targets. 

CrossFit experiment happening tomorrow, along with looooooooots of studying. Happy Friday! (:

Much love,

Jess

Attitude check

[Day 69B]

There's been a trend these past couple of days. It always gets like this, I always get to a place with training where I find myself really wrestling with what I'm doing and what it means and how I can go about doing these things that I love without completely mangling my love for them. It always happens and I've still not figured out how to fix it. But I always have thoughts, so I will share those. Workout summary first.

Today's Workout: Trainer ride, 120 mins, grab bag of things
Summary:

• WU: 
• 10 mins easy 
• 8 x :30/:30 spin ups 
• 2 mins easy 
• Main Set: 
• 5/5/5 @ 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 2 mins recovery 
• 5/5/5 @ 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 4 mins recovery 
• 6 x (3 mins on, 2 mins recovery) at 90-95 rpm, starting at base, going up one gear each minute for the 3 minute working set
• 2 extra mins easy
• 4 x 2/2/2 as base +3 @ 65-70 rpm, base +4 @ 60-65 rpm, easy spin recovery at base
• WD: 8 mins easy
• Totals: 28.63 mi, 2:00:37, 14.2 mph average

Hit Rate: 73/81 (90.1%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I did not go very hard today. It was not a bad workout despite that. Hit both 5/5/5 rounds, they didn't feel fantastic towards the end and I will admit that there were some pace blips below target (but for the most part I was consistently on target) but compared to how that felt the first time I came back and tried to hit that set, it was way way way way better. It seems like the extra rest time did do my legs some good.
• Worth noting that I did drop out of target on the 3rd minute of a few of the 3 minute sets, but again, it was a real solid effort for the most part. I actually sort of botched the second round altogether and thought it was going to lead into one of those descending spirals of "omg I can't do this" failures, but I was good about mentally checking myself and getting back on track so I'm really happy about that. 
• The point is, I didn't kill myself on the trainer today, which is what I usually do, so it feels a little bit weird to have not been entirely destroyed by the endeavour. 

Non-workout related thoughts:

• I finally cleaned the clips on my bike shoes. They are doing much better now and are way less stiff when I'm trying to get in/out of my pedals.
• I listened to 2.5 podcasts today. Two from the archives of Julie Foucher's podcast and half of one of Spin's. There were some interesting recurrent themes today in the podcasts of people just really digging into focusing on what they thought was best for them and their happiness and tuning out the rest of the noise and just doing that. I need more of that in my life. I think I try to worry about every imaginable thing and the vast majority of the things I worry about are not important. If I just let myself do me, without worrying about the plan or the repercussions or whatever, I would be fine. I've never not been fine and I imagine the world will continue to turn even if I don't have every little variable under control. I need to take a chill pill is really what I think the universe was trying to tell me today. 
• I love longer warm downs. I don't always take warm downs that amount to a full 10 minutes or more, but I find that when I do, I'm always exhausted initially, and then I recover and my body naturally amps up the pace/effort towards the end. It finds this rhythm it wants to be in and it goes and gets it, even though it's warm down and honestly I couldn't care less about what I was actually doing. And today, it was interesting because while I was watching the rpms and speed go up towards the end of my warm down, it clicked that this was my body doing the thing that it loves to do. My body loves that feeling. There's like a zone that it really enjoys being in, sometimes it's high intensity, sometimes it's low, sometimes it's comfortably in the middle. But whatever it is, my body really loves moving and experimenting with movement and it's so nice when it just gets in its groove and does its own thing without my brain having to worry about it. That's the thing that makes me feel like I was made to do this. Maybe not fast or well, but I was made to move and it's so lovely. 
• Oh now I want to tell a story. Fun fact, I spent a lot of my sophomore year of college playing around with different ways to stay in shape. I had sort of just taken freshman year off from physical activity. I took the occasional swim and the occasional jog but honestly that was all I did. Then I fell back into club swimming and starting trying to run more and spent more time in the gym and I had all these questions for myself about what fitness was going to look like in my life when I got older, because I knew that I had to make good habits early if I didn't want to fall into really poor physical health like most of the nation does eventually. So I played around. I went to yoga classes and pilates classes and group fitness classes and spin classes. I found a yoga studio I loved and I went on Saturday or Sunday mornings just to clean my hands of the week and it was fantastic. I went to spin classes early in the morning on Mondays and Wednesdays because the intensity blew my mind and I loved being pushed like that. I went to swim practice and I lifted because I wanted to swim faster and I had some cool friends that went to the pool with me. I ran occasionally still because I had always been jealous of runners because what the heck is running and how is it that people are good at it. Anyways, it was my funny foray into trying anything and everything that actually made me feel like I could run a triathlon if I wanted, after all I was a swimmer, I'd been going to spin class, and I'd been sort of running sporadically. But I'd really had no life goals beyond trying to just do random stuff at that point. And somehow I got back on that path of competing with swimming, then with tris, and like got lost from that whole adventure of just doing whatever I wanted to for no other reason than the fact that I wanted to (and it's good for you). I sort of miss that right now. And don't get me wrong, I love racing. I would do anything for racing (as evidenced by all of this going on right now) and as long as I have the ability to be racing I will probably continue racing. But I would love to find a way to be able to race and to return to my former "I just do stuff because I want to and it's awesome" mentality. That was a really long bullet point. Here let me make a new one.
• I don't know that I ever will be able to race and just have fun doing whatever I want though. So much gets invested into racing (in terms of money, my time, Henry's time and sanity and endless loving care/support) and it makes me feel like I have to work hard enough and do well enough to at least justify what's going on there. I think I'd feel really bad if these resources got funneled into giving me the opportunity to race and I didn't take it seriously and just waved my arms about and had a random fun time instead of focusing on what actually needs to get done for me to get better and do well. I dunno. Sometimes I think the pressure is unfounded. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I wish there was no good reason for me to feel that pressure but honestly I think there is. So it makes me feel a little stuck when I daydream about being a cute sophomore on a try everything streak. I want to race more than I want that life back and I guess that means that things just can't be as much fun when I'm training for a race. It's sort of a bummer. I'm still working out what that means long term. I'm still trying to figure out if I can make some kind of middle ground. I'm sure time will give me the answer, but until then, I'll just keep speculating.

Officially have a morning swim on the calendar tomorrow morning, but the weather is also predicting rain and honestly I'm not riding out/back from practice in the rain, so if that turns out to the be the case I'll just hit the gym extra early, no big deal. Only one workout for tomorrow, so should be a pretty good day. Happy hump day everyone!

Much love,

Jess

Honesty is the best policy

[Day 67B]

Long post. All the personal messiness. Brace yourselves.

So I think I got carried away. I'm really ambitious. I want to be the absolute best that I can be and I work off the assumption that in the long run I am limitless. I allow myself to believe that because I think it's the only way you ever find out exactly where your limits are. If you pre-define your limits without really searching the space, you'll never figure it out for real. But the other half of that story is that it makes me prone to (a) thinking I'm way more capable than I actually am and (b) me beating myself up a lot when it turns out that that isn't true or (c) me not being willing to admit that (a) is true and beating myself up over some character flaw or another (usually it's related to lack of discipline and focus and an inability to actually work hard enough). I got carried away. Sometimes I want to be better so badly that it makes me a little bit blind.

Henry suggested this morning that I take my run this afternoon with my watch face blank. No pace/distance/cadence/whatever numbers, keep it on to track stats for afterwards but just run however I wanted to run. I had told him that I was upset that there was no joy in the lift this morning. I'm usually so happy in the gym. I usually love the crazy way it feels to use your body at the limits of what it is capable of doing. It's amazing. And today it just wasn't amazing. I hit the heaviest deadlift reps I've ever hit (and if anyone is going to tell me that 145 is no weight, they can stop and shove it because it is for me and I'm really proud of it) and there was just no excitement about it. I don't want that. I don't do this because there's any inherent value in how much weight I can pick up off the ground and then immediately drop. I do it because it feels satisfying. I do it because it makes me happy. And today I wasn't happy and that was upsetting. (And you see what not being happy does to me - it makes me walk out in the middle of a workout because I'm actually really terrible at trying to do things that make me unhappy.) So Henry told me to just ditch the numbers and goals and things for a day and try to enjoy some nice weather (the weather is beautiful today) and find what makes me happy.

I was skeptical. I wasn't gonna do it. But when it came time for me to run this afternoon, I took his advice. I ran however my body told me was best (which was funny because I think it's still really blown from yesterday - I felt like a baby deer learning how to walk, I just felt so unsteady and clumsy on my feet today) and just let myself enjoy the process. I forgave myself for being not as fast as I want to be and I got to think a lot about everything that's been going on. There was a lot to those thoughts. Summary first, then we'll talk.

Today's PM Workout: Easy base run, 7 mi
Summary: 7.02 mi, 1:09:48, 9:56 pace, 170 spm cadence
Pace splits by mile: 9:34, 9:56, 10:09, 10:08, 10:10, 10:00, 9:39
Hit Rate: 71/78 (91.0%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Title notes: What I mean by "honesty is the best policy" is that I need to listen to my body more, like I did today. One of the things I thought about on the run was the fact that these past two months have been the most consistent block of training that I've gotten in since junior year of college (when I strung together about 2 or 3 months of pretty great swim training that was sort of stalled by a lot of binge drinking). The last time I had been training this consistently was high school. The volume is new, my body is adapting to it, it goes through waves of feeling good and feeling bad and the process isn't linear. I haven't been wanting to listen to my body, but it's seen a few big workouts this past week (three 2+ hour workouts, two of which were bricks with fairly fast runs coming off the bike and one of which was the longest run I've taken all year) and it can't just keep pounding on like that forever. I am tired, it's forgivable, I need to listen and be willing to go slow on days like today so I can give myself opportunities to have more big days (and not just any big days but productive big days that realistically aid in building my fitness and aren't likely to get me overworked and injured).
• Outside of just having to listen to my body, I think I need to come back around to being comfortable with what training on accumulated fatigue means. We swam a lot in high school. You were always slow at practice. It was okay because we deloaded before the big meet and BAM magic speed came out of nowhere. That's how endurance training works. I have to get comfortable with not seeing the kind of numbers in runs and bikes that I expect to see race day. The fact of the matter is that I will likely not be seeing those kinds of numbers until race day, when I will likely very pleasantly surprise myself. 
• The caveat to the above thought: It doesn't matter if I don't pleasantly surprise myself. Races are fun because you never know what might come of them. You don't control conditions, you don't control the course, you control what you do to prepare and the rest is up to fate. You can be as fit as can be and some days the tide swings in your favour and some days it doesn't. That's okay. As much as I'm expecting the work to pay off with gains on race day, I can't demand that. It either will be or it won't be and I have to be accepting of that either way. 
• Another interesting thought to that end: Sometimes I find myself wanting to say things to the effect of "but I worked hard so I deserve this". I have to be better about not feeling entitled to progress just because I did something. Plenty of people do things. There's more to progressing than just working or just working harder and there are so many variables that you're never going to have it all figured out. Putting in the work is a requisite part of the process, but that in no way entitles you to progress. I believe that if you put in work consistently enough for a long enough time, progress will eventually come. But that doesn't mean I can demand progress just because I've been working. I have to be better about remembering that fact. 
• One of the things I think I've said on this blog before is that I need to start where I am, and not where I want to be. I've been jealous of how much success my friends have been having in training. I've been jealous of boys and their naturally high testosterone levels (and probably generally greater athleticism when compared to me outside of that) and girls with talent I could never even fathom. I want to be that good. I'm not. And you can't fake it. You can't just "try harder" and be there. I'm not on that level. I know that. I would like to work towards that. But I have to start where I am, not where I want to be. 
• Which brings me to another point: Patience. A lot of the things above relate to me being impatient. I've been working for a few months and I want to see that turn around in fitness and it hasn't been a crazy drastic thing like I want it to be. But if I look back a year in the past, there are definitely lots of bits of progress I can see. Sure, my run paces are pretty comparable and haven't budged much (if anything I might be a little slower on average right now) and my swimming is pretty much in the same place, but the average volume I'm sustaining week after week is way higher, the amount that I can comfortably do on the bike now has increased by a ton, and my comfort with longer workouts (runs, bricks, whatever) has increased too. It takes time to get better. And not just a month or two of time, years and years of time. When I was a freshman in high school, my swim season was cut short by an ACL injury and one of my coaches had told me to not worry about being set back by that time out of the water because swimming was a sport of "accumulation". (He had used the Chinese term "积累".) The whole idea is that I didn't get good at swimming in a few weeks. We built base and technical skill and speed and strength and power over years and years. I wasn't going to lose the years in a few weeks. I'd be rusty when I got back, but those years would still be there, I would just have to work on dusting them off to get back to where I wanted to be. But that's the thing, I had to put those years in first to get that base. I'm sure the same thing goes for what I'm doing here and now with triathlon. I'm only a year and a half into it, I have so much to learn and so much to improve on, and it's going to be a process of accumulating miles and experience so I have that foundation. The progress doesn't come overnight. I need to be more patient. 
• The other issue that came up in my conversations with Henry is that sometimes I have no confidence in the training I'm doing. Which is stupid. I know what I'm doing for the most part with the plan. The plan is the way it is for a reason. The funny thing is, that reason is probably why I worry about it. I didn't really build the plan to be the perfect triathlon training plan. I really built the plan to try and balance gaining fitness for racing with doing things that I enjoyed. Sometimes I enjoy being challenged so I throw in hard days. Sometimes I enjoy just going easy and slow so I throw those days in too. There's really not a fantastic reason for me to be lifting the way I do, and frankly there's not a ton of reason behind how I lift, but I do it because it's fun and I love it and it makes my life better. (And I'm pretty sure it makes me just more fit in general, and even if that doesn't directly make me a better triathlete, it probably doesn't hurt right? Outside of lost opportunity cost. Which I'll take in terms of the happiness I get out of it in return.) There's probably no reason at all for me to be going to sprint freestyle days, but those are some of my favourite workouts so I keep going to them. Conversely I should probably go to more distance free days, but I don't like them as much so I sprinkle a few in there but I don't demand that I do that every single week. I was cognizant of balancing the things that made me happy with the things that made me better when I planned it. And all of a sudden when I started feeling pressure to improve faster, I started second guessing the planning and the values that drove how I planned. I need to stop doing that. I made this thing so that I could be happy doing it. It won't make me the absolute fastest I can possibly be, but it'll help me improve while helping me stay in love with these things that I do genuinely love. I need to have more faith in that, not just in terms of trusting that the plan will get me to where I want to go but also in terms of really believing in the value of my own happiness as a key part of the equation. 
• Related to bullet point above: I'm trying a CrossFit class on Saturday! If you read this blog, you know I've been following the open and it's just been super inspiring watching people of so many different skill and ability levels tackle these crazy workouts. I love trying stuff. I love doing things with my body. I love learning new physical skills and I've always wanted to learn to do the Olympic lifts and be better at pull ups. But CrossFit has always felt like the wrong thing no matter how much I loved watching it. It's just such a crazy mix of high intensity and high volume work and I'm training for an endurance sport and if anything it'll just get me injured right? Well I've been actually thinking about that the past few days now that I've gotten myself into the messy situation of planning to actually trying it out because what if I like it? What then? I mean it's super easy if I don't like it, wipe my hands clean of that and move on, but it's been interesting to think about what might happen if I do like it. And on the run today, after all the thoughts above, one of the things I realized is this: It's like everything else, you figure out how to do the things you enjoy. You give them a chance, you work them into your schedule, you adapt, you accept that everything comes with a sacrifice. Training inevitably means my schoolwork quality suffers. Not to the point that I want to give up training altogether, but it's something I have to accept. Conversely, sometimes I have to focus on school and inevitably training suffers. But again, those are my priorities on those days and it's something I have to accept. If it turns out there's another thing in the world I want to give a spin and it'll encroach on all my sort of planned out triathlon specificity, well I guess we'll have to see if I like it enough to give up some of that. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I'm a little less nervous about Saturday knowing that I've thought about what it could mean for some of the other things going on in my life. 
• Last thing: Effort. I feel like I almost constantly find myself telling myself that I should be working harder or trying harder or whatever. But honestly, that's not what anything is about. There is a certain level of effort you should give to everything. And when you have it in you to give more, you should. But you can't be full throttle 24/7 because no one actually has that capacity, and me sitting around pretending that I do and beating myself up for it when it turns out that I can't actually do that helps literally no one. Not every day can be destructively awesome, it would kill you. Average days are good days too. I really have to try and believe the contents of this particular bullet point. This is a valuable and honest bullet point that I forget over and over and over again and it causes me a lot of misery sometimes. 

Soooooooo. Now that the full contents of my soul are laid out in a blog post, I think I can...heat up dinner and get some studying done now? Lol hope everyone had a good Monday. (:

Much love,

Jess

PS - Plan is AM swim for tomorrow, along with a tri team appeal for more Nationals/Wildflower funding in the evening. Fingers crossed that that goes well. Too bad the appeal meeting is late at night, will make getting up early to lift on Wednesday super rough. Original Wednesday morning plan had been to do some circuit work or something, but I'm gonna try and do a repeat of this morning's planned lift on Wednesday instead and hopefully actually get through the entire workout. There will also be a long trainer ride in the PM on Wednesday. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Just wish us luck for that appeal tomorrow!

Loving something so much it hurts to stomach

[Day 37]

Today's Workout: Cycling (outside) with Molly! (MCT trail system)

Summary: 18.28 mi, 1:16:55, 14.3 mph

Speed splits by mile: 13.7, 15.6, 13.4, 14.6

Hit Rate: 40/41 (97.5%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Riding outside is amazing. It was really cold when I first got up this morning and I was worried it was going to be freezing and awful, but it was a super sunny day and the temperature came up a bit and I layered up real good and it was actually a totally fine temperature to be riding at. I had sort of shied away from riding outside because of the weather (not that I don't ride to practice in this weather anyways, but that's in like sweatpants and a ski jacket so it's sort of a different deal) but now I feel like there really isn't any good reason to, so I might hit the outdoors more often. 
• This set of trails Molly found is great. No traffic, not very many riders out today, well-paved, nice environment, I was just really happy about it. It's a bit of a trek to get out there, but with a buddy it's totally worth it. Also her tri bike is sick. Way jealous, really hoping she has some great races on it this year. 
• I fell once, trying to make a turn I should have really just clipped out for because the road was narrow. Luckily I was totally covered so no road rash besides a scrape on my ankle that I managed to get through my sock somehow.
• Molly has a heart rate monitor, which I'm sort of jealous of. There are so many things that I need to prioritize about getting before I want to invest in a heart rate monitor though that I'm just sort of like, okay another thing that's cool but not actually that important. xD
• I definitely felt like it took more effort to ride that pace than it should have today. Probably just fatigue from the week, but the speed demon in me is a tad bit disappointed because the biking felt so controlled and I normally prefer it to feel less controlled. I feel like my brain interprets biking really similarly to skiing and I want biking to give me skiing levels of speed rush which is basically impossible unless I'm shooting down a hill at a likely unsafe speed. All that really means though is I have to get more bike fit, which is what I'm working on right now, so maybe in a month or two I will be going faster and therefore be feeling happier about it. 

Weekly Recap:

• 3 rides (2 trainer, 1 outside), 3 swims, 4 runs (3 outdoors, 1 on a treadmill after lifting), 1 lift, 1 core specific session for a total of ~12:45.
• This was a big week, sort of artificially so because I included a half hour of core in the log and it was a 7 day week instead of a 6 day week because I swapped today's ride and tomorrow's rest day to accommodate other schedule things in my life. 
• I have been really tired. Like way more blown out at the end of each of my days (or even by mid-afternoon) than I was all of January. Makes sense because more volume. Surprisingly enough, I've been really impressed with the actual workout performance given that. In terms of late week workouts, runs have been really slow but the swims have been really solid and I'm super impressed with my body managing to hold that together despite feeling genuinely terrible. 
• It's been an emotional week. A lot of doubt, dissatisfaction, and self-pity at night but also a lot of big moments that have really re-affirmed to me why it is that I go through all of that. I love what I do. I could not not do what I do. It's really not a choice, it's just a part of who I am and who I will always be. So it's really hard, but I gotta buckle down and take that because this is what I want.
• I was just out at dinner and one of my friends said something really nice about how she was really impressed with how motivated I am and she probably doesn't realize this because I honestly had no idea how to properly respond to that comment but it meant so much to me. It always means so much to have someone say, hey I see you. I feel like this is a part of my life that is not actually seen by very many people because so much of it happens when I'm essentially alone, so to have someone acknowledge that meant a lot to me. It's just good to be seen. It makes me feel a lot less alone.

Next week is also gonna be a big week, followed by a short 4 day decompress before we get into what is officially speaking Block II. Honestly the plan is just to go really really hard and take all I can take and then let off for a bit and hopefully see the work pay off at the start of Block II. Much needed rest day coming up tomorrow. Happy Saturday! (:

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

"If you haven't felt like quitting..."

[Day 32]

"...your dreams aren't big enough."

This was a quote taken from a very touching email one of my professors sent our class today. I will not get into the rest of the contents but let's just say that it was a much needed message on a day like today and I can't help but feel like this is the world telling me to just put my head down and keep going.

I'm not gonna lie, it's been a rough way to start a week that I know is going to be really hard...Let's talk.

So there are two kinds of soul-crushing workouts (in my experience at least). The more common of the two (for me at least) are the ones where it's really hard but you get through and you come out on the other side physically and mentally stronger. They're the ones where I walk away and think, wow I did something I didn't think was possible today and it's going to make me so much better. And I have more confidence and it makes me really happy. Then there's the other kind of soul-crushing workout, where you walk away from it without too many positive takeaways. Sometimes it's because I don't make it through the workout (I have to make big adjustments or truncate it altogether) and it's disappointing and it makes me feel like I'll never get to where I want to be. (Although there are plenty of workouts where I do have to make adjustments and I think the more typical situation is not getting super discouraged, but rather it typically makes me more hungry to work harder and hit the workout right the next time.)

I guess yesterday was weird because it was the kind of soul-crushing workout where I did kill it (even though I did have to make some adjustments to the original set, I'm not super beat up about that, I will hit it again and it will be better next time) but I still walked away feeling super discouraged. I think all night and most of this morning, I've just been sinking in this sense that it's so so so hard and I don't know that I have what it takes to go through something like that again. I feel like a little kid but there's this voice in my head that just keeps saying "but it hurt so much..." and doesn't have much else to offer me than that. And I think the worst part for me is that I hate being like this. I know how much you have to put in to get better, I know that there's very little about this that's comfortable or nice and I need to be able to handle that reality if I want to improve but this little voice just comes back with "but it hurt so much". And it really did. It really did.

In any case, I find myself in sort of a strange situation because this isn't typically how I react to these things. The other part that comes with this that's hard for me is that it makes me really lose faith in myself and my ability to do what I need to do. I've just been leaning on things that Henry's been telling me, I've been leaning on him believing in me, because I'm not really sure how to do that for myself right now. I have a few more comments about Henry, but we'll save those for the end.

So I went to the gym this morning and had a sort of disappointing lift. I had a bit more planned than what I ended up doing because of a combination of not wanting to do things (e.g. what I knew was going to be a pretty painful legs giant set) and being slow (will talk more about this in a bit) and that sort of only adds to the cloud of dejection floating over me about training right now. It was one of those days where I spent every second of my breaks between sets convincing myself to not just walk out the door and go home. I just had to keep forcing myself to go back to the bar and once I was there and set up I knew I was gonna get through that set. Then rinse and repeat. It was hard, it slowed everything down, it wasn't any fun and I don't feel like I accomplished what I set out to accomplish. But it was the best I was going to get out of this day, so at the very least I can say that I showed up when I really didn't want to. Here's the recap:

Today's Workout: AM lift and short treadmill run
Summary:

• Lift:
• Back squats: WU 12 @ 65#, 2 x 8 @ 105#, 2 x 6 @ 105# (honestly I think the sets of 6 were more a confidence thing than a strength thing, was sort of scared to go for it so I didn't)
• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 45#, 4 x 10 @ 75# (need to go up)
• Deadlifts: 4 x 8 @ 115 (need to go up)
• Back giant set: 3 rounds of 
• Straight arm pulldowns: 12 @ 6 plates
• Lat pulldowns: 12 @ 6 plates (up?)
• Cable rows: 12 @ 6 plates (up?)
• Shoulder press: 3 x 8/8 (last set was 8/5-5) @ 25#/15#
• Easy treadmill run, 20 mins, 2% incline, 6.0-6.2 pace
• Treadmill numbers: 2.09 mi, 20:37
• Garmin numbers: 2.21 mi, 20:28, 9:16 average pace

Hit Rate: 34/35 (97.1%)

I think the day has been getting better since. Henry stayed with me in the morning and worked really hard to talk me out of how sad I feel about everything and despite it being a situation where I think once upon a time he would have asked me to just take a day off from responsibilities and just recharge, instead he asked me to dig deeper today and keep moving forward. I know that's hard for him, but to me it was this big piece of proof to me that he really did believe that I can keep going and I can get what it is that I'm after and I really needed that reassurance today. His willingness to keep pushing me makes me feel like I am capable of more, I just have to dig a little deeper and find it. I'm so glad that I have someone to be tough on me right now because the hardest moments like this are when the magic happens. We also had a fun little exchange where he was all surprised that today wasn't a double day (for reference the only planned doubles this week are Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, and next Sunday again but I consider that next week since it's after my rest day) and that's also refreshing. I've definitely talked about this before, but normalizing the workload is super important to making it all not seem extremely daunting all the time. I think the other thing that's starting to happen today is that we talked (although not directly) about normalizing the emotional experience as well, just in terms of how this kind of day and these feelings are always going to be a part of the experience (not just for me but anyone else that does what I do). And what comes out of all of that is none of this is an excuse to do work any less hard and even though that's a tough pill to swallow sometimes, I'm glad I have someone to reinforce that and to support me and believe in me and help me work through it all. 

Outside of that, I registered for Swim the Suck today! (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) There are literally not enough exclamation marks in the universe. I'm really glad I got in.

I spent so much of the morning being distressed about needing to go to practice tomorrow and having to bike in what will likely be rain but Henry was adamant that I should go (and I agree with him, I should go) so I was/am planning on going but I wasn't happy about it. Well now that I know I'm racing an open water 10 miler in October, I feel a little bit more urgency about hitting up the pool as many times as possible. It makes me feel a tad bit better about how tired/wet/cold/annoyed I will be about having to ride out to and back from Clayton in the rain tomorrow. And I think this is one of those things that may just be a temporary incentive right now, but it's coming at a pretty important time.

So at this point I think I have to go back to that quote. "If you haven't felt like quitting, your dreams aren't big enough." Things are sorta rough right now but I have amazing support to lean on and I just need to put my head down and keep at it. Thankful in spite of it all today. We'll get through. (:

Much love,

Jess

Living room workouts are turning out to be pretty clutch

[Day 22B]

I just ate a lot of BBQ. Very happy about that.

Today's PM Workout: Trainer ride, endurance work
Summary:

• WU: 10 mins easy 
• Pre-set: 5 x :30/:30 spin ups 
• Main set: 4 x 
• 4 mins @ 90-95 rpm base 
• 4 mins @ 60 rpm climb (base +4)
• 4 mins @ 90-95 rpm base 
• 3 mins @ 90-95 rpm pick up (base +1) 
• 3 mins easy 
• Technique work: 10 x :45/:15 single leg drill 
• WD: ~5 mins easy 
• Totals: 22.66 mi, 1:33:12, 14.6 mph average

Hit Rate: 22/23 (95.6%)

Notes/thoughts:

• The point of this workout was to learn to recover from the pick ups without dropping the base effort. Just building nice long steady endurance. 60 mins without a full recovery, it was good. (Last round was tough but all in all I'm willing to step it up the next time I do an iteration of this. Haven't decided if I wanna change pace/resistance/total time yet, so we'll see.)
• The best thing about workouts like this one is that they calm the rest of my life freak outs. I was sort of losing it over how much work I have to do and how behind I feel but I conquered this thing so it makes me feel like I can handle whatever else there is that life wants to throw at me. Reminders that we're deeper than we think. 
• My brain definitely went offline in the latter parts of that workout. If I didn't have my timer (get the Seconds app if you haven't already!) running with what each interval was supposed to be written down on it, I would have totally lost my place. All I could really focus on was keeping the pedals turning at the right speed. 
• Worth noting that I had some pretty bad wrist pain in the first 30 or so minutes of the ride (right side). I just adjusted my position a bunch of times and eventually found something that eased it up, and then later on it just seemed to go away...Dunno what the deal is. Will keep an eye on it though.
• Was listening to Swimcerely again (love it sooooo soooooo much) and was thinking about team dynamics in swimming and how we're all super competitive people but at the end of the day we're all rooting for each other and working to lift each other up. It's funny because I'm in medical school now and I feel like applicants are always asking things like whether or not it's competitive and never in my life had I associated competitiveness with sabotage or other negatively connoted actions before so it's been weird to try and address those things. Honestly I feel like medical school much closer resembles a swim team. We're all trying to do something that is, at the end of the day, honestly really difficult. We all work really hard, we're all doing our best, and we all want to be successful. But just because we want to be successful doesn't mean that we don't want our peers to be successful too. We do a lot to help lift each other up, because it's wonderful to help others and it's wonderful to be helped by others. I sort of dislike that people pit competitiveness and genuine niceness against each other because that's not how I think it works. I'm extremely competitive. But I also have a lot of love for my teammates and classmates and I want them to succeed just as much as I want to succeed. And beyond that, I want to play a part in supporting them and helping them succeed whenever it's possible, and I'm 100% sure that they feel the same way about me. I think we really need to lose this notion that competitive people are just out to get you and want you to fail so they can look good. I honestly don't think that's how it works, at least not in my experience. Okay end random Jess musings. Check out Spin's podcast though, it's fantastic. 

So random last minute decision: I'm going to swim practice tomorrow morning! Because...why not? It's 6-7 am, I'll have time to come home and eat some food and get a tiny bit of rest before I go lift with a classmate at 9 am. That'll be okay right? Right? Lol I'm an addict. Someone help me. Anyways, after that it's a pretty busy day. I've got a health screening to work in the afternoon and a take home exam I haven't looked at yet that I really need to start on. But I believe! Gonna go home (I'm in lab right now, but it turns out I couldn't do any lab work because I'm still short a few accesses, which is annoying because I've requested like 7 accesses already and apparently I need even more) and stretch and do some more studying and then hit the sack. 5:25ish alarm tomorrow morning so 9ish bedtime? (Wow so much sleeping in.) That'll be the goal. 9:30 wouldn't be the end of the world either. Alright, that's all from me! (:

Much love,

Jess

2015: A Year in Review

[Day 1]

In all likelihood, I'm traveling back to Shanghai from a ski trip with my family and Henry right now. (This post was written in advance to make sure I would have Day 1 content for my goal of 366 days of log blogging.) Since I'm probably not going to be back on that training grind until Sunday (when spring triathlon season prep officially begins!), I decided that for these first two days, I would write a few reflections about 2015 on day 1 and a post looking forward to 2016 on day 2. Today, I will be looking at some numbers regarding my training volume and mileage from last year.

(All data based on info from Garmin Connect. Note that I didn't get my Garmin until late January so the January numbers are not accurate representations of what was happening in January.)

Let's start with the overall breakdown of activities, which is really just how many workouts of what type I did in any given month:

Predictably, I swam and lifted the most in the spring months prepping for my last ever Club Swim Nationals, I ran the most during the summer when I was in Boston and that was my main form of training, and I had the most balanced big training month in August, which was my last heavy block before two September races.

Honestly, this entire year has not been exactly what I wanted it to be. My running is really the only thing that I've gained a lot of confidence in (which sort of fell off towards the end of the year because of the lack of training and the lower body injury). My cycling was improving for a period of time, but then I sort of stopped going after it as aggressively after my September triathlon races and so now I'm back to being quite timid about it. My swimming has gotten markedly worse since I left Princeton. The pool workouts have been less focused and less frequent and the lack of quality strength training owing to my August back injury has really hindered my swimming. So all in all, there's only one discipline of my three that I feel like I made strides in this year.

In addition, the year has been pretty inconsistent. With senior year insanity early in the year, graduation and lots of moving and traveling and general instability throughout the summer, and the medical school adjustment happening in the late part of the year, I feel like I really didn't string together any good full segments of training with the exception of the month of August. I do believe made the best out of a non-ideal set of situations, but I would like to see more stability to help build more consistency.

I've also been disappointed in the fall off in training hours in the latter months of the year. I know that it's probably not possible to sustain the kind of momentum I had in August/September/October throughout the entire year, so the challenge will be figuring out how to organize my year such that I won't have to take extended R&R intervals (although they are necessary and will need to be incorporated into my year) in order to maximize the number of good months I have.

I do, however, know that it's possible to manage the hours that I aim for and my medical school life obligations. August, September, and even parts of October really showed that to me. I haven't struck exactly the right balance yet and I definitely still need to be more in tune with my mood, but I think this year has shown that it's possible and I just have to keep refining the scheduling the same way I have to keep refining my actual swimming, biking, and running skills.

Here is a plot of total training hours, since number of workouts is not always the best indication of training volume:

It's pretty clear from this that the heaviest training month was August, as intended, and the rest of the year was pretty even with the exception of this past month or two (again, January data is inaccurate because I didn't get my watch until the last week or two of the month). For August, I hit about 2430 minutes of total training time, which is almost 9.5 hrs/wk, right around where I want the serious months to be. Under typical circumstances, I would have probably like June and July to also be around that volume, but with graduation and moving and living out of Henry's place and moving again and going home and all that other madness, it's understandable why this summer wasn't the time for it. It's worth noting that 1500 min/month amounts to about 5.8 hrs/wk, which is around where I was floating for other months and quite a bit less than what I want it to be. I would like to be up around 7-8 hrs/wk on those less big months. Looking into the calendar in more detail, in reality what was happening was I had some 8-11 hour weeks and some 2-4 hour weeks and the average of those things played out this way. August was unique in that I only had one week where my schedule was greatly thrown off, so I hit most of the weeks the way I wanted to. Again, it all comes down to consistency and this year was generally very wobbly when it came to consistency.

The other thing I wanted to look at was mileage. Let's start with run mileage:

My biggest months were July and October, when I had both my half marathons, so that's to be expected. Those months turned out an average of ~25 miles/week while the average month was closer to ~15 miles/week. Given how new I am to running, I'm pretty happy with what those numbers are, even though I know that this is pretty low mileage as far as running is concerned.

Now onto cycling mileage:

If I'm being honest, this makes it pretty clear that I was really only biking when I knew I really had to be, and even then I was not biking very much. This is definitely one part of my game that I really need to step up.

And swimming mileage:

My biggest swimming month averaged 8.67 miles (~15,000 yards), which actually isn't very much at all (5 x 3000 yard practices/week). The rest of the year, the swim training was fairly spotty.

So what was the point of this exercise? Well you have to know where you've been and where you're starting in order to get to where you want to go. These are the numbers from this year. Really only one of my months felt like a very high quality month for me and I would love to get more consistency out of the rest of my year so that all of my months can be higher quality months. Some years are better than others and I would say that this hasn't been the best year for me (although my running has been steadily improving and I am very happy about that). I'll be back tomorrow to talk about where I would like these numbers to go in the upcoming year.

Stay tuned and Happy New Year! (:

Much love,
Jess

Rest and Restlessness

Predictably, I've been gone for a while. The foot injury turned out to be plantar fasciitis and persisted up until about Wednesday or Thursday of last week when the pain started waning and regular walking got a little bit easier. Obviously I hadn't trained in the meantime and I tried to focus on academic work (to mixed success) but by the time the weekend had swung around and I had to go pick up my race packet for Sunday's Hot Chocolate 15k, I was starting to get a bit restless from my break. I had made the decision to just forgo the race because of the injury. I wanted to make sure that my foot would be good to go for the upcoming Spring training block (which I've drawn out my outline/plans for already!) and for skiing over winter break (which is up in the air right now because it turns out my little brother injured his ankle as well...). In the end though, Henry convinced me that if I wanted to do it, I should give my foot a test run on Saturday and just go for it if it felt okay, so that's exactly what I did.

My Saturday test run actually felt horrible. It was a 4 miler and my foot felt okay for most of it, it ached but it didn't hurt too seriously until very close to the end. The problem was that I was soooooo out of shape, just finishing the 4 miler was tough and my pace kept dropping off so much from mile to mile. I spent Saturday experiencing a lot of angst about being out of shape but ended up deciding to race on Sunday anyways. It was really intimidating because I really thought that there was a chance I wouldn't have it in me to finish. I knew that the race was going to be shorter and slower than my typical long run, and yet I also knew it was going to be way tougher because I was in no physical condition to be doing it. I wanted to try though, and Henry was really supportive of everything that was freaking me out, so I ended up going for it at the end of the day.

I will write a real race report for this race and a bigger reflection on the training that's led up to it after my finals week (which I am in the middle of currently). Suffice it to say that my performance during the race was pretty poor, but I'm extremely proud of myself for going out there and doing it and pushing through a tough day anyways. The one thing I do want to comment on is something I've realized about the nature of my recent racing experiences: During my competitive swimming days, I used to go to at least one or two meets a month and it meant that there was a very clear distinction between important races and all the other races. Racing frequently meant I had a certain tolerance for bad races and bad days because I always had another opportunity coming up. I was better at accepting the non-linearity of progress and knew that I wasn't going to get a PB every single race. I think that mentality helped me overall to just embrace doing the best that I could on any given day, always reaching for that PB but not demanding it of myself because I knew how hard progress could be to come by sometimes. There's been a lot of pressure associated with my racing in triathlon and running because the races are infrequent and the training build up takes so long and I feel like I have to perform at every single one and it's a lot of pressure every time. I want to try and remove some of that pressure, I would like to be able to approach racing in this sport the same way I approached racing in swimming. Maybe next year, when I have more ample transportation options, I will sign up for more casual 5ks and 10ks and just work on racing regularly as a part of training. But that's also an expensive and time-consuming endeavor, so we'll see what comes of it...In any case, my point is, there will be a real race report coming later, so expect that.

After running that race though, I've felt really impatient about getting back into training, even if it's just unstructured working out. Unfortunately, finals is a thing, followed by winter break when I will likely not be training because I'll be trying to spend as much time as I can with the family I don't see very often. It's sort of unfortunate, but honestly that's the only reason I'm here writing this post: I'm feeling really restless. Which I guess was the entire point of taking a break: your body and your mind let you know when it's ready and rested and wants to get going again. Even reading back through the blog, I'm starting to notice that you can really tell how I'm feeling about training by the tone of the posts. Sometimes training is going great and I'm feeling great and things are fantastic! Sometimes training is going great but I feel terrible and sometimes training is going terrible but I feel great! There's such a mix of things, but it all comes out in what I'm writing, and I think the most important thing I've realized is that there's a big difference between when I'm enjoying the process and when I'm not. I'll try to be more cognizant of that in the upcoming year and upcoming training cycle. For now, I have to prioritize studying over my brain's desires to go frolic in the park though, so I have to get back to hitting the books.

Other quick updates before I leave:
- I picked up my long sleeve team jersey for cycling yesterday! Good motivation to take it out for a spin in the cold, maybe this Saturday after exams and before I fly out.
- I just bought a sleeveless wetsuit for the April/May races, which I'm super pumped about. (I'm also super glad Henry let me do that, because wetsuits are a big financial investment.)

Okay time to get back to that physical exam and physiology review! Stay tuned for the next race report!

Much love,
Jess

No room for ego

I forgot where I had first heard that, but somewhere along the line I had picked up the phrase, "There's no space for your ego at the gym". It's a crazy true statement, especially given where I'm at right now. Having not seriously or consistently been in the gym for almost half a year now and nursing this back injury meant that I had to be okay with what almost felt like going through the motions at the gym. Wanting to do everything the right way and the safe way meant there wasn't much pushing (and to be honest, the combination of it being early and me being not super pain adapted right now meant I didn't really want to push that hard anyways) and a lot of generally being weaker than I want to be. Had to check my ego at the door and just work smart today, gotta trust in the long-term plan and be patient. Despite not being as strong or as healthy as I want to be, it was a good way to start the day and I know it's just another starting point. I'm going to try and get back into the gym more regularly, at least once a week, so I can start building back some strength and so I have an opportunity to do more work on stability and movement efficiency. Here's the run down of my hour.

Today's Workout: Gym, full body, compound focused, stability-focused lower body work

• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 45 lbs, working 3 x 8 @ 75 lbs, burnout 12 @ 55 lbs
• Pulldowns: 4 x 12 @ 6 plates (I don't know these weights...) alternating wide/narrow grip by set
• Squats w/ band around knees: 20 bodyweight, 12 overhead w/ small bar (25 lbs?), 20 bodyweight
• DB shoulder press: 3 x 12/12/8-3 @ 20 lbs/side
• DB row: 3 x 12/side @ 35 lbs
• Step ups: 3 x 12/side @ 15/side (DBs) - focus was on keeping hips even throughout movement (stable lower spine)
• Incline bench: 3 x 12/10/8 @ 55 lbs
• Stretch cord butterfly: 3 x 20
• Back extensions: 12 w/ 10 lbs, 12 bodyweight

Hit Rate: 3/3 (100%)

In other news, today I changed my first flat! Which was an adventure and harder than I thought it would be, but I did it, and I'm immensely proud. I then took my bike to the post office so I could mail something and made sure that it was in fact functional, and it is! So I will be taking it out tomorrow morning to swim practice very early in the morning. Time for me to clean up the cookware from dinner and hit the sack super early so I can be up super early! Yay!

Much love,

Jess

Accepting your limits

There are a couple of big factors that I think have really shaped my mentality and the way I approach life nowadays. I grew up with Asian parents who were big on telling me exactly where I stood both in terms of my abilities/talents/limitations and in terms of my work ethic. I was smart and not very hard-working when it came to school, I had a moderate amount of musical ability but again no work ethic when it came to piano, I had no talent and an average amount of work ethic when it came to dance, I had a tiny bit of talent and a lot of work ethic when it came to swimming. Unlike a lot of parents, my parents weren't really "process" parents. They didn't see it as my job to try my best on everything. I think they knew that if I were to throw myself at everything 100%, I would burn out super quickly because I have the capacity to invest myself in things too fully. At the same time, they also made it very clear that in the arenas of life where I was capable and fell short because I didn't work hard enough, that was on me. I think the message at the end of the day was always to set goals and know exactly where I want to be and balance the talent/work division in such a way that I got there without wrecking myself.

The other big factor is that I grew up as an endurance athlete. I lived within the confines of a sport that rewards the kind of work ethic that doesn't stop for anything. It's hard to be successful as a swimmer. You put in a lot of hours, your easy days are few and far between because the sport is so low impact, you're sore pretty much all the time because the sport is year-round and even with periodization, you don't really get many real breaks from the grind. A few big things that I took away from those years are that (a) accomplishing what you want to accomplish can be really difficult and (b) you are deeper than you think (as is everyone else, so if you want to keep up, you'd better be working).

I think all of this has put me in a place where I honestly believe that when my dreams are big (by my standards) and are the kinds of dreams that require a lot on the work end to make up for a lack of talent on the talent end, I feel like I always have to be working at the edge of what I'm capable of. And the biggest problem I have with that right now is that I can't define that edge very clearly, and even when I can, I don't necessarily want to acknowledge it. One of the things you learn from going to practice day in and day out is that your brain always wants you to quit before your body really will, so it doesn't matter how much it hurts or how hard it is, you just have to suck it up and keep pushing. It's never been okay to just stop and rest, because even though that might make things easier or the rest of your workout faster, it's going to stall your progress in the long run.

But then real life steps in, and strangely enough my earliest interactions with physical exhaustion have all come in the form of swim practice. So when I'm exhausted in real life and I have a list of things I should be doing but I just want to take a break and recharge a bit, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of letting myself do that because it's like quitting in the middle of a set. Physical exhaustion always feels like something I should just be able to push through and when I can't do it, it makes me feel like I've really failed.

Why am I here writing this thing? Yesterday was a tough day. It ended really rough for me and I ended up just staying up really late crying over how exhausted I was and how I really couldn't face this day up ahead because there was so much to do (including an early morning workout). Logically, all that says is that I should take the day off and cut myself some slack for not being perfect while taking recovery more seriously than I am right now, but in my heart it just feels like I've failed. It feels like I stopped pushing and let go in the middle of a set I should have fought through.

Regardless, I guess the point is this: I slept in this morning. I will not be working out today. I'm pushing the gym session back to tomorrow and making a few adjustments to the rest of the week. I didn't have a rest day planned this week so it really doesn't hurt to take one (so no hit against the hit rate), especially since I haven't actually taken a full day off since the half and this will probably be good for me in the grand scheme of things. I thought these thoughts were worth the update. I'm sure I'll come back to them at some point in the future and they'll ring true for another day later in the cycle. Wish me luck with the rest of the day. I'm going to try to be the best that I can be, even if I didn't get off on as good of a start as I had wanted.

Much love,
Jess