Today, I was kind to myself

I'm not often kind to myself when it comes to training. I guess that's really not the point of training. Sometimes I have days like today when I think that maybe I should change that. Exercise is supposed to be a kindness to your body and a kindness to your mind and a kindness to your soul and it's so easy for someone like me to push all of that aside in pursuit of faster. But today, I was kind to myself, and I'm proud of that.

I had an interval set planned, a repeat of my October 1st treadmill interval workout at a slightly faster pace, and it was one of those days where I felt like from the very outset it wasn't going to go very well. I thought maybe it was just a matter of being slow to warm up though, so I gave myself a nice long warm up before launching into it and things really didn't feel much better. There are a lot of excuses I could make (and will talk about later in this post) for why I then decided to just axe the set and go home, but in reality all it was was that I didn't feel well. I had woken up feeling well, way better than what I was expecting given the combination of the load on my body and the work at school and the hours of sleep I've been getting (which have been acceptable, but not perfect), and I didn't want to give that up today. I wanted to feel good, and I listened to myself, and I was kind to myself, and I am allowing myself to feel good.

Now here come all the things that could be construed (if by no one else, then at least by myself) as excuses, but I want to remind myself that they're also perfectly valid reasons to make a decision. Not every decision to not stubbornly charge ahead at full speed at all times is the wrong decision. It's like Henry said, if life were a race, you would have to pace yourself to get the most out of it.

I could have probably gritted my teeth and gotten through the workout I had planned or down-adjusted the pace, but honestly I don't know what my body would have been willing to take from that experience. It would have spent the rest of the day exhausted and likely not gotten enough sleep tonight before I hit the pool for a workout early tomorrow morning. My body would be beat up and unhappy and I would be beat up and unhappy and the marginal physical gain I was going to get from that workout really didn't seem like it was going to be worth those consequences.

Also, there is the obvious and real issue of the fact that I was tired running today, which meant my form was sloppy. That can get dangerous on a treadmill, and even when I tried really hard to focus on correcting my form, my exhausted brain really couldn't keep up with both the physical effort and the mental effort. So in the end I just called it quits, took it as a short "easier" day, and will focus on trying to make tomorrow better.

Today's Workout: AM treadmill run
Summary:

• All at 2% grade
• WU: 2400 m @ 6.0-6.5 mph
• Main Set: 400/200, 800/400, 400/200 @ 8.0/6.0 mph
• WD: 800 m easy @ 6.0 mph 
• Total (machine): 3.55 mi, 32:41
• Total (Garmin): 3.33 mi, 32:40, 9:48 pace

Hit Rate: 8/9 (88.8%)

Notice that I still let it count towards my hit rate. I'm reminding my future self that it is acceptable to be kind to myself. Also, a shortened workout is different from a missed workout and if nothing else, I'm still moving in the right direction. Not every day has to be a destructively hard and impressive day. Some days are just average. Some days are less than average. But I got out there and followed the advice that every recreational athlete has been given: Do the first 20 minutes. If you're still not feeling it, you can be let off the hook. And usually in that time period, you get into it and you can finish the workout. But some days, it just isn't meant to be. On those days, it's worth accepting that you tried and that it's better to come back and try again tomorrow. I will try again tomorrow. (:

Much love,

Jess

RNR

It's weird to have to admit that despite having a lower load training week than usual (easy swim/run on Mon/Tues, Wed off, real workouts on Thu/Fri) I'm still not really fully recovered from my half. There are plenty of people who can run a half marathon and have a super quick turn around time, people who don't get sore or stiff or achy and have bodies that bounce right back. I'm not one of those people. I noticed it after my last half too: Even though I wasn't really sore, it took quite a few days of real rest before I was back to being ready to run again. And it was summer, so I was at home relaxing, which really helped push that process along. This week has been crazy for me because the training that I have done has been interwoven with a lot of school/life busy-ness and the recovery has been slow but I haven't wanted to slow down. It's meant that I've not really recovered as well as I wanted/expected and that's made for a couple of tough nights this week. Last night Henry really convinced me that I need to take it easier on myself, so I decided to sleep in today and thought about canceling my other plans too if I didn't feel well.

I'm feeling really good actually. After a super restful night's worth of sleep, I'm definitely feeling better both physically and mentally. I'm going to try and keep it low stress and low pressure today. It feels weird not to be working out when I had planned on working out, but I know that in the grand scheme of things it's not all that important. Once again, I find myself making adjustments to my training plans, but we'll make them work. The week ahead will be tough but I really have to work on finding the right balance so that I can keep mental stress a little lower. Sometimes I forget that the summative tole on my body can be really high and I need to respect that and give myself some quality RNR time. It's okay to not be constantly pushing forwards, you have to pace yourself in life just like you have to pace yourself in racing. It's a marathon, not a sprint. We're gonna make it. (:

Hit Rate: 4/5 (80%)

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