No apologies...

[Day 160]

...For being missing for a few days this time. I was busy enjoying my weekend and I don't do that often enough so I'm glad I just let myself go and did whatever this weekend. And then I started work on Monday so things have been busy managing life and real work hours. That having been said, I do owe you/myself some training/race updates so let's get to it! (:

Skipped the swim on Friday morning because I had cramps Thursday night and wasn't sleeping well, took the Friday evening interval workout as planned, did a way better job than I thought I would and was really happy about that.

Friday's Workout: PM interval run, main set of 2 x 1 mi @ 10k pace (7:35-7:50) w/ 3 mins rest, 3-4 x ½ mi @ 5k pace (7:05-7:20) w/ 3 mins rest (walking rests)
Summary:

• Totals: 7.27 mi, 1:11:23, 9:50 average pace
• 1 mi splits: 7:40.2, 7:38.4
• 1/2 mi splits: 3:35.6 (7:11), 3:37.4 (7:15), 3:34.9 (7:10), 3:36.4 (7:13)

Hit Rate: 21/28 (75%)

Took Saturday off as planned so I could be ready to try and run fast on Sunday! At which I was sort of successful. Went a 23:17 (official time), which wasn't what I had hoped it would be (was aiming for a 22 something) but I feel okay about it. Aimed high, fell short, still came away with a PB which I'm not gonna complain about.

Sunday's race official: 5k, 23:17, 7:30 pace

Sunday's race via Garmin: 3.14 mi, 23:24, 7:27 pace, 182 spm average

Pace splits by mile: 7:24, 7:22, 7:42, 6:36

Hit Rate: 22/29 (75.8%)

Thoughts about the race: It was harder than I thought it was gonna be. It was a rainy cool day, which played to my advantage, no wind which was good, but I just didn't have enough in me for the third mile. The first mile felt strong, the second mile took a little pushing to hold pace and I really genuinely thought I could sustain that effort through mile three but I just didn't have it. I think I did mentally quit a little bit when it got tough and I settled for something in the 7:40 range when I probably shouldn't have, but really there was genuinely not much left in my legs at that point. Henry has a wonderful (read: awful) finish line photo of me and the look on my face is just such a disaster. I push my jaw forward when I'm in a lot of pain because it helps me restrict the tension to my face so it doesn't tighten up my shoulders when I'm running, but it looks so terrible, you can tell I'm just absolutely dying. In any case, it was what I had to give. 

For reference, when I ran this race last year, my splits were 7:25, 7:43, 7:50 so I was able to really improve on that seeing as I can hold that first mile pace for another mile now. The next time we do this (early July), the goal will be to see it through for all three miles. We'll see how it goes. For now, I'll take the PB and move on.

Monday's Workout: AM easy/base run, 8 mi

Summary: 8.44 mi, 1:23:53, 9:56 pace, 172 spm

Pace splits by mile: 10:08, 10:12, 10:12, 10:04, 9:55, 9:49, 9:43, 9:48, 9:07

Hit Rate: 23/30 (76.6%)

This one felt bad. It was a fasted morning workout the day after a race, what was I expecting really? I just felt sluggish the whole way, it felt like a struggle just finishing, although the splits will speak to the fact that I did seem to get warmer after the first four miles and things were incrementally improving as the run went on. In any case, it was just a run I took to get some more miles in, and that was all I needed from it.

Tuesday's Workout: AM CMSC practice, mid-distance free day

Summary:

• WU: 400 swim, 3 x 100 swim
• Pre-set: 4 x 150 @ 10-15 SR, 50 kk/50 dr/50 sw
• Main Set:
• 6 x 50 @ 10SR, odds build to 80%, evens hold 80%
• 3 x 200 @ base (3:10), descend 1-3
• 4 x 50 @ 10SR, odds build to 80%, evens hold 80%
• 3 x 200 @ base +5 (3:20), descend 1-3
• 2 x 50 @ 10SR, odds build to 80%, evens hold 80%
• 1 x 200 @ base +10 (3:30) - this was 3 x 200, descend 1-3 as written but we ran out of time
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 3400 LCM

Hit Rate: 24/31 (77.4%)

I was not a happy camper about going to this practice. I had been really emotionally upset about a lot of things the night before, although Henry did eventually get me to sleep. I didn't get a ton of sleep, I had actually planned on not going, but I woke up around 4:50 and I would've felt awful if I just went back to sleep so I sucked it up and went to practice. I really wasn't feeling it at all. I swam in the 1:35 base lane, turns out that the pace times are fine although everyone in the lane is super super fast which made me feel kind of crappy because I just like hung off the back 10-15 seconds behind everyone else and it's sort of obvious that I'm really slow. I couldn't really find a good excuse to leave the lane though. Honestly the slower lane is just way too slow and it wasn't like I was missing pace times or getting lapped so I felt like I just needed to suck up my pride and put my head down and do the work. 

In reality though "doing the work" was really just finishing. I didn't try that hard, I didn't actually descend anything, I just swam and made the pace times and that's all I did. I actually really wanted to leave like pretty much immediately after the warm up, and I kept saying to myself, "Okay I'll leave after this set", but I never did. I just kept saying it after each little bit of the set and at some point it was like, "Oh it's actually time to leave". So yeah, I got through it somehow. Only other notable thing was that I had that right shoulder kink again during warm up, but it actually didn't bother me at all during the set (my swimming was probably higher quality during the set), so hopefully it stays better.

This morning I skipped practice, just didn't feel like going, so this is happening...Hit Rate: 24/32 (75%) And this PM, I took a run!

Today's Workout: PM base run

Summary: 8.42 mi, 1:14:21, 8:50 pace, 173 spm average

Pace splits by mile: 8:55, 8:51, 9:03, 8:56, 8:45, 8:47, 8:48, 8:55, 7:55

Hit Rate: 25/33 (75.7%)

This was supposed to be a tempo run, but I've decided that I really don't care. There is so much in the world that I do care about and feeling the weight of expectations tethered to all of my workouts was really getting to me. I would like to go back to that phase of my college club swim career where all I did was show up to as many practices as was reasonable given whatever else was going on in my life and racing on random weekends knowing I was going to swim terribly and actually swimming terribly and having a blast doing it anyways. I want to be fit enough to race and enjoy the experience of racing. Improving and dropping time and winning things on the occasion is fantastic, but it takes so much out of me in order to do that. Sometimes you just have to decide when things aren't worth it anymore. I want to have mental and physical energy to put towards my clinic work and my studying and the time I have to spend with Henry and friends. I want my life to drift a little more closer to normal because I've been getting tastes of it here and there recently and I really like that. I want to keep racing and training because I love it, but I don't want either of those things to feel like a chore. It was starting to feel like a chore. So I'm gonna drop the expectations and the run training plan and just swim and run and try to do things because they're good for me and because I love them. I've never been good at that, but I'm gonna try. I'll still keep "planning" in the sense that I'll pen things into the calendar ahead of time because if I have no structure I'll just spend all my time napping, but it'll be flexible and there will be no demands on the kinds of workouts I have to do. Gonna keep working on that whole balance thing.

In any case, with regards to the actual run today, it felt sort of interesting...I knew it was a comfortable pace mentally just from the info I was getting from my legs and from my heart rate and breathing rate and what not, but it really never felt comfortable. I have a bit of a head cold so my nose is simultaneously really runny while feeling really dry and I've been coughing so my airway is a little irritated and the end result is that I think that's why I never got comfortable. It's hard to be comfortable with a head cold. The weather was cool though and the pace was quick in a very relaxed way and I was surprised that I was able to take a run at this kind of distance at this kind of pace and have it feel as good as it did. I really hope that's not an anomalous thing, I really hope my natural running pace is just coming up bit by bit. It'll take a lot of time to sort that out though, I'll try not to read too much into one run.

The plan as of right now for tomorrow is morning swim practice and a run with Henry in the evening. We'll see what actually happens. Happy Wednesday! (:

Much love,

Jess

All I do is sleep

[Day 153]

Things accomplished today: Woke up, went to practice, came home, ate breakfast, promptly fell back into bed and just woke up again. Good job Jess lol. Doubled up yesterday, so here's the summary from yesterday and today!

Yesterday's PM Workout: Easy run, 4 mi
Summary: 4.34 mi, 42:00, 9:40 pace, 176 spm
Pace splits by mile: 10:05, 9:29, 9:53, 9:41, 8:21
Hit Rate: 18/23 (78.2%)

This was way harder than I thought it was going to be. My legs just didn't feel with it, it was a struggle for most of the way until we did a little pick up push at the end of the run. Henry pretty much pulled me the entire time. I know he has a much easier time running with me when I'm beside him but I spent a lot of the run tucked in behind him because my legs just didn't feel like they could go any faster. It was rough. But whatever, we got it done.

Today's AM Workout: CMSC practice, IM day
Summary:

• WU: 400 swim, 3 x 100 swim
• Main Set: I have no idea what any of the pace times were, I was just going last and leaving 5 off the person in front of me...
• 4 x 150 @ base + :10/:15, 100 fly/50 back, 100 back/50 breast, 100 breast/50 free, 100 free/50 fly
• 4 x 100 @ base + :10/:15, 50 build stroke/50 recovery choice
• 4 x 50 @ base + :10, 15 underwater fast/35 recovery choice
• (break)
• 4 x 150 rolling IM @ base + :10/:15 (pretty sure these were on the 2:50?)
• 4 x 100 @ base + :10/:15, 25 stroke FAST/25 recovery choice (pretty sure these were on the 1:50?)
• 4 x 50 @ base + :10, 35 moderate/15 sprint to the finish (pretty sure these were on the :55?)
• Did these 1-3 free as written, 4 easy b/c ran out of time lol
• Total Distance: 3100 LCM

Hit Rate: 19/24 (79.1%)

Swam a lane up today, was definitely the slowest in the lane and really hope I wasn't ticking my lane mates off by being too slow. They seemed fine though, they left on whatever interval they were doing and for the most part I made all the pace times so I wasn't really holding people up I don't think. And I wasn't THAT much slower than the second slowest person in the lane lol. I'm gonna try to stick it out and see how things go with swimming in this lane. I don't even know what base pace they were using, but whatever it was, it worked for today.

I'm feeling stronger in the pool than I was expecting to. I mean long course fly is non-trivial but I managed to make an okay go of it. I had some pain in my right shoulder today but it's because my hand tends to deviate outwards on my freestyle catch, especially when I'm breathing to the left. If I'm careful about my freestyle form, my shoulder holds up fine, so I guess it's a good thing that it nags at me when I swim poorly. 

My legs are less sore today than they were yesterday for sure, but they're still keeping me up at night and they're definitely far from perfect. Gonna try and take that tempo run today, I feel pretty confident in my ability to at least hit the HM pace intervals, but less sure about those 10k pace intervals...just gotta remind myself that how I feel is probably not gonna be an accurate reflection of what my body is capable of and I just have to not freak out and focus on holding good form and get after it even if it seems way harder than it should be. Hopefully things will go alright. I'll report back in the PM.

Much love,

Jess

Back to CMSC (:

[Day 152]

Today's Workout: AM CMSC practice, mid-distance free day (test set day)
Summary:

• WU: 400 free, 3 x 100 free
• Pre-Set:
• 300 as 25 kick/25 drill/50 swim
• 4 x 150 free @ 10SR, 50 easy/50 build/50 cruise 
• Main Set:
• Test set of 10 x 100 free @ 1:40 (made them, yay!)
• 100 easy
• 2 x 200 free @ 3:30
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 3200 LCM

Hit Rate: 17/22 (77.2%)

Went to master's! Swam a lane down from where I usually swim, but will probably be moving back up tomorrow because I led the lane and I think they normally swim on a 1:45 base pace which feels a tad slow (even though 1:35 or 1:40 would be super challenging based on where I am right now, I think it'd be worth it to go back up a lane and try and hang with the faster swimmers). I don't feel as out of shape as I was expecting to, honestly the stroke felt strong, my legs which are completely non-functional on land presently actually did pretty well in the water, all in all I'm really happy with it. Long course will take some adjusting to, the pool feels endless and sometimes I don't stay focused the entire length and my form really drops off towards the end of each 50. I'll just have to figure out a way to cue myself back into focusing on my swimming since there's no wall at the 25 to help me reset. But yeah, it was a good way to get back in the pool. Hopefully I'll keep that up.

The plan was originally to take a tempo run today but I think I'm gonna swap today's run for tomorrow's because my legs definitely aren't up for it yet and I want to hit that workout right. Will take something short/easy with Henry today and try and hit the tempo run tomorrow instead. Trying to keep quality the priority. 

Much love,

Jess

A double? What?

[Day 106]

Today's AM Workout: Rec swim
Summary:

• WU: 600 as 150 free/50 kick
• Main Set:
• 6 x 50 descend 1-3, 4-6
• 4 x 250 free @ 4:00 as 150 sighting drills/100 fast
• 4 x 200 pull
• 1, 2 - w/ paddles @ 3:00
• 3, 4 - w/o paddles @ 3:20
• WD: 200 easy
• Total Distance: 2900 SCY (~50 mins)

Hit Rate: 104/114 (91.2%)

Today's PM Workout: Easy run w/ Brian

Summary: 4.98 mi, 45:59, 9:14 pace (there was some starting and stopping, Brian's first post-half marathon run, he wasn't feeling too hot in the middle)

Hit Rate: 105/115 (91.3%)

Much love,

Jess

Why is 4:25 am so early...

[Day 103]

Today's Workout: AM CSP Practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU:
• 2 x 300 free @ third person rest
• 4 x 50 free @ :50
• Main Set:
• 4 x 200 free @ 3:15
• 1 - 50 strong, 150 smooth focused on technique
• 2 - 100 strong, 100 smooth focused on technique
• 3 - 150 strong, 50 smooth focused on technique
• 4 - all strong
• 4 x 250 free @ 4:00, 200 smooth focused on technique, broken for 5-10 secs, 50 sprint
• 4 x 100 kick w/ fins @ 1:30-1:40, 25 fly kk on back/50 choice kk/25 swim free
• 8 x 25 free @ :25, FAST breakouts then easy swim
• 200, 150, 100, 50 free MAX @ 60SR
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 3800 SCY

Hit Rate: 101/111 (90.9%) - Worth noting that I will not be putting any hits on the hit rate from here on out until we're done with Wildflower. We're getting into that taper/rest period and at this point it's really not the plan I care about, what matters is getting the right balance of training and rest (which is like almost impossible to do but I'll try my best). Having the freedom to be flexible and listen to my body will be important so I'm forgoing the structure for the home stretch. 

Updates:

• I literally threw a fit this morning when I had to get up for practice. I have to grow up a bit. But also honestly the work is getting a bit wearing. Pumped to race but also pumped to have some time to decompress in the coming months. 
• Forgot I had my selective this afternoon, had planned to bike during that time but I had to be in class instead so dropped that workout. Then spent a lot of time looking at the schedule for the rest of the week and freaking out about not getting enough outdoors time on the bike. (Just one more outdoor ride left on the schedule officially before we'll likely have to ship our bikes out.) I know it's silly but I'm just worried about things like not being able to clip in during the race or something like that since my shoes have been giving me issues lately. Fingers crossed that won't be something I'll actually have to worry about come race day. Maybe I'll calm down a bit after the next ride I take. Maybe I won't. Who knows.
• I think in general I'm hitting the point of OMG THE RACE IS SO CLOSE I CAN'T DO THIS I'M GOING TO DIE. It's going to be okay. But I'm going to spend A LOT of time freaking out.

Run tomorrow morning, that'll be it for the day. Will hopefully get more schoolwork done than I've managed today because it's been pretty abysmal on that front. Gotta get my act together! Happy Tuesday!

Much love,

Jess

I have the best fiance

[Day 99]

Henry drove me out to practice this morning in a car borrowed from a friend. Friends with cars are wonderful. Having a fiance who is willing to get up at an ungodly hour in the morning to drive me to practice is the best kind of blessing in the universe. He's taking a well deserved nap now lol.

In regards to practice, I really should've worked harder given that someone else gave up many hours of their morning to get me to and from practice. It's hard though without really aggressive pace times to push me and I wanted to keep pace times reasonable for the lane because towards the end of the set people were falling off the pace so it was a weird balance to try to strike. (It was IM day so I was leading.) My knees hurt a little bit, my left knee specifically, from breaststroke so I'm gonna try and keep an eye on that. Here's the set.

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

• WU: 
• 500 swim
• 2 x 250 @ 3rd person rest
• 1 - alt. 50 IMO kick/50 free swim
• 2 - alt. 50 IMO drill/50 free swim
• 4 x 100 free pull w/ paddles @ 1:35
• 4 x 75 IM no free @ 1:20, descend 1-4
• Main Set: straight through unless indicated
• 5 x 100 IM @ 1:45
• 4 x 50 IMO @ 1:00
• 4 x 100 free @ 1:35
• 4 x 50 free @ :50
• (break)
• 3 x 100 IM @ 1:40
• 4 x 50 IMO @ 1:00 (pretty sure this was supposed to go down to :55...but we just didn't...)
• 2 x 100 free @ 1:30
• 4 x 50 free @ :50 (again, pretty sure this was supposed to be :45...)
• 1 x 100 IM @ 1:35
• (there was supposed to be 4 x 50 IMO MAX @ 1:00 or 1:10, but we didn't have time)
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 4100 SCY (4300 SCY as written)

Hit Rate: 97/107 (90.6%)

Originally had a long run with a big tempo effort in the middle scheduled for today, but might be shortening that down because honestly I need to do the rest of life too. It's fine. I'm ready, I don't need the extra distance, I know that. It's just hard when I want to do more but I know that I can't without compromising my schoolwork. We'll see what comes of it. I'll be back. Happy Friday everyone!

Much love,

Jess

Why am I so busy.

[Day 97]

I don't know why my life is so crazy but it is. I skipped a gym workout this morning and got up at 5 am literally just to study and get life errands out of the way. And everything still feels like a disaster. :\ I also moved around some of the workout planning for later in the week so I can squeeze another gym session in and actually take a rest day at some point. We'll see how it all goes. Turns out the whole being a triathlete and going to med school thing is just a huge struggle. Here's the late update from yesterday.

Yesterday's Workout: AM CSP practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU: 550 swim (600 as written)
• Main Set:
• 5 x 200 free @ 3:15
• 1, 5 = normal
• 2, 4 = broken at the 100 for 10 secs
• 3 = broken every 50 w/ 45 sec send offs
• Straight through:
• 100 free @ 2:00, 90%
• 2 x 50 free @ :55, 95%
• 4 x 25 free @ :30, MAX
• 4 x 150 free @ 2:20
• 1 = normal
• 2 = broken at the 100 for 5 secs
• 3 = broken at the 50 for 5 secs
• 4 = broken each 50 for 5 secs
• 8 x 50 alt. 25 fly/25 kick @ 1:00
• 4 x 75 kick w/ fins, middle 25 is swim with <8 strokes @ 1:10
• Straight through:
• 3 x 100 free MAX @ 2:00
• (extra 15 SR)
• 2 x 50 free MAX @ 1:15
• WD: 4 x 75 swim @ 1:15
• Total Distance: 3850 SCY

Notes: I really didn't want to be there in the morning but am finding out that I'm a lot more fatigue resistant than I used to be. Not fading towards the end of practice means I've been finding myself getting more and more into practice as it goes on, which has been nice. I also definitely said to myself in the locker room before practice "I would give anything to not be here right now" and realized that all I would have to "give" is being slow and promptly changed my mind. I guess that means I'm still motivated to do something lol.

Hit Rate: 95/104 (91.3% - this includes this morning's skipped gym sesh)

Brick on the books for this afternoon. Loooooong day coming. Let's get it. (:

Much love,

Jess

I don't understand mechanisms of heat/cold intolerance in thyroid disorders help me

[Day 77]

Today's Workout: AM CSP Practice, sprint free day
Summary:

• WU: 
• 200 swim
• 200 kick no fins
• 200 pull no paddles
• 100 swim (as written was a 200...idk what the lane decided)
• Pre-Set: straight through, breaks indicated, if I didn't put a pace time it's because I don't know what we did it on
• 8 x 50 stroke/free by 25 @ :55 (I did 4 fly, 4 back)
• 1 x 100 free
• 4 x 25 choice (back) descend 1-4
• (break)
• 4 x 50 kick w/ fins choice @ :50
• 1 x 100 swim w/ fins @ 1:30
• 4 x 25 kick w/ fins MAX @ :30
• (break)
• 2 x 50 free @ :45
• 1 x 100 swim @ 1:40
• 4 x 25 break outs free 
• Main Set: straight through, all free
• 1 x 50 @ :40
• 2 x 100 easy @ 1:40
• 2 x 50 @ :45/:40
• 2 x 100 easy @ 1:40
• 3 x 50 @ :50/:45/:40
• 2 x 100 easy @ 1:40
• 4 x 50 @ :55/:50/:45/:40
• 2 x 100 easy @ 1:40
• 5 x 50 @ 1:00/:55/:50/:45/:40
• 2 x 100 easy @ 1:40
• WD: lol no time
• Total Distance: 3750 SCY

Hit Rate: 82/90 (91.1%)

Already dreading the trainer ride tomorrow and I haven't even taken my exam yet yay. Back to studying.

Much love,

Jess

Going through the motions

[Day 75]

Meh. Let's not talk about it. But here is the set anyways.

Today's Workout: AM CSP Practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU: 550 swim (600 as written)
• Main Set:
• 5 x 150 free @ 2:15, last 25 build to fast
• 5 x 50 @ 1:00, 25 kick w/o fins/25 free
• 5 x 75 @ 1:20, 25 moderate/25 faster/25 fastest
• 5 x 25 free MAX @ :30
• 5 x 100 kick w/ fins @ 1:30, 75 choice/25 fly on back
• 150 easy as 100 free/50 back
• 5 x 150 @ 2:20, 75 moderate/50 fast/25 sprint
• WD:
• 4 x 50 free @ 1:00, DPS/DPS-1
• 4 x 75 free @ 1:10, RB 7/5/3 by 25
• 50 easy
• Total Distance: 4000 SCY

Hit Rate: 79/87 (90.8%)

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

A little mix of disappointment

[Day 69A]

But also a little bit of faith. I skipped another workout this morning. Missed another blog post yesterday. I had time to do the blog post in the evening, I was just tired and used that time to veg out on the internet instead. That was on me. I missed the workout because I was at the tri team appeal last night and didn't get home until after 11 pm. The 4:30 am or even 5:00 am wake up wasn't going to happen. I actually did wake up at around 5:15 am and thought about doing what I had done Monday and just sucking it up and going anyways, but I only have two workouts in bold on my calendar this week (meaning they were planned as key sessions) and those are today's trainer ride in the PM (because my only other rides are outdoor moderate rides as the first half of brick sessions on the weekends) and Friday's long run. I knew that the combination of the physical work on my legs from the gym session and the inevitable afternoon crash from not having enough sleep would have inevitably cut into the quality of my trainer ride this afternoon, and I wanted to prioritize that (as well as my health and sanity, which sometimes requires that I get enough sleep). So I slept a little extra.

It's a bummer because it means my only gym session this week was a poor showing on Monday, and I don't like to leave things like that. But at the end of the day, I also know that's not my priority right now and that's okay. This is where the faith comes in: it puts a bit of pressure on to nail the trainer ride this afternoon (and hopefully not crash in the afternoon? Although even with the extra sleep I definitely didn't get enough sleep lol). But that's how these things tend to go isn't it?

Anyways, to make up for missing yesterday, here was the swim:

Yesterday's Workout: CSP Practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU: 2 x 300 swim, last 25 kick
• Main Set:
• 4 x 250 free @ 3:40-3:45, as 200 mod/50 faster, broken at the 200 for 5
• 4 x 50 free @ :45
• 4 x 200 free @ 3:15, as 150 mod/50 faster, broken at the 150 for 5
• 5 x 100 kick w/ fins as 75 choice/25 free kick on side @ 1:30
• 4 x 150 free @ 2:15, as 100 mod/50 faster, unbroken
• 100 back easy
• 4 x 100 @ 1:45 negative split
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 4300 SCY

Hit Rate: 72/80 (90% - includes this morning's missed session)

I felt really crappy yesterday to be honest and my swimming was pretty subpar. I was just exhausted. It was hard. I struggled. I got through it. Lots of rest time between yesterday morning and today's afternoon workout, so hopefully my body has had a bit of a chance to sort itself out. We'll find out later I guess.

Much love,

Jess

Well that was mildly unpleasant...

[Day 64]

We did end up doing core stuff last night! Along with that timed 100 push ups challenge. And watching the 16.2 announcement, which was freaking insane. Made even more insane by the fact that one of the judges counted Dan Bailey's reps wrong and he's probably gonna have to do the workout again. Ouch.

Anyways, if you don't know what the 100 push up challenge is, it's basically a thing that Henry and I do because I enjoy winning at stuff where we take turns doing 100 push ups for time. Not continuously, because honestly I have a hard time linking together push ups past 20 reps. But you know, broken up however you want until you get to 100. Henry went first yesterday and set the bar really high and put the fear of god in me and I subsequently crushed it. 6:57, best time yet by a lot. I broke them up pretty similar to how I usually do but I was able to stay in the 5 rep range for longer and I think my reps were faster and my breaks were shorter. I was very very happy about that. Then we did some core stuff, and since we were sort of on a challenge streak, we started with some max reps stuff. Literally unbroken reps until I failed out of one, which was fun. (Yes, this is the kind of thing I find fun.) Unfortunately, fun doesn't always mean productive? I mean it was a great workout, but I also definitely didn't focus as much on form as I typically try to and blah blah blah. A good thing to do every once in a while, but probably not something I should get in a habit of. Also I need to plank, which we skipped yesterday because of the push ups. Here's the summary of that.

Yesterday's Core Work:

• 100 push ups for time: 6:57
• 128 sit ups (unbroken)
• 92 leg lifts (unbroken)
• 200 Russian twists, broken twice (at 96/179 if I remember correctly)
• 35-18-12 V sit ups (was aiming for 35-25, but the reps got ugly and I reset and tried to hit good ones)
• 10 x 10 second leg lift negatives

Then I swam this morning! Henry gave up some of his life yesterday to make sure he could be home and support me so I could make it out to the pool this morning, so when I woke up and felt pretty crappy and didn't wanna go, I sucked it up because of him and got my butt out the door. The workout in and of itself wasn't bad, but I felt pretty terrible. Even not hard things felt hard today, I just didn't have it. We got through though. The lane sort of opted out of deciding on pace times, we just swam. There are like 5 of us girls that are virtually the same speed so it does work out in the end, but it was kind of weird for me to be like, I don't know what the send off is gonna be but as long as I come in some reasonable amount of time after Emily it'll probably be fine (I went third in the lane). The ride back was terrible and very slow. I was very tired. Biking while tired is slightly dangerous. I kept feeling like I was veering and not very steady (probably because I was veering and not very steady...). Here's the summary:

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

• WU: 
• 300 swim
• 300 drill
• 250 alt. 50 kick/50 drill (was supposed to be 300, but idk what my lane decided to do...)
• Pre-Set:
• 4 x 200 IM
• 1 - drill, 2 - swim, 3 - kick w/ board (no fins), 4 - swim 
• 5 x 100, odds IM descending 1-3-5, evens free
• Main Set: 3 x 
• 125 double up IM (first round 50 fly, second round 50 back, etc.)
• 50 weak stroke (breast)
• 100 free
• 50 strong stroke (back)
• 75 IM no free
• WD:
• 200 kick (free w/ board no fins)
• 100 swim
• Total Distance: 3650 SCY (3700 SCY as written)

Hit Rate: 68/75 (90.6%)

Had a pretty productive day, ended up taking a nap in the afternoon though because the exhaustion from the morning never really cleared up. Ran right after my nap, opted for a 12 miler instead of a building 10 miler today because I've done more speed work than I typically do this week and I knew I had no kick in my legs today (based on the swim/ride). So long and steady it was. 

It was actually pretty nasty in terms of how it felt. I was honestly aiming to be just under 10 minute mile pace, I figured something nice and leisurely would do for the longest run of the year to date, but it just didn't feel nice and leisurely. By about mile 8 or 9 I was struggling with the focus and the pace and my legs just felt shredded. I got through though and held on for the finish. It's weird because these long days used to really intimidate me, but now I almost feel like I can compare it to any other run when I just don't feel so hot. Sometimes I take easy 5 milers and they feel horrible. You know you're gonna get through it, it's just gonna feel horrible. I could tell myself the same thing about today's run, except it was 12 miles. I don't know where that confidence of "oh of course I can run 12 miles, there's no question about whether or not I'll finish, I just have to decide to do it and go out and do it" came from, but it's nice. Progress. Even if today's run in particular ended slowly and with me in a lot of pain, I can see the progress hidden in it.

Today's PM Workout: Long run (12 miles), easy pace

Summary: 12.65 mi, 2:03:19, 9:45 average pace, 176 spm (Nailed that! Didn't realize it til just now but I'm real happy about that)

Pace splits by mile: 9:48, 9:52, 9:43, 9:44, 9:30, 9:47, 9:38, 9:53, 9:44, 9:46, 9:47, 9:48, 9:45

Hit Rate: 69/76 (90.7%)

I've been a huge lump since I've gotten home though. Don't feel so hot, haven't really been able to stomach much real food so I had a smoothie and have been munching on random snacks that don't upset me (tomatoes eaten as if they were apples because tomatoes are amazing, hummus and pita chips, roasted potatoes, yeah I'm random). It's late so I'm gonna stretch now and probably hit the sack. The real planned day off is tomorrow. It's interesting, that'll be the third day off I've had in seven days, which is way more than is typical. The workouts this week have been longer and higher intensity though, so I feel pretty justified with the extra rest. xD Maybe I'm just making excuses. But right now my body definitely doesn't feel that way. It'll be nice to have the day off. TGIF!

Much love,

Jess

Ah distance free day, we meet again...

[Day 60]

Today's Workout: AM CSP Practice, distance free day
Summary:

• WU: 
• 400 swim
• 2 rounds of
• 150 free
• 100 IM
• 50 build
• all on third person rest
• 6 x 50 kick w/ fins 
• 2 easy @ :55
• 2 moderate @ :50
• 2 fast @ :45
• Main Set: straight through within rounds, rest between rounds
• Round 1:
• 400 free @ 6:15
• 2 x 200 free @ 3:00
• 50 easy
• Round 2:
• 300 free @ 4:45
• 2 x 150 free @ 2:15
• 3 x 100 free @ 1:30
• 50 easy
• Round 3:
• 200 free @ 3:10
• 2 x 100 free @ 1:30
• 200 free @ 3:10
• 4 x 50 free @ :45
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 4000 SCY

Hit Rate: 64/70 (91.4%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Felt real tired today, wasn't too slow in reality given that, but it felt super sluggish. It was probably a lucky thing that the pace times were forgiving. It was one of those days where I couldn't keep the tired sounds inside of my mouth during practice. Sometimes I would touch the wall and the "bleeehhhhh" would just slip out of me. Same with riding home, there was one time when I crested over a hill and the "ugh" sound just sort of whooshed out of my mouth because I was winded. Honestly I was tired enough today that I wanted to get out about 800 into the warm up, but I just talked myself into taking it one repeat at a time. I told myself that I got credit for every lap I swam and that it was making me better, so I would try for another and another and another and eventually I got to the end of the workout.
• The sun coming up is so key to the ride home not feeling miserable.
• One definite thing I noticed today was the core weakness. My back was definitely more arched than it should've been because I had a hard time holding my body line in the water and it led to a bit of lower back soreness after practice. Nothing that lasted, but still. I haven't done core work in a while, I really need to get back on that.

Early gym sesh tomorrow morning and a run in the afternoon. Another long day of med school too. (Today was an 8:30 am to 6:00 pm day, a little bit rough.) Fingers crossed that I make it.

Much love,

Jess

I spent all day sitting in lab...

[Day 56]

...And I don't even know who I am anymore. It's amazing how long you can just like sit and not move and not even realize it. So glad I'm not gonna have a desk job in the future. Would not be able to handle that on a daily basis. Also pretty sure it would just take years and years and years off my life. Yeah, no thank you. (Also for the record, I'm doing clinical research so it's all based out of a computer, which is why I just literally sat at a desk all day and moved literally zero.)

Today's Workout: AM CSP Practice, sprint free day
Summary:

• WU: 
• 800 free
• 4 x 50 free build @ :55
• Main Set:
• 10 x 75 free @ 1:15
• odds - first 25 FAST
• evens - last 25 FAST
• 200 easy
• 100 free MAX (I went 1:13ish? Not great)
• 100 easy
• 5 x 100 kick w/ fins @ 1:30, 75 choice/25 fly kick on back, focusing on streamlines off the walls
• 25-50-25-75-25-100-25-75-25-50-25 @ :25 per 25 base, 25s FAST, others easy
• 100 easy
• 25-50-25-75-25-100-25-75-25-50-25 @ :25 per 25 base, 25s easy (which was really more like moderate because :25 seconds is long enough to actually swim easy...), others FAST
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 3850 SCY

Hit Rate: 61/66 (92.4%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I felt kinda sluggish this morning but it turned out fine. Definitely wasn't my fastest swimming which is a shame because the sprint efforts definitely felt lacking in real speed, but it wasn't a terrible swim either so I'll take it.
• Hap definitely made a point of calling out some technique issues today (head position, streamline, reaching/finishing my strokes because I've been too eager to get my arm into the recovery). It was good to be made to think about that. Also reiterated how important it is to focus on swimming well during warm down so it's the last thing your body remembers. Took that to heart today, gonna try and follow up on that as the swimming continues.
• The bike out was rough. It was windy. I didn't wanna be late (and I wasn't!). The bike back was nice though, no time pressure today so I just chilled. It also helps that the sun is rising by the time we're out of practice nowadays so I'm not coming back in the dark, which generally improves my mood a lot.

Just watched the Crossfit Games Open announcement, which was pretty cool. The workout was a pretty crazy thing, go google it if you're curious. I'm sitting here trying to decide what random sports related item that I've been wanting to buy for a while I should actually go ahead and buy. Or if I should just...continue to not buy things seeing as it obviously hasn't killed me yet. But I want all the things. Help me. Okay need to go back to studying now. Yay med school life...

Much love,

Jess

School comes first

[Day 54A]

Trying to convince myself to write blog posts on busy rest days is one of those things that works literally zero percent of the time. Third missed day now I guess? I'm not great at this resolution thing evidently...but you know what, I sort of see it like how I see training. It's not about being perfect, it's about being as consistent as possible.

That being said, I'm not at practice right now. I'm at home, doing some final review for genetics before I tackle a take home quiz this morning. I didn't have enough time to finish it yesterday (full morning of lectures and full afternoon of clinic hours mean that all my studying was relegated to the morning and the evening and it just wasn't enough time) so I'm here trying to get it done now (it's due at noon). School is the priority.

I've also been thinking a bit about next year and am realizing that I want to focus on being the best med student that I can be during second year, so I'm probably going to step down training intensity dramatically in the fall after my fall races and really just focus on doing well in my classes and doing well on Step 1. That's a ways off, but I think it'll take me some time to get used to the idea of letting one thing go to focus on the other, so I'm glad I'm making my own expectations for myself clear ahead of time.

The rest day was good, I haven't been sleeping well recently which is a bummer (though strictly speaking I have been hitting enough hours), but other than that things are going well. Afternoon run today if the rest of the day goes according to plan.

Hit Rate: 57/62 (91.9%)

Hit rate feels like it's getting precarious. Am gonna have to make a really serious effort to not be skipping more workouts from here on out. Might be tough though with exams coming up in a few weeks. We'll see how it goes. Wish me luck!

Much love,
Jess

Hitting reset

[Day 49]

There's a long one coming. And it's pretty damn personal. Brace yourselves. Let me just get the boring half of the post out of the way:

Today's AM Workout: CSP Practice, sprint free day
Summary:

• WU: 400 swim, 250 swim (as written was 2 x 400 swim)
• Pre-set: 10 x 75 free @ 1:10, RB 6/4/2 (I did 6/4/3 because I can't breathe every 2...)
• Main Set: 
• 4 x 50 free @ 1:00 build to a sprint, no breathing last 12.5
• 8 x 25 free breakouts @ :30
• 50 MAX
• 6 x 100 kick w/ fins @ 1:30, 25 fly on back/75 choice
• 3 x (4 x 50 free @ :55 ascend 1-4), 100 easy between rounds
• WD: 400 swim easy as 100 back/300 choice 
• Total Distance: 3650 SCY

Hit Rate: 52/55 (94.5%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Kate is trying to get me to bike race. And ride with groups. Um both of those things make me uncomfortable but I guess I'm willing to try out either? (This thought is here because we talked about this on the car ride back, after she took me to a cafe to get delicious post-workout scones, mine was cheddar chive and it was so yummy.)
• There was a point where I was like, I just wanna go home. I'm so done with this. But Hap makes swims manageable, he always makes me laugh at some point and it brings me back to life a bit. 
• My underwaters/breakouts are terrible. Ugh where did my pool swimming skills go.

This afternoon's workout was interesting...I guess. I'll tell my story first and put the details at the end so they make sense. I was planning a redo of that one continuous effort ride that literally broke my spirit a few weeks back. I had Henry to see me through that one (I've actually had Henry around to see me through a lot of the rougher rides recently) and so I sort of saw today as an opportunity to see how I'd fare on my own. It didn't go well.

I think right from the get go the entire concept of that workout freaked me out. It's hard to look at a set that long and say "I can get through this" when you're hurting 10 minutes into a 75 minute set. I don't get beat by distance. You can tell me that I have an hour left of something and as long as the only requirement on me is that I keep going, I will keep going. But when you add a pace requirement to that all of a sudden it totally breaks me. I'm not great with the whole intensity business. There was a time in my life when I was and I'm not really sure what happened or how I lost it, but I find myself in the position of knowing that I really struggle with maintaining intensity. And that's tough for me to face because I feel like you have to have that kind of mental resilience to be good at this and I want to be good at this and I don't know how to be tougher other than by just doing it. Which I haven't been doing.

Anyways, the gist of what happened was that in the 5 x 5/5/5 progression, I broke in the last 3 minutes of the first round. The first round. I got to three rounds at my target gearing last time and took the last two rounds a gear down which was already kind of disappointing but at least I did something vaguely resembling the workout. This time I got 12 minutes into the main set and I just couldn't. And it was incredible because I was so active about evaluating how I was feeling and yes it was a rough pace and yes my legs burned but it wasn't an outrageous level of effort. Logically speaking I knew that I should be fine but my brain was panicking the whole time and it just felt like I couldn't and I couldn't and so I didn't. It was so incredibly disappointing to just quit on myself like that. And I wanted really badly to just unclip and go shower and put it behind me but I couldn't, so I brought the gearing down one and thought, okay, let's go at this effort level. I know for a fact that I can do this a gear down. But same thing, 12 minutes in, I just couldn't. My brain just couldn't handle it. 

It's weird, but I really do feel like the last time I did this it was just so hard and so incredibly painful that I really didn't gain any confidence from the workout. I remember just sort of being kept awake by it at night that day and the next few days and feeling like I could never do that again, I could never put myself through that again. No workout has ever really done that to me before, including like the terrors that were New Years Eve or New Years Day workouts from my age group swim club days. Usually getting through a tough workout gives you confidence but honestly that workout just broke me. And even now I really can't shake that feeling and I think that's a part of what's holding me back. 

The other part is that accumulated fatigue is a thing. I can feel it every time I run and every time I ride, it takes me normally 30 or 40 minutes to get into it and feel okay instead of the usually 15 or 20. Even on the trainer, I tend to feel best a few repeats into whatever set I'm doing because it just takes forever to get my legs to loosen out. So in a way I know that had I just gotten a little bit further through it it would have probably eased up a bit. But I just couldn't, even after I dropped down a gear, and I ended up feeling so stuck and frustrated and disappointed with myself. 

I ended up getting off the bike and taking a short run. I felt like I needed to run. The only time I ever ran in high school was when I was really upset. Sometimes I'd get into a fight with my parents or I would get really emotional over drama at school and I would just need to run. Need it like I needed air and nothing could stop me, I'd be out the door and I'd find myself x number of miles from home too tired to keep going and not really sure how I was gonna get back. The only time I ran during my first two years of college was after exams. I only ever ran when I had something to run from and today that feeling hit me full force while I was sitting on the bike. I just very literally had to run away from my problems.

The run did some good for me. I had a lot of negativity I needed to shrug off before I could really think about what was happening and getting outside and feeling like I could escape some of what was going on back in my apartment was good for me. And I had a long conversation with myself that basically went like this: So you're angry and frustrated and upset with yourself, what are you gonna do about it now? Quit? Never set foot on the trainer again? No. So what are you gonna do? Work harder. Well that's easy to say now seeing as you just ran away from the work you were supposed to be doing. That's not a good answer. Try again. Make a new plan. Okay what is this new plan. I don't know. Tell me why this isn't working for you. The set is daunting. I'm scared. How can we make it less daunting? It's sort of like goal setting. The end goal is always daunting, you have to break it up to make it manageable. Okay so how do we do that here? Well I obviously am not gonna hit the workout as written right now so why don't we make this set an ultimate end goal and work up to it. Great, more details. The number of repeats is scary. The fact that there's no rest is scary. Let's try and break the set up along those lines and work on building confidence with one of those things at a time before trying to put it together again as a big set. Okay that sounds good. Are you missing anything? Yes, I need more warm up time. I'm willing to sacrifice the sprinting at the end of this workout in order to make sure I hit this main set and can fit in solid warm up time. That all sounds good to me. Let's make it happen.

I was actually really amazed with where my brain took me on that run. That's not to say that I'm not still angry/upset/frustrated and that I'm not still sitting here berating myself for not just being tougher (I am, can't help it, it feels like I should be able to do this and the fact that I can't kills me), but I do know that at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if I can't get this set done for fitness reasons or for mental reasons, it all amounts to the same thing: I'm not doing quality work, I need a plan to fix that. So the plan is this. I'm going to do three variations of this workout in the next three weeks and on week four, I'm going to try to hit the main set (the 5 x 5/5/5, no finishing sprints) as the main portion of a 100 minute trainer ride brick (tack on 3-4 miles of running to the end of that). That starts tomorrow, where I'm going to do just 3 x 5/5/5 with 2 minutes of rest between each round and one set of six 45 second sprints. I just need to prove to myself that I can get through those last 5 minutes on each repeat and the reward of rest will hopefully keep me going past 12 minutes and we will build from there. 

Is it sort of silly that I'm really hung up on this workout and am willing to build my entire trainer progression around it instead of working on other things? Yes. It's extremely silly. It makes very little sense in the grand scheme of training. But I also know myself and I know I need to get this monkey off my back if I want to continue enjoying what I'm doing. I can't let this beat me because so long as this hangs over my head, I'm going to feel like I don't have what it takes. I have to prove to myself that I can work through this, so I'm going to work through it, even if it comes at some sort of expense to whatever the ideal training plan is. And the crazy thing is, even at a very reasonable 3 x 5/5/5 with rest breaks, I'm still scared. It still scares me. But I'm gonna give it my best tomorrow and hopefully prove to myself that if I work at it, I will get there. Wish me luck. In the meantime, enjoy what happened today.

Today's PM Workout: An unexpected first brick of the year!

Summary:

• Trainer ride: 10.60 mi, 45:21, 14.0 mph average
• Outdoor run: 4.18 mi, 39:28, 9:27 pace

Hit Rate: 53/56 (94.6%)

I'm going to go shower now and continue to be disappointed with where today left me. It doesn't feel good to feel like I'm not moving in the right direction, but that's how these things go. It would be great if training and progress were linear but it never is. I did this a few weeks ago and today I couldn't do it, so now I have to look forwards and figure out how to get back to where I want to be. Gonna keep working for that breakthrough. Swim tomorrow morning, edited trainer ride re-do in the afternoon. Let's get it. (:

Much love,

Jess

I have a lot of feelings.

[Day 46]

Fun facts: I don't handle myself very well. It takes a lot for me to be satisfied with myself and okay days or even good days generally don't make that mark. I had a rough time this morning at the gym and I'm still figuring out where I am given that. I wasn't as mentally present as I like to be, but sometimes it's just hard to be fully mentally present at 5 am and I'm willing to cut myself some degree of slack for that. The problem though is that I think honestly I've been falling back on Henry a lot these past couple days, I've really let him take the mental burdens for me because it's so much easier than stepping up and taking responsibility for my own efforts. As much as I know that having him around makes me better in a lot of ways, I also know I'm doing myself a disservice if I let that become an excuse for me to be less tough on myself because I know he'll pick up the slack. I wasn't 100% there and 100% committed this morning and I don't like that.

I definitely also totally psyched myself out this morning. I had such a mind-blowingly great lift on Thursday and to me all of that was from the kick I got from getting to take that lift fed and in the evening when my body was warm and ready to go. It scared me so hard to be getting back into the gym this morning because I felt the weight of wanting to hit those numbers again but knowing that I was going back to being fasted and cold. I was telling Henry about this on the way out there, some people feel a lot of pressure going into races/events, but I typically don't. I mean don't get me wrong, I get nervous and I'm hungry to do well but I think everything that I can possibly control about the race is already out of my hands. I build those races in the months that lead up to it and the day of is just a matter of execution and the right kind of luck because there are always race circumstances that are out of your control. But I feel pressure every day that I'm training, every time I lace up to run and every time I clip in on the trainer and every time I dive in the pool and every time I get under a bar at the gym, I feel so much pressure because those moments are what are going to make or break my races and every single workout feels so valuable and so important and so heavy sometimes. It sucks to fall short in those contexts, it really does, and that's where I feel the nerves and the pressure the most.

One of the things I've noticed about my benching especially is that what's going through my head on my first rep normally has a way of determining how the rest of the set goes. I've been trying really hard to tell myself that it's easy weight on that first rep, I just repeat that to myself over and over no matter how that first rep actually feels because I know it makes a difference in how many I end up being able to hit. I think today I was expecting everything to be harder because of the whole being fasted/cold thing and I think it definitely played into me not performing quite like I wanted to be. I'm bad at the mental game and I hate that because it seems like such a simple thing to fix. Just don't think like this. It's frustrating today.

The other things worth noting today are that I had a pretty rough morning post-workout. I felt fine immediately afterwards but after about an hour and getting some food into my system, I felt genuinely awful. I ended up taking about an hour nap just in Henry's lap on the couch trying to get put back together and I've been doing much better since, especially after lunch. It was not the start to my day I wanted though. I also sort of felt shitty because Henry was obviously going about his life being a perfectly functional normal human being but I was such a mess. It was just one of those situations where I felt awful for not being able to pull it together and just suck it up and be normal because someone who literally did the exact same workout as I did this morning happened to be sitting next to me and was perfectly fine. That's the kind of thing that makes me feel weak in an extra special way. -Sigh-

I should also comment on the swim meet yesterday. It was meant to be a dual meet with the SLU club team, but they dropped out due to weather (it was snowing yesterday) so we ended up holding a time trial instead. My swims were super slow, but also I was getting like a couple minutes between each swim so what was I expecting really. Regardless, it was a blast. I love racing, like deep down at the core of who I am I love racing. It didn't matter that the context was a casual time trial, my body goes places it would never go in practice when I'm racing and I love that feeling so much. There was a distinct point in the third 50 of my 200 free when literally everything in my body hurt and I was just like, awwwwwwww yes this is what I live for and I dug a bit deeper. Which made me feel sort of like a total weirdo, but hey, it's what I love to do. So I'm going to summarize yesterday and today!

Yesterday's Workout: WUSTL Swim Club Time Trial
Summary:

• Meet Warm Up:
• 200 free, 200 kick
• 8 x 50 sprint down/easy back 
• 8 x 25 IMO
• 2 x 25 breakouts off the blocks
• Swims: we were hand timing, so I don't have exact numbers
• 200 free: 2:20 low
• 100 back: 1:17 high
• 100 IM: 1:16 high
• 50 back: 35 mid
• WU/WD yardage: 350
• Total Distance: 1850 SCY (I counted this as 30 mins on my Garmin)

Hit Rate: 49/52 (94.2%)

Today's Workout: AM Lift w/ Henry

Summary:

• Back squats: WU 12 @ 65#, working 5 x 8/8/8/6-2 @ 105#, 1 x 8 @ 95#
• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 55#, working 3 x 8/8/6-2 @ 85#
• Deadlifts: 3 x 8 @ 125#
• Pulldowns: 4 x 12/12/9-3/12 @ 7 plates alt. wide/narrow grip
• Legs giant set: 3 x 
• Goblet squats: 15 @ 45#
• Weighted split squats: 15/side @ 15# DBs/side (these got split pretty heavily, they were real rough)
• Reverse lunges: 15/side @ 15# DBs/side
• Superset: 3 x
• BB push press: 12 @ 45#
• BB row: 12 @ 45#
• Superset: 3 x 
• Bicep curls: 12/side @ 15# (I should like probably be doing more weight but I'm always afraid I'm going to destroy my wrists or something...)
• Skull crushers: 12 @ 15# (I think I normally do these a bit lighter but it was fun to try and get through these at this weight. It was hard, I didn't do a great job, had to break them up a lot and had Henry spot quite a few of them, but it was fun to try.)

Hit Rate: 50/53 (94.3%)

The only note I have to say about this is that I repeated the set I did with Fay that one time, but after having back squatted already and subbing normal squats in for goblet squats and I would like to say that this set will f*ck you up. I honestly didn't even push super hard today because my brain was just not in it, but I can almost guarantee you that if you do this right and really fight to get the reps in consecutively it's the kind of metabolic work that would make you vomit. I'm gonna keep working at this, I wanna be fit enough that this set at this weight gets easy.

Okay end long post/rant. Need to get back to studying for physio. Happy Monday! (:

Much love,

Jess

Every up and every down

[Day 41]

Sometimes your days are unpredictable. Today was one of those days that yo-yo'd between being good and bad so many times that I'm here at the end and I'm not sure if I should be expecting another down after that latest up? I don't even know. Let's talk about the workout first, then I'll give you the timeline of my day.

Today's Workout: PM rec swim slash tri team practice (I sort of used both time periods because it was what was convenient to me)
Summary:

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set: straight through
• 200 free @ 3:10
• 4 x 150 IM no free @ 2:30
• 200 free @ 3:00 (was supposed to be 3:05 but it made counting awkward so I just sort of did whatever...)
• 4 x 125 fly/free/back/free/breast @ 2:00
• 200 free @ 3:00
• 4 x 100 IM @ 1:40
• 200 free @ 2:50 (was supposed to be 2:55, but again, counting...)
• 4 x 75 IM no free @ 1:15
• 200 free @ 2:50
• 4 x 50 IMO @ :55
• WD: 200 easy
• Total Distance: 4200 SCY, 70 mins

Hit Rate: 44/46 (95.6%)

Notes/thoughts:

• My legs were not 100% rested because I felt them burn a bit early on in the set and opted not to use them very much because of it, but the rest of me felt real good from the extra rest (I slept in this morning and I skipped the AM lift, will explain later on) and I think that really showed in this workout. Also, both workouts that I've done in the Wash U pool this year have been way quicker than I was expecting, enough to make me question if the pool is even set to the right length. I'm sure it is. So the only other explanation is probably that these are the only two swims that I haven't done fasted. The test set AM swim involved me getting up early enough to eat and digest breakfast before going to the pool and today I swam in the evening so I had already had dinner. I know from my college days that the gap between how I swim when I'm fasted and how I swim when I'm fed is huge, but I think I had sort of not thought about it much since I take all of my swims fasted in the mornings now. It's mind blowing to then have a non-fasted workout (while rested no less!) and see that difference first hand again. Fuel is so key. 
• (On that note, some people will probably wonder why it is that I don't eat before morning workouts. That's actually totally elective. I think one important thing about being an endurance athlete is teaching the body to function while fasted. Sure, it's also important to practice race day nutrition, etc. etc., but at the end of the day the body can only process so much external fuel so fast. You're really limited by your digestive system. It makes more sense to try and train the metabolic system to be able to find fuel when it's got nothing external to depend on, so that's why even on weekends when I do have time to eat before my workouts, unless I'm up really early for another reason, I don't intentionally get up early to eat breakfast. I like to take my workout first.)
• I was honestly expecting to need to go on more forgiving pace times than this. To have gone straight through at this pace seriously blows my mind. I mean the free pace times were pretty easy (although that last one did hurt) but the IM times definitely pushed me and I dunno, I just didn't think that I was here fitness wise. It's really amazing. Another interesting thing I've noticed is just how much more resilient my body is during workouts. When all I did was swim full time, I had way more speed/power in the water than I do now, but I couldn't last through workouts like this and just keep pounding consistently like I can now. That's a really recent development and I think it's just the rest of the training showing through. I love that so much, I love seeing the work I'm putting in pay off in places that I don't expect it to. It makes me just want to keep working harder.

Okay let me tell you about my day:

• Henry talked me out of the morning lift. I was worried about being unprepared for my microbes quiz and he was the reasonable one who told me that I need to prioritize school. I was planning on getting up early and studying for that but actually ended up sleeping in by a lot. (I had a 5:30 am alarm, then ended up sleeping until 6:30 am, and the most amazing part was that it felt like I had closed my eyes for a split second after I reset my alarm before it was going off again.) I felt physically fantastic (which seemed like a small miracle given how horrible I had felt last night going to bed, the trainer ride hit me pretty hard) but also a bit guilty about all the extra sleeping...In any case, it was still more time than I would've otherwise has and I was able to get all the studying I needed to do in the morning.
• Morning classes were good, I was able to go home and make some food as well so I would have lunch and dinner today and lunch for both Henry and I tomorrow. I took my microbes quiz in the afternoon and it was easy and went well. I had a library session for a POM assignment that I didn't really want to go to, but honestly that went pretty well too. Then I think my brain sort of gave up on me so when I had to go home and cram for my immuno take home and then take it, I had a really rough time. I did eventually get it done and I ate dinner and wasted some time (which I felt pretty guilty about, but I was just so mentally blown) before heading out to my swim.
• Now at this point, it seemed like everything was going according to plan. I had worried that I would need more time for immuno than I ended up needing, so I had been concerned earlier in the day that I wouldn't be able to get out to the pool in time to go pick Henry up, but that turned out not to be an issue and I was so excited to just do my swim and then go see Henry. Well I got to the pool and realized that I had brought everything I needed except for my suit, which I normally wear under my clothes when I swim in the morning, but that wasn't what I did today because I was swimming in the evening. I was devastated. I know, I sound like a total diva, but that's what it was. Here I was going about my day thinking, man it's been so crazy but I'm getting to the end and all I have to do is swim and go to the airport and everything will be great. Instead I find myself trekking back to my place in the snow via the metro and wasting about an hours worth of time in order to pick up my suit so I could go swim. I thought briefly about just not swimming and doing work or going to the gym or something else instead, but I really wanted to do today's workout and it was important to me to prove that I wasn't going to let my own idiocy stand in my way, so I ended up sucking it up and going. Boy am I glad that I did.
• So I had made contingency plans to not be able to go to the airport, since I had wasted an entire hour. (Which I really could have used to do things like study for my physiology exam next week... -sigh-) I was expecting the workout to take me pretty long, since it was a 4200 yard IM workout. Instead I ended up being in and out of the pool in 70 minutes and I realized that I would have just enough time to get to the airport if I rushed and made the metro. I did. I am here now, writing this post from the airport, waiting for Henry's plane (which was actually conveniently delayed by a bit, this is the only time in my entire life that's I've been glad a plane of his is delayed), eating a bagel and drinking some milk I treated myself to from the airport bagel place. I know, not quite the right balance of macros for a post-workout snack, but whatever, carbs for life, right?
• Fun thing worth noting, there was a sign posted up on the blackboard that I noticed for the first time today. I'm sure it's there for the varsity team, and what it reads is this: "The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do". Honestly, I had counted myself out after all the madness earlier in the day, but my workout blew my mind. I don't think I have very many people telling me I can't do stuff, but I think I tell myself that all the time. I have so much doubt and so much fear and so much uncertainty and the only reason I keep going is because I love it so much it hurts and because there are so many wonderful people in my life who believe in me. Today, I got to prove myself wrong, I literally thought the words, "I can't do X, Y, and Z" and then went on to do those things. That is in fact a great pleasure in life. 
• As an addendum to that, I think part of the reason I swam well today was because I had been fired up. I was so upset with myself for making a stupid mistake like forgetting my suit and I was so worked up, and being worked up puts me on a different plane mentally sometimes. Sometimes it totally wipes motivation out of me, but today it didn't. Today I felt like I had something to prove. I had to make my workout so good it was worth that wasted hour. I had to prove that I was better than these stupid things that I do sometimes. And I think I did prove that, but my point is really that on some days, making mistakes drives me. Although if given the chance to do things again, I would have definitely opted not to do the dumb thing that led to my great swim, I do also want to acknowledge that I think the experience did have some value. It put a kind of fight in me that I don't always have, and I'm appreciative for that much. 

Okay this post is long enough as is. Henry just landed. Yayyyyyyyyy. Oh one last thing to explain: I'm not docking the hit rate for not going to the gym today because that workout is actually getting shifted to tomorrow evening, so I'll get to go lift with Henry! It means back to back doubles the next two days, which will probably be sort of rough, but whatever, I'll get by. No change in total number of workouts, so as long as I actually do go to the gym tomorrow, I figure the it's fine. Morning trainer ride tomorrow and gym sesh in the evening, let's get it! (:

Much love,

Jess

"Sometimes I feel like I'm about to quit..."

[Day 40]

"...but it's about that time I get over it."

Thanks for the kick in the butt shuffle, I don't think I would've gotten on the bike trainer this afternoon if it weren't for that. Let's get to it!

I feel like I've been on a real hot streak recently with the swimming and I knew that it was going to end sooner or later but I didn't really dwell on it because I would have preferred later to sooner. Well today was the first roadblock I feel like I've hit in a while. It was a good run, but all good things must come to an end. I don't even know what it was, I guess I felt a little bit more tired than usual this morning and I really just couldn't get into it with the swimming. It went okay for the first half of the workout but then my lane mates all sort of left for one reason or another and the person who typically goes before me and pushes me the most in these workouts had some shoulder issues today so he just chilled it. Before you knew it, I was left finishing the set alone and whatever momentum I had been getting from just swimming around other people fizzled out pretty quickly. It sucks because I just couldn't focus on doing the best that I could do so in a lot of ways I feel let down by my tired brain more than I feel let down by my body, and I hate feeling like the limiting factor in my workouts is my brain. I feel like I should have a handle on that part of things by now, but it's hard to mentally on point every workout. Anyways, here's the summary:

Today's AM Workout: CSP practice, mid-distance free day
Summary:

• WU:
• 400 swim
• 4 x 75 kick/swim/kick @ ??? (sometimes I don't pay attention to the interval and I just swim...)
• 300 pull w/ paddles
• 4 x 50 free descend 1-4 @ :50
• Main Set: straight through unless otherwise indicated
• 3 x 200 free @ 3:00
• 2 x 150 free @ 2:20-2:25
• 100 free FAST (~1:20)
• (break)
• 3 x 150 free @ 2:15
• 2 x 125 free @ 1:50-1:55
• 100 free FAST (~1:25)
• (break)
• 3 x 125 free @ 1:50-1:55
• 2 x 100 free @ 1:30
• 75 free FAST (I didn't get a time on this one)
• WD:
• 2 x 100 kick choice w/ fins @ 10SR
• 2 x 75 swim choice w/ fins @ 10SR
• 100 easy
• Total Distance: 4100 SCY

Hit Rate: 42/44 (95.4%)

Another thing worth noting is that I haven't been feeling as recovered as I typically feel after a day off. This day off was pretty special too, because it was straddled by a morning workout and an afternoon workout so I actually got 48+ hours of rest when I usually try to limit myself to around 36 hours or less, so I was expecting to feel way more refreshed yesterday and today than I've been feeling. I guess this is the point at which things really start accumulating and that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's sort of the point of endurance training. I'll have some time early next week to sort of decompress and get a bit of that out of my system anyways, so I'll just have to be tough and get through this week feeling the way I do.

The day was a little bit stressful. I just feel like I have a lot going on at school and obligations keep popping up for the remainder of the week and it makes it tough to stay focused and motivated. I'm trying not to let all that get to me, but it really does. Also anticipating Henry coming soon really doesn't help me. I just want time to pass faster so he can be here, but I also don't because I have so much to do before he gets here, and all that's sort of stressful too. Anyways, my point is that it's the kind of situation that makes me super unmotivated when it comes to getting home and jumping on the trainer for two hours. It was honestly just the last thing I wanted to do. But Henry sent me a text telling me to remember why I'm asking my body to do this for me and that song (Invincible by Our Last Night) came on and I couldn't say no to that. 

Here's the fun thing about that song: it reminds me a lot of a mentality I really grew into back when I swam in high school. I knew all the girls from the other schools in our conference who were roughly my speed and roughly on my developmental trajectory as far as swimming goes. We were all a pretty tightly clustered bunch when it came to times and I was determined to come out on top every time. And the way I handled being tired and especially swimming hard practices when my body just felt awful was that I told myself that I didn't want to be able to beat these girls just on my best day, I wanted to be able to beat them every day. I wanted to be good enough that at my worst, I could beat them at their best. That's what I worked towards and it helped me hang on during the really hard days. That's sort of what that phase "I want to be invincible" meant to me, so when the song popped on, it was almost like a challenge. You're having a terrible day. What are you going to do to prove that you can come out on top even on the worst of days. Here's the summary:

Today's PM Workout: Trainer ride, 120 mins, endurance work with some speed thrown in

Summary:

• WU: 10 mins easy
• Pre-set:
• 8 x :40/:20 pick ups @ base/base/+1/+1/+2/+2/+1/+1
• 2 mins easy recovery 
• Main Set:
• 20 minute steady state effort, 90+ rpm @ base
• 5 mins easy
• Speed work: 6 x (6 min efforts, 2 min recovery) broken as 2 min base @ 100 rpm, 2 min base +1 @ 90+ rpm, 1 min base +2 @ 85+ rpm, 1 min base +2 @ MAX rpm
• So I didn't hit all the targets here, I was more or less hovering around the targets instead of staying above them, see the file if you're really interested
• 20 minute steady state effort, 90+ rpm @ base 
• WD: 7 mins easy
• Totals: 29.70 mi, 2:00:17, 14.8 mph average

Hit Rate: 43/45 (95.5%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I think I have a tendency of psyching myself out sometimes when it comes to what certain cadences at certain resistances should feel like and I actually do a lot better when I'm not staring at the numbers on my watch. For the 20 minute efforts today, I literally threw a towel over my watch and handlebars and didn't look at them the entire time and just let my body figure out what the right pace to be moving at was for that kind of steady effort. It hit it pretty bang on, which I was really impressed by. And what's even better about it was that it didn't necessarily feel hard, it felt like I was in exactly the right place, whereas sometimes I think when I'm looking at those numbers I psych myself out and it actually raises perceived effort when it really shouldn't. So that was an interesting experiment.
• The interval set in the middle was something I had pulled from a workout I did last year that was a shorter overall ride. I wanted to hit it again so I sandwiched it between two steady state efforts. The base +2 cadence target was 90+ rpm before and the MAX target was specified at 100+ rpm, but it was pretty obvious I wasn't going to hit those today so I made adjustments. I don't know if it's because I had that steady state interval beforehand or if it's because I'm using a different base gear (I used to ride mostly in my small ring in front and I've shifted back to starting mostly in my big ring in front but I normally have the back gear set such that what I define as base feels like a pretty comparable effort to me, so idk what the deal is) but either way, it was more of a struggle than I was expecting it to be. (Not that it was like easy by any means last time, but I think I made more of them, so that's saying something...)
• Today was a music day. Which was interesting, I hadn't had one of those in a while. I feel like I've done a lot of podcast days or silence days, but today I felt like I really needed music to help with the motivational lapse. It did work super well. There were so many amazing songs that came on that really pushed me through. A lot of it reminded me of my high school swimming days, especially the days at school that were just rough for whatever reason and ended in me jumping in the pool and just swimming my heart out because I didn't know what else to do. I really drew from that entire set of experiences, it was a reminder that I've gotten through a lot in life and if I could get through that I could get through this. I feel like sometimes when I'm pushing my absolute hardest, that's when I'm most brutally honest about who I am and what I love and I don't feel apologetic about it which is nice. I think normally, I'm worried about being too intense or specifically being judged by other people for being too intense, but like ADTR put it "cast your stones, cast your judgement, you don't make me who I am". (Not gonna lie, I cried a little bit in the middle of that last 20 minute segment when this line came on. It was partly the song, partly the workout, partly the rest of life. I want to cry during hard workouts pretty frequently, I don't typically do it, but music can tip me over that edge sometimes.)

I'm tired and I need to eat dinner and study for our microbes quiz tomorrow but honestly I think I'm going to fall asleep just like sitting here in this chair. So exhausted. Lift tomorrow morning (maybe a short treadmill run tacked on if my legs are feeling okay) and swim in the PM (either rec swim or tri team practice, TBD depending on how the rest of my day goes work-wise). Hope everyone had a great Tuesday!

Much love,

Jess

It's bedtime.

[Day 35]

Today's Workout: AM CSP practice
Summary:

• WU: 400 swim
• Main Set:
• 8 x 50 free @ :50, descend 1-4, 5-8
• 8 x 125 @ 2:00-2:05 as 25 fly/free/back/free/breast
• 10 x 25 free @ :30
• 1, 4, 7, 10 - MAX
• The rest moderate
• 100 backstroke kick focusing on streamlines (no fins)
• 5 x 100 free w/ fins @ 1:30, focusing on fast underwaters off every turn to mid-pool
• 100 easy
• Sprint set, straight through: 100 MAX @ 2:00, 75 MAX @ 1:30, 50 MAX @ 1:00, 25 MAX @ :30
• 4 x 50 easy @ 1:00
• Another sprint set, straight through: 100 MAX @ 2:00, 75 MAX @ 1:30, 50 MAX @ 1:00, 25 MAX @ :30
• WD: 200 easy
• Total distance: 3650 SCY

Hit Rate: 38/39 (97.4%)

Notes/thoughts:

• These will be brief because I want to be asleep like literally right this second.
• The lane was fast today, loved every minute of that. 
• Waking up is hard, the bike out sucks (it was below freezing today and super windy which was extra unpleasant), but I'm really happy once I'm in the water and warmed up. Tots worth it. 
• I need to stretch (lol I wrote that as a note to myself this morning when I jotted down the set in the draft of this post) but uh I'm sleeping now so whoops? xD

Beeeeeeed.

Much love,

Zombie Jess