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!

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