Despite the best of intentions...

[Day 50B]

...We all fall short sometimes.

I'm trying to stay positive. I'm going to narrate the workout again. I ended up taking the ride earlier rather than later because I knew it would weigh heavy on my mind all day if I left it til the afternoon, so I hopped on the trainer not too long after breakfast. Yesterday, I had figured breaking up the set with 2 minutes of rest between efforts and only aiming for 3 instead of 5 rounds would change things, but apparently not. Just as a reminder, the rounds were at base +1 gearing, 5 minutes at 80-85 rpm, 5 minutes at 85-90 rpm, 5 minutes at 90-95 rpm continuous. I got through the first 15 minutes interval and it was brutal as to be expected and I just caved on the second one within the first five minutes. I told myself I wasn't allowed to quit on it, so I took some extra rest and went again. I made it through the first five minutes, quit within the first 2 minutes of the 85-90 rpm interval. And again, I told myself I wasn't gonna let that stand. So I went again. Same thing, 6 minutes in and my brain was out.

At this point I thought, okay maybe we need a change of plans. I can get through the first bit. Let's break the rest of it up too. So I tried to do just a single 5 minute interval at 85-90 rpm. Failed two minutes in on my first try. Reset. Tried again and made it. It wasn't comfortable, but I made it. So I thought okay, same thing, 90-95 rpm. Broke on the first one. Reset. Tried again. Hit it on the second try, imperfectly so far as staying in zone went, but I made it. On that last one, I really tried to just sink my teeth into how much it hurt instead of hiding from it. I basically found the tempo and closed my eyes and buried myself into that feeling and somehow I got through those five minutes. At this point, I was about 80 minutes in and I thought about finishing out with sprints but honestly I couldn't bring myself to do it after trying and failing with the main set bunch of times so I just warmed down and called it a day.

I'm starting to realize that this set is genuinely really hard. I've never been great at maintaining effort on long sets and that's really what this comes down to. Once again I find myself in the position of having to re-visit what I need to do in order to accomplish this. I don't want to spend more workouts struggling through things like this and losing structure when I fail out of the set because that doesn't help me build the kind of specific fitness I'm trying to get. So I think the next time I ride on the trainer, the target set will be the same warm up as today (20 minutes instead of 15), one round of 5/5/5 like I did today, then three more rounds following the same pattern but at 3/3/3, 2/2/2, and 1/1/1 with 2 minutes between each round. If I make it that far and I'm feeling okay, I want to take an extra 2 minutes of rest and hit the 5/5/5 broken like I did today to finish out (with 2 minute rests between each 5 minute segment?). Maybe tack on a single set of six sprints. Even looking at that, it sounds ambitious, but that's how I like to plan workouts. Aim high, then every once in a while I get to surprise myself. I'm also realizing that it's gonna take me a long time to work up to being able to do this right again. But that's okay, I'm willing to be patient and put my head down and work to get there.

I have a profoundly new appreciation for hard I was pushed the last time I did this. Henry honestly put the team on his back because I can't work myself that hard without him. It's incredible what that kind of presence does for your ability to look at pain straight in the eye and say I won't let this beat me. It's crazy. I can't wait to have him around full time to push me. It'll be brutal but it'll make me so much better.

In the meantime, I have a chance to work on being mentally tough on my own and not letting fear hold me back. I'm going to get there, if nothing else today showed me that even when I'm failing I still know how to be tenacious and get back up and get after it. I didn't do what I set out to do but I didn't let myself off the hook for it either. I didn't run, I didn't hide, I adjusted and I tried again and again until I reached a point that I was somewhat satisfied with. I'm going to get there. It's gonna take time but I'm going to get there.

The only other comment I have to make is that I'm also realizing that I have to reassess how I judge my running and biking fitness. I'm good about being more reasonable when I'm judging swim fitness because I've been doing it long enough to know that it takes a huge amount of work to make even the slightest bit of progress. I try to be at my best every single day, but when I have a fluke awesome day, I'm good at realizing that more likely than not it's a fluke and I don't expect to be that awesome every day that follows. Sometimes I'm wrong and I do genuinely get better. But sometimes I'm right too, and it helps keep my head in check.

With running and biking, I have a tendency of expecting every day to be like my best days. For some reason (probably because I'm still new), I see that as the bar, and there are some ways in which that helps push me, but there are many more ways in which it probably holds me back. It's important to know where I'm really at physically in order to tune the training to a reasonable level. At some point, continuously overextending is just not going to benefit my fitness. I'm starting to realize that the one Sunday when I hit this workout was probably a fluke day in which my legs probably far out-performed what they're genuinely capable of. The end goal of course is to be able to do this on any normal day, but I'm going to have to work up to it at a reasonable rate instead of just diving in and thinking that I can mentally muscle my way through it. That's not how fitness works. You can't hide shortage of fitness by trying harder, you have to do the work to build it up to that point. So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be patient and trust in the work and I'm gonna get there.

Today's Workout: Trainer ride, 90 mins
Summary: Imperfect summary but this is functionally what happened

• WU: 
• 10 mins easy
• 8 x :30/:30 spin ups 
• 2 mins easy
• Main Set: pretty arbitrary rest breaks (2-5 minutes) between rounds/sets and some failed attempts thrown in there
• 5/5/5 @ 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm (base +1)
• 4 x 5, 2 @ 80-85 rpm, 1 @ 85-90 rpm, 1 @ 90-95 rpm (base +1)
• WD: ~10 mins easy
• Totals: 20.48 mi, 1:30:38, 13.6 mph average

Hit Rate: 54/58 (93.1%)

Let's do the rest of this Friday. (:

Much love,

Jess

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

[Day 32]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hit Rate: 34/35 (97.1%)

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

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

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

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

Much love,

Jess