And there goes the dropped ball, but it's okay

[Day 139]

I go to med school. Sometimes I think I can suck it up and be exhausted and get on fine doing what I do but that's just not true. Opted to nap in the pm today because I was entirely non-functional. Chose to focus the rest of my time on school work rather than on squeezing in a workout. It was the right call. It's nice to not be training super seriously for something and have the ability to just axe workouts when I have to prioritize other stuff. I spent a lot of the past few months feeling torn between all of these different things that I wanted to accomplish. It's nice to have a single clear priority that I can put above other things and not constantly feel so conflicted about. Gonna try and run in the AM tomorrow if I can. No promises lol.

I'm tempted to drop the hit rate count because I know it's not gonna look good, but I'm also really curious about what the hit rate will turn out to be if I continue tracking it and choose to just live my life instead of constantly trying to work my life around training. I think it'll be an informative number honestly so I'm going to keep tracking it, even though I think there's a chance it might make me feel a little bad. The knowledge is worth that risk. Besides, I finished that last training block on a stellar 91.6% while still managing to do med school, so I'm allowed to drop the ball however much I want now. xD

Hit Rate: 11/13 (84.6%)

Send me good vibes for a good studying day tomorrow, I'm really needing it for the upcoming exam week. (:

Much love,
Jess

PS - Still going strong on that daily core/stretching! So proud! (:

Another day, another missed workout

[Day 98]

But I want to be a doctor. So I will suck it up and do my becoming a doctor things. Planning on doing some core work tonight. Will return and update the post if it happens.

Hit Rate: 96/106 (90.6%)

Core Update: w/ Henry

• We started w/ the standard 100 push up time trial because that's fun or something. I lost. ): 6:43, which is still an improvement over last time (6:57) and something I'm very proud of, but I hate losing. (Henry went 6:39 for reference, he got through his first 70 super fast and then slowed down a bit to close out.)
• Planks: 2 x 1 min front, 1 min each side
• Wrist to knee sit ups: 80
• Leg lifts w/ Henry pushing: 50 + 10 x 10 second negatives
• V sit ups: 50, 35
• Russian twists: 100, 70, 30
• Wasn't the best effort. Wasn't the worst. I'm not super happy about it but honestly when am I ever happy with anything? Just getting it done. 

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

Run mileage is steadily climbing

[Day 43]

This week just really hasn't been swinging in my favour. My teammate who typically takes me to swim practice when she's also going in the mornings woke up with a migraine this morning and it obviously made more sense for her to go back to sleep and try to rest up that headache instead of go to the pool, so I didn't end up making it out to practice today (-1 on the hit rate!). I did, however, take the opportunity to go for a bit of a longer run and do some core stuff in the evening. Here's the rundown:

Today's Workout: Base run, 8 miles (clockwise lap of Forest Park + some extra bit)
Summary: 8.26 mi, 1:19:39, 9:39 pace average
Pace splits by mile: 9:36, 9:37, 9:52, 9:49, 9:53, 9:29, 9:38, 9:19, 9:24
Hit rate: 47/50 (94%)

Notes/thoughts: It felt pretty rough honestly but I just kept telling myself to take it mile by mile and stay under 10 minute mile pace for each and surprisingly I held up pretty well. I felt like after mile 4 or 5 I was getting stronger each mile which was nice. The fitness is there, it's just buried under a lot of fatigue lol. Gotta keep grinding! (:

Post-Run Core Workout:

• 2 min plank (was gonna try and do the rest of the series, but my shoulders are killing me from yesterday so we axed that...)
• 50/25 wrist-to-knee situps
• 40/20 leg lifts (w/ Henry pushing my legs at the top) + 10 negatives
• 25/25 V-situps
• 100 Russian twists

I'm really sore. Surprisingly my legs are particularly sore, like basically every muscle in them hurts, and honestly all they did was squat/deadlift so I dunno what the deal is. 2 hour trainer ride tomorrow, should be really terrible, but I'm going to do it during the US Marathon Olympic Trials so at least that will be motivation/entertainment. Gonna stay in and curl up and movie night with Henry now. Yay!

Much love,

Jess

Core update

Did some evening core work with Henry. Got abundant breaks between exercises because we alternated.

Core Workout:

• Planks: 2/1/1/2
• 75 wrist-to-knee situps
• 75 leg lifts
• 15 x 10 second leg lift negatives
• 50/25 V situps
• 200 Russian twists
• :45/:30 flutter kicks
• A set of 50 pushups which were meant to be split 25/15/10 for me but I dropped early 3 times (the penalty for which was 5 extra pushups) so my split ended up being more like 20/10/10/8/10/7 for a total of 65. (Yeah, I know, these need a lot of work. In my defense I lifted this morning. But yeah, they need a lot of work.)

Stretching and bedtime now!

Much love,

Jess

Random update time!

Did core stuff, will write down.

Core!

• Planks: 2/1/1/1:30 w/ 30 SR b/w (front/side/side/front for anyone new to this)
• 50 wrist-to-knee sit ups
• 50 leg lifts + 10 x 10 second negatives
• 100 Russian twists
• 2 x 25 V sit ups
• 100 Russian twists
• Planks: 1:30/:45/1:00/1:30 (dropped out of the right side down one...that shoulder is sad today for some reason)

Props to evil task master Henry for making me do all that. Also I stretched! Yay bedtime. (But booooo physio take-home with which I'm still not finished sadface.)

Much love,

Jess

Lol what are knees...

[Day 19A]

Today's AM Workout: Treadmill interval run (and some semblance of core work)
Summary:

• WU: 1.5 mi @ 6.0-6.5 
• Main Set: 5 x 800/400 @ 7.0/6.0, 7.5/6.0, 8.0/6.0, 7.5/6.0, 7.0/6.0 
• I had originally planned on doing 6 repeats (doubling the top 8.0/6.0 interval), but my right knee wasn't feeling so hot the entire time so I brought it down a notch
• WD: ~0.25 mi to reach total of ~5.5 mi 
• I should have warmed down more...I got lazy...
• Treadmill numbers: 5.56 mi, 51:06
• Garmin numbers: 5.44 mi, 50:48, 9:20 average pace
• Core: 2 rounds of 30 leg lifts, 30 wrist to knee sit ups, and 50 Russian twists (med ball?), no rest within rounds, some arbitrary amount of rest between rounds.

Hit Rate: 17/18 (94.4%)

Notes/thoughts:

• So in some strange twist of events, while I was stretching after the run, I popped my left knee (the one that's prone to doing that) even though it was my right knee that hurt most of the run...so now I have two knees that both aren't doing fantastic but also both aren't doing so badly that I feel particularly inclined to change anything about my plans for them. It's awkward. We'll see how they hold up the rest of the day. I took a Naprosyn and hopefully that'll calm things down? (Before you go off on me about how bad NSAIDs are while training, I know, I know, but a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.)
• I still do only roughly 50% of the core work I plan to do because it sucks and I have no discipline. ):
• The one upshot of this morning was that I didn't have breakfast planned or pre-made like I usually do, so I just threw some stuff together and actually had a super delicious wrap with cream cheese and cucumbers and deli chicken (with some eggs and chocolate milk) so that made me pretty happy.
• It's cold. Why is it so cold. It was literally warmer at Killington than it is here. Don't do this to me.

The status of the afternoon trainer ride is currently unclear. We'll see whether the knee issues resolve as the day goes on or gets worse. That'll probably be what decides it. I shall report back later. (Or if I don't, I will report back tomorrow, likely to tell you that I skipped the PM workout today. Hopefully that's not what ends up happening, but we shall see.)

Much love,

Jess

"It will settle"

[Day 13]

Title quote is from Chrissie Wellington, retrieved from a magazine I was reading over breakfast this morning. Pretty much sums up how things felt during the workout today so I thought it was fitting.

Today's Workout: AM treadmill run (one big long continuous hill) + core
Summary:

• Run:
• WU: 1.5 mi @ 6.0-6.2, 2% 
• Main Set: all at 6.2 mph, 1.0 mi @ 3%, 0.75 mi @ 4%, 0.50 mi @ 5%, 0.20 @ 6%
• WD: 1.0 mi @ 6.0, 2%
• Treadmill summary: 5.07 mi, 50:05
• Garmin summary: 5.24 mi, 49:56, 9:32 pace
• Post-run core: 
• 50-30-20 shoulder touch planks
• 30-30 leg lifts
• 10-10 PT lying leg extensions (R/L)
• Plank series: 1:30/0:45/0:45/1:30 w/ 30 SR b/w
• 10 four count sit ups

Hit Rate: 13/13 (100%)

Notes/thoughts:

• It will settle: every time I upped the incline today I had a moment where my brain was just like, ugh I have to do how much more of this? And then we're gonna bring it up again? But the beauty of endurance work is that you always settle into it, you just have to give it time. I really felt that today. It's a good mantra to keep in mind when things feel off kilter early on in any workout/interval/whatever it may be. 
• Definitely still overreaching every time I plan a workout. I was like, oh I've never really done hill work on a treadmill before (other than that one dabble into a preprogrammed hill run on the treadmill the one random day) so let's try something new today. Let's not do actual intervals because I don't want to be too aggressive. And I found this cool thing that was like a continuous hill pyramid and thought, yay perfect for the base weeks! Except I'm totally not a good enough runner to do this as a pyramid yet. xD Sooooo instead I took it as a ladder. Worked my way up today. Will hopefully be able to work my way down too next time? And then we can work on inching up that pace? We'll see. I've got things to work towards.
• I really need someone cracking the whip on the core work. I did some amount of it but honestly I didn't put in that much effort. Really lack discipline with the core stuff, especially when it comes to planking. It's one of those things where I need someone else to be holding the stopwatch and pestering me about form otherwise it just doesn't get done right. (Notice that I went for a 1:30 based set instead of the typical 2:00 based set...yeah...) It sucks that this is actually important to me being better at the other stuff because I dislike core work so much. I am trying and I guess not doing as much as I should be is still better than doing nothing...but I still really just need someone to glare at me and tell me to actually do the work when it comes to this. (Henry? Sunday after we get back from Killington? Just make me do it?)
• Henry had to do some work to kick my sorry butt out of bed this morning. I really just wanted to sleep in. But he made me get up and got me to the gym where I subsequently got to do my thing so that was nice. 
• My right knee was bothering me a bit today again during the run, and it's been intermittently painful throughout the morning, so that's something to watch out for. Especially seeing as I'm skiing over the weekend, the knee health will be pretty pivotal to everything.
• Did Garmin update their software? Because my accelerometer numbers this week have looked really different than they used to look and nothing has really changed about the treadmills or my running I don't think...we'll see if the change trends continue. I reserve judgment until a later time. 
• Cadence was still low on average today (169 spm). I had some good stretches in the middle of higher cadence running though, so that's a step in the right direction. Probably taking a run outside tomorrow so hopefully those numbers will give me a better indication of what the deal with cadence is right now. 

In other news, I took some time for myself this morning. Just like didn't do anything I was supposed to do, took a bath, watched some random videos (including this which got me real pumped about skiing over the long weekend), laid around in bed, it was fantastic. I haven't done much of that the past week and a half, low pressure me time was much needed. Some days I don't take well to needing down time and like spend the entire time fretting and being a little crazy. Today though, I felt like I deserved it and it was time well spent so I'm not living with as much angst as I usually am after blowing off responsibilities for an entire morning. Now I have to actually go address the realities of my life though lol. At least I'm already done with all the training I have to do today? And it was a short workout at that?

Two sessions on the books for tomorrow: a morning swim and an afternoon run (hopefully outdoors). Fingers crossed for warmer weather and NO WIND (because I have to bike out/back in the morning). Okay gonna go get my undercut trimmed up now. (:

Much love,

Jess

Reach for the moon

[Day 7A]

Remember those elementary school posters that read, "Reach for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars"? I hated those things (not to mention that's just like scientifically wrong), but I do feel like it properly captures how workout intensity tends to go with me. I get really overzealous when I'm planning and think I'm gonna be really fit and do really well and whatever, then I get on the treadmill and I struggle bus through the entire warm up and am pretty convinced that I'm going to die and I'm like, whoops, I got ambitious. But I always tell myself that I have to try, and I can make adjustments if I honestly fail, so I gave it my best and ended up only having to down adjust one part of the planned run (the second mile repeat was supposed to be at 7.5 mph, but that wasn't happening today). Aiming high meant that my workout was pretty quality anyways, even after I had to adjust some stuff.

The same sort of goes for core work. I had more planned than what I ended up doing, but had I not planned on doing more, I probably would have done nothing and just went home. I was real tired but I felt bad cutting out that big a chunk of the planned workout, so I got some easy core/PT work in too (and stretched a lot, because my legs are still hurting me). Anyways, here's the morning report!

Today's AM Workout: Treadmill run + post-run PT/core/stretching
Summary:

• Run:
• WU: 1.5 mi @ 6.0 mph
• Main Set: 3 x 1 mi @ 7.0 mph, .25 mi @ 6.0 mph (recovery) 
• WD: .75 mi @ 6.0 mph
• Treadmill numbers: 6.10 mi, 56:44 
• Garmin numbers: 5.77 mi, 56:24, 9:46 pace.
• Post-run core/stability: stretching b/w every set 
• Cobra into extended plank, 5 x 10 second holds 
• PT leg lifts (R/L/B) x 10 
• Cobra into extended plank, 5 x 10 second holds 
• PT leg lifts (R/L) x 10 
• Cobra into extended plank, 5 x 10 second holds

Hit Rate: 5/5 (100%)

One of the things I was thinking about while walking out and walking back from my workout was that days like yesterday are hard because I always feel like I need validation that I'm doing enough or I'm doing the right thing. It was easy when I had coaches to fall back on, because you just trusted that whatever they planned for you was right and if they made adjustments, there must have been good reasons. I had lots of faith, I just went with the flow, and whatever happened happened. Now things are harder because I have to make my own decisions and they never seem like clear cut decisions to me and the athlete side of me thinks, well more is always better than less, right? Right? So if I'm not doing more I feel like I'm not doing the right thing, when objectively speaking, that's just false. 

And then I realized that I'm sort of like that about schoolwork too. My mom used to swing by and check in on me when I was working and if it seemed like I was banging my head against a wall about a certain thing for too long, she kicked me out of the house or made me hang out with my brother or something. Because she could see that doing more wasn't the answer, a little break would do me good. I'm much better about identifying that kind of thing with school than with training. With school I think I've always felt like there's a big difference between doing a lot of work and learning a lot of things. Endurance training is such a volume driven ordeal though that I have to associate some degree of volume/physical pain with progress, which makes it harder for me to step back when I should be stepping back. 

But then I was thinking about how a lot of people give advice about this kind of thing and they all say that we have to have self-awareness and be self-sufficient in identifying what we really need. That seems to me like such a massive hassle though. Like I have enough responsibilities as is, I don't want to take on the mental burden of being a self-awareness guru as well. I'm a big believer that you have to set your environment up in such a way that it maximizes your likelihood of success. A big part of that in my life is surrounding myself with the right people. When I was younger, it was coaches and my mom that kept me on track and reined me in when necessary. Nowadays, a large percentage of the time it's Henry that keeps me on track (and reins me in as well). I would like that to not solely be his responsibility though. I wish I had better environmental cues to help me figure out what the right thing to do is, outside of just someone straight up telling me. I'm gonna spend some time trying to figure out what those cues could be. I'll report back if I have any breakthroughs. 

Okay those are my morning musings. I just had a breakfast sandwich (bagel thin, egg, turkey), a post-workout smoothie, and an avocado for breakfast and I will likely need a pretty hefty snack for morning classes today. Gotta shower and change now and get some review done before 8:30 am genetics lecture. I have an afternoon trainer ride planned, another pretty boring base ride, and I will hopefully not be too jetlagged and still have the ability to report back after that instead of promptly passing out (went to be at 7 pm last night but was honestly totally blown by 6 pm). We'll see though. Have a great day! (:

Much love,

Jess

I really wish I worked harder.

[Day 6]

I'm having a rough day (following a rough night that I won't get into the details of) and it's not even 9 am. I want to be going at full throttle at all times and I have some semblance of an understanding that this isn't actually possible, but the reality of my life is that days like today happen where I know (on some level) that the right play is to give myself a day and focus on recovery. The problem is that I always feel terrible about these days, especially if they're changes to what had been a more rigorous plan. Adjusting harder days to easy days makes me feel terrible, even when I know it's the right thing to do. I always feel like I'm just choosing to be weak. Like if I pushed harder I could just get through this and it would be fine. I wish I was strong enough to just choose to do more. But I guess some days you're just supposed to do less. I dunno.

Anyways, all I did was some stretching/yoga and core work this morning. The core work was 2 rounds of 50 leg lifts (broken as 35/15 and 30/20), 50 wrist to knee sit ups, and 100 Russian twists. It wasn't much, but it was really all I was motivated to do. (This is the other problem with spontaneous changes to the plan: I end up not really doing much of anything because I didn't have a prepared workout laid out for me in advance.) I know I need to do less straight ab stuff and more functional core things but it's all stuff I really hate (read: planks) and I'm super unmotivated about all the maintenance work. I know it's important, I just have to get better about actually putting it into my schedule so I can't just continually blow it off like I tend to. I wrote some plank/core work into my post-run tomorrow, so hopefully I will actually do that.

All in all, I was on my yoga mat for like an hour, but realistically I was only doing things for maybe half of that. (I was also distracted by life drama, what can I say.) I'm going to try and fit some more stretching in in the evening as well because that actually made my body feel tons better. I'm not going to add or take away anything from the hit rate, I think taking it easy today was the right call to make, even if I'm not entirely happy about that. We'll get back at it tomorrow (planned double, treadmill run in the morning and trainer ride in the afternoon).

Much love,
Jess