Taking an extra day off

[Day 154]

After some talk about it with Henry last night, we decided to forgo running today. I need the extra recovery day, I wanna do well this Sunday, that involves actually being rested so I'm going to rest today. I will count it against the hit rate, but I won't count it against my chain/streak thing because I do think I'm making the right decision. Be back tomorrow. (:

Hit Rate: 20/26 (76.9%)

Much love,
Jess

Sometimes I need to listen to my body more

[Day 153B]

So there are these two completely conflicting things that I find myself saying to myself a lot:

"Start where you are, not where you want to be." - for when I get too aggressive and try to do too much too fast.

"Bite off more than you can chew and chew it." - for when I'm scared of what I have planned and I need a little jolt of motivation.

I'm really bad at toeing the line between these two sentiments though. Inevitably I just spend all my time swinging too far from one end to the other and the balance seems like it's never there. But I think I'm starting to realize that balance isn't a thing anyone has perfected from day 1 when they draw up their plans. Every time I make plans I find myself changing them precisely because things feel off-balance and I need to get myself back on track. Today was life reminding me that I'm veering too far in one direction and I have to center myself again.

I'm not recovered. You'd think that'd be obvious to me given the fact that I don't really sleep through the night because of the nagging pain in my legs but no. I gave what I had to that tempo run and boy was it rough. The first 2 miles at HM pace were actually pretty solid, legs felt heavy but the pace wasn't hard to find or hold. As soon as I tried to hit the 10k pace mile though, things just fell apart. To the point where when I did finally decide that there was no way I was going to be able to do the rest of the workout and I should just run home at whatever pace I felt like, I couldn't even keep myself running at faster than 10:30 pace AND I was taking walking breaks. It was a rough day. I got ambitious this week with the residual soreness from the weekend combined with adding swimming back into my schedule and it wasn't prudent to be doing what I was doing but I did it anyways. Now I know I have to step back. And I have to go back to my calendar for the summer and re-plan things out in a way that will allow me to get the most out of my job and my training and the time I have here in Boston. And the way to do that is definitely not the way I've been going about it right now. Will have to figure out where the right balance is.

Today's PM Workout: A planned tempo run that sort of devolved into do whatever you can, logged as 6 miles in an hour, there was a good 2 mi pick up at HM pace (~8:20) in there.
Hit Rate: 20/25 (80%)

I needed a wake up call. Life gave it to me. Re-vamped schedule for the week involves not doing stadiums tomorrow and taking an easy short run with Henry in the AM instead. Then swim practice and an interval workout on Friday, Saturday off, and race day Sunday! Yay!

Much love,
Jess

Recovery recovery

[Day 125B]

Took an easy run in the middle of the day today. Partially to clear my head, partially to see how the body is doing post-race. I took two full days off, which I don't always do before my first post-race test drive, and I think it was a good call. I felt pretty good on the run and stronger as the run went on which is always nice. I also haven't collapsed in the hours since (which happens to me sometimes, even when the workout itself feels good), so I think I can genuinely say that my body is doing well. That's good because I'm gonna jump right into 10k training starting this Friday and I wanted to know that my body would be ready for it. We'll see how the harder workouts go later this week. Here are the deets:

Today's Workout: Easy run, 4 mi
Summary: 4.21 mi, 39:52, 9:28 average pace, 176 spm average
Pace splits by mile: 9:45, 9:46, 9:29, 9:03, 8:39
Running Hit Rate: 1/1 (100%)
Overall Hit Rate: 1/1 (100%)

You will notice that I'm resetting the hit rates for the summer block! I want to really focus on improving my running between now and the BAA 10k at the end of June, so I'm making a run workout specific hit rate to track how I'm doing on the running specifically. I will probably let the overall hit rate carry over all the way until August when I do the Chicago Triathlon. Yay!

Another day off tomorrow and then we get back to work starting Friday! Alright, back to studying now. (:

Much love,
Jess

"Rest day"

[Day 72]

I went to an intro CrossFit sesh today! It was super chill so it totally doubles as an off day. The session was pretty simple, we did some technique work with PVC pipes on air squats, back squats, front squats, and overhead squats, learned a few tips and tricks for those lifts. Then we did a short and simple metabolic conditioning workout of 50 air squats, 40 sit ups, 30 push ups, 20 bench dips, 10 burpees and that was that! I had a good time, had a good subsequent conversation with the gym owner, Tom, who is a really nice guy. In the end I decided that now wasn't the best time to add something new to my schedule, also CrossFit is a little bit cost prohibitive if it's not the only form of physical activity you do, so I decided to just hold off on trying more out until later. Maybe after this year of racing (which at this point goes through the crazy swim I have planned in October and the half marathon), I'll re-visit this and see if it's a more viable option. Until then, I'm just gonna focus on doing me and executing the current plan as best I can.

Had a 30+5 brick planned for tomorrow, but am actually going to edit that into a 2 hour ish maybe longer trainer ride. It's supposed to rain in the morning and I honestly don't want to do into a near 2 hour ride with any amount of uncertainty about whether or not I'll get stuck in bad weather. I know people do ride in the rain, but I have no confidence in my bike handling abilities in inclement weather and no confidence in drivers abilities to not hit me while I'm on the roads. So instead I think I'm going to take a trainer ride during the hockey game tomorrow night, just throw it on TV and hope on the trainer and go for however long the game happens to go. No set or anything, just gonna see what a long steady effort on the trainer feels like.

Hope everyone had a great Saturday! (:

Much love,
Jess

Sharing the love

[Day 24]

Rest days are wonderful, but I just watched the Patriots lose in pretty heart-breaking fashion to the Broncos in the AFC Championships so...right now I just want to go pick a fight with someone. I think right after the loss I wanted to cry and eat buckets of Nitya's amazing homemade fudge for hours on end, but a little bit of time has passed and I'm now in "I want to fxck shit up" mode. In any case, let us not dwell on that but instead focus on something more positive that happened to me today on my lovely day off!

So the med school hosts a winter formal of sorts every year called the Red Dress Affair, in which you get to wear red and help support the American Heart Association. I wasn't able to attend this year because it was last weekend and I was out of town at Killington with Henry. I did, however, contribute by donating 2 hours worth of swim lessons to the auction. Today, I met my student for the first time (one of his friends won the lesson and gave it to him) and I got to spend about 45 minutes in the pool introducing the wonderful world of swimming to a non-swimmer. It was fantastic!

For context, I taught a lot of lessons during my college years. It was a really rewarding job that paid well and I always got roped into teaching more lessons than I realistically had time for. Teaching was always such an amazing way to share something I love with other people, and I've always been a little bit sad that I don't have time for it now with med school and everything. It was nice just to have a one off opportunity to do that again. The best part is when you start to see the subtle bits of swimming physics (which is so different from substantive-gravity-involving land physics) start to click with the person you're teaching and it's like "Yes! Welcome to my side of the universe!". It was fun, I had fun, I think I needed some of that this week and it was nice to get it in the context of doing something that I really genuinely love.

As for body updates: my legs are sore but completely functional, so the way I like to put it is if I had to live the rest of my life this way it would be totally fine (which is exactly the level of sore I like to be if I have to experience soreness in one way or another). I just stretched and rolled out and am hopeful about the IT band continuing to not give me any problems. I've got a busy busy week (I'm helping organize a couple of talks this week relating to primary care because that's one of my big interests and I'm trying to squash 8 workouts into 5 days and I'm behind on work and life and everything and I have two of my selective meetings this week which means days like tomorrow where I'm in class from 8:30 am to 5 pm so things are a little crazy), but we'll get through. I believe. (:

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Much love,
Jess

Accepting your limits

There are a couple of big factors that I think have really shaped my mentality and the way I approach life nowadays. I grew up with Asian parents who were big on telling me exactly where I stood both in terms of my abilities/talents/limitations and in terms of my work ethic. I was smart and not very hard-working when it came to school, I had a moderate amount of musical ability but again no work ethic when it came to piano, I had no talent and an average amount of work ethic when it came to dance, I had a tiny bit of talent and a lot of work ethic when it came to swimming. Unlike a lot of parents, my parents weren't really "process" parents. They didn't see it as my job to try my best on everything. I think they knew that if I were to throw myself at everything 100%, I would burn out super quickly because I have the capacity to invest myself in things too fully. At the same time, they also made it very clear that in the arenas of life where I was capable and fell short because I didn't work hard enough, that was on me. I think the message at the end of the day was always to set goals and know exactly where I want to be and balance the talent/work division in such a way that I got there without wrecking myself.

The other big factor is that I grew up as an endurance athlete. I lived within the confines of a sport that rewards the kind of work ethic that doesn't stop for anything. It's hard to be successful as a swimmer. You put in a lot of hours, your easy days are few and far between because the sport is so low impact, you're sore pretty much all the time because the sport is year-round and even with periodization, you don't really get many real breaks from the grind. A few big things that I took away from those years are that (a) accomplishing what you want to accomplish can be really difficult and (b) you are deeper than you think (as is everyone else, so if you want to keep up, you'd better be working).

I think all of this has put me in a place where I honestly believe that when my dreams are big (by my standards) and are the kinds of dreams that require a lot on the work end to make up for a lack of talent on the talent end, I feel like I always have to be working at the edge of what I'm capable of. And the biggest problem I have with that right now is that I can't define that edge very clearly, and even when I can, I don't necessarily want to acknowledge it. One of the things you learn from going to practice day in and day out is that your brain always wants you to quit before your body really will, so it doesn't matter how much it hurts or how hard it is, you just have to suck it up and keep pushing. It's never been okay to just stop and rest, because even though that might make things easier or the rest of your workout faster, it's going to stall your progress in the long run.

But then real life steps in, and strangely enough my earliest interactions with physical exhaustion have all come in the form of swim practice. So when I'm exhausted in real life and I have a list of things I should be doing but I just want to take a break and recharge a bit, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of letting myself do that because it's like quitting in the middle of a set. Physical exhaustion always feels like something I should just be able to push through and when I can't do it, it makes me feel like I've really failed.

Why am I here writing this thing? Yesterday was a tough day. It ended really rough for me and I ended up just staying up really late crying over how exhausted I was and how I really couldn't face this day up ahead because there was so much to do (including an early morning workout). Logically, all that says is that I should take the day off and cut myself some slack for not being perfect while taking recovery more seriously than I am right now, but in my heart it just feels like I've failed. It feels like I stopped pushing and let go in the middle of a set I should have fought through.

Regardless, I guess the point is this: I slept in this morning. I will not be working out today. I'm pushing the gym session back to tomorrow and making a few adjustments to the rest of the week. I didn't have a rest day planned this week so it really doesn't hurt to take one (so no hit against the hit rate), especially since I haven't actually taken a full day off since the half and this will probably be good for me in the grand scheme of things. I thought these thoughts were worth the update. I'm sure I'll come back to them at some point in the future and they'll ring true for another day later in the cycle. Wish me luck with the rest of the day. I'm going to try to be the best that I can be, even if I didn't get off on as good of a start as I had wanted.

Much love,
Jess

Letting things not go according to plan. Being bigger than the fear.

So the drafting of the training plan from now until the Hot Chocolate 15k is well underway and my life has already thrown me enough curve balls that I've had to modify my first week plans about three times. It's a funny reminder to just keep focused on the big picture instead of getting caught up in the details. I guess it's really the only way to make training work alongside everything else in my life (by which I really just mean med school). Flexibility is key and flexibility is not detrimental to my progress so long as I do it right. Gotta remember to keep that in mind over the course of this training block.

Yesterday I went for a swim in the evening with Victoria. I don't know why I decided not to take a day off (I'm actually not planning on taking a day off for a while, just planning on doing a lot of active recovery) but that's what I decided, so I rode my bike out to the Athletic Complex and took a swim! I blew a flat on the way out which was a bummer because (a) I had to ride half the way there and the whole way back on a flat, which was rough on my legs and also likely rough on my bike and (b) I was planning on going to masters swim on Thursday morning but it seems like that won't be happening until I get my new tubes in the mail (thus more plan readjusting!).

In any case, the swim itself was alright. I had been planning on just chilling it but ended up doing some real work because Victoria was there with a friend and they were actually working out so I hopped in and out for parts of their set. I was extraordinarily slow and it really hurt to be swimming intervals that should have realistically been easy. I'm sure it was a combination of having been out of the pool for a while (and not really focused on the swimming in recent months even when I was getting pool hours in) and having run a half marathon the day before. There was also a lot of dawdling and chatting during the workout so I spent about an hour and a half at the pool but only maybe 50% of that was real swimming. It was fun though, I got to hang out with my friend and meet someone new and make a new friend, and I got some swimming in. All in all it was a very enjoyable experience.

Monday's Workout: PM rec swim

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set:
• 2 x (2 x 100 free @ 1:30) w/ copious amounts of rest in the middle (I just butted in during parts of Victoria/Thomas's workout)
• 8 x 75 @ 1:15, odds 50 swim easy/25 kick fast, evens 50 kick fast/25 swim easy (this was particularly rough on my already roughed up legs...)
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 2100 SCY

Hit Rate: 1/1 (100%)

Today, after quite a long day in terms of general life, I took a short easy run just to shake out the legs. Nothing fancy. I had this entire conversation with myself while I was out there about the upcoming training block and how it's crazy that my PB in this recent half marathon has really made me feel like if I worked hard for it, I could improve my running by a lot. It makes me want to be really focused and disciplined and structured about my training and it really makes me want to chase speed rather than just chasing more endurance. That's also really tough though, I find intensity a lot more mentally challenging and intimidating compared to distance so I know it's going to be a struggle to really get myself to commit to something that is in reality just going to hurt a lot and be really difficult. But now that I think I have the ability to improve, I can't just let that go to waste, I feel like I have to pursue it. And I guess more importantly, I really really want to pursue it. So it's all very scary and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to rise above that fear and get what I need to do done. I have no answers, but I figure if I tackle it one workout at a time the way I tackled the race one mile at a time, I'll end up getting to where I want to be (or at least I'll be however many steps ahead of where I am right now, even if I do ultimately fall short). 

Today's Workout: PM easy recovery run

Summary: 3.13 mi, 30:35, 9:46 pace.

Pace splits by mile: 9:40, 9:54, 9:44, 9:38.

Hit Rate: 2/2 (100%)

As you can see, I'm starting up the hit rate measure again. I'll keep this up until the race in December and see if it continues to serve me well. In the meantime, the current update is that tomorrow will be an early morning gym session, the contents of which I will be flexible about pending how my body feels when I wake up. I'll hopefully be reporting back more frequently than I have been the past few weeks as well. I think I'm off to a pretty good start. Excited to start on this new block! Yay! (:

Much love,

Jess

PS - I signed up for next year's Rock n Roll St. Louis Half Marathon yesterday! Presale pricing was too good to pass up, can't wait to run this race again in a year and hopefully scrape off some more time! (:

Always a game of catch up

I'm starting to realize that I'm never actually going to be on top of what's going on, and for the most part that's okay. The problem with not blogging about my workouts daily though is that it sort of defeats the purpose of blogging. I'm not here just to spit my workouts back at the page, I do that when I log on my computer or on Garmin Connect. The point of the blog is reflection, and if I don't take time to reflect the day of a workout, it tends to generally just fade away by the time I get to writing about it...I think I really need to try to prioritize this on a daily basis. It doesn't take me more than 20 minutes to write one of these posts and I think it is really meaningful towards qualitatively assessing my training. Trying to do better. Here are the updates:

On Friday I took it easy after the pounding what was my first treadmill interval session of the year. Was planning on taking a 30 minute treadmill run in the morning, because it was the only time I was free, but ended up only doing 20 minutes and a small amount of lifting instead. The treadmill is do-able when broken into chunks but pretty tough as one slow slog so I took some of the mental load off and did something a bit more fun. Kept weight really low and reasonable for the lifting, trying to protect my back and my body more than I am trying to get strong.

Friday's Workout:

• Easy run:  treadmill, 20 mins broken as 5 @ 6 mph, 15 @ 6.5 mph, 2.25 mi, 21:14. (Garmin numbers: 2.1 mi, 20:53, 9:57 pace.)
• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 45 lbs, working 3 x 12/8/8 @ 75 lbs (legs up to protect my back)
• Pull downs: 4 x 12 alt. wide/narrow grip @ 6 plates
• Goblet squats: 2 x 12 @ 45 lbs + 5 squat jumps following each set. (Even this felt hard on my legs, funny how the run before hand really changes the game.)

On Saturday I took my weekend long run, which happened after a nap cut short by Henry waking me up because I told him to and me throwing a somewhat uncharacteristic tantrum and crying for a bit. I wasn't feeling too hot so I started really slow and just told myself to try and pick up the pace by :15 per mile every two miles and I ended up having a really great building run. I didn't think I had those kind of splits in me and I was really impressed by my own running. Unfortunately I also ended up developing a pounding headache after the run that lasted for hours and pretty much wrote off the rest of my day. Check it out though, I was really proud of this one:

Saturday's Workout:

• Long run: Forest Park and Wydown, 10.37 mi, 1:36:12, 9:11 pace.
• Pace splits: 9:40, 9:54, 9:41, 9:38, 9:13, 9:22, 8:58, 8:30, 8:39, 8:36, 8:38.
• Note: The weather was perfect, nice and cool and overcast, which probably played a lot into the quick pace of the run.

Sunday was another easy day. Sunday made my Monday sort of wonky because it was in reality a really unproductive day when it didn't need to be that way and it makes me feel really stupid for not having gotten more done because now I feel really overwhelmed. As far as the workout though, it was just to shake out the legs after a big day on Saturday. I took the opportunity to take some random roads in Forest Park and run through some grass and explore a bit, which was relaxing and fun. Apparently Toby saw me while he was biking and I totally didn't see him. Whoops!

Sunday's Workout: Easy run, 3.04 mi, 30:27, 10:02 pace.

Yesterday, I took another morning treadmill interval workout, this time it was a set that was sent to the tri team GroupMe last week and it was intended as a track workout, but I figured it worked well enough for this purpose. I kept the intervals at a similar speed as last workout but the recovery breaks were shorter, so I didn't know how it was going to play out. The set itself was also shorter, so that was another factor. The one thing I really like about treadmill intervals is that you're forced to keep up. You don't have to constantly be worried about making sure you're on the right pace, the treadmill does that for you, you just have to keep up. It takes that extra mental dimension out of it, and on one hand, I realize that it's important to train that mental dimension, but on the other hand, I know that this is one of the reason I avoid doing interval and speed work. If the treadmill removes some of the mental barriers and helps me get more speed into my training, I will take it and develop that mental resilience some other way or later down the line. 

In any case, it was by no means an easy run even though it was a shorter set than what I had done a few days ago. I got through it though and was very happy with how my body handled it overall. Also, my legs were a little rough in the morning but ended up feeling great the rest of the day. I don't really know what the deal with that is, but I'm not going to complain about it!

Monday's Workout:

• Treadmill interval run: 2% incline throughout, 6.02 mi, 54:08.
• WU: 2000 m
• Main Set: 3 x [1000, 600] @ 7.5 mph w/ 200 recovery @ 6 mph between each rep
• WD: 1600 m
• Garmin numbers: 5.57 mi, 53:53, 9:41 pace.

It's worth noting that I'm posting both treadmill and Garmin numbers. I figure both are pretty inaccurate, but whatever, they give me a sense for the range of what I'm doing.

As for the rest of the week, the plan was a long run today (10 miler, some tempo pick ups, not sure about whether I'll actually do those yet, we'll see how I feel this afternoon) and an easy run tomorrow (4-6 miles). I may actually scrap the run tomorrow though and go to morning swim practice instead, since I dropped out of some shadowing work this evening (need time to study) and will have the chance to hit the sack early and get up early for that. It's also IM day! Which would be fun. So we'll see what I decide in the end. Regardless, Henry gets here tomorrow evening, Thursday will be a day off, and we'll see what Friday and the weekend bring! Gotta go deal with the rest of my life now. Glad I finally got around to writing this post. (:

Much love,

Jess

USAT Club Nationals 2015: Race Recap and Updates

Here's the day by day breakdown of last weekend's race at the Innsbrook Resort for USAT Club Nationals!

Thursday: Day off! I had a pretty loaded day so it was nice to not have the added task of fitting in a workout. I also got to enjoy a super fun evening of PATRIOTS FOOTBALL with friends which was nice and relaxing. Cut a bit into my sleep time, but oh well, totally worth it.

Friday: Went to class in the morning, ate, got packed up and ready, headed out around 3 pm. We got there at around 4:30 and picked up our race packets and took a quick dip in the lake. It was nice and warm in the water despite it being quite chilly and windy on land. We swam the Olympic course because it was a bit further and got a feel for the slight chop that we may be encountering the next day with the wind conditions as they were. Afterwards, we went to the hotel, unloaded all of our gear, got cleaned up, and went to Applebee's for dinner (where I ate a ton of pasta and sweet potato fries and nachos, which I guess isn't the healthiest food, but hey carbs right?). I went to sleep around 10 or 10:30 pm.

Saturday: Woke up around 5:30 am, readied all the kid, ate breakfast, and headed out to the course. We were sort of rushed when it came to transition (had about 15 minutes) which was sort of stressful, but it all worked out fine in the end. Club Nationals were being held at the Halfmax race this year, where they added Olympic and sprint distances especially for nationals. Most of the team was racing the sprint distance, a few of our boys did the Olympic. The sprinters all had about an hour of downtime between when transition closed and when our race started, so we wandered around a lot and hydrated and tried to stay warm before our start.

It was another chilly day and the water temperature had dropped slightly overnight and was just barely wetsuit legal (I think it was around 75F?). I am totally not comfortable swimming in a wetsuit in water that warm because I tend to overheat, so I stuck to just a trisuit. One of my teammates and I made a point of getting right to the edge of the water in the first row for the swim start since we were both strong swimmers: We came out of the water second (her) and third (me) out of the women's wave. Our wave started 5 minutes after the sprint men, which was sort of annoying because it meant that I was playing dodge the slow swimmer the entire last 100 yards, but overall it wasn't the worst. I didn't have the greatest swim ever, I took off pretty well from the gun but then slowed down and felt sort of sluggish and minimally motivated the rest of the way. I came out of the water in 7:57 (1:36 pace) where I was met with a long transition run uphill to T1.

I was actually in and out of T1 quite quickly, beating my teammate who had come out of the water before me to the start of the bike. The first 5-6 miles of the bike were super rough, something like 1300 ft of elevation gain in that period in the form of a series of short but super steep hills. It leveled out a bit after that and I just went into high cadence cruise mode. There was also one major hill towards the end that was also pretty rough. There were grades on that bike course that I had never seen in my life before and I definitely was surprised to see that some people had to clip out and push their bikes up some of the hills. I've never actually had to clip out on an uphill before though and am pretty sure I wouldn't actually be able to do it, so when I was struggling I just kept saying to myself that it was between getting to the top and falling over halfway. Thankfully I did make it through all of the hills, which was a massive blessing.

The bike course was fun because (a) I didn't get passed as early by one of the other girls on the team as I thought I would and (b) I hung with another teammate for a few miles in the latter portions of the race, just exchanging back and forths before I finally pulled ahead more consistently. There were actually 2 or 3 riders that I hung around pretty consistently the entire ride and they helped push me along pace wise. I ended up averaging 17.2 mph which I found to be super impressive given the hilliness of the course, so I was very happy with that.

T2 was pretty standard and fairly quick. The teammate I rode with in the later bits of the bike blew past me on the start of the run but I was expecting that since he comes from a running background. The run was also extremely hilly, pretty much just endless up or down with very few flat spots. It was 3.4 miles though so I just tried to stay steady and managed to churn out an 8:48 pace which I was happy with. There was one older guy who was originally from the New York area but now lives in St. Louis who ran with me basically the entire way. We sort of shuffled back and forth most of the way and talked briefly around the 2-2.5 mile mark on the way in before I pulled ahead on the final uphill into the finish. Speaking of which, the final uphill (which was also the first downhill) was the most ridiculously steep thing I had ever seen in my life. The thing about a lot of these hills were that you couldn't get up them by just being consistent and keeping the turnover high, you really had to drive hard in order to make your steps even count, so it was a lot of work. Coming off a hilly bike, it meant that every uphill my legs filled with acid and just burned the whole way and coming down I just did my best to not let the pace stutter and not let the form fall apart so I wouldn't hurt myself.

Overall, I finished in 1:47:53, 2/4 in my division, 9/74 for women, 70/181 overall. I got to take home a medal, which I don't really think I deserved, but it was still nice. I think the big takeaway from this race for me was that you really do work hard the entire time. There is no relaxing, not on the swim, bike, or run. There's effort management so that you don't blow up at the end, but expect to be breathing and working hard. I guess what goes hand in hand with that is knowing that I have the physical ability to work at that level for just under 2 hours without blowing up. That will hopefully help me with being afraid of inducing early pain in the longer race I have coming up this weekend.

A note on nutrition: I had a full breakfast in the morning and a single bottle of potassium laced fruit punch Vitamin Water and a gel roughly 15 minutes before the start. I did not take a gel on the bike like I had planned, but I did drink about 80% of my bottle of endurance mix Gatorade. It worked out well, I didn't feel like I was ever glucose short, so that was ideal. For the longer race this weekend, I will make a point of taking that second gel regardless of whether or not I think I need it, because the run will take me around an hour and I will more likely need it than not.

We ended up staying at the race venue way later than we wanted to waiting for the timers to sort out results and present medals. I got home around 3 pm, took a nap, got up, went grocery shopping (the active recovery begins!), made/ate dinner, and passed out.

Sunday: I took Sunday off, although there was some bike commuting to a volunteering obligation in the morning and some time spent with a family I'm mentoring through a school program that involved running around in a park shooting Nerf guns, so more active recovery!

Monday: Easy AM run, 3 miles, super chill pace, legs were actually feeling really good and not sluggish at all (although the easy pace probably helped with that).

Tuesday: Took a run with a friend, just under 3 miles, would have probably liked to go faster but she's just getting back into running so we went slow. I don't really know if I even want to count that as a workout, it was more of a brief escape from studying type thing.

Wednesday: Today! I got up earlier than I expected, spent 40 minutes on the bike trainer (10 minute warm up, 8 x 1 minute as 40 MAX/20 easy on base/base/+1/+1 repeat, 2 minutes recovery, 5 x 3 minutes as 2 @ 90-95 rpm threshold/1 @ recovery, 5 minutes warm down) while listening to a lecture I skipped like two weeks ago (feeling like a hardcore med student). It felt way tougher than it should have, but that was probably more due to dehydration than anything else. Whatever, I got in there and did something more resembling a workout than what's been happening the previous days so I'm good with that.

The plan is to take a swim tomorrow morning with the Master's team, sandwiched with a ride out and a ride back (putting that new commuting bike to work!) and a run in the afternoon (probably a tad longer, closer to 4-5 miles) on Friday. Saturday will be off for travel and Sunday is race day! Hopefully things will go well and I won't have to worry about qualifying for Collegiate Club Nats in the Spring. Fingers crossed!

Much love,
Jess

Dropped off the radar

I evidently dropped off the radar for a bit there...It was a mix of things. I'm a little squeamish about blogging when Henry's around because I don't really want to show him how neurotic I am (even though he totally already knows) and then we started our first week of classes and life got sort of busy so I just let myself go. I'm supposed to be on a trainer ride or a long run right now but instead I'm sitting here writing this because I hurt my back again at the gym this morning. It was just one bad set of front squats (set 4) and bam. And the worst part is, I only did about half the workout because I didn't want to aggravate my back any more and yet it's been really hurting all day. It hurts when I stand, it hurts when I walk, it hurts when I sit, I pretty much can't do anything. It doesn't hurt so badly that I feel like I couldn't get through a run if I tried, but I'm worried about making it worse so I'm taking it easy. Let me do all the updates on the missed workouts (mostly without context because I've forgotten the majority of the context by now) and then I can do the update on where I'm at right now.

Thursday: Day off

Friday's Workout: Base run
Summary: 7.00 mi, 1:04:04, 9:09 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 9:43, 9:20, 9:11, 9:02, 8:55, 9:00, 8:53.
Hit rate: 40/43 (93.0%)

This run was solid. I had been having a shit morning (had a shit night prior to it) and I felt awful and discouraged and yet the run was pretty good so I finished feeling somewhat better about everything. The cool weather and overcast skies helped.

Saturday's Workout: Trainer brick
Summary:

• Bike set: 
  • WU: 8 mins easy, 2 mins base of a hill
  • Pick ups: 
  • 8 x 40 on/20 off, base/base/1/1/2/2/1/1 
  • 2 mins easy recovery
  • Main set:
  • 1/1, 2/2, 3/3, 4/4, 3/3, 2/2, 1/1 (+2 90-100 rpm/easy; I actually split the 4 min interval at half +2, half +1)
  • Climbs (16): 2 x 
  • 1 seated, 1 seated + 10 rpm, 1 seated, 1 easy
  • 1 seated, 1 standing, 1 seated, 1 easy
  • I may have screwed up the gears on this and done the first one a gear too low.
  • WD: 12 mins transition spin
• Bike summary: 18.82 mi, 1:20:06, 14.1 mph.
• Bike splits: 13.8, 14.6, 14.5, 13.4
• Transition: 0:58.5
• Run summary: 4.05 mi, 37:02, 9:09 pace. (Henry ran with me!)
• Run splits: 9:23, 9:26, 9:04, 8:46, 7:58

Hit rate: 41/44 (93.1%)

This workout was unbelievably on point. The bike set was rough but the run felt so solid. Part of it was having Henry next to me but part of it was just going for it and not worrying about a possible crash. I felt strong so I attacked the run and it worked so great for me. If I can start off my 10k run in the race like this I will be so satisfied.

Sunday's Workout: Base run

Summary: 7.01 mi, 1:07:36, 9:38 pace.

Pace splits by mile: 9:49, 9:50, 9:36, 9:46, 9:17, 9:33, 9:32, 10:08

Hit rate: 42/45 (93.3%)

I want it to be noted that it was a 90 degree day and it was sunny. There was a time not so long ago when this exact same run in the same weather took me 5 minutes longer to do. There were a combination of things at play, not the least of which I imagine is just less fatigue because I had been working out less intensely that prior week, but I'm definitely acclimating to the heat and that's progress I will take. Also honestly the run started off feeling real poor, it took my limbs a while to get the hang of things but once they were going they were solid so I was really happy with the pick up as time went on in the run.

Monday's AM Workout: CSP Practice, distance free day

Summary:

• WU: 500 swim
• Pre-set:
• 200-150-100-50 kick w/ fins @ 1:55 base
• 10 x 50, 1-4 @ :55, 5-7 @ :50, 8-9 @ :45, 10 FAST (made the first 7…)
• Main set: As per usual I'm not really sure what the pace time situation was because my lane was slower…
• 400 fr @ 6:45
• 2 x 150 @ 2:20
• 400 free @ 6:30 (??)
• 3 x 100 free @ 1:35 (??)
• 400 free @ ??
• 6 x 50 free @ :50
• WD: 2 x
• {100 choice
• 2 x 50 choice}
• I did a mix of pull w/ paddles (free) and swim (free and back)
• Total Distance: 4000 LCM

Hit rate: 43/46 (93.4%)

This swim was brutal. I think I had gone to bed a little hungry so I woke up epically underfueled and the set was long and faster than I could do and it was really all I had just to finish out every set and not skip any lengths. I did it though so I'm really proud. The only upshot was that I met a cool girl who seemed about my age who is faster than me and led my lane. We were also the only two in our lane so it was nice and spacious. And she was gracious enough to wait for me when I wasn't making pace times which was unnecessary but really sweet of her. I appreciated it. I was proud to have just finished that day to be honest. 

The plan had been to take a trainer ride in the afternoon, but Hoang invited me on an evening group ride with him so I did that instead. Maya also came along and she was on a hybrid and new to group rides so we ended up cutting the ride short because she was struggling towards the end. It was a lot of fun though and I had a great time and I'm really glad I chose to do that instead of my serious workout. Sometimes it's nice just to go out and do something and enjoy yourself and not worry too much about achievement/goals/whatever. I mean don't get me wrong, I love being an achievement/goals oriented person and I do think I'm really different from some of my friends in that I really love the pain of a good hard workout and I really chase after that day to day, but I think it's good to throw some chill balance of just hang out and have fun in there too. It helps curve the neuroticism slightly, which is probably good for me. 

Monday's PM Workout: Group ride with South Side Cyclery (we went through downtown and it was sooooooo beautiful and so nice!)

Summary: 20.21, 1:34:56, 12.8  mph.

Pace splits by mile: 12.2, 13.9, 17.4, 10.6, 10.0

Hit rate: 44/47 (93.6)

Tuesday's Workout: Rec swim (w/ Victoria)

Summary:

• WU: 200 free, 200 kick, 200 IM 
• Prep set: 
• 3 x 75 descend @ 1:10
• 3 x 50 descend @ :50
• 3 x 25 descend @ :30
• 50 kick no board easy
• Main Set:
• 6 x (75 FAST @ 1:00, 25 easy @ :30) best average
• 100 easy alt. kick/swim by 25
• 6 x (50 FAST @ :40, 25 easy @ :30) best average
• 100 easy alt. kick/swim by 25
• 6 x (25 FAST @ :20, 25 easy @ :30) best average
• 100 easy alt. kick/swim by 25
• IM Set:
• 3 x 200 IM @ 3:15 
• 6 x 75 stroke/free/stroke by 25 rotate strokes IMO @ 1:20 (probs should've tried to go for 1:15...)
• WD: 200 choice easy
• Total: 4000 SCY, ~1:15

Hit rate: 45/48 (93.7%)

Because of the late night on Monday (I got home late and then I stayed up late just sort of having an honest heart to heart with Henry about fun and achievement and whatnot), I decided not to go to CSP practice in the morning and slept in. Instead I hit up the Wash U pool for the first time with Victoria in tow. She's a great swimmer, would kick my butt if she were in shape but as it stands is a little slower than I am right now. I would have totally dropped the IM set if she weren't there to say that we should keep going, so I'm glad I had her to push me to finish it out. It was nice to be back in short course (although going back to CSP now is probably going to feel newly brutal again) and although I'm a tad slower than I'd like to be, I also realize that I haven't been swimming enough to be able to reasonably expect to be faster. I'll keep working at it. Also, Victoria has these beautiful turns/underwaters that really forced me to at least try to kick underwater off my walls. Positive peer pressure, it's good stuff.

Today's Workout: AM Lift

Summary: 

• Front squats: WU 10 @ 45, 10 @ 65, 2 x 8/7 @ 85. Then I tweaked my back and decided not to keep going.
• DB flat bench: WU 12 @ 25/side, 2 x 6-8 @ 30/side, 1 x 8 @ 25/side (honestly I did sort of quit on the last set and I really shouldn't have...)
• Pulldowns: 4 x 12 (sets 2-4 splits 8-4) @ 6. 
• Walking lunges: 1 set of 12/side @ sb+20 before I couldn't even get the bar off the ground because of back pain...

Hit rate: 46/49 (93.8%)

Honestly I was not happy with this morning's lift at all. Part of it was that I aggravated my back, but worse than that was that my head really wasn't in the game and I wasn't as strong as I wanted to be and it just wasn't fun or enjoyable to be there. And now my back hurts again and I don't know how the rest of my workouts this week are going to go or if they're even going to happen. This afternoon's workout is definitely already something I'm going to have to pass on. We'll try again with CSP practice tomorrow I guess. Since the changes to my schedule are now in consideration of an injury, I'm not going to count any "missed" workouts against my hit rate because the best thing I can do for myself right now is to rest and recovery properly.

As for where I'm at right now, I think I'm going to forego taking an entire day off this week, unless it is Saturday because Saturday is a busy day (coming back from the retreat late, might not have time to get a real workout in and I don't want that to add extra unnecessary stress to my life). At the very least I'll try to swim tomorrow and Friday. If I can, I will try to take a long run tomorrow afternoon as well, but we'll see what the status of my back is. If it still hurts when I walk, putting 10+ miles on it will probably be a bad idea...In the meantime I think I do have to make an effort to stretch and do mobility/core work because my back will never fully heal without it. I also think I should stay out of the gym until after all my races (triathlons in September through to half marathons in October/November) and just focus on letting my back heal completely before I try to get back into strength work. No sense in just repeating this cycle over and over again, I'm only asking for trouble this way. Maybe I'll do strength work mainly with bodyweight or something. In any case, I'll reassess in the winter and decide where to go from there with this whole back issue. 

I did end up going out and buying real cycling shoes today though after I was encouraged by many people to do so. I'm going to head over to Hoang's and have him put my pedals in right now. Hopefully I'll be able to make it back home okay with the new pedals...I'm really scared about not having adequate clip-in/clip-out experience. Wish me luck!

Much love,

Jess

Soreness and compromise

The rest day was not as relaxing as I would have liked. It was a pretty non-hectic day though which I appreciated. I still woke up pretty early and basically just chilled in the morning. Had a long school day (9-4) but a good chunk of time to stretch and take care of some chores and errands before dinner which was nice. I went to bed later than I would have liked, but it wasn't a huge deal. The main complaint I have about yesterday was that the gym wrecked my body pretty hard. In all honesty, I've had worse before, but even this is pretty bad. I'm expecting most post-lift days to feel like this, maybe slightly better once I get into the swing of things, but overall I'm going to have to learn how to manage with the soreness.

This morning's masters practice was pretty brutal. Our lane leader was really fast and the main set turned into a lot of "just turn at every wall" and I wasn't getting much out of that so I skipped a few things in order to get rest and try to improve the quality of the rest of my swim. I was pretty drained today. Between the continuing soreness and my inability to get any food in my body this morning, it was an exhausting ordeal. I did the best I could though and even with the skipped 300 total meters, it was a 3500 LCM workout, so I'm not going to berate myself too much. I made the best I could have out of a non-ideal situation and I showed up despite feeling exhausted and sore and under-motivated, so I will give myself credit for that and forgive myself for being imperfect. I have to remind myself sometimes not to accuse myself of always making excuses: real valid situations get in the way of your performance sometimes and what's important is to try and do the best you can given the cards you're dealt.

Today's AM Workout: CSP practice, IM day.
Summary:

• WU: 500 swim
• Pre-set:
• 4 x 150 IMO kick/drill/swim by 50
• 4 x 200 rotate 50 stroke IMO and free
• Fly/free/free/free, free/back/free/free, free/free/breast/free, all free
• 6 x 50 free @ :55, 2 fast, 1 easy
• Main Set: pace times were just sort of whatever we could do…
• 200 IM
• 2 x 100 free - I only did 1
• 200 IM
• 4 x 50 free
• 200 free - I only did 100
• 2 x 100 IM
• 200 free
• 4 x 50 IMO - I only did 2
• WD: nope, no time…
• Total Distance: 3500 LCM (3800 as written)

Hit rate: 31/33 (93.9%)

The plan was to do an interval trainer ride followed by a transition run this afternoon/evening but that's probably not going to happen. I think if I put that kind of load on my legs today, I'd be asking for an injury. The temporary plan is just to do the interval ride portion of the workout. Although I may swap the real workout for just a steady state ride (indoors or out) to clear some of the gunk out of my legs because they are still really hurting. We'll see how I feel as the day progresses and how much time I really have in the evening after school today. Trying to make the best out of what I've got. I'm proud of myself for plowing onwards despite it all. (:

Much love,

Jess

Recovery Updates

I didn't train Monday or Tuesday due to a combination of needing post-race rest and some mild period-related anemia that mom totally predicted and I totally scoffed at even though she was in fact right. I took a run this morning that was very short and very slow because apparently there's still a ton of residual fatigue in my legs. I figured the best thing was just to be active for about 30 minutes and not push anything too hard and come back tomorrow and see how things go from there.

Today's Workout: Easy recovery run
Summary: 3.18 mi, 33:33, 10:33 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 10:34, 10:39, 10:30, 10:14.
Hit rate: 19/21 (90.5%)

Hopefully I will be able to get some kind of trainer ride in tomorrow or maybe a run or some form of physical activity in and out of the madness that is a travel day, but we'll see.

In other news, I officially registered for both USAT Club Nationals (sprint distance) and the Cyman Triathlon (Olympic distance) yesterday so now I'm really in triathlon prep mode and am excited to getting back to working on my swimming and cycling! (Not to mention starting school!) It'll be an adventure. Stay tuned! (:

Much love,
Jess

Chasing Consistency

I feel like my big complaint about last year as a training year was lack of consistency. The thing about success at any endurance sport (and I count competitive swimming amongst them, because it's true for that too) is that you need to be consistent with your training in order to make progress. Sure, the stalling that comes with hiccups in training is possible to overcome, but it's difficult and comparably more mentally and physically taxing than it needs to be. Usually being consistent wins out in the long run.

The problem I've started realizing recently though is that as a normal human being trying to balance my normal human being life with trying to progress at my sport is that consistency is oftentimes hard to come by. Looking back on the last year, consistency was hard to find because of travel for medical school interviews, then travel for my long distance relationship, then summer things that included spending time with friends and family and moving out to St. Louis. Looking ahead to the next year, there's my erratic August orientation schedule, travel to Asia over Winter Break, my upcoming wedding next summer and Henry moving out to St. Louis, and probably other things that will pop up whenever they feel like it. Looking even further ahead, there'll be my changing schedule from year to year (and rotation to rotation), Step I, and who knows what else. I won't always be able to settle into that consistent schedule that I want, because like I talked about in an earlier post, the priority in my life is realistically not training. And that's okay.

I guess today's situation is related in some ways and unrelated in others. I was planning on taking a swim in the morning, but my period started today and my mother really doesn't want me swimming through my period. I've had a lot of issues with stomach cramps this year and she knows the cold and the exertion make it a lot worse. If I was still seriously swimming competitively like I did when I was younger, she would have understood the need to be at practice and let me go. But she's a firm believer that my priority should on my health and not on my performance (she thinks I train too much and too hard as is) and I'm willing to oblige her while I'm living in her house. The more the day goes on and the worse my cramps get, the more I am glad I am obliging her.

In any case, what I'm trying to get at is that while I'm here, my priority isn't training, it's family. Part of that means making time for them and making sure I have the energy to spend quality time with them but part of that also means trying to balance their needs with my needs. Living by my mother's rules for a few days is a part of me trying to satisfy her needs. So for the next few days, I won't be swimming like I planned. I don't even know that I'll be running like I planned. I'll just play it by ear day to day and see what happens.

The problem with that plan is that it starts to knock down at the consistency I've been building towards this month though, and that's a disappointment. But I think acknowledging that consistency is difficult to find in a life where training really does take a back seat to a lot of other priorities (and acknowledging that it's okay for training to be taking a back seat, it doesn't mean I'm not a committed, hard-working person) will be important for me moving forwards in terms of getting comfortable with the inevitable hiccups in the schedule that generally seem so frustrating to me. They are all part of the part-time athlete act and that's perfectly okay because it's just that: part-time.

So I'm going to work around it and move forwards and accept that consistency is a great goal to have but you don't always meet every single goal. That's the point of the 80-90% rule; do your best as often as you can and don't worry about the rest. (I'm also not even penalizing my numbers these next few days with that rule, there will be no adding or taking away from the hit rate regardless of what I do since they're planned as flexible days.) I am going to really try to be consistent moving into the fall triathlons seeing as those races are important to me, but if there are any more unexpected hiccups in the road, I will try to face them with the same attitude I'm facing these next few days with. Really working on having the right mentality and keeping training a positive experience. (:

Much love,
Jess

PS - A quick note on the recovery front: Mom has been rubbing out my legs sporadically throughout the day while I'm functionally disabled from stomach cramps and it's been wonderful but they're still sore. The joint pain is mostly gone although my knees have been flaring up occasionally when I'm lying down. Still mostly better than I was expecting though, I've had much worse from hard gym days so this I can live with.

Race Report: Running from Cancer Half Marathon (Tecumseh, ON, Canada)

So my Garmin is telling me that I did not actually run a half marathon, which is sort of sad...But the course is certified so idk, maybe the GPS is just wrong. In any case, I will present my Garmin data as if it were accurate and we can debate whether or not I'm 0.08 miles off some other time.

Yesterday's Race: Running from Cancer Half Marathon
Summary: 13.02 mi, 1:53:19, 8:42 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 8:02, 8:24, 8:38, 8:48, 8:45, 8:49, 8:42, 8:43, 8:46, 9:07, 9:01, 8:49, 8:37, 8:15.

Let's start by commenting on my finish time. I don't have an official finish time yet, although I will update this post when I do. As of right now, we'll go with my Garmin time, which says 1:53:19. This should be pretty close, I started the watch when the race started, I stopped the watch after I crossed the line. My time from Philly was 1:55:37, which makes this about a solid 2 minutes faster. Most of that I honestly think can be attributable to the fact that this course was as flat as physically possible (there was a total elevation gain of 16 ft, which is nothing) but I'm still generally pretty happy about hitting that time range since my training has felt on the slow side. I want to be under 1:50 by the St. Louis Rock 'n Roll Half though, so there's still work to be done for sure.

The day started with me waking up at 5:38 AM (just before my 5:40 AM alarm) and getting dressed and starting to hydrate with some water. Mom took me to Timmy's where I got two 12 grain bagels toasted with cream cheese. I ate most of one and then couldn't really eat any more. We arrived, I checked in and got my timing chip and sat around while drinking the first half of my Vitamin Water. (Up to this point, I had already drank a little more than half of a bottle of regular water.) I also scoped out the competition, which, because it was a running event, was intimidating seeing as it looked like everyone else was a real runner, and I feel really out of place amongst real runners. Some Ironman finishers were thrown in there as well, including one man who had a cocky attitude about him I really disliked. It was intimidating.

Mom left to go back home to Coen and I hung around while sort of warming up (really just loosening out my legs, doing some mobility movements, I didn't do any jogging like a lot of the other competitors did). At 6:45, I downed a single chocolate Clif Shot and washed it down with the remainder of my Vitamin Water and just chilled until the start.

It was interesting to note that up until this point I was very much so feeling unconfident and sort of freaked out by all the other runners and my comparative lack of running experience, but as soon as they announced "5 minutes to go" (we started at 7:05 instead of 7:00 because they had a bit of set up to do on course still) my brain like flipped a switch into race mode Jess and all of that fell to the wayside. It's funny how that happens, I guess the mental half is something that really does transfer across sports. Before races, I'm all business, and my brain is good at zeroing in on only worrying about making sure I execute the way I want to and I'm glad that instinct kicked in when it did yesterday morning.

I started out too fast, and I knew that as soon as I took off. One lady who passed me just after the one mile mark had commented to a friend/teammate of hers that it was an 8 min flat first mile and I was like, whoops. But the pace settled down pretty well for me over the course of the next few miles so I don't object to it too much, even post-race.

Around the 4-5 mile mark, my right foot started hurting and it was more of a bone ache than anything else and I knew it might develop into a problem further down the line but I didn't give it too much thought at the time. It didn't negatively affect my running yet and I was willing to let it go until it did start to bother me more. It never did, so that was good. (Although it was hurting all of yesterday and still hurts today so I'll probably have to give that some time to heal up.)

Also around this time, there was a man who had come up on me, pulled up beside me briefly, and then fell back and ran on my shoulder for most of the remainder of the race. On one hand, he was probably drafting off of me which was mildly annoying, but on the other hand having someone behind me pressuring me is exactly the kind of thing I need to keep me going. Usually people in front of me are less motivating because trying to catch up to someone is always a struggle, but trying to stay in front of someone or trying to drop someone are much easier for me to motivate myself to do. So it was sort of nice to have that kind of pressure on my back for most of the race.

The plan was to try and make sure that I only got passed in the first half of the race and only passed people in the second half. With the exception of the guy who sat on my shoulder most of the race and passed me in the last mile, no one else passed me and I passed a few people (including a girl who had passed me at the beginning of the race and pulled way ahead, I was very glad to have been able to real her in in the final parts of the race).

Overall, I was very very happy with that race. I had mentally given myself permission to look at my watch for splits starting with my mile 10 split, but I found myself not even wanting to know because I was running a well executed an well paced race (or at least that's what it felt like) and I was really enjoying my race experience and I didn't want to ruin it with pressures about pace or PBs. So I was happy to run in and determine my end pacing on feel alone and that worked pretty well for me. Also as the man behind me passed me, he ran side by side with me for a bit and encouraged me to get after trying to get in front of that girl who had been ahead of me the entire race and it was nice to have that encouragement near the end. The last time I raced this distance, the last 4-5 miles were just torture and I was mentally pushing myself really really hard just to try and hold onto the pace that I was going. This time, I felt like I moderated the effort much better throughout and it was just a very comfortable and enjoyable run. At no point did I feel like the distance was too much, it doesn't intimidate me anymore, and that's also really really nice. On top of that, I felt absolutely destroyed physically after my last half, but I felt much better after finishing this one. I mean my legs were super tight and I had to spend a lot of time walking it off and my ankles and hamstrings especially hurt a lot throughout the rest of the day, but I was able to stand and sit without feeling like my joints were going to explode open and was mostly in control of my ability to walk throughout the day, so it definitely took less of a physical toll on me than my first race had. Progress!

The only big things I want to be able to improve on are taking things out a little slower and trying to hold onto the pace without big external motivators. I had actually dropped guy on my shoulder briefly whilst passing someone else in front of me, but at that point I was mostly alone because the next person in front of my was quite far in front and I had no real motivation to keep pushing the pace. That was where the 9 minute mile drops came from I think so trying to hold onto that pace in the absence of pressure from competitors is something I have to work on. Also, as much as I am mostly very happy with how consistent the run was in terms of pacing, I would still like to be faster on the back end compared to the front end (and I would like to be able to do that by making the back half faster, not by making the front end slower), so that's something I will continue to work on.

Other things worth noting: The race, despite it being very small, was very well organized. Props to the organizers for hosting a great event! And there was plenty of water on the course, which I tried to get a little bit of at every station, and drinking while running is something I'm slowly improving at. Well organized small races are very impressive to me though, so I'm really glad I had a chance to be a part of that.

As far as recovery goes, it's been a day now, and I'm definitely more sore today than I was yesterday, especially in the quads (which I wasn't feeling at all yesterday), but I have less structural pain in my ankles and other joints, which is nice. I wanted to take a short recovery run this morning, but a few minutes out I knew that it wasn't going to happen because I just couldn't hold decent form on my tired limbs, so I turned around and came home. I will try to be active about walking and stretching today and we'll maybe give it another go tomorrow.

All in all, the race was a really great experience and I'm really glad that 13 days ago I randomly signed up! I'm excited for the rest of the adventures this season of racing will bring. (:

Much love,
Jess

Taper rest days

I love rest days. I was actually feeling really restless and energetic yesterday but I'm a little more mellowed out today than I was expecting to be. I'll do some stretching later tonight and take my short run tomorrow and get READY TO RACE on Sunday! :D

I've been drinking Vitamin Water (fruit punch loaded w/ potassium) religiously and looking ahead to starting med school (aka planning out every second of my life) and that's about all that's going on. Going to try and get back on that HIPAA training for school so I don't have to stress about it next week. Yay!

Much love,
Jess

(Yes, I know, rest day reports are boring. I apologize.)

Teammates: When excellence becomes an imperative

I realized something today on my walk home from my morning swim: It's hard to be dedicated to working hard day in and day out when it seems like the exception instead of the norm. Part of what makes having a team so valuable is that you see a group of other people who work hard day in and day out just like you do, and it makes the effort and commitment and dedication the norm. It means that if you want to be better than any of the others, you have to not only show up at every single practice but also be focused and hard-working and driven constantly. The situation forces consistency and it forces you to push yourself because you constantly see everyone around you doing the same. It makes excellence an imperative in that showing up every day and giving it your all every workout is simply the expected minimum within the circle that you run in.

The real world is hard in a way because to the average on-looker, I train a lot. In my mind I feel like I'm hitting bare minimums for what I want to do, I'm not even approaching the average of what I should be doing, but to everyone else, that level of effort is commendable. And over time, I really want to buy into that. I really want to pat myself on the back for a short mediocre workout because hey, at least I wasn't just sitting on the couch. There are a lot of ways in which high expectations are extremely exhausting and difficult but at least they keep you accountable and force you to push yourself. The low expectations are hard in their own way because they sap motivation from me and allow me to accept less than my best, which really isn't something I want to get in the habit of doing.

It's a fine line to toe I guess, the balance between the expectations I had for myself in my former life as a competitive swimmer and my current life as an adult who enjoys racing and training but knows that it's always going to be just a hobby. I wish I could push myself back into that mindset where the hours and the struggle and having my body hurt all the time was just normal so I can stop throwing myself pity parties because my legs ache and burn and I just don't want to push hard during my workout today. Still trying to figure out how to go about making that happen, beyond just yelling at myself internally to be mentally tougher.

In any case, I took a swim today, cut it way short because I really wasn't feeling it. In some ways I'm impressed I made it as far as I did, because I didn't want to go, and I wanted to leave after warm up, but at least I got through half of what I had planned before I threw in the towel. On the other hand, I knew that if I had a team or a coach I wouldn't have been allowed to just quit. I would've finished it out and been better for it. So on one hand I'm accepting of what happened today, on the other hand, I'm disappointed. I've sort of lowered my standards for myself a bit this week because I want to be calm and rested and in a good place mentally going into racing on the weekend, but I really want to get back in the habit of expecting great things from myself at all times once I'm in St. Louis and settled down into my new med student life. Here's the set:

Today's Workout: AM recovery swim

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set:
• 5 x 100 free @ 1:45
• 5 x 100 IM @ 2:00
• WD: 200 pull, 200 kick, 200 swim
• Total Distance: 2500 SCM

Hit rate: 15/17 (88.2%)

That's all for now. Will take runs tomorrow and Thursday, Friday off, short run on Saturday, and race on Sunday! Then we'll talk a brief recovery break and some serious triathlon training.

Much love,
Jess

Priorities

Last night and today were much needed reminders that as much as I love racing and training and I try to hold myself to high standards when it comes to these things (and by high standards I mean standards in terms of commitment and effort, not so much performance), the real priorities in my life are not racing and training. It's the summer so I don't have school commitments, but I do have a family and a lover and these people in my life are my priority. And when school starts, school will be another priority. Henry and I had a rough night in a lot of ways last night. I sort of picked a fight with him and he's been going through a rough patch and in the end I think we both needed to just spend some time together, even if it was over the internet, being there to support the other. It meant I didn't get to bed until close to 2 AM. And I had promised Coen a trip to Adventure Bay today, so I had to be mentally present for him. Henry said something that was really important to me last night about this: Being there for my family right now is worth losing 5 or 10 minutes on my race finish time. And he's right. Competing and training is a really selfish thing in a lot of ways because it is such an egocentric activity and takes a lot away from what I can do with my time/energy outside of that. It's important to remember that this isn't the most important part of my life: I've got a lot of other things to prioritize above my training and performance.

So I had actually consented myself to the fact that today was probably going to be a missed workout day, but found some time in the morning to squeeze in a very short easy run. I had a base 4-6 miler planned, but seeing as I was slightly sleep deprived and somewhat stressed and exhausted, I decided to cut myself some slack and just run an easy recovery 5k. It was a nice relaxed way to decompress in the morning before my day got started and I feel very lucky to have been able to get a run in today, however short and slow.

Today's Workout: Easy recovery 5 km.
Summary: 3.15 mi, 34:56, 11:05 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 10:55, 11:03, 11:16, 11:09.
Hit rate: 13/15 (86.7%)

On top of that, today was a fairly active day. Coen and I spent 10 AM to 1:30ish PM at Adventure Bay (climbing stairs for the water slides was pretty rough on my evidently still exhausted legs - may have to adjust training load next week to make sure I'm properly rested before the race). I came home and took a short nap in the afternoon and then spent some time playing one-on-one basketball with Coen in the evening. (He's always beating me at basketball. The scores are close, but it's sort of embarrassing seeing as I'm way taller and way older than him.) It was the right call to keep things short and easy today, glad I made the adjustments as necessary.

I had a long run (10-12 miles) planned for tomorrow, but Coen and I are being taken to a classic car show in the county during the day so I don't know if I'll have the time or energy for it. I might take the day off instead and re-adjust my training plan so I take the long run on Monday and possibly an extra rest day sometime during the week. We'll see how my body is feeling. I think being fresh for the Sunday race is the priority, so I'll do what I have to do to get there.

In other news, I've been taking a look at what I would like to go and the paces are really aggressive and intimidating. I have no baseline to compare this experience to because I wasn't tracking my training very accurately in the lead up to my first and only half marathon (the Philly Half Marathon from the Philly Marathon Weekend; 1:55:37 finish time on a fairly flat course) and I know I took the race out too fast but I also have no sense for how much faster than my usual training pace it was. My goal (ideally) is to go faster than I did in Philly, especially since the Windsor course is way flatter, but I very rarely am able to hit that kind of pace in training. Ideally, I'd like to be under 1:50, but an 8:22-8:23 average pace sounds ridiculous to me. I will stick with the plan of starting out at 9:00 pace and hopefully dropping that down as time goes on, which should at least get me to my old finish time, but we'll see how I'm feeling when I'm (hopefully) rested on race day. I also hope that the smaller scale of the event doesn't cut back too much on the intensity that I'm able to summon up. I know that the size of the crowd and the event was a huge motivator for me throughout the Philly Half, and I don't know that I'll be able to repeat that kind of performance without the energy of that kind of crowd. A lot of factors go into race results, I know that already, so I just have to be prepared to face the music when it happens I guess.

Much love,
Jess

Recovery run/day!

Today's Workout: Easy recovery run, 3-5 mi.
Summary: 4.30 mi, 41:01, 9:33 pace.
Split paces by mile: 9:25, 9:35, 9:38, 9:37, 9:11.
Hit rate: 11/13 (84.6%)

I did the thing! I stayed in the right pace range, I stayed in the right distance range, I took some time to stretch at the rink after my run, I am feeling good and awesome and on track to hopefully rip out a very high quality run tomorrow morning. The only thing that might possibly be getting in the way of that is the fact that I have to stay up tonight in order to speak to Henry briefly when he gets home, so I might be slightly sleep deprived on my run tomorrow morning...We'll see how that goes. I'll also be fasted. Which could either be a plus or be terrible. I will probably take a few Shot Bloks before I head out, and hopefully that will keep me well loaded. Wish me luck!

Much love,
Jess

Long run and short swim

Yesterday afternoon/evening was an interesting adventure in varying states of exhaustion. I went for a long run during Coen's hockey practice. I was aiming for closer to 12 miles, but there came a point on Old Tecumseh when I would have had to cross the road, which was sort of busy, and then run a bit and come back and cross the road again, and I was at mile 5 and tired and just turned around. So I only got 10 miles. In the evening, when I was talking to Henry about it and voicing my concerns that I hadn't run far enough, he just sort of laughed like literally nobody thinks, "Man I ran 10 miles today I don't think it was far enough". And I guess he has a point. I finished fairly strong (my last mile split was much quicker than the rest, which was fairly smooth paced throughout) and I didn't feel like I was going to collapse or die at the end, so I think I have the extra distance in me if I go for it. It was a sort of slow run though which worries me a little bit because I am definitely going to try to take it out around 9:00 pace during the race and for some reason I have no confidence in whether or not I'll have the ability to hold that. We shall see...

Yesterday's Afternoon Run Workout: Long run, 10-12 miles.
Summary: 10.09 mi, 1:38:39, 9:47 pace.
Pace splits by mile: I didn't turn my auto lap timer on until about 2 miles in, so the first two mile splits are the same pace value. 9:37, 9:37, 9:57, 9:58, 9:52, 9:47, 9:56, 9:57, 9:52, 9:18, 8:54.
Hit rate: 9/11 (81.8%)

So in hindsight I realized that I took a slightly different route than what the race course will be, but it's close enough to be a good preview of what race day will be like. The nicest thing about Windsor running is that it's super super flat here, which makes holding a pace much easier. The course interestingly felt very long on the way out and significantly shorter on the way in. When I'm racing I'll have to remind myself not to get intimidated by how long things feel on the way out, since everything seems to move quicker on the way back in. Otherwise, it was a solid run. My legs were hurting from the very beginning, but settled into a rhythm and even though it was a slow one, it was one I was happy with given that I had a hard track workout the night before. Fingers crossed that things continue to feel good going into next week. And maybe the back half of my long runs might even get a bit quicker? We'll see.

I felt okay immediately after my run but honestly the more time went on the more exhausted I got. I even fell asleep for a bit while Skyping Henry. So I figured if I continued to be this exhausted I would just skip the pool this morning and take my easy recovery run in the afternoon. But I woke up with enough time to go to the pool, so I did. My left shoulder is really aching, I think it's because of how Coen slept on my arm last night, which sucks. It was giving me a lot of problems during backstroke and kick and so I didn't push it too hard. I was also feeling generically lazy so I kept the set short and easy. It was sort of a cop out swim to be honest, but I'm happy enough about having just showed up when I really didn't want to that I'm willing to accept it.

Today's Morning Swim Workout:

• WU: 1000 SKIPS
• Main Set:
• 10 x 75 free pull @ 1:30
• 6 x 75 free swim breathe 3/5/7 by 25 @ 10SR
• WD: 100 swim, 200 kick
• Total Distance: 2500 SCM (55 min)

Hit rate: 10/12 (83.3%)

I'm slowly crawling my way back up to 90% in terms of hit rate. Above 80% though which is nice. I'm altering my schedule to cross out tomorrow's morning swim. It's a function of two things, I want to give my shoulder time to get better and I also want tomorrow's run to be high quality and focused. I have to sacrifice the extra training volume for the quality because Coen doesn't have hockey on Friday so I don't have a solid period of alone time where I can take my run unless I do it after dinner (which generally sucks because I don't usually have enough time to put enough time between dinner and my run) or in the morning before everyone is awake. And I generally swim in the morning. So the swim is probably going to be sacrificed in the interest of making sure my run workout remains high quality. And the priority right now is the running, so I don't feel too bad making that call. I'll try to get a few swims in next week as well. As of right now, the swimming is just some base work before I try to commit to very early morning masters practice once I'm back in STL anyways so I'm not going to stress too much about missing a single swim.

On the calendar for this afternoon is an easy recovery run. I'll aim for somewhere in the 3-5 mile range, nice and slow and even 9:30-10:00 pace (or slower). (I'm setting these standards now to make sure that I don't end up running a negative split 6 miler that finishes with sub-9:00 paced miles because I feel like working harder. Today is an easy day, it has to stay easy so that I have fresher legs in the tank for tomorrow's workout. It's important that I get tomorrow's run right, which means I have to commit to doing less today in order to recovery properly.) Yay! (:

Much love,

Jess

Slowly slowly...

Today's workout: Recovery run.
Summary: 5.43 mi, 55:07/55:21 total time, 10:10/10:12 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 9:37, 9:53, 10:30, 10:39, 10:38, 9:32.

So today was supposed to be an easy recovery run after yesterday's session (which was pretty brutal). Normally I would've probably done 3.5-4.0 mi and called it a day, but seeing as the earliest I'll probably be working out again is Friday, I decided to put in a little bit of extra distance. It was by far one of the most uncomfortable easy runs I've ever done. There was just no kick in the stride at all, I was trying to hit that 9:45-10:00 forever pace and it just wasn't there. Turned into a real "just put one foot in front of the other" day by the end.

Already though I feel like the having to think about my workouts in order to blog about them thing is giving me a little bit of insight. Easy days are so unsatisfying. Even when they are genuinely easy. It's even worse when they're not. I understand that today my run was pretty terrible because my run yesterday was really hard and my body needs some time to recover. But even then, days like today are real morale killers. Completing a hard workout makes you feel unstoppable and gives you all this great momentum moving forwards. Completing an easy workout is not that satisfying and really not motivating when it comes to continuing to train. So I think a big thing I will have to work on in order to really stay consistent with the training is to re-organize how I interpret easy days. I have to not let them zap all my motivation from me and I have to not let poor performances on dedicated easy days make me feel as if I cannot rip out a great workout the day after. I was slow today. I will not be slow tomorrow. (Well, I'm not working out tomorrow. But if I were, I would have to make a point of reminding myself that yesterday was a more accurate reflection of my fitness levels than today and therefore I can conquer whatever the next hard workout has to throw at me.)

In any case, other than that I spent the day consuming more leftovers (fried chicken, lobster, plain egg noodles, steamed broccoli, some eggs in the morning) and packing and taking care of other errands. It's been exhausting, I'm blown out, but unfortunately I'm going to have a bit of a late night because I have to go get Henry from the airport at around 10 PM. I'll have lots of car time to rest up in these next few days though, so it should be okay. Although travel is exhausting in its own ways.

I haven't really been tracking sleep while I was here in Boston, but I'll probably start doing so again once I'm in St. Louis. I'll be sure to note any interesting trends if I find any. That's it for today!

Much love,
Jess