No apologies...

[Day 160]

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

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

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

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

Hit Rate: 21/28 (75%)

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

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

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

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

Hit Rate: 22/29 (75.8%)

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

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

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

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

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

Hit Rate: 23/30 (76.6%)

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

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

Summary:

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

Hit Rate: 24/31 (77.4%)

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

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

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

Today's Workout: PM base run

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

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

Hit Rate: 25/33 (75.7%)

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

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

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

Much love,

Jess

Falling off the radar

[Day 151]

Exams will do that to you! I am pleased to report that I did in fact survive exam week. As of yet it is not officially known whether or not I actually passed all my exams, but I think I did fine, so I will just pretend that I did pass and that I am done with first year of med school for real. I came out to Boston on Thursday after my last exam and have been mostly adventuring with Henry. We went paddleboarding on Friday, hiking on Saturday, and ran stadiums with Tony and went to a movie yesterday! It's been good. I'm not gonna bother logging paddleboarding and hiking here, although it's up on Garmin Connect if anyone really cares. Here are the rest of the updates:

Yesterday's Workout: AM stadiums (~1/2 of Harvard stadium) + dryland circuit (5 rounds)
Summary: dryland reps

• Push ups: 19, 16, 14, 14, 15 (78 total)
• Sit ups: 14, 15, 14, 14, 14 (71 total)
• Dips: 24, 21, 22, 24, 23 (114 total)
• Squats: 21, 21, 21, 22, 22 (107 total)

Hit Rate: 15/20 (3 skipped exam week workouts; 75%)

Today's Workout: PM easy run, 4-5 mi

Summary: 4.88 mi, 43:38, 8:56 pace, 175 spm

Pace splits by mile: 9:21, 8:56, 8:45, 9:00, 8:34

Hit Rate: 16/21 (76.1%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I'm really sore today. Really hoping that fixes itself by tomorrow because I have a tough tempo run on the books (and I'm planning on swimming in the morning, so it'll also be a double day) and I'd like my legs to be functional for that. 
• The Harvard stadium is brutal. They were not kidding. I'm gonna try and work on that while I'm here, good way to try and keep some power/kick in my legs for the cycling while I'm away from my actual bike.
• For some reason my body was like, RUN FASTER RUN FASTER my entire run today. I was gonna go for an easy 9:30-10:00 paced run and the entire time my brain/heart/lungs were like ew this is too fast what are we doing but my body was like, nah this is good let's keep going. It was bizarre. But I guess that instinct is also exactly why I do what I do. Sometimes I think at the core of who I am is just this sort of crazy inexplicable desire to go faster all the time. I guess that's why I keep at it. 

So yup, master's swim practice in the AM tomorrow and a tempo run in the PM. Wish me luck! (And happier legs!)

Much love,

Jess

It's a good thing the schedule is flexible

[Day 137]

Some days you got work to do and your long run has to be a not so long run. Whatever school's the priority.

Today's Workout: AM base run, 6 mi
Summary: 6.17 mi, 54:42, 8:52 pace average, 179 spm average
Pace splits by mile: 9:17, 9:14, 9:01, 8:46, 8:29, 8:27
Hit Rate: 10/11 (90.9%)

Easy run in the AM tomorrow. Happy Monday e'erbody! (:

Much love,
Jess

Suck it, expectations!

[Day 134]

Lol I think I'm better at tempo runs than I am at intervals. Or maybe I'm just better at working out when my stomach isn't pissed off at me? Who knows. I had a great run today. Was expecting it to be tremendously horrible because the set was tough, but it was actually super great. Numbers first, then thoughts.

Today's Workout: Tempo run, 1.5 mi WU, 4 mi @ HM pace (8:10-8:25), 4 mins recovery (under 11:00), 1 mi @ 10k pace (7:35-7:50), WD (should've taken a longer WD but really didn't want to so...yeah...)
Summary: 7.53 mi, 1:06:01, 8.46 pace, 180 spm average (!!!!!!!!)
Interval Splits:

• WU: 1.5 mi, 14:33, 9:42 pace
• 4 mi @ HM:
• 1-2: 16:40 (8:20 pace), 105 ft gain, 10 ft loss
• 3-4: 16:30 (8:10 pace), 66 ft gain, 125 ft loss
• Recovery interval: 4:00, 0.41 mi, 9:43 pace
• 1 mi @ 10k: 7:42 pace
• WD: 0.62 mi (loooooool), 6:46 (loooool), 10:54 pace

Hit Rate: 8/8 (100%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Little bit of anterior knee pain in the R leg, probably related to the fact that my IT band on that side is really tight, but it's okay b/c I'm taking 2 days off from running (probably gonna ride my bike tomorrow and I'm also hitting up the gym with a friend who wants to get into lifting) over the weekend and will be sure to do lots of stretching and maintenance stuff to get that fixed up.
• Mile 2 of the 4 mi tempo was rough. It was mostly this long protracted low grade uphill and I was thinking that if I had to maintain that effort for another two miles I might die. Turns out it made the rest of those miles feel like cake because yay subsequent net elevation loss! Lol
• My brain is definitely adjusting its definition of "pick it up" pace. Like HM pace used to feel insanely fast to me and now it feels sort of just like generic quick running. Gotta focus to stay there, but not as destructive as it used to feel. 
• The 1 mi interval started off really great. The first like 1/4 mile-ish of that was fast and fantastic and then things started to gradually fall off. It's kind of like swimming I guess, the third leg is always the hardest, b/c the third 1/4 mile of that was bad. And then it was like, DON'T FALL OUT OF THE PACE RANGE RUN JESS RUN for the last bit so it all turned out fine in the end, but uh trying to figure out what a consistent 10k effort is is something I'm gonna have to work on.
• I didn't walk the recoveries! I walked a little bit after the 10k effort, but even then it was a tiny bit before I was back jogging again. I just didn't feel as generally wrecked by this run as I had been feeling after the last few fast runs, which is good. My stomach cooperating had a big role to play in that I think.
• The crazy thing is, I'm here like, omg I did so awesome yay! And then I look at next week's workouts and obviously they get harder because that's what workout progressions do and I'm back to freaking out. xD But not in a bad way. I actually felt really confident going into today's workout because I felt really good on yesterday's easy run and so I had faith in the ability of my legs to do what had to be done, which was nice. I'm going to try and carry this momentum forward into next week so I don't spend all my time cowering in fear of upcoming workouts. It'll be tough but I think I have it. And I'm getting back in touch with my inner age group swimmer who is all like "tough things are the funnest things to do ever!" and half of me is like "yeah!" and the other half of me is like "who is this crazy chick and why are we still friends with her?!" Lol crushing workouts is/are immensely satisfying though, I'm pretty lucky I get to do this in my free time. 

Work work work work work for the rest of the day now, followed by the screening of our med school class show!!!!!! Just listen to this awesomeness: click here. So pumped! Happy Friday everyone!

Much love,

Jess

Can't stop won't stop

[Day 132]

There's a lot I feel like I have on my mind but not so much that I want to write down. Let's talk numbers, then feelings.

Today's Workout: PM run, intervals

• 15-20 mins easy WU
• 4 x 1/2 mi @ 10k pace (7:35-7:50) w/ 3 mins rest (jogged the first three, walked the last)
• 4 x 1/4 mi @ 5k pace (7:05-7:20) w/ 1:30 rest (walked these)
• 15-20 mins easy WD

Summary: 7.56 mi, 1:16:28, 10:07 average pace
Interval splits:

• 1/2 milers: 3:53.1 (7:46), 3:51.4 (7:43), 3:40.7 (7:41). 3:51.7 (7:44)
• 1/4 milers: 1:47.6 (7:10), 1:48.3 (7:13), 1:49.0 (7:16), 1:49.7 (7:19)

Hit rate: 6/6 (100%)

Notes/thoughts:

• My stomach was really bothering me today. About 10 minutes into my warmup, I had some pain and nausea started up and I just thought to myself, Jess you've gone to swim practice on so much worse and cranked it out, there's no reason you can't do this. So I did it. With some amount of compromise. I let myself walk half the rest intervals because I felt like I had to to keep the contents of my stomach in my tummy. I felt pretty horrible, would have much rather gotten to just concentrate on the running instead of concentrating on fighting the feeling in my stomach, but you know what, it's been a while I think since I've been really mentally challenged and I always welcome that. I think you need to be mentally challenged regularly to remind yourself that you can dig deep and overcome that so I'm glad I was forced to be tougher today than I am on any other regular day. 
• I was really surprised by how easy the 5k paced 400s came. 1/4 mile is an incredibly short distance apparently. Honestly the first four 1/2 milers didn't feel great compared to last week, but I got through them fine, and I was just worried about not having any kind of speed in my legs but I shot through that first 1/4 miler and I knew I was gonna be fine. I would like to not be walking recoveries in the future but it let me do the important work on pace and kept me from having to throw in the towel early so I'll take it for today. 
• There's something qualitatively different about running at 10k pace versus 5k. It's really interesting to be finding run speed gears because I'm starting to learn the difference with my body in terms of how to maximize efficiency at each pace. The swimmer part of my brain turns on and that's just what it does. It's really amazing to have been doing sports my whole life and still get to learn new things about my own movement and feel those patterns form and shape and adjust as I get better. That's one of my favourite things about exercise and it's really awesome that intervals really bring that out for me when it comes to running.
• I've genuinely just missed working hard and getting my ass kicked by workouts. I feel like I had a lot of intensity the past few months on the bike trainer because that's something I've been really focusing on and trying to improve on, but I haven't been very intense in the pool and I have never been very intense about running. It's just really satisfying to lay everything you have out on the line during a set and then spend the 15-20 minutes of warm down willing myself to not drop dead on the side of the road or in the park somewhere because I'm almost too tired to even want to go home. That's fun, I get a kick out of that. 
• I want to be really proud of what went on today. I don't feel it as powerfully as I know I should. These paces are cake to so many people but this is insanely fast for me and is a level of running that I didn't think I was capable of doing. So I want to be insanely proud and insanely happy with myself. Instead I feel sort of meh because I walked some of the recoveries and I feel like I should've jogged them but I didn't. I don't want that to drag me down but it does. I'm a little too ambitious for my own good sometimes. I'm bad at just being happy when I do a good job. It wasn't a perfect job, but it was a good job and I should be proud. I am trying to just repeat that to myself over and over again and perhaps it will eventually cement in my head as reality. Who knows.

Easy run on the schedule for tomorrow, 5 miles on the schedule, I'll play the turn around point by feel because I feel pretty wrecked from today and I do want to actually recover tomorrow so I can hit another insane tempo run on Friday. In other news, have a running agreement with Henry that I'm going to try and do 10 minutes of core work and 10 minutes of stretching every night, so I'm gonna finish the work I have to do tonight and then go do that. Working hard, staying hungry. Happy Hump Day! (:

Much love,

Jess

Learning to train faster

[Day 128]

I psych myself out a lot when I try to run fast. I consider myself a slow runner. You can put any amount of distance in front of me and I don't generally find it too daunting because I just tell myself I can run slowly and go forever. Fast running freaks me out and for the most part I feel like I can't do it in contexts that aren't racing. I'm trying to work on that though because I want to be faster and today went a long way towards boosting my confidence in my ability to run fast on just a normal day of the week.

Today's Workout: PM tempo run, 1 mi easy, 4 mi @ half marathon pace (8:10-8:25), some amount of WD
Summary: 5.82 mi, 51:54, 8:55 average pace, 175 spm average
Pace splits by mile: 9:31, 8:22, 8:17, 8:17, 8:19, 11:07
Hit Rate: 3/3 (100%)

The run didn't feel as hard as I was expecting it to. Once I settled in, it took a lot of focus to hold the pace but it didn't really get painful until about 2.5 miles into the run. The last mile hurt but it didn't feel like I had to reach too hard to stay on pace, it was just that it was starting to get to me by then. I really tried to focus on my breathing because Henry had commented that my breathing yesterday was atrocious, and I think it helped today, both with my running and with keeping myself mentally calm so I could stay relaxed through what my body was feeling. Henry biked alongside me while I ran today and really helped keep me positive and keep my confidence up which was super key. I was definitely scared going into this workout and doubtful of my ability to do a training run at this pace and to have him reassure me as I was going really helped get me through enough miles to objectively look at my effort and say to myself, "everything is okay and I can do this". It's crazy that I still doubt myself even though I've done a half marathon at that pace but honestly I just never train at anything close to race pace so playing around with that on a normal day is still a new phenomenon for me.

Between yesterday and today, I'm feeling really good about everything that's coming up with run training. Seeing as I can't really bike or swim or lift for the time being with all the bike crash related injuries, I'll just keep focusing on my running and trying to make the best of this situation. I'm excited to spend a bit of time just working on getting faster and building confidence in my ability to train faster than the moderate pace I like to take all my running at. Happy Saturday! (:

Much love,
Jess

And so it begins again

[Day 127]

I should've written something yesterday but I didn't because it was a day off and I was busy doing other things, like watching the new Captain America movie with Henry lol. Don't judge me, it was awesome. In other news, I took the first interval workout of this block today! Yay! Henry came with and ran most of it with me and pushed me through the tougher moments. Here's the summary:

Today's Workout: Interval run, main set of 6 x 1/2 mi @ 7:30-7:50 pace (yeah, I know that's a wide range but I like to give myself breathing room - goal 10k pace) with 3 minute jogging rests and some amount of warm up/warm down
Summary: 7.83 mi, 1:15:15, 9:36 pace average, 170 spm average (not super informative b/c there was some walking and some stopping for water, etc. etc.)
Interval splits: 3:49.7 (7:39), 3:52.5 (7:45), 3:50.8 (7:42), 3:49.3 (7:39), 3:52.5 (7:45), 3:48.7 (7:37) - In the interest of full disclosure, I did walk a little bit instead of jog for some portion of the rest between rep 5 and 6
Hit Rate: 2/2 (100%)

Notes/thoughts:

• The first two felt so easy and so smooth and so good. And then it all went downhill from there. The last two were brutal, wouldn't have hit the last one if it weren't for Henry running next to me and telling me to stick with it. 
• The speed actually isn't hard to find surprisingly enough, what's hard is holding onto it as I get tired. It's nice to know that I have the pace, I just have to work on accessing it when my brain wants my body to slow down. 
• Running fast is fun. Hard, but fun. It's cool to really feel like I'm moving at some amount of speed, I don't do that very often so when I do it's a really awesome novel feeling. 
• Good start to running shorter and running faster, excited to see where things go from here. (:

Happy Friday folks!

Much love,

Jess

A double? What?

[Day 106]

Today's AM Workout: Rec swim
Summary:

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

Hit Rate: 104/114 (91.2%)

Today's PM Workout: Easy run w/ Brian

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

Hit Rate: 105/115 (91.3%)

Much love,

Jess

Wings drop game one of the playoffs ):

[Day 104]

Today's Workout: AM easy run
Summary: 7.07 mi, 1:08:43, 9:43 pace, 176 spm
Pace splits by mile: 9:31, 9:47, 9:48, 10:01, 9:32, 9:46, 9:36
Hit rate: 102/112 (91%)

No words tonight, it's late and I need to get to bed. Happy hump day!

Much love,
Jess

The fourth month has not been kind to the blogging

[Day 102]

Sorry. I'm trying. I swear.

Friday's PM Workout: Base run w/ Henry riding on a bike next to me offering words of encouragement the whole time
Summary: 8.67 mi, 1:18:45, 9:05 pace, 176 spm
Pace splits by mile: 8:59, 9:08, 9:07, 9:03, 9:03, 8:56, 9:10, 9:12, 9:09
Notes: Definitely felt like I was fading towards the end and it was a relatively flat run since I took the bike path instead of the footpath, but I'm still happy with the pace and effort overall.
Hit Rate: 98/108 (90.7%)

Saturday's Workout: Easy run, paced Helena through the Go! St. Louis 5k!
Summary: 3.15 mi, 31:20, 9:57 pace
Notes: Was definitely hoping to get to a point pace wise where she could finish strong but we underestimated the terrain and she wasn't really prepared for that so things started out a tad too fast and fell off a bit as time went on. I'm still super proud of her though, she took something crazy like 8 minutes off her last 5k! Hoping she keeps running and we can do this again with more races in the future.

Sunday's Workout: Trainer brick, 2 hours on the trainer (mix of speedwork/sprints and hill work) and 4 mi FAST off the bike
Summary:

• Trainer set:
• WU: 10 mins easy
• Pre-set: 8 x :30/:30 spin ups, 2 mins easy
• Main Set: 
• 8 x (3 mins on, 2 mins recovery) at 95 rpm, starting at base (big ring in front, 2nd biggest ring in back to start), going up one gear each minute
• 4 x 5 segments at base +3/+4/+5/+4/+3, alternating 2 min segments and 1 min segments by set (total climb times are 10/5/10/5), 2 mins easy spinning recoveries between 
• 8 x :45/:45 sprints @ base +1 
• 10 mins steady state (prep for transition) 
• Total time: 120 mins
• Summary: 29.13 mi, 2:00:37, 14.5 mph
• Trainer speed splits: 13.4, 15.3, 14.6, 14.9, 14.8, 14.1
• Transition: 1:03.3
• Run summary: 4.49 mi, 38:45, 8:38 pace, 181 spm
• Run splits by mile: 8:32, 8:44, 8:42, 8:35, 8:36

Notes: I was challenged by Henry to do the run under 9:00 pace average (for a reward of ice cream, which I didn't actually take in the end lol) and I would have never gone for it if he hadn't made that challenge, but I did and it went spectacularly well. Things oscillated between feeling tough and feeling remarkably easy but basically as long as I kept my cadence up I felt pretty strong. I pushed up the hills and found it pretty easy to recover after them and I was holding pace well in the flats which I struggle with sometimes so all in all I was very very very happy with how things went. I wasn't going to be this aggressive with my run at the race but people tell me the Clemson course is flat so I think I'm going to shoot for under 9:00 pace on my 10k and if it falls apart in the last 2 miles, then so be it. But given how that run went, I think I definitely have it in me and it would be shame not to give it a try so that's the game plan for now.

Hit Rate: 99/109 (90.8%)

Today's Workout: Gym sesh, last lift before racing! (~1:15)

Summary:

• Back squats: WU 8 @ 95# (was rotating with a friend, this was the weight she was doing so I just went with it), 5 x 8/6/8/8/8 @ 115/115/105/105/105 (disappointed that I had to drop down, but it was the right call, 115s were a real struggle)
• Deadlifts: 4 x 8/8/6/6 @ 155# (probably could have gone for 8s on the later sets but prioritized protecting my back, don't want to take any injury risks this close to competing, felt strong even though it was right after squatting, the big deadlift plates definitely help since the bar starts pretty far off the ground)
• Pulldowns: 4 x 10/10/10/7-3 @ 7+ plates (didn't go for sets of 12 because honestly I just didn't feel like it...)
• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 55#, 3 x 10/8/7 @ 85# (these continue to disappoint...just gotta keep doing the thing)
• Leg stability set: 2 x
• Single leg glut bridges: 10/side (body weight)
• Single leg Romanian deadlifts: 10/side @ 25# (one DB)
• Band squats: 20
• Shoulder press: 3 x 12/10/8 @ 25#/side (still not understanding how I can do 8-12 drop sets at 25#/15# but somehow I still can't hit full sets of 12 with just the 25s...)
• Single arm DB row: 3 x 12/side @ 40# (go. up. in. weight. And need more grip strength looool.)
• Incline bench: 3 x 12/10/8 @ 65#
• Fly pulls w/ resistance cords: 4 x 30

Notes: I felt pretty weak today, which was sort of disappointing, but I also made a point of trying not to take myself too seriously. The point of today was just to remind my body to try and hold onto as much muscle as possible between now and when I race so the strength doesn't just fall right off my body, the details of how much weight I'm moving right now aren't super important. The other half of that story is the fact that I'm as strong as I've ever been in my life which means inevitably I'm going to get to a point where it gets harder to keep going up in weight without some changes to how much time I'm spending working on strength. I'll save the attempts at serious progress making for when I'm not so focused on triathlons, for now just holding close to this set point is fine by me. I also went to the gym in the middle of the day, which I never do, and I had an interesting revelation about how vulnerable I feel when I'm training and how it freaks me out to show that kind of vulnerability around others. The other thing that I realized though is that I need to be willing to take ownership of what I'm there for and what I'm doing. Sometimes I worry about what other people think about the random girl in the boy space at the gym but at the end of the day, I know exactly why I'm there and what I'm out to get and it really doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about it. (And you know, I don't subscribe to the patriarchy and all and I need to stop talking like I do.)

Hit Rate: 100/110 (90.9%)

I was really tired after this but it seems like a good amount of coffee is bringing me back to life. Much school work to be done now. Tomorrow will be a swim in the morning and if there's good weather, a chill ride in the afternoon, either in Forest Park or maybe elsewhere if I'm feeling adventurous. We'll see. But it'll be chill. Because we're starting to err into taper territory...not officially yet (I've been hesitant about declaring a day as official start of taper) but I do want to get some decent recovery in so that'll be the point of the ride. Happy Monday!

Much love,

Jess

Getting it done

[Day 97B]

Today was an adventure. That was mostly full of terrible things. I was just dissatisfied with so much of what went on today. I took a nap in the afternoon that I shouldn't have. I wasn't as productive as I should've been. The weather was crappy. It was bad. And then I tried to go for this brick and took my bike out of the apartment through the back and got mud all up in my cleats which made clipping in initially really hard. But I got it eventually and I figured it would be fine. Unfortunately, the first time I hit a light, I clipped out and could not for the life of me get clipped back in. I spent an entire lap of the park trying to figure out what to do about my pedaling situation and finally decided that I had to go home to sort it out. So I ended up coming home and spending close to an hour disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling my cleats to get them to work again and then heading back out for the workout.

It seemed silly but at that point I had wasted close to two hours and I was trying to figure out what the best plan of action was. Maybe I should've just settled for a ride or went for a run instead or something but I just felt like the world was trying to stop me from making this workout happen and I didn't want to be stopped. I kept thinking about how the day had been such a huge disappointment and I couldn't imagine doing any less for this workout than what I had originally set out to do because any less than that would have felt like quitting or failing. I felt like I had something to prove. So I went out and proved it and took my workout exactly as I had planned. Sure, I lost a lot of my day to making that point and it made me really time crunched this evening and I really really struggled through everything else I had to do, but it was worth it. I haven't been proud of myself like this in a long time. Plus I learned how to fix my cleat issues! Redemption. I love redemption.

Today's Workout: PM brick, 24 mile ride (laps of Forest Park) and 6 mile run (hilly side of Forest Park)
Summary:

• Bike: 24.17 mi, 1:30:41, 16.1 mph average
• Bike speed splits by 5 mi: 15.2, 16.5, 15.9, 15.9, 16.6
• Bike notes: It was windy, I went way harder and rode way more aggressively than I typically would knowing I was running off the bike, but I was angry and I wanted to attack it and see what my body could handle. I was proud of how it turned out.
• Transition: 2:13
• Run: 6.06 mi, 55:56, 9:14 average pace, 178 spm average
• Run splits by mile: 9:01, 9:11, 9:23, 9:22, 9:11, 9:17
• Run notes: So happy with the cadence! The hills are TOUGH after the bike. My legs burned so hard on every uphill but I just tried to focus on keeping my upper body relaxed and my turnover quick. It worked out pretty well I think. First two miles felt really relaxed and then it just got exponentially tougher. It felt like I was fighting for every step in those middle miles, but I knew I was hitting a good pace and I just kept pushing and luckily my body never fell apart on me. It was a solid solid run. 

Hit Rate: 96/105 (91.4%)

Hitting up rec swim over lunch tomorrow. Gonna do a distance free set because I need to do more distance workouts. Hope everyone had a good Wednesday!

Much love,

Jess

Blogging "every day" amirite?

[Day 95]

Tired right now. Break was great. Too lazy to go into all the details. Here just have the summaries.

Monday's Workout: Gym sesh w/ Henry
Summary:

• Back squats: WU 12 @ 75#, 3 x 8 @ 115#, last set drop set for 12 @ 95#
• Pulldowns: 3 x 12 @ 90#
• Flat bench: 12 @ 55#, 3 x 12/8/6-2 @ 85#
• Trap bar deadlifts: 3 x 8 @ 165# (split 6-2 or 5-3 just sort of depending...) - we just googled it and found out how much the bar weighs, turns out that's why those were sort of rough lol
• Legs superset: 3 x 
• 15 goblet squats @ 45#
• 15 split squats @ 15#/side (DBs)
• 15 reverse lunges @ 15#/side (DBs)
• Dips: 3 x 12 @ 50 lbs of assist
• Seated cable rows: 3 x 12 @ 70#

Hit Rate: 87/95 (91.5%)

Tuesday's Workout: Run

Summary: 8.66 mi, 1:23:24, 9:37 pace, 171 spm average

Pace splits by mile: 9:11, 9:31, 9:43, 9:43, 9:47, 9:38, 9:42, 10:13, 8:57

Things worth noting: I had really bad period cramps that started about a mile in, I ended up stopping at 1.5 mi and thinking that I would just have to walk home and call it a day, but the cramps faded and I ended up deciding that I should try and get through it anyways and if I had to, I would just walk when the cramps acted up. They didn't come back, so I got the rest of my workout in nice and smooth. Was glad I decided to stick it out. (:

Hit Rate: 88/96 (91.6%)

Wednesday's Workout: Indoor brick at the hotel gym

Summary: (continuous)

• 20 mins biking as 10 mins @ 6-8 warm up, 5 mins @ 9, 5 mins @ 10, all at 95 rpm
• 10 mins running @ 2% incline, 6.2-6.4 mph speed
• 20 mins biking as 5 mins @ 10, 5 mins @ 11, 5 mins @ 12, 5 mins @ 11
• 10 mins running @ 2% incline, 6.5 mph speed
• Summed totals:
• Biking: 11.50 mi, 40:06
• Running: 2.19 mi, 20:42

Things worth noting: So sore from the gym sesh...but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Hit Rate: 89/97 (91.7%)

Thursday's Workout: Stadiums at Princeton w/ Henry

Summary: 2 rounds of stadiums with rest between rounds, lower level only, alternating singles/doubles by staircase

Hit Rate: 90/98 (91.8%)

Friday's Workout: Indoor biking at the hotel gym

Summary: 17.68 mi, 1:01:03

• All at 90-95+ rpm
• WU: 10 mins @ 6-8
• Main Set: 9 x 5 mins @ 9/10/11/12/13/12/11/11/10
• WD: 5 mins working down from 10 to 6

Things worth noting: Henry had to kick me out of bed so I would do this. I really didn't wanna do it, but I'm glad I did. Stadiums were really bad to my ankles so I stuck with non-impact work.

Hit Rate: 91/99 (91.9%)

Saturday's Workout: Gym sesh w/ Henry, upper body only

Summary:

• Flat bench: WU 12 @ 55#, 3 x 12/8/8 @ 85#
• Pulldowns: 4 x 12/12/12/10-2 @ 90#
• Incline bench: 3 x 12 @ 65#
• Single arm DB rows: 3 x 12 @ 40#
• Shoulder press: 3 x 8-12 @ 25#-15#
• Bicep curls: 3 x 12 @ 20#
• Dips: 3 x 12/12/10 @ 40# of assist
• Superset: 3 x
• 12 lateral raises @ 12.5#
• 12 front plate raises @ 25#
• Leaning lateral raises, one set of 12/side @ 7.5#
• Skull crushers: 3 x 12/12/6-4 @ 15#/15#/15#-10#
• Machine flyes and reverse flyes: 3 sets of each, 12 reps, the weight was whatever Henry set the machine to (I think I did the same for normal and reverse flyes, which I guess says something ridiculous about my front/back strength ratios), alternating exercises

Hit Rate: 92/100 (92%)

Sunday: Rest day! Ah glorious rest days.

Today's AM Workout: Base run, 5 mi

Summary: 5.04 mi, 46:20, 9:12 pace, 175 spm

Pace splits by mile: 9:09, 9:18, 9:18, 9:09, 9:06

Notes: Felt sluggish, but got through it. Probs b/c I hadn't run fasted in a while and last week is catching up to me fatigue wise, but it's fine. I'm happy with this for a normal run of the mill run.

Hit Rate: 93/101 (92%)

Today's PM Workout: Outdoor ride w/ Hoang (who puuuuuushed me, it was awesome)

Summary: 28.87 mi, 1:43:33, 16.7 mph

Speed splits by mile: 16.2, 16.9, 16.3, 20.9, 16.5, 14.2

Notes: New 40k PR today, 1:25:44, kinda cool.

Hit Rate: 94/102 (92.1%)

Yayyyyyy. Swim tomorrow. Sleep now.

Much love,

Jess

...And we're back

[Day 87]

I think I passed all my exams! I think we're in the clear! Lol I have so much I want to write about now that I'm back on the bandwagon. Let's get to it!

Life updates:

• I'm in Maine w/ Henry and his family. The rest of break will involve some mix of Boston and Princeton (for wedding planning). The training this week is pretty arbitrary - whatever I get in is whatever I get in. I'm trying to be consistent the whole week so I can put in a big 7-10 day push once I'm back in St. Louis before taper, but that's really the extent of goals.
• I basically opted to take the whole week away from training to focus on school. It was the right call. I have probably studied more this year alone than I have in my entire life prior and it's so amazing to feel like I'm learning things and getting this whole medicine thing figured out. Like by the time I got to the end of exam week and sort of looked back and took stock of everything I'd managed to shove in my brain during the week, it blew my mind. It's really nice to feel like working hard pays off in the end. It makes me feel a lot more reassured about this training too - I haven't given it a chance to show me what it's worth yet so of course I'm swimming in self-doubt but I think exam week made me feel like there are great things coming in the next few months. I've put good time and effort in, I trust that it'll pay of. It's nice to just feel steady and confident for once. 
• Taking time away really makes me appreciate swimming/running/biking/lifting/generally being active for the sake of loving the feeling of moving. I just missed being active. I didn't care about racing or getting faster or whatever, I just wanted to get out and do what I feel like bodies are made to do. Bodies are made to move. It made me really sad to feel like I didn't have time for that. It really puts things in perspective. Sometimes I put a lot of pressure on myself to work hard and to succeed and it makes me forget that I just genuinely love doing what I'm doing. Time away always puts that in perspective. I think I need that every once in a while.
• Being still is sort of a physically horrible thing. I had some back pain (lower and upper) and knee pain (left) that nagged me all week and it was just like, ugh why I haven't been doing anything but sitting all this time. But I guess that's what happens when you sit all the time. Yeah it's awful.

Anyways, I'm in Maine now and I took two runs, one yesterday and one today. Yesterday's was nice and quick and I really enjoyed that. Today's was a little bit slower. One of the things I really like about running here is that the terrain is nice and rolling, just gentle longer uphills and downhills which we don't really get in St. Louis. I'm enjoying playing with the effort on the slight terrain. I've also been running without keeping track of pace live as I run (time of day stays on my screen throughout and I get mile splits as they happen but that's it) which is nice. It's good just to focus on the feeling of running instead of worrying about how my running actually is and trying to compare perceived effort to what I think perceived effort should be based on pace. I'm just happier when I trust my instincts and don't feel the need to have the clock validate those instincts. And it tends to work out really well for me in terms of overall pace anyways, so I'm real happy with it. 

It's worth noting that I've had some naggy come and go foot pain (not soreness/achy-ness, actual pain) which worries me a little (which was also why I opted for a shorter slower run today). I think the plan of action is to continue with what I'm doing and just keep distances short (under 6-7 miles) so long as I can handle what that feels like during my runs without compromising stride form and hopefully with the consistency things will ease up day to day. I'm also hopefully gonna be back in the gym tomorrow. The weight work typically helps with my foot strength/balance so maybe that'll make a difference as well. I'll keep you updated. In the meantime, here are the workout numbers. I'm also going to include a fun little exercise at the end: I need practice with my H&P write ups, so I'm gonna do one for me and my foot! Hope you enjoy that little tidbit. Here we go:

Yesterday's Workout: Base run, 6.5ish miles

Summary: 6.74 mi, 58:44, 8:43 pace, 178 spm

Pace splits by mile: 8:56, 8:27, 8:22, 8:51, 9:00, 8:43, 8:42 

Hit Rate: 85/93 (91.3%)

Today's Workout: Base run, 5.5ish miles (w/ Henry for the first 3.5 miles)

Summary: 5.66 mi, 51:08, 9:02 pace, 176 spm

Pace splits by mile: 9:11, 9:19, 9:16, 8:54, 8:54, 8:26

Hit Rate: 86/94 (91.4%)

Jess's H&P: We're going to pretend I'm presenting to a walk-in clinic in Maine w/ foot pain.

• CC: foot/ankle pain (R)
• HPI: Miss H is an otherwise healthy 22 yo Asian female presenting with pain in her right foot/ankle. This began yesterday during a run in which she felt the pain come and go a few times throughout the run. She had a similar experience on a slightly shorter run today and states her pain today as worse than yesterday. Her pain is localized to the area under her medial malleolus and the arch of her foot and does not radiate to any other locations. She has no pain when the foot is resting but experiences pain when the ankle is bearing weight or with movement (e.g. rolling her ankle, pointing/flexing her foot). While she is running, she feels that the pain increases with uphill and downhill running, but tends to fade away on flat terrain. When she is not exercising, the pain is more mild than it is during her runs and does not interfere with her activities of daily living, although she does not limited range of motion in her right compared to left ankle, which concerns her. At the worst, she rates the pain a 5/10 and otherwise on average a 2/10. She denies any trauma precipitating the onset of the pain. It is worth noting that she is a triathlete and recently took a week away from training on account of exam week. She reports that her current training mileage/intensity is lower than what is typical for her training. These two recent runs are her first runs back from her break. She reports a history of MSK problems (previous ankle injuries/pain/weakness, knee injuries including a right ACL tear, ongoing lower back pain) that have largely been managed through PT. She has not tried NSAIDs or other pain medication. She has iced the ankle which does appear to help with the pain and slightly improves her range of motion. 
• ROS: Negative for symptoms outside of those reported in the HPI.
• PMH: No significant past medical history.
• PSH: Two major dental surgeries in distant past (8+ years ago). 
• Medications: None reported.
• Allergies: Tylenol (acetaminophen - hives reaction, unclear at the time if the true cause was Tylenol but avoids the medication anyways)
• FH: (redacted)
• SxH: Pt is from St. Louis, MO, lives alone in an apartment, attends medical school, is currently visiting fiance's family. Denies any history of tobacco or recreational drug use. Reports occasional alcohol use. (Sexual history redacted.) 
• Physical:
• VS: (not actually available, but let's assume they're normal because they probably are)
• General: Well-appearing young female in no apparent distress, sitting up and breathing comfortably on room air
• Mental status: A&O x4
• Cardiac: RRR, no S3 or S4, no murmurs/rubs/gallops
• Lungs: CTAB, no wheezes/rales/rhonchi
• Abd: Normoactive bowel sounds, soft, non-distended, non-tender to palpation, no hepatosplenomegaly
• Neuro:
• CN I-XII intact (symmetric where applicable)
• 5/5 strength in all four extremities, normal passive motion and tone
• +2 biceps, triceps, brachioradialis, quadriceps, and Achilles reflexes
• Soft touch and vibratory sensation intact and symmetric in all four extremities
• MSK: Pain with touch pressure on medial arch of right foot and below medial maleolus. Slight +1 edema on posterior aspect of right ankle joint surrounding both sides of Achilles tendon. Pain on active inversion of right foot reported, no pain reported with passive inversion. Marginally reduced range of motion on plantarflexion and inversion of right foot when compared to left. 
• Aw yeah, I did the thing. Without looking at a template. And you know what? I feel like I'm doing okay for myself given that I'm an M1 that really doesn't know what I'm doing. 

Okay I'm gonna go rejoin civilization and be a normal social person now. Yay! Happy Easter friends! (:

Much love,

Jess 

Sometimes the best plan is no plan at all

[Day 81]

I live a fairly regimented life, but there come times like exam week when I really just have to let go of some of that structure and listen to myself and what feels right when I'm studying. I had a really productive studying day yesterday, opted out of the run because I wanted to keep that streak up. After my microbes exam this morning I decided to take a short run because the weather was glorious and somehow did a destructively awesome job of it. I'm not a fast runner, so any time that I'm running at anything mildly resembling real speed it impresses me a lot. Today I opted not to pay attention to my watch and just run and that's exactly what I did. It felt HARD. My lungs felt like they were going to explode the whole time but I wanted to see if I cold hold that effort because it felt good in my legs so I stuck with it and this was what happened.

Today's Workout: AM run
Summary: 4.14 mi, 34:10, 8:15 average pace, 179 spm
Pace splits by mile: 8:17, 8:22, 8:14, 8:07
Hit Rate: 84/92 (91.3%) - Note that I'm opting not to dock for any "missed" workouts this week. I decided that every session I get in during exam week is icing on the cake because the priority really is passing, not training. So only positive credit this week, no negatives. (Same sort of goes for how well I do with logging. If I don't log again Friday night, it's fine, the priority is school.)

I did keep my eye on the splits so I knew I was going fast starting out, but I was expecting closer to 8:40ish for that second mile and when it came out 8:22, I knew I had to just keep pushing it out until the end. Am super super amazed at how that went. Am also feeling pretty good about my ability to sit in a really uncomfortable place and keep going, because running fast is way not comfortable. It was great though, so glad I went out and did that. Dunno when the next time my body will get to move from this chair is, so I'll be back whenever I'm back...Happy Monday! (:

Much love,
Jess

"Will you destroy what destroys you?"

[Day 76B]

Today's PM Workout: Long run, 12 mi, easy effort (two clockwise loops of Forest Park, didn't run up/down Skinker hill the first lap because there was grounds work being done but I did on the second lap)
Summary: 12.70 mi, 2:04:42, 9:49 pace, 174 spm
Pace splits by mile: 9:52, 9:51, 9:49, 9:53, 9:27, 9:37, 9:51, 10:02, 10:04, 9:55, 9:50, 9:44, 9:41
Hit Rate: 81/89 (91%)

Notes/thoughts:

• The goal today was to make 12 miles easy and surprisingly enough I felt pretty successful with it. Definitely the best I've ever felt after a 12 mile run, and the best part is that it wasn't even much slower than my last 12 miler 2 weeks ago. Worth noting that it's always hard to compare these runs because of differences in the lead up workouts, but still cool nonetheless to feel like I have this distance in the bag.
• Worth noting there were a few rougher feeling miles in the middle there, miles 8 and 9 didn't feel super great, partially terrain related, partially wind related, but also probably because that's the point where I sort of get beyond the usual time/distance that I train so my body was probably wondering why we were still going. It picked back up though and I felt pretty relaxed going into the finish so I did rebound.
• It was windy. Let that be noted. 
• I ran with music for the first time all year today (well if you only count outdoor runs, because I usually use music on the treadmill) and it was really nice. I think it definitely helped me keep calm and relax. I kept my watch set to clock time instead of pace and I did check my pace at every mile interval when it gave me the split, but otherwise I really tried to run off feel and feel alone (I told myself I'd be happy with anything faster than an 11 min mile average). The whole goal was to see if I could cover the distance at an easy effort or if the distance would inevitably break things down, so it was important to keep effort in check today. Surprised at how well things turned out, especially in terms of split consistency and all. I should run by feel more often, I get caught up in the pace times sometimes and some days I think it's productive but I think some days it detracts from what I'm really trying to do.

Packing for a morning swim tomorrow and a looooooong day of physio review. Happy Hump Day!

Much love,

Jess

Some days you feel deceptively good...

[Day 74]

But it turns out that's probably just because you didn't do much moving all day. No overt discomfort all day so I went into my run feeling pretty confident, was gonna go for 2 easy/4 fast/1 easy for 7 miles but it became pretty clear about a half mile into the fast segment that it really wasn't meant to be today. I was actually hitting a pretty solid pace and probably could have pushed that through, but I was doing it on not the best form and over-striding had me worried a bit about my knees. My legs just had no kick to them today, it felt like it took all the concentration I had just to keep the turnover reasonable (and actually the average cadence was quicker than it felt so that was a pleasant surprise) and I could really feel the fatigue from yesterday's ride even though I really hadn't noticed that all day. Just goes to show sometimes you really don't know where your body is at until you're in the middle of the workout.

In any case, I adjusted and just decided that it would be better to try and focus on running well instead of running fast. In a race situation I'll be feeling those heavy legs anyways and it's always good to program good form in while you're fatigued so it's more natural in race situations when your brain isn't always there to take the reins. In the end the pace ended up looking much better than I thought it would, given that I really wasn't focusing on that, so I was happy about it. Also the pace definitely built as I went on, so my body was easing itself into the workout which was promising. Surprised by how trashed my legs feel from yesterday, but then again maybe I shouldn't be. 3 hours is really not a joke for someone as relatively new to riding as I am. Here's the update.

Today's Workout: PM base run
Summary: 7.05 mi, 1:04:36, 9:10 average pace, 173 spm
Pace splits by mile: 9:32, 9:25, 8:56, 9:13, 9:09, 8:56, 9:06
Hit Rate: 78/86 (90.6%)

Swim practice in the morning tomorrow and what will likely be a long day I'll split between lab and studying for finals. Honestly not being too aggressive this week or next because school is the priority and I would like to keep my wits about me as best as possible. That said, Wednesday will still be a big day, but we'll talk about that when we get there. Happy Monday everyone!

Much love,
Jess

Friends make you better (:

[Day 71]

It's late so we'll keep it brief today.

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

• WU: 
• 400 swim
• 4 x 150 fly/bk/br by 50 @ third person rest
• 1 - kick (w/ board)
• 2 - 25 kick/25 swim
• 3 - drill 
• 4 - 25 drill/25 swim
• 300 free pull w/ paddles
• Main Set: straight through, breaks indicated
• 3 x 100 IM @ 1:45/1:40/1:35
• 3 x 100 free @ 1:40/1:35/1:30
• 3 x 100 stroke @ 1:50/1:45/1:40
• (break)
• 2 x 100 IM @ 1:40/1:35
• 2 x 100 free @ 1:35/1:30
• 2 x 100 stroke @ 1:45/1:40
• (break)
• 1 x 100 IM @ 1:35
• 1 x 100 free @ 1:30
• 1 x 100 stroke @ 1:40
• (break)
• 3 x 200 kick w/ fins @ 3:30 (I think we did more like 3:00/3:15, it was sort of arbitrary)
• 1 - 25 fly/25 free
• 2 - 50 fly/50 free
• 3 - 100 fly/100 free
• I did the fly kick on my back, free mostly on my side with some lengths on my front
• WD: 100 easy
• Total Distance: 3800 SCY

Hit Rate: 75/83 (90.3%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I didn't feel like going when I woke up this morning, but for the first time in a while, it was a very normal kind of lack of motivation. It wasn't catastrophic or devastating, I didn't feel too emotionally over-involved, I was just tired and I didn't wanna go. I wanted to stay in bed and sleep. Obviously I didn't, but it was interesting to just feel a normal emotional response instead of the overblow emotional responses I generally have. I feel like I have a much better handle now on the difference between my mentally low days that I should try and push through and the mentally low days that are probably indicative of bigger things at play that I should probably respect and rest through. It was an interesting perspective shift.
• It took me a long time to get ready to swim fast today. I really went in with the attitude of, "I have made it here, that is the most you can ask from me today, if I swim poorly then whatever", but because the set eased into the faster efforts, I found that by the time we got to the end of the main set and had to be swimming seriously, the rest of the set had already prepared me for that and gotten me fired up to go and hit those repeats fast. It was good. (:

Today's PM Workout: 10 mi building long run

Summary:

• The pattern was 3 mi @ 9:30-9:45, 3 mi @ 9:00-9:15, 3 mi under 8:45 pace, 1 mi easy
• 10.14 mi, 1:32:34, 9:08 pace, 172 spm

Pace splits by 1.5 mi: 9:21 (14:02), 9:39 (14:29), 9:11 (13:46), 8:58 (13:27), 8:37 (12:55), 8:33 (12:50), 9:45 (1.14 mi in 11:04)

Hit Rate: 76/84 (90.4%)

Notes/thoughts:

• I ran w/ Brian and Tsehay today! Having friends was super key for the pace in the fastest 3 miles, I think it was much easier to mentally attack those miles with friends who were fasting than me leading the way. Just focusing on keeping up instead of focusing on pushing harder makes a lot of difference for me mentally. I guess this is part of why I have an easier time racing than I do training. 
• Cadence was a bit low today, definitely felt that happening but also couldn't do too much to fix it. Just gotta keep working on it more. 
• The paces were all pretty on target, a few of the earlier splits were a bit faster than the target range but it all played out okay today. 
• I honestly put out a much better run than I thought I was going to. My body didn't feel great and I was exhausted today so I actually took a nap in the afternoon that I think helped give me enough juice to get through this. The fastest 3 mile block was rough, but I definitely managed it way better than I thought I would and I didn't drop off over 10 minute pace for the warm down which makes me pretty confident that it was a good effort level and I wasn't over-extending or anything. I'm really happy with how this particular run played out, I think I'm gaining more and more confidence in my running with every workout of this nature that I manage to hit well in terms of pace targets. 

CrossFit experiment happening tomorrow, along with looooooooots of studying. Happy Friday! (:

Much love,

Jess

Honesty is the best policy

[Day 67B]

Long post. All the personal messiness. Brace yourselves.

So I think I got carried away. I'm really ambitious. I want to be the absolute best that I can be and I work off the assumption that in the long run I am limitless. I allow myself to believe that because I think it's the only way you ever find out exactly where your limits are. If you pre-define your limits without really searching the space, you'll never figure it out for real. But the other half of that story is that it makes me prone to (a) thinking I'm way more capable than I actually am and (b) me beating myself up a lot when it turns out that that isn't true or (c) me not being willing to admit that (a) is true and beating myself up over some character flaw or another (usually it's related to lack of discipline and focus and an inability to actually work hard enough). I got carried away. Sometimes I want to be better so badly that it makes me a little bit blind.

Henry suggested this morning that I take my run this afternoon with my watch face blank. No pace/distance/cadence/whatever numbers, keep it on to track stats for afterwards but just run however I wanted to run. I had told him that I was upset that there was no joy in the lift this morning. I'm usually so happy in the gym. I usually love the crazy way it feels to use your body at the limits of what it is capable of doing. It's amazing. And today it just wasn't amazing. I hit the heaviest deadlift reps I've ever hit (and if anyone is going to tell me that 145 is no weight, they can stop and shove it because it is for me and I'm really proud of it) and there was just no excitement about it. I don't want that. I don't do this because there's any inherent value in how much weight I can pick up off the ground and then immediately drop. I do it because it feels satisfying. I do it because it makes me happy. And today I wasn't happy and that was upsetting. (And you see what not being happy does to me - it makes me walk out in the middle of a workout because I'm actually really terrible at trying to do things that make me unhappy.) So Henry told me to just ditch the numbers and goals and things for a day and try to enjoy some nice weather (the weather is beautiful today) and find what makes me happy.

I was skeptical. I wasn't gonna do it. But when it came time for me to run this afternoon, I took his advice. I ran however my body told me was best (which was funny because I think it's still really blown from yesterday - I felt like a baby deer learning how to walk, I just felt so unsteady and clumsy on my feet today) and just let myself enjoy the process. I forgave myself for being not as fast as I want to be and I got to think a lot about everything that's been going on. There was a lot to those thoughts. Summary first, then we'll talk.

Today's PM Workout: Easy base run, 7 mi
Summary: 7.02 mi, 1:09:48, 9:56 pace, 170 spm cadence
Pace splits by mile: 9:34, 9:56, 10:09, 10:08, 10:10, 10:00, 9:39
Hit Rate: 71/78 (91.0%)

Notes/thoughts:

• Title notes: What I mean by "honesty is the best policy" is that I need to listen to my body more, like I did today. One of the things I thought about on the run was the fact that these past two months have been the most consistent block of training that I've gotten in since junior year of college (when I strung together about 2 or 3 months of pretty great swim training that was sort of stalled by a lot of binge drinking). The last time I had been training this consistently was high school. The volume is new, my body is adapting to it, it goes through waves of feeling good and feeling bad and the process isn't linear. I haven't been wanting to listen to my body, but it's seen a few big workouts this past week (three 2+ hour workouts, two of which were bricks with fairly fast runs coming off the bike and one of which was the longest run I've taken all year) and it can't just keep pounding on like that forever. I am tired, it's forgivable, I need to listen and be willing to go slow on days like today so I can give myself opportunities to have more big days (and not just any big days but productive big days that realistically aid in building my fitness and aren't likely to get me overworked and injured).
• Outside of just having to listen to my body, I think I need to come back around to being comfortable with what training on accumulated fatigue means. We swam a lot in high school. You were always slow at practice. It was okay because we deloaded before the big meet and BAM magic speed came out of nowhere. That's how endurance training works. I have to get comfortable with not seeing the kind of numbers in runs and bikes that I expect to see race day. The fact of the matter is that I will likely not be seeing those kinds of numbers until race day, when I will likely very pleasantly surprise myself. 
• The caveat to the above thought: It doesn't matter if I don't pleasantly surprise myself. Races are fun because you never know what might come of them. You don't control conditions, you don't control the course, you control what you do to prepare and the rest is up to fate. You can be as fit as can be and some days the tide swings in your favour and some days it doesn't. That's okay. As much as I'm expecting the work to pay off with gains on race day, I can't demand that. It either will be or it won't be and I have to be accepting of that either way. 
• Another interesting thought to that end: Sometimes I find myself wanting to say things to the effect of "but I worked hard so I deserve this". I have to be better about not feeling entitled to progress just because I did something. Plenty of people do things. There's more to progressing than just working or just working harder and there are so many variables that you're never going to have it all figured out. Putting in the work is a requisite part of the process, but that in no way entitles you to progress. I believe that if you put in work consistently enough for a long enough time, progress will eventually come. But that doesn't mean I can demand progress just because I've been working. I have to be better about remembering that fact. 
• One of the things I think I've said on this blog before is that I need to start where I am, and not where I want to be. I've been jealous of how much success my friends have been having in training. I've been jealous of boys and their naturally high testosterone levels (and probably generally greater athleticism when compared to me outside of that) and girls with talent I could never even fathom. I want to be that good. I'm not. And you can't fake it. You can't just "try harder" and be there. I'm not on that level. I know that. I would like to work towards that. But I have to start where I am, not where I want to be. 
• Which brings me to another point: Patience. A lot of the things above relate to me being impatient. I've been working for a few months and I want to see that turn around in fitness and it hasn't been a crazy drastic thing like I want it to be. But if I look back a year in the past, there are definitely lots of bits of progress I can see. Sure, my run paces are pretty comparable and haven't budged much (if anything I might be a little slower on average right now) and my swimming is pretty much in the same place, but the average volume I'm sustaining week after week is way higher, the amount that I can comfortably do on the bike now has increased by a ton, and my comfort with longer workouts (runs, bricks, whatever) has increased too. It takes time to get better. And not just a month or two of time, years and years of time. When I was a freshman in high school, my swim season was cut short by an ACL injury and one of my coaches had told me to not worry about being set back by that time out of the water because swimming was a sport of "accumulation". (He had used the Chinese term "积累".) The whole idea is that I didn't get good at swimming in a few weeks. We built base and technical skill and speed and strength and power over years and years. I wasn't going to lose the years in a few weeks. I'd be rusty when I got back, but those years would still be there, I would just have to work on dusting them off to get back to where I wanted to be. But that's the thing, I had to put those years in first to get that base. I'm sure the same thing goes for what I'm doing here and now with triathlon. I'm only a year and a half into it, I have so much to learn and so much to improve on, and it's going to be a process of accumulating miles and experience so I have that foundation. The progress doesn't come overnight. I need to be more patient. 
• The other issue that came up in my conversations with Henry is that sometimes I have no confidence in the training I'm doing. Which is stupid. I know what I'm doing for the most part with the plan. The plan is the way it is for a reason. The funny thing is, that reason is probably why I worry about it. I didn't really build the plan to be the perfect triathlon training plan. I really built the plan to try and balance gaining fitness for racing with doing things that I enjoyed. Sometimes I enjoy being challenged so I throw in hard days. Sometimes I enjoy just going easy and slow so I throw those days in too. There's really not a fantastic reason for me to be lifting the way I do, and frankly there's not a ton of reason behind how I lift, but I do it because it's fun and I love it and it makes my life better. (And I'm pretty sure it makes me just more fit in general, and even if that doesn't directly make me a better triathlete, it probably doesn't hurt right? Outside of lost opportunity cost. Which I'll take in terms of the happiness I get out of it in return.) There's probably no reason at all for me to be going to sprint freestyle days, but those are some of my favourite workouts so I keep going to them. Conversely I should probably go to more distance free days, but I don't like them as much so I sprinkle a few in there but I don't demand that I do that every single week. I was cognizant of balancing the things that made me happy with the things that made me better when I planned it. And all of a sudden when I started feeling pressure to improve faster, I started second guessing the planning and the values that drove how I planned. I need to stop doing that. I made this thing so that I could be happy doing it. It won't make me the absolute fastest I can possibly be, but it'll help me improve while helping me stay in love with these things that I do genuinely love. I need to have more faith in that, not just in terms of trusting that the plan will get me to where I want to go but also in terms of really believing in the value of my own happiness as a key part of the equation. 
• Related to bullet point above: I'm trying a CrossFit class on Saturday! If you read this blog, you know I've been following the open and it's just been super inspiring watching people of so many different skill and ability levels tackle these crazy workouts. I love trying stuff. I love doing things with my body. I love learning new physical skills and I've always wanted to learn to do the Olympic lifts and be better at pull ups. But CrossFit has always felt like the wrong thing no matter how much I loved watching it. It's just such a crazy mix of high intensity and high volume work and I'm training for an endurance sport and if anything it'll just get me injured right? Well I've been actually thinking about that the past few days now that I've gotten myself into the messy situation of planning to actually trying it out because what if I like it? What then? I mean it's super easy if I don't like it, wipe my hands clean of that and move on, but it's been interesting to think about what might happen if I do like it. And on the run today, after all the thoughts above, one of the things I realized is this: It's like everything else, you figure out how to do the things you enjoy. You give them a chance, you work them into your schedule, you adapt, you accept that everything comes with a sacrifice. Training inevitably means my schoolwork quality suffers. Not to the point that I want to give up training altogether, but it's something I have to accept. Conversely, sometimes I have to focus on school and inevitably training suffers. But again, those are my priorities on those days and it's something I have to accept. If it turns out there's another thing in the world I want to give a spin and it'll encroach on all my sort of planned out triathlon specificity, well I guess we'll have to see if I like it enough to give up some of that. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, but I'm a little less nervous about Saturday knowing that I've thought about what it could mean for some of the other things going on in my life. 
• Last thing: Effort. I feel like I almost constantly find myself telling myself that I should be working harder or trying harder or whatever. But honestly, that's not what anything is about. There is a certain level of effort you should give to everything. And when you have it in you to give more, you should. But you can't be full throttle 24/7 because no one actually has that capacity, and me sitting around pretending that I do and beating myself up for it when it turns out that I can't actually do that helps literally no one. Not every day can be destructively awesome, it would kill you. Average days are good days too. I really have to try and believe the contents of this particular bullet point. This is a valuable and honest bullet point that I forget over and over and over again and it causes me a lot of misery sometimes. 

Soooooooo. Now that the full contents of my soul are laid out in a blog post, I think I can...heat up dinner and get some studying done now? Lol hope everyone had a good Monday. (:

Much love,

Jess

PS - Plan is AM swim for tomorrow, along with a tri team appeal for more Nationals/Wildflower funding in the evening. Fingers crossed that that goes well. Too bad the appeal meeting is late at night, will make getting up early to lift on Wednesday super rough. Original Wednesday morning plan had been to do some circuit work or something, but I'm gonna try and do a repeat of this morning's planned lift on Wednesday instead and hopefully actually get through the entire workout. There will also be a long trainer ride in the PM on Wednesday. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Just wish us luck for that appeal tomorrow!

Longest workout of the year to date

[Day 66]

Oh no I missed another blogging day! Yesterday was so hectic it completely slipped my mind that I hadn't blogged. This is what happens on rest days. I forget stuff. Okay well let's do a recap of yesterday and a recap of the week before we get into today's workout log.

Rest day: Yesterday was a pretty good day all in all, got some studying done, went to Schnucks Screenings, performed in the Vagina Monologues, had fun focusing on non-training related things that made me feel like I had a life again. I actually had a great day just being a normal person. That was probably why I forgot to log lol. The body felt pretty good most of the day, a little bit of residual exhaustion from the run on Friday but nothing super notable. Good stuff all in all.

Weekly Recap:

• 2 swims, 2 runs, 1 trainer brick, 1 gym session, 1 core session for a total of ~10 hrs in 7 sessions.
• I missed a swim this week and took 3 rest days which sort of made it not the week I wanted it to be but for what it's worth, I think I put in some great efforts during this week's sessions, especially with regards to running.
• It was nice to finally hit some harder efforts with the running. I'm pretty slow but it's coming along really well I think in terms of finding speed while tired. It's really shown through in the bricks, where I've been taking much faster efforts than I typically do. Makes me think I could pull out a pretty good 10k time in the next race. We'll see.
• I haven't done great this week with the sleep. I think that's worth noting. I've had to take afternoon naps twice and I think it says something about my sleep habits that needs to be fixed. Gonna really try and fix that in the upcoming week because it'll be a big week and I'll need to try and keep my energy reserves up. 

Okay time for today! Here's the weekend brick update:

Today's Workout: Brick (30 mi ride + 4 mi run, moderate effort)
Summary:

• Bike: 29.66 mi, 2:00:30, 14.8 mph (Geyer-Adams-Ballas route)
• Bike speed splits by 5 mi: 14.4, 14.7, 15.2, 14.5, 14.7, 15.2
• Transition: 2:30.60
• Run: 4.24 mi, 38:07, 8:59 pace, 178 spm cadence (flat half of the park)
• Run splits by mile: 8:36, 8:56, 9:13, 9:08, 9:11 

Hit Rate: 69/76 (90.7%)

The ride felt really good. I took it pretty moderately and honestly felt way more energized in the second half than I thought I would. Was mostly pretty calm too, wind started up towards the end but it was very manageable. I spend some time out of the saddle in the first half but pretty much tried to keep my climbs seated in the second half because I need to work on the steady seated climbing (Collegiate Nationals and Chicago should both be flat courses so it makes more sense to just stay seated rather than amp up heart rate with standing climbs when there are small hills). The run felt pretty rough today, not gonna lie. Didn't have the same spring in my step I usually expect and I felt outrageously slow, but the splits came out well and I got some good practice forcing myself to focus and stay positive and finish strong. It's just as important to work on the mental side of things so I'm glad there are days that really challenge me in that department. The only other thing worth noting about the workout is that I took two gels on the bike and had most of a bottle of Gatorade. I didn't eat breakfast beforehand, just had a Clif Bar, some water, and 3 Shot Bloks. It seemed to meet my calorie needs pretty well though, so it's good to feel like I have that part of the game plan down. Will probably stick to a similar pattern for the rest of the workouts that clear 2.5 hours in length. 

It's pretty cool to note that my longest workout last summer in the lead up to September racing was a 30+5 brick and a 24+6 brick and I've hit a 30+4 and we're still 7 weeks out from racing. I'm feeling super fit and super pumped to keep working towards putting together a good race in April. Excited to see where this goes. 

Lifting in the morning tomorrow and taking a nice easy run lap of the park in the afternoon. Seems like it'll be a light day in terms of school hours which will be nice, give me a chance to keep trying to catch up on lectures and things. Big week of training coming up, let's get it! (:

Much love,

Jess

First (planned) brick of the year!

[Day 62]

Today's Workout: Trainer ride brick, 90 mins + 4 mi run
Summary:

• Trainer set:
• WU: 
• 10 mins easy 
• 8 x :30/:30 spin ups 
• 2 mins easy 
• Main Set: 
• 5/5/5 @ base +1, 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 2 mins recovery 
• 4/4/4 @ base +1, 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 2 mins recovery 
• 3/3/3 @ base +1, 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 2 mins recovery 
• 2/2/2 @ base +1, 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 2 mins recovery 
• 1/1/1 @ base +1, 80-85/85-90/90-95 rpm 
• 2 mins recovery 
• 15 mins steady state riding (cover the clock, just find whatever gearing/cadence works for you) 
• Run set: 3 miles hard, 1 mile easy
• Garmin numbers:
• Ride: 22.05 mi, 1:30:24, 14.6 mph
• Transition: 2:40.70 (slow today because I had to change into cold weather running gear)
• Run: 4.26 mi, 38:34, 9:04 average pace, 175 spm 
• Run splits by mile: 8:37, 8:56, 8:55, 9:44, 9:13 (0.26 mi only)

Hit Rate: 67/73 (91.7%)

I'm really proud of this one! Recap in narrative form today. I think I had expected to feel really awful because I was pretty sore/tight today from yesterday and I was also sort of scared of throwing that round of 4s into the main set, but it went okay! I am actually super proud of myself because I worked really hard at being positive going into this workout. During the warm up and during each recovery interval I literally talked to myself out loud and just tried to say really positive things and reaffirm that I could do this and I had it in me and I think it went a long way towards getting me through the ride portion. I definitely was tired going into the workout because it was the afternoon and I'm always tired in the afternoons and I felt like I was going to fall asleep on my handlebars at first, but I got into it and it definitely woke me up and gave me more energy as I went on.

The transition was a little slow because of the inevitable delays of having to change into winter running gear (and try to dry myself off as thoroughly as I could with a towel so I wouldn't freeze as soon as I got outside) but I kept it under 3 minutes which I'm fine with as far as transition time goes. I love running off the bike. I think my legs are firing so many muscles on the bike that when I switch to the run, my brain recruits a bunch of muscles it typically doesn't when I'm running, so the amount of power in each of my strides blows my mind and it feels so good to have that kind of strength in my running. I can never really find that spot when I'm just going for a run, so I think the extra level of sensory awareness I get from running off the bike is always nice. Also I'm already warmed up, which is one of the things I struggle the most with when I'm running. It usually takes me forever to get into it when I just run, but running off the bike is almost easier because I'm already warm and my body is so ready to go.

I pushed the pace today because I felt good, so I wanted to take as many miles fast as I could. I was definitely fading in mile 3, was hovering between 9:05-9:10 average for probably 2/3s of the mile and then decided in the last little stretch that I really wanted to get that mile in under 9:00 so I put in a pretty good surge and kicked really hard to try and get there. I was pretty sure in the last minute or so of that mile that I was going to throw up, I worked really hard to keep the contents of my stomach in my stomach. I was impressed that I finished out in under 10:00 pace once I slowed down for my cool down mile given that I pushed pretty hard on that run, so I'm really happy with how that went. Also worth noting that the spm stayed high, which is good because that's usually something I worry about when I run coming off the bike. Glad I kept that up too, it was definitely something I was trying actively to think about (that along with running form in general).

I think the craziest thing is looking back on just a year and a half ago when I was new to this sport and my longest bricks were like 12 or 18 miles of biking (I honestly don't remember) plus a 6 km run and it felt like death and I was just holding on for dear life by the time I was 5+ minutes into the run. This workout was already longer than that and the fact that I could even think about pushing pace and feeling strong blows my mind. I've come so far, it's pretty cool to see that play out. Don't get me wrong, I still live in a constant state of "ugh I'm so bad at biking and running", but in fairness I am way way better than I used to be.

Gonna finish up with laundry and pack up for tomorrow and maybe do a tiny tiny bit of work before I hit the sack tonight. Swim tomorrow morning, only one workout, rain in the forecast which is sort of uncool but I'll get up and see how that actually plays out. If the weather seems bearable, I'll brave it for the swim. Fingers crossed! (:

Much love,
Jess