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

[Day 139]

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

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

Hit Rate: 11/13 (84.6%)

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

Much love,
Jess

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

Knee update

[Day 19B]

So my right knee had a pretty major flare up on my walk to school today and has been hurting real bad since. I self-diagnosed on Uptodate and determined that I probably had ITBS (which, let's face it, every runner has, has had before, or will get, just like shoulder injuries in swimmers) which was later confirmed by a real life physician (hooray for going to school in a building of doctors) at a student health services appointment. So...that's a bummer. (Also, I've been to student health three times and they've all been for MSK issues this year. Can you tell that I don't do my maintenance work? Yeah, I can too...)

One of our lovely IM chief residents told me that I should probably take a week or two off and it'll probably resolve on its own, otherwise I should go see PT. Honestly though I don't know what PT can tell me that I don't already know. You can never be too strong in the lower abs and glutes, my feet pronate slightly still (even though they're way better now than they were say four years ago), I'm female, all of these things don't help my case with something like ITB. So I guess my plan is to take it day by day (because if I commit myself to taking a week off I'll probably die, I told Henry this earlier in the day, I have the patience of a squirrel on speed, and it's entirely true).

That starts with likely cutting out the ride today. Technically I think the cycling is not supposed to aggravate it too much (???) but given that I can't really walk without making my gait super weird I figure less is probably more today. Instead I'll take some time to roll out my legs and stretch tonight because the roller typically makes a big difference. The trend with this knee has been that I've woken up with it better in the morning, so another Naprosyn before bed tonight and hopefully things will just clear themselves up.

In other body-related news, my wrists are so loose. (Lol all my joints are just wrecked. They are like this all the time. Wish I had mom's magic joint stuff.) I'm a tad bit sore today but nothing bad, a little extra time to stretch will be nice though.

As for the plan moving forward: the original plan was to do a circuit dryland workout from my age group swimming days tomorrow in the morning and spend some time rowing because I haven't done that in a while and it's fun cross training. I might actually keep to that because I can bodyweight squat right now without my knee hurting at all and between that and rowing, it's no impact and doesn't simulate the kinds of movements that cause me pain, so it'll probably be fine. If it turns out that it's not fine and I have to pull the plug on it, I will. I'll assess how everything is doing during the day and decide if I want to take a trainer ride in the afternoon or something.

I think the big take home message from all of this is honestly that I have to be doing more maintenance work. Stretching and foam rolling and plyometrics and core work and stability work need to happen or I'm not going to be able to keep this little body of mine happy. But I hate that stuff. Halp. I think at this very moment, I'm willing to commit to the foam rolling thing and will let the rest of it play out from there. Let's see how the rest of this week goes.

Much love,
Jess

Rest day report!

[Day 9]

Today was a pretty uneventful off day. I got some good sleep last night, some good work done in the morning (including my planning for next week), some volunteer work in the afternoon, and watched slash am watching some football (during which I stretched and foam rolled because Henry told me to!). And I ate a lot of food, because that's my entire life now. Oh I treated myself to a cupcake! I feel like I haven't really treated myself to much of anything since the year started so yay treats!

Off days are kind of weird, I'm not gonna lie. You know that feeling you get when you think you've forgotten something but you can't remember what? That's what my body feels like. Like it was supposed to do something maybe but it's not sure and it's just confused. I wasn't physically restless today (the way I get on my taper off days) so I know the rest is probably doing me lots of good, but it's still weird.

I'd like to get some more work done in the evening but I'm super drowsy already so maybe I'll just sleep more. As of yet unclear. There's also a party happening tonight that I want to go to (it's an underwater 90s themed party, I would get to wear my wetsuit, which is sort of kick ass) but I love sleeping so much...What to do what to do.

I will report back on my decisions tomorrow. In the meantime, other than feeling really sleepy right now (food coma?), my brain/body feel pretty good, which bodes well for tomorrow's run. It'll probably be just another easy lap of the park (yay base runs!) but I gotta go figure out what time that's happening. See you on day 10! (Omg double digits.)

Much love,
Jess

Reach for the moon

[Day 7A]

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

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

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

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

Hit Rate: 5/5 (100%)

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

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

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

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

Much love,

Jess

I really wish I worked harder.

[Day 6]

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

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

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

Much love,
Jess

Start of Tri Specific Training!

I will consider the Thursday that just passed (7/30) as the first official day of triathlon specific training. As of today, I am six weeks out from USAT Club Nationals (where I will be racing the sprint distance) and and seven weeks out from the Cyman Triathlon (where I will be racing the Olympic distance and hopefully using that finish to qualify for Collegiate Club Nationals in the spring). The plan is a six week build split into two three week blocks with 2.5 weeks of going pretty hard and a couple days in a row of rest. I opted to set myself up like this because the typical 3-4 weeks hard and 1 week recovery doesn't work as well for me (I'm bad at both the longer period of continuous work and the longer period of recovery) and also because the 3 week splits just work better with the schedule. (I couldn't start real prep earlier than this do to travel/moving in/etc.) The activity split in my mind is pretty even and I'm more than willing to be flexible with the plan I have made for myself moving forward, just sort of depending on where I'm at and what else is going on in my life and how I'm feeling. A lot of variables go into optimizing training and I think what I've learned this summer is that flexibility, a willingness to listen to my body, and a respect for the other obligations in my life are going to be very important to me being successful in the upcoming weeks.

That having been said, I've missed some blogging, so this post will be long because I'm going to recap all of it here. Let's go!

Thursday's Workout: Bike trainer session
Summary:

• WU: 10 mins, mix of seated spins and jogs, just getting used to the trainer and getting blood to the legs
• Main Set: split as 95% steady state seated/105% +1 gear and max cadence/recovery spin in minutes
• 1/1/1
• 3/1/2
• 5/1/3
• 7/1/4
• 9/1/5
• Gears: B3/B4/recovery
• WD: 5 mins easy spin
• Total time: 60 minutes

Hit rate: 20/22 (90.9%)

My bike trainer showed up, so I figured I would put it to good use. Didn't have my speed/cadence sensor yet, so I really just played it by feel. I think I was definitely too slow on the cadence and could have maybe been better off working in lower gears at higher cadences, but that was hard to figure out without the sensors since I don't have an intuition for it yet. The sensors have come in since, so the next trainer session I do, I will be able to put these observations to the test.

The trainer session was a great reminder that riding can be a lot a lot a lot of pain. Sometimes I want to say swimming pain is comparable, but when the burning really fires up in your legs there's really nothing that actually compares. Trainer sessions are so mental in that realm. That's something I'm really going to have to settle down and focus on in order to become a stronger cyclist. 

On a more technical note, the upper body involvement in biking always surprises me. It's just like everything else, your upper body is so important to keeping everything stable and energy directed the right way that you can't just assume it's not involved because it's not the key force driver. Will have to focus on simple things like my body position and keeping my shoulders relaxed as the efforts get harder, etc. I also really have to work on smoothness with my pedal stroke. I know that's hard when I'm in toe-clips instead of real cycling shoes, but there's definitely still room for improvement even given that so I'm really going to make an effort to work on that pedaling efficiency. 

Friday AM Workout: CSP swim practice, IM day

Summary: 

• WU: 400 free
• Pre-set:
• 4 x 150 kick/drill/swim by 50 IMO
• 10 x 50 swim @ 1:10/1:15
• 4 free, 3 breast, 2 back, 1 fly
• Main Set: 4 x
• 200 IM @ 3:40
• 150 free @ 2:30
• 100 IM @ 2:00
• No time for real warm down lol...
• Total Distance: 3300 LCM, 75 mins

Hit rate: 21/23 (91.3%)

Lindsey coached yesterday (don't quote me on the spelling of her name) and she was really sweet. Workouts are given orally, which hasn't happened to me since my high school days so my listening comprehension and memorization skills were pretty poor and needed some work. I swam in the faster half of the pool, but we were the awkward lane that was fast enough to be given the faster workout but not fast enough to finish it with time to actually warm down. The people in my lane were pretty cool though, mostly young'uns like myself. There were some hardcore triathletes around throughout the pool, one woman in my lane was going for a ride after practice, turns out there are pretty inspirational people to be found throughout this city.

As for the actual swim itself, the set doesn't look that bad but it was brutal. The combination of me having been out of the pool for a while and the pool being set in long course was just rough, especially on the fly. My quads were cramping up towards the end (probably from the trainer session the day prior) and I was not having a good time. I also have no idea if my lane was actually hitting the intervals. We wanted to make sure everyone was getting some amount of rest so the send offs got sort of arbitrary and I don't like the clocks at this pool very much, they aren't very clear and I just couldn't get a sense for whether or not we were making the intervals just barely or missing them by a lot. It was confusing and weird. But the workout was quality nonetheless so that was appreciated.

The other nice thing about swimming long course is that it forces you to be really cognizant of your technique. You can't hide it with the "oh but it only happened once this length" excuse and if your technique falls apart when you get tired, it shows at the end of the length and you really have to work on holding it together. I like that the setting of the pool is forcing the issue.

The other nice thing is I think practice really gets back at that whole issue of being surrounded by excellence. It's easy to want to complain about getting up at 4:15 AM so you can commute to a 5:15 AM swim practice, but when you are surrounded by others that are doing the same thing and some athletes who are taking bike rides or runs right afterwards, it seems like what you're doing is so small in comparison. Just being around other people who are committed to the same insanity that you are makes what you're doing seem normal instead of commendable or downright strange. And on top of that, when you really really want to quit on repeat 2 of 4, you can't, because everyone else is struggling through the same thing too. I love that. I can't wait to go back next week. Although freestyle is so not my jam.

Friday PM Workout: Outdoor base ride

Summary: 18.13 mi, 1:10:31, 15.4 mph, 577 ft gain

Speed splits by 5k: 14.8, 15.6, 16.0, 15.4

Hit rate: 22/24 (91.7%)

Took 3 laps of Forest Park, really struggled with that incline up on Skinker, but it's good that I'm getting practice with it. Cadence was sort of low on average (74 rpm; I don't look at that on my outdoor rides, trying to get a natural feel for it) so I'll have to work on that. I was going to go for a fourth lap but I decided that I didn't want to blow myself out in case the group ride today required me to be more on top of my game than I was feeling. My legs were pretty shot. It was nice to get outside and be forced to take some quick turns and avoid human beings and get the feel for some climbing and fast descending. The next time I take this ride I might try and do it the other way around to get some of that steeper climbing in and cruise down the Skinker hill and see which I prefer. In general I think the alternating will make me a better cyclist so it's worth doing. 

Today's AM Workout: Short-mid ride w/ 8 AM Big Shark group (including my commute out)

Summary: 23.34 mi, 1:56:56, 12.0 mph, 879 ft gain

Speed splits by 5k: 10.6, 11.0, 14.0, 12.0, 13.5.

Hit rate: 23/25 (92%)

This morning I took my first ever group ride! There were only 4 of us, it was really chill, probably too chill, but the route was nice (and bonus very few cars in the morning) and the company was nice and I'll probably try this route out again tomorrow as the lead in to my brick. Not too much to say I guess other than that riding on the roads was less scary than I thought it would be (mostly because there are so few cars out on the road on a Saturday morning) and spending two hours out riding really digs into your appetite even if you don't go very far or very fast. At some point I would love to go out and try the faster 7:30 group ride but they are faster and that intimidates me so I don't know that I'll be taking that on until I have a little more confidence in my riding abilities. 

One nice thing to note was that I was pretty solid on the uphills (learning to control the effort, realizing that I can climb slowly and keep effort in check and it's really key to longevity in the ride) and there was a ton of coasting down hills which was really nice and a lot of fun. I think the biggest take away from this morning was that riding can be a lot of fun and I need to try and find that and enjoy it whenever possible so that saddle time isn't just torturous all of the time. Also I needed the recovery session for my legs and that was pretty key.

In other news, Henry made me stretch last night and this morning after my ride, and that's definitely been doing me some good. I haven't had the will power to bring myself to do any core work yet, but baby steps I guess. As long as I'm hitting my sessions and stretching and recovering properly after them, I will accept my present shortcomings. We'll work towards putting the rest of the pieces in place as things continue on. I've also taken short 1.5 hr naps both yesterday and today to help keep me rested. Won't be able to do that once school starts next week so that'll be an adjustment. I assume caffeine will have it's role to play when the time comes.

As for the rest of today, I plan on taking a base run sometime in the afternoon (while Henry goes to the gym!) but it should be a fairly easy-moderate effort and I'm just gonna focus on coping in the heat. Things are off to a great start, I'm really excited about where this is headed! Yay!

Much love,

Jess

Building, building...

Building is really not the word you think of in terms of your training a few days out from a race but somehow that's what today's run was. It felt like a continuation of yesterday's run, I started out already feeling warmed up and just sort of built from there. It was a solid, consistent, and easy-moderate effort and I was very very satisfied with it.

Today's Workout: Base 6 mi. run.
Summary: 6.58 mi, 1:02:03, 9:25 pace.
Pace splits by mile: 9:42, 9:23, 9:39, 9:14, 9:25, 9:24, 9:02.
Hit rate: 17/19 (89.4%)

Also it's around 6 PM now as I'm writing this and the taper is really kicking in. I feel super super good (especially in contrast to how blown out I felt last week) and I have so much excess energy I just feel like I have to actually work out. Like do something to destroy myself physically. But I can't because I'm resting. It's so strange. And to think there's another two days of this. Not really sure how that's going to go. Must stretch tonight!

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