Busy June

Wow, this month is crazy!  I'm someone who loves their routine, but also the occasional adventure.  June has had lots of adventures and I'm ready for life to slow down a little bit!

All charts brought to you by Bia Sport!  So happy that I backed their Kickstarter campaign.  This is my first GPS watch, so there may be some user error involved!

Workouts have been really consistent due to my Olympic triathlon training.  My weeks are basically swim, bike, run x 2 for 6 workouts a week.  I missed a ride over Memorial Day weekend, so I tacked it on to the first week in June.  I have been running on a Monday-Sunday training week (aka my "week"starts on Monday)

June 2-8.  Need: 2 swims, 45 min bike x 2, 35 min run x 2. + 60 min bike from previous week.  (this was a scaled back week in training).
Monday: supposed to run w/group.  got rained out.  Put in 30 min on the treadmill, 30 min on stationary bike at YMCA.
Tuesday: AM swim, PM yoga
Wednesday: Morning ride.  Radar showed rain a ways off.  It wasn't raining when I woke up.  I got out the door and it started sprinkling.  I wasn't going to let rain show me up!  However, it was steady enough for me to only go a mile from home and ride some repeats down my favorite street.  Only got 30 minutes in until the lightning/thunder got close and I had to bail!
 Forgot to start my watch until I was halfway through!

Thursday: AM swim with the new coach.  Eh.  I just wanted my coach who knows me and can push me.  It was okay and pretty easy.  PM 40 Min run.  Felt awful.  Legs were heavy, lungs were tight. Decent pace, though!

Friday: Glorious rest.
Saturday: Garage sales :) ha!
Sunday: 90 min bike trainer ride.  I had those two 45 min bike rides to get in, so I just combined them.  I got to space out on the bike trainer and it went pretty fast.  Why didn't I use this more in winter?

June 9-15 Needed: Swim x 2, run 50/45 mins, Bike 75 min x 2.
Monday: 45 min run.  Slower pace once I hit trails instead of pavement.

Tuesday:  75 min bike trainer ride.
Wednesday:  Morning swim.  Swam outdoors in a 50meter pool.  Tried the GPS watch for kicks.  I swam "a mile" 1500m (a swimmer's mile).  The time was right and the distance was pretty darn close. (1500m=0.93 miles).  But that GPS map! LOL

I think my flip turns threw it off, because that was when it was under the water.  I swear I just swam down the black line in the middle of the lane!
Thursday: Rest (AKA BOUGHT A CAR!!!)
Friday: Rest.
Saturday:  1 mile open water swimming race!  A few posts ago I said I was doing this one, but could have done a longer one 50 minutes away.  I'm glad I stuck to this one!  It was great!  It was about 2 hours away, but the drive wasn't that bad.  I got to registration and got my stuff. Did the sunscreen thing, and then was hanging out near the beach.  The race isn't huge, but the race director coming over and introducing himself was very nice.  I warmed up and wasn't super confident because everyone looked so fast!  But the water was a perfect temperature and remarkably clear.  We had our pre-race meeting and I was off before I knew it!

Lord knows what I did to make this a "run"on my watch, but at least I got my time and the GPS looked a ton better than Wednesday's swim!!!  I definitely believe I did 1.04 miles - sighting is hard!  I was next to a man the entire time!  In that first part of the triangle, out to the left, he was weaving in front of me and it was very annoying!  So many times I tried to get ahead of him, but I just couldn't.  Around the halfway point, i was in survival mode - soooo tired!

I only got kicked on the last turn.  There were about 4 of us turning at the same time at the buoy and I turned and then did 2 breastroke strokes to make sure I had sight of the buoy at the end.  In that moment, the people behind me kept doing freestyle and my legs were under someone when I tried to kick and I got kicked as well.  It was amusing to me!  We got to the end and I had wanted to make it under 1/2 hour, but I knew i was probably over.  I swam the best pace I could and the race ended on the beach.  I swam till 2 strokes hit the sand, stood up, and jogged over the finish mat.  And wouldn't you know it, that sneaky little bastard that I had been next to and was ahead of at the end SPRINTED out of the water and crossed 2 seconds before me?  Rude.  haha!

I took off my timing chip, handed it to a volunteer and was promptly greeted by a congratulatory handshake from the race director.  What?!?  Small race in small town America - can't beat it!  I felt awful and dehydrated, so I downed a gatorade and hung out near the finish.  The race was supposed to cut off at an hour, but the last person was a few minutes over.  Do you really think this nice race director would pull the oldest competitor out of the water because of the time limit?  No!  When she crossed the finish line, there was as much cheering for her as, I imagine, the winner.  Made me happy!  They got through the awards and door prizes - I didn't win any (I was hoping for a door prize!).  I went to look at the results and found the sheet for women's results.  I look down at the bottom half of the list..um..not there...kept going up and - holy smokes!  I got 5/18!  I was VERY happy with that.  I wasn't anywhere close to the top 3, but was about 45 seconds behind 4th place.  And the kicker - I recognized a girl's name I used to race against in high school...I beat her by a lot! :)

Now, I was TIRED.  And I knew I needed to run.  I didn't see any good routes close to this lake.  And if I got in the car and went to my dad's, I know I definitely wouldn't run.  And I skipped the run today, I wouldn't do it tomorrow.  But, if I did it today, in this town, I could get one of my favorite lunches that we don't have in the city!  A light bulb went off!  The people who did the timing was a running company from that town.  I asked them for suggestions and they suggested a park with plenty of greenways 10 minutes away.  Perfect!

I had a banana, nutrigrain bar, and some water and I was finally feeling a lot better.  My run started by feeling tired, but not impossible.  I had bargained that I would do 4:1 run/walk ratios so that I wouldn't beat myself up if I was too tired to run for a very long time.  The first mile wasn't amazing, the second mile was pretty slow, the third mile, for some reason, I picked the speed up and I was not impossibly tired, and the final 3/4 of a mile, I was determined to be "fast".  Negative split the second half...not too shabby!

Reward meal earned! (Taco  salad, chips & salsa, plus a pop, but the pop was gross)

Sunday: Father's Day.  I had SwimKid and we did the church thing then came home for a nap.  At 6pm, we had to get in a hike (her request), go grocery shopping, do dinner, a bath, and I needed that final bike trainer ride.  All in 4 hours.  Yikes!  Luckily I rushed her along in the hike and when we went grocery shopping she asked if she could pick out a snack.  I was reluctant because we had froyo for lunch, but I said sure.  And wouldn't you know it - that kid picked out a banana as a treat.  Without prompting from me.  Are we even related?  She had eggs, broccoli, and a banana for dinner.  I had leftovers of some pasta and garlic bread. Her meal wins!  I got 10 mins of bike riding in while she was in the bath, then 40 more after she was out.  Then I was exhausted and it was past my bedtime, so I scraped the remaining 25 minutes.  Oh well! :)

June 16-22.  Need swim x 2, run 50/55 mins, ride 90 mins, ride 90mins+10 min transition run.
Monday: 90 minute bike trainer ride.  Felt good to have one crossed off the list right off the bat.
Tuesday: AM swims (maps/yards were all over the place), PM yoga.
Wednesday: 55 min run on the indoor track as it was storming out.  Then bowling w/my small group.
Thursday: There was like 1 bolt of lightning at 6am, so they closed the pool.  I decided to do my other run, as I was going to do it after work anyway.  It was a gorgeous morning, albeit humid!

Not awful for having run 12 hours prior.
I was going to do a swim in the evening, but it was storming (again).  So I just went home and will tack it on to the next week.
Friday: Worked a conference.  Childcare burns a lot more calories than sitting at my desk all day. #hungry
Saturday: Same conference.
Sunday: Half day at the conference.  Came home, ate, text people about biking.  No one was in, so I took a hardcore nap.  I did a 90 minute ride later that evening with a 10 minute transition run. SwimKid was with me, so she was running in her pjs and flip flops, so my pace was far from stellar.  At least I got it done!

June 23-29.  Need Swim x 3 (1 makeup from last week), run 55/60 mins, bike 90 mins x 2.
Monday: 90 min bike trainer ride.  Finished Sherlock season 3.  Really, BBC?  Not a fan of that ending.  I'm a huge fan of the books and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have done something like that.
Tuesday:  AM swim.  Very threatening clouds, but no lightning!  Yoga was cancelled due to tornado warnings!
Planned: Wednesday: 60 min run w/small group from church
Thursday: AM swim, PM nails done - yeah!
Friday: Rest
Saturday: Triathlon!  600 yd swim, 14 mile bike, 3.7 mile run.  yeah, I'm counting this as 1 swim, 1 bike, and 1 run.  I may ride a little Wednesday or Thursday because I haven't ridden outside since the beginning of the month!

Whew, just typing all that made me tired.

I am not enjoying tri training as much as I did last year.  This month has been hard because I've had a lot to do and my tri group from the Y has a very different training schedule than last year.  Definitely excuses, but it is annoying.  Last summer I had 1 activity every day and I was training for a sprint tri which meant 1 a day was good enough and whatever the group did was good enough.  This Olympic tri means more training and this summer a lot of it is by myself.  Wahhhhh....

I don't know how people train for Ironman races!

Food has been okay except for this last week.  Let's take today for example.  Breakfast was breakfast sandwich and veggies (decent), lunch was baked chicken and veggies (good!), I came home and had 2 breadsticks + marinara sauce, chips & hummus, half a hershey's bar, and more chips (freaking awful!).  Sigh.  Planning would be a good thing to do!

Sorry for a lack of real pics!  My phone had so many amazing pics for this post, but it died on Sunday and I am not able to recover ANYTHING!!! Boooooo....

A gold star for anyone who actually finished this post.  Let me know where to mail it :)

A VERY HAPPY FRIDAY!

Onederland!

Changing things up

**oops!  meant to post this like a week and a half ago....**

In the past week – and even the past 4 days, I have changed/added several things!
I don’t stick to goals a lot and just meander around.  What can I say?  I like doing my own thing!  But I have some goals related to my Olympic tri in early August and my fitness in general that I would like to achieve.  Thus, I have hired a health coach. 
When we met on Monday, I said that one of my goals was to remain injury free.  She asked what I was doing to work toward that goal.  Uh – nothing?  I rarely stretch and although I do attend yoga once a week, I can definitely be more proactive in this area. 
My favorite question she had to ask was definitely about my pooping habits.  That answer/response puts your relationship to the next level! Haha
I have been around 205lbs for quite a while now.  I have always said my fitness comes first and whatever weight I lose is great, but UGH I WANT TO BE UNDER 200 POUNDS.  The high 190s is what I was when I graduated high school/went to college.  It’s been a while!  I took matters into my own hands and ate a breakfast sandwich for…breakfast, delicious salad and an apple for lunch and had my favorite soup for dinner every day last week. No snacks.  Only thing other than tons of water was spark once a day. Where did it get me?  Haha I did not lose weight last week!  Now, there could be several factors involved, of course.  I wrote a whole post out and included what I ate at every meal.  And then to not lose weight was disappointing. This is why I don’t like to focus on weight. 
So, I joined a Diet Bet.  Now, I’m fully expecting not to win.  At this point, 4% would be 8.2lbs and I don’t see that happening.  But it will be nice to have a goal with a time limit and cheer the other betters on. 
If I were strict with my diet and focused on that, I think I might be able to do it.  But I realized last week that my Olympic tri is ONLY 11 weeks (now 10) away!  Uh, training plan anybody?  I had marked one down, but that plan had weird rest days and would more often than not have workouts like “Tuesday:  20 min swim, 40 min bike”.  Which is fine, but that’s a lot of gear to have at once and really – am I going to ONLY swim 20 minutes?  Likely not!  I was perusing Midwest triathlons last week and came across this Olympic tri that had a training plan right on the website.  http://leonstriathlon.com/schedule-olympic-triathlon-training.php   The plan has you training 6 days a week, which I don’t intend to do, but I can definitely get 6 workouts in per week. 
I love the flexibility of my single girl schedule.  Monday I was supposed to run, but had a horrendous headache and was in bed at 8pm after meeting with my health coach and hanging out with my brother a bit.  Tuesday was the normal back to back yoga/swim sessions.  Wednesday I was supposed to bike, but of course it was storming!  I decided I was going to go to the indoor track at the local rec center and get at least my 35 min run in, but aim for the 60 minute run that I had scheduled for Thursday evening.  I wasn’t too excited about running that long on the indoor track!  It was pouring when I got in the car, but when I arrived about 5 minutes later, the rain had ceased.  It wasn’t clear skies, but it was definitely clear for now!  I decided to do a loop around the rec center that I know is a little over a mile.  About 15 seconds into my run, it started raining, but it only lasted about 30 seconds.  It was so amazing to BE OUTSIDE and splish
splashing through little puddles and there were tons of little wildlife critters out.  The first mile is always the worst, or so I say.  About 1/3 of a mile in, I thought my hamstrings were going to give me serious trouble, but they loosened up, thankfully!  As I got back to the rec center, it was still clear, so I decided to hop on the main trail and head south for a half mile.  There are very good quarter mile markers on this trail and the streets intersect it every half mile, so it is very easy to keep track.  I got to the cross street to complete my half mile, but the mile marker was on the far side of the road.  So I crossed and decided to go another quarter mile.  As I turned around, it was soooo gorgeous with it being in the low 60s and a little bit of sun streaming through to the trail where trees cover most of it.  It wasn’t until this point that I saw another runner!  This trail is usually packed! When I saw how beautiful it was, I gasped
“Oh my Jesus!”  Haha, can’t stick to the normal exclamations!
I got back to the rec center at 3 miles and I knew that if I could go another quarter mile out and back, I could match my longest continuous run at 3.5 miles and stop for a rest/drink of water at the rec center.  I had to do a little running in circles around the entrance before my phone said 3.5.  It would have been fine, but there was definitely a high school couple having out with some PDA right there.  Oh well!  I paused my workout on my app and got a drink.  I walked to the other end of the rec center and restarted my running from that exit.  I had 15 more minutes left of running.  I didn’t know if I could run the whole time, but I would try!  When my app said I hit 4 miles, the pace said 10:41.  Now, one thing is for sure – if I’m running a 10:41 mile, I will only be running ONE mile!  My app definitely paused the time, but connected the distance from one side of rec center to the other!  Good thing I was running for time, not distance!

I made it to the hour mark and then walked back to my car.  It felt good to accomplish that on such a beautiful interpass between storms (I may have made that word up!) – it was pouring again not 15  minutes later!  I went home, made dinner, showered, and stretched and foam rolled.  Unfortunately, I’m super sore today.  To be made worse by swim practice this morning.  I’m really tired!  I still have a 50 min bike/35 min run left to get in this week.  I was going to do something else tonight, but I am tired/sore and got asked to babysit, so I just might do an early morning BRICK workout tomorrow.  I thought about it this morning as I was heading to swim practice – it was a perfect morning for a bike ride! 
All of that to say, I need my weekends to be weekends.  I’m getting more involved at the church and would like to have a social life too, and trying to fit in big miles just felt like a ton of pressure.  Again, just so thankful for my single girl schedule where I can do what I want, when I want!  
Also, I stopped going to Dunkin Donuts as my Saturday morning treat.  Their iced coffee was packed full of sugar and after drinking it, I would be hanging out at the church after prayer and feeling so shaky/awful.  Then I would go home and lay down for a few hours to recover.  Definite sugar overdose!  That also hurt my Saturday workouts, obvi. 
Lastly, I have signed up for 2 races this week – a 5 mile race (the 5K option was not timed – duh, I want to have a race timed!) It was only $18 and for a branch of the company that I work for.  A week from Saturday.  It’s a small race, so I’m 99% sure I’ll come in last, but hey I’ll be good as long as they don’t close the course on me!  Definitely going to bring my own water bottle – just in case!
The other I signed up for is a sprint triathlon.  I need to get a sprint in and this one had been on my radar for a long while.  A couple weeks ago, my frenemy Will told me that it was SUPER hilly.  But I’m not trusting him 100%/in denial/going to be a big girl about this.  It is near my hometown and we are having my family reunion that weekend, so it was really a no brainer as long as I get over my aversion of hills.  Note:  go ride more hills! 

As always, here are some pics! :)

Pics of the sky before my run - not too shabby this way

A little bit iffy this way

My favorite part - sorry wasn't going to stop running!

Just me and the empty (blurry) trail!

Went to take a selfie and someone almost backed into me. This is my concerned face.

#rundrunk

How did my biking the next morning go?  Here is a hint...