The summer is off to a slow start

I haven't posted much because I don't have a lot going on. It was a rough week this week, and it got off to a slow start. I had good workout days yesterday and today, which felt good.

I did sign up for a 5K in a few weeks! For the third year in a row, I hope to run the Pure Detroit 5K (2016, 2017 race reports). It's right down the street from me and I will be totally fine running it slowly at my own pace, as my knee is still healing.

I also found a flat duathlon at the end of summer that I am thinking about, although I'm not signed up for it quite yet. I've never done a du, so it would be an automatic PR. Yay!

I failed on one of my healthy living goals this month — take at least a long weekend off every month this summer. I took two half days this month, once for a migraine and once to get out of town to escape the fireworks, but that was it.

Also, I missed the broadcast of "40 Years of Dreams," not hearing about it until I had already left for work, too late to set my DVR. (Trailer here.) If you saw it, let me know how it is!

I will watch this eventually!

Week in review June 18-24: Step in dog poop, bike, run

This past week was a busy one, so I’m going to blame that for not updating here. We skipped town last night because my lab mix Daisy hates fireworks, and it was the International Freedom Festival in Windsor and Detroit... with lots of fireworks. So we headed to my in-laws for a nice dinner and a quiet evening.

Mutts chilling at Gwamma and Gwappa's.

Last week got off to a craptastic start, literally. We dogsat for my parents’ geriatric shih tzu, Jack, and when I got up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night I stepped into a pile of his poop. Sigh. Most likely, he was just stressed from the travel and staying at our place. The rest of the week passed with much less excitement. Thankfully.

Everyone tolerated each other, for the most part.

With that start to my Monday, it could only get better, right? I managed a decent number of workouts, although I still haven’t broken the 10-hour training mark. I gave up one night to hang out with friends in their sweet backyard setup and eat a delicious pork roast from their smoker. The weather was rainy and I didn’t feel like dealing with it Saturday, so I did a long trainer ride instead of trying to hit the road, although I had luck avoiding getting rained on when I went for a run on Sunday.

Not a bad week.

All told, it was:

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer, for almost 30 fake trainer miles in just longer than 3 hours.

Run/walk: Three times, twice on the road and once on the treadmill, for 11.25 miles in about 2:42.

Everything bike and run felt pretty OK this week. I had some twinges doing both activity here and there, maybe a little discomfort, but nothing that reached real pain or made me want to pull the plug.

PT: Four solo rehab sessions for about 2:30 total. I did one each Monday and Tuesday, slacked massively for the rest of the week, and picked up again Saturday and Sunday. Oh well, at least I did something.

Weights: One round of my heavy/bodyweight moves for about 1:15. I am definitely feeling the renewed interest in chin-ups and pushups.

Total: 11 sessions in about 9:30. Not bad at all!

I didn’t do any yoga this week. Early week was PT focused, and I had errands and such Thursday, and by Friday I was sooooooooooo tired all I could manage was a mediocre run. I really should have at least stretched while watching TV but… oh well. I was pretty lame and stayed in for most of the weekend.

I have a couple of health goals to work on these next few weeks. I have to get better at going to bed earlier. I get up at 5:45-ish currently and a good night is one where I’m in bed by 10:30. I was up too late both weekend nights. Blech. My problem is, I try to cram too much stuff into the precious few evening hours.

My other health goal is to slowly try to get back to the pool. I went this morning for a blood draw which may confirm or deny my suspicions that I am actually over medicated for my thyroid issue, which could be causing the shortness of breath and anxiety. Getting my thyroid taken seriously and then medicated appropriately has been a 10+ year struggle, and I’m so used to being slow and sluggish. Well, I’ll know more after the draw and follow up in a couple weeks.

I hope your week is off to a good, poop-free start.

Week in review June 11-17: 10 miles of run/walking! But not enough PT

Not a bad week - a nice variety, even if PT was lacking.

It feels like 103 degrees outside so I am hibernating for the foreseeable future. Yesterday was the hottest day of the year here so far. After a walk around the block, my dogs pass out for two hours. (OK, that part I don’t mind.)

I did move my run indoors yesterday, but I did run twice last week and ride once last week outside before the heat wave moved in. I hit one of my goals of run/walking 10 miles over the course of the week, but I definitely slacked on the PT.

Other than that it wasn't a bad week. I had a good mix of training (except for swimming) although I didn't do as much as I would have liked in each. I really want to hit 10 hours of training one of these weeks! 9.5 hours last week is the best I've done in a while.

Anyway, last week worked out to be:

Bike: Three times, twice on the trainer and one nice road ride, for a bit less than 3 hours. My road ride was 20 miles in about an hour and a half, super easy and spinning up the "hills" that pass for hills in southeast Michigan.

Run/walk: Three times, twice on the road and once on the treadmill, for a total of 10.27 miles in about 2:45. Everything felt operational.

PT/rehab: Major slackage here. Only twice for an hour total. Blech.

Weights: One hour-long barre class.

Yoga: One 20-minute solo session.

Total: 10 sessions in almost exactly 8 hours.

Another victory from last week was that I did at least one thing every single day. Hooray! I prepped food for the week on Sunday and took a salad to work for lunch every single day. Hooray, again! Training wasn't 100% but healthy eating was on point, and that counts for something.

Heat wave be damned. Hopefully this next week will be even better than last.

Triathlon, 7 years later

Cat 5 tattoo (chain grease marks) from my first triathlon.

Three days ago was the 7-year anniversary of my first triathlon. It made me smile when it popped up in my Facebook memories, but it also made me a bit sad that I’m not in a condition to be triathloning right now.

Lately, I have been consistently frustrated with how little of my day I have to dedicate to any type of training. I have to get up before 6 a.m. to walk the dogs, eat breakfast, and get ready for work (which I’m almost always a few minutes late for anyway). If I go to barre or for a run right after work I don’t get home until at least 7:15 p.m. By the time I do my PT, if I do my PT, and eat dinner, it’s 9-9:30 p.m. and I need to shower and get to bed so I can do it all the next day.

What on earth had I done differently in the past to make training for a 70.3 doable, while still working a full-time job? I went back a few years in my Google calendar to see, and came up with a few things:

• I only worked half-time in an office and remotely the rest of the time, which meant no commute at least two days per week. That was huge in time savings. Plus, my old office was a bit closer to home, so my commute was shorter when I had to do it.
• I worked in an industry that started later in the day, which meant I could sleep later than 4:30 a.m. if I wanted to swim before work. There’s a huge psychological difference to me in waking up at 5 something vs. waking up at 4 something.
• I didn’t really do any food prep and ate many fewer salads for lunch.
• I ate out for dinner a lot more.

So, there’s the trade-off. I eat a lot more meals at home now, eat a huge salad for lunch almost every day, and do several hours of food prep on Sunday. Is it healthier in the long run? Maybe. Probably. The saying goes, "You can't outrun a bad diet."

I had to make a conscious realization a while ago that I could only reasonably expect to do three things after work: One errand (usually stopping somewhere on the way home from work), one workout, and one meal. Sometimes that errand becomes PT, sometimes it all gets thrown out the window for lazing on the couch. I think I’m overall happier trying NOT to cram too much stuff into my evening. Most of the time.

So, what's a time-crunched person to do? I fit as much as I can in the 4 hours or so I have every evening, try to get to bed at a decent hour, and take it easy on myself for not doing everything. The other option is to stay up too late, and that doesn't work for me, either.

I don't know when, or if, I'll ever get back into multisport. My available time is going to be one of my limiters for now. I'm going to keep working at being efficient with what time I do have, and train when I can. I don't see myself doing anything long course while I have this work schedule, but maybe a sprint will be in the near future again. 

I came from zero triathlon experience 7 years ago — I can do it again, right? Time (heh) will tell.

Health goals check-in: OR, The Caffeine Situation

Sunday morning was quiet and leisurely, just the way I like it, but I only had a cup and a half or so of coffee with breakfast. I didn’t think much of it until I needed to take a 20-minute nap in the afternoon before I started my food prep and treadmill run. “Tee hee, I wonder if that was because I didn’t have that much coffee this morning?” I joked.

I felt better afterward and my run was fine. I was up a bit later than I would have liked finishing up in the kitchen and getting ready for work, but I didn’t get to bed TOO much later than I usually do. I was woken up at about 4 a.m. by a pounding headache. “OH NOOOO,” was all I could think. This was no longer a “tee hee” situation.

I tried to get up and get ready for work. I raced to the bathroom thinking I was going to throw up. I crawled back to bed. My crazy dog jumped up in bed with me to play and I had to push her away because petting her hurt my head. Everything hurt my head. Texting my boss to say I wasn’t getting out of bed hurt my head. I made my husband take the dogs out and make some coffee. I sipped as much as I could without barfing and tried to sleep it off.

By 9 a.m. I was starting to feel more normal and could tolerate things like moving and sunlight. I made another half pot of coffee. “I think this is a sign,” I said to myself.

So, starting today, I’m trying out a new coffee routine that caffeinates me a little less. Instead of taking with me to work a full travel mug, I’ll have one small cup as I eat breakfast. After I got to work today, I made myself drink one 24-oz cup of water (I have several of these and I love them) before making myself one 10-oz coffee (per my Keurig), which I was done with by 10:30 a.m. or so. And that is going to have to be it for the day.

Pre-work coffee....

and at-work coffee.

I don’t know that I could ever quit coffee completely. I love the taste of good coffee and I don’t think I could ever give up my French press. But I don’t want to be getting rebound migraines, either. I guess finding that happy medium will be part of my never-ending journey toward better health.

And that means I have another goal to add to my Be Less of a Fatass goals, which I haven't checked in on here a while. I keep them in a Notes file on my phone, so they are ever-evolving and sometimes vary from week to week, but generally:

- No potato chips: This one was a fail as of last night. I used being sick earlier in the day as an excuse. Before yesterday, though, I had avoided chips for at least a few weeks.

- Build to 10 miles per week run/walk: I’ve hit 9+ miles a couple of times. Increasing my run interval by 30 seconds or 1 minute these next few weeks should do the trick.

- Use up my barre classes before they expire: haha. I have until the end of the month to go twice. I’m going to try for tomorrow or Thursday.

- Organize PT exercises: Right now all my PT homework is a half-shredded photocopied packet with multiple highlighter colors, stars, and underlines. I’d like to organize these into “every time” and “every other time” exercises.

- Also – Rehab knee: Working on this, too. Run intervals are going well.

- Yogurt salad dressing: Success! I have started using a homemade plain coconut milk yogurt and herb dressing instead of olive oil.

- Yoga once per week: Working on this.

- Drink all the water I bring to work: I almost always drink my Tervis tumbler plus another large water bottle I bring with me.

- Fish for dinner twice per week: This has been a success almost every week.

- Three hanging chin-ups in a row, one full hanging pullup: I am so freaking close to one full hanging pullup.

- Weigh in lower than my lowest weight two years ago: Working on this.

- Back to swimming: This one is also a work in progress. I’m trying to figure out issues that might be breathing or anxiety related, and would like to order more swim tools to make getting to the pool less of a drudgery. More on this later.

So, that’s where I’m at now. Still working on making small healthy changes, still working toward doing a little better each day health-wise, and making bigger adjustments as I have to. BLOAF will probably never be “finished,” but I can always improve.

Week in review June 4-10: Two and a half hours is the sweet spot

A nice, even spread among sports.

Adding up the numbers for last week, it was fun to see that of the four disciplines I did any training in, all fell within a 2.25-hour to 2.5-hour time range. And I didn’t even plan it that way.

It was also fun to see that my 9.5 hours of training time was the most I have done in a while. I had to call up my 2017 training document to see that mid-September was the last time I did anything approaching 10 hours. I would have loved to hit 10, but I was stressing big time by the time Sunday evening came around, and didn’t get in any yoga like I had hoped. Not hitting 10 hours came at the expense of going out to eat one night with my husband, and spending another evening in the garden. I KNOW – it doesn’t get wilder than that. Both evenings were well worth it!

It worked out to be:

PT/Rehab: Four times, all solo homework sessions, for about 2.5 hours.

Run/Walk: Three times, twice on the road and once on the treadmill, for about 9.15 miles in about 2:27. I have been doing a 0.75-1 mile warmup walk, 4 run repeats with walking recovery between each, and a 0.5-0.75-mile cooldown.

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer (it was raining Saturday), for 20 trainer miles in about 2:18. I went for an hour on Saturday and everything felt fine.

Weights: Twice, one barre class and one round of heavy/body weight moves at home, for about 2:15. I added back lightly-weighted deadlifts, squats, and forward and backward lunges for the first time in months.

Total: 12 sessions in about 9:29.

If I can do all this again next week, I’ll be a happy camper. If I can do all this again and add some yoga, I’ll be even happier. If I can do all this again, get an outside bike ride done, and hit 10 miles running, I’ll be over the moon. Let’s see how far last week’s momentum will take me.

Adding more weights back into the routine

Since I was unofficially discharged from PT last week, and I'm no longer doing any lunges or lower-body weights at the clinic, I decided to add them back into my heavy/body weight exercises today.

I took it super easy and did 10 each of deadlifts, squats, forward lunges, and backward lunges with 15 pound weights in each hand. (I also added pushups back into the routine and did all my usual stuff.) I was careful not to drop too low on any move and to pay close attention to how my knee was feeling. The good news is it felt fine throughout.

I'll probably never deadlift my bodyweight and squat ass-to-grass again, but it did feel good to do something even moderately challenging for my lower half. And it felt even better that my knee cooperated.

And after I biked, lifted, and did my PT, I scrubbed the shower because adulting. It was the sweatiest I got all day! Then I rewarded myself with a pedicure, wine, and chocolate.

Week in review May 28-June 3: A little bit of a lot

Not a bad variety of activity.

I had a super busy day yesterday with an all-day work event and trying to cram too much stuff into the evening (although I did make it out to the garden for the first time this season, which was wonderful), so writing a recap of last week was an afterthought. Whoops!

The short version is I had a decent week and did a lot of stuff, although not too much of any one thing. I played hooky one day to have a nice mid-week dinner with my husband, but I did a bit extra on Memorial Day, which I had off work. It ended up being a nice balance.

We also had good weather most of the week, and although I stuck to the treadmill on Friday since it was threatening rain, I got my first outdoor ride of the season done, too. Hooray!

The week worked out to be:

PT/Rehab: Four sessions, one in the clinic with the therapist and four more homework sessions, for about 3 hours total. I was unofficially discharged from PT after this last session, UNOFFICIALLY, which is why I’m not treating it as a bigger deal. There’s really not much else I can learn from PT at this point. I have been going faithfully, doing at least a dozen exercises and spending almost two hours there each time, while also doing my homework at least a few times a week, for five months.

If this doesn’t help, we start talking chicken cartilage injections and maybe surgery WAY down the line. For now I need to be faithful with my almost-daily at-home rehab program. One of my goals this week is to organize my huge packet of homework exercises into what I should be doing daily, what I should be doing a few times per week, and what I can add back into my regular weights routine.

Run/walk: Three times, twice on the road and once on the treadmill, for 9.18 miles in about 2:25. I keep getting these weird mileage totals because I am recording three separate workouts of a walk, run/walk intervals, and another walk on my Garmin and I almost never remember the totals so I can end on a round number. My goal for this week is to hit 10 miles and continue with the 3:00 run/2:00 walk for 4 run intervals until I have zero knee pain. I am still getting the odd twinge and I don’t want to overdo it.

Bike: Twice, once on the trainer and once OUTSIDE, for 5 trainer miles and 13 road miles in about 1:33. I rode on the road for less than an hour, and probably spent more time driving and getting ready to ride than I did actually riding, but it was a beautiful day and I was thrilled to be out for an easy spin.

Weights: Twice, my heavy/body routine minus squats and lunges in two sessions for about 35 minutes total. I ran out of time Tuesday and saved abs for later in the week. As I mentioned earlier, now that I’m unofficially done with PT I’ll start working lunges and squats back into my weights routine rather than at the clinic.

Yoga: I did squeeze in 20 minutes of pigeons, bends, and twists while catching up on Westworld. Not ideal but it was something and it was much needed.

Total: 12 sessions in just shy of 8 hours. Hey, I’ll take an average of more than hour per day.

Of course I would like hours and hours of free time, and lots and lots of cartilage, to train whenever I want. But I can't complain. Fingers crossed that this week will be just as good.

May in review: Vacation meant LOTS of hiking

I was afraid that going on vacation for a chunk of May would really limit the amount of training I would be able to do. Yes, I didn't get in as much running and biking as I would have liked as a result, but my sister-in-law and her husband are big into hiking around California. So, not only did I get in a good 8 hours of hiking over the month, I got to experience vistas like this:

Point Reyes National Seashore, California.

(When I say "hiking," I mean moderately challenging trails that can be done in tennis shoes. They were all definitely workouts, but we weren't summiting Mt. Katahdin. I didn't want to do anything that required bringing my actual hiking boots in my already overweight suitcase.)

Of course, the biggest success of the month was getting cleared to return to a run/walk program. I ran a few times at a walk warmup / 2:00 running, 3:00 walking x 4 / walk cool down, and bumped it up to 3:00 running / 2:00 walking once at the end of the month. Although I had a few twinges in my knee here and there, I was able to run/walk six times, all without any actual pain.

I also did a bunch of biking on the trainer and a whole lot of PT and rehab. I didn't make it to the pool (more on that later) or do any yoga, sadly.

May wan't too bad.

By the numbers, it was:

Other: Three long hikes and one boxing session for about 8 hours, 50 minutes. 8 hours of that was hiking three times along three beautiful trails in California (Lake Tahoe twice, Point Reyes once), for about 18 miles total.

PT/rehab: Ten sessions for about 7:15 total this included two clinic PT sessions and eight homework sessions. I need to do this a little more regularly than every third day, but I didn't do any on vacation and that set me back.

Run/walk: Six times, four on the road and two on both road and dirt trail, for 17.99 miles (seriously?) in about 4:45. Hooray!!!

Bike: Five trainer sessions of 5 "miles" each, for almost 3 hours total.

Weights: Four sessions for about 2:10 total. This included one barre class and two rounds of heavy/body weights, one split up into two.

Total: 29 workouts in almost 26 hours. The long hikes definitely skewed this a bit, but it still works out to almost one workout per day so I'm not complaining!

Let's also take a look back at my loose goals for 2018 and how they looked for May:

Work through my health issues and re-start a training schedule that gets me back to racing. Still in progress. I have a fun 5K in mind for next month. Unfortunately another health issue seems to have popped up, but I am hoping to work through that one, too.

Run some cool places, maybe another marathon. YES! I got to experience a couple nice marsh runs in California.

Like this beautiful California marsh trail!

Work on whole-body health, incorporating things like yoga and pre-hab. PT/rehab/pre-hab is getting there. Yoga less so.

Keep a healthy work-life-training-family-friends-other balance. I think going on vacation for a good chunk of the month counts! I also got some additional hanging-out-with-friends time in.

Have fun. There was definitely a lot of fun to be had this month.

Knock on wood, but June seems to be off to a good start. Here's hoping I can build on the successes of May and keep the momentum going for another month.

A ride outside

I rode outside today! Although it was short and sweet, my knee behaved, which is what I was most worried about.

The day started off cool and breezy but it warmed up a bit and the sun came up by the time I hit the road shortly after 1 p.m. I just did one lap of the 6.5-mile out-and-back of a road closed to traffic and called it a day. I didn't want to overdo it on my first ride back.

13 slow miles is still 13 miles. I made sure to look around and enjoy the sunshine and birds, taking a few moments just to be happy I was out there.

Shadow me giving the thumbs up!