A week of celebration and Thanksgiving

My birthday usually falls during the week of Thanksgiving, so the past few days have been nothing but eating, celebrating, and other mild debauchery.

I really don't care about how many calories are in stuffing or pie, and I really don't care to punish myself with exercise to burn off calories. I eat my food, I enjoy my food. I choose to train (most days), I enjoy my training (most days). If I do a Turkey Trot, great. If I sit on the couch and watch The Godfather all day, also great.

I had to stop one Thanksgiving discussion from going too far into calories and points because... come on. It's Thanksgiving. Eat your turkey cupcakes.

I didn't do any activity on my birthday but I did do some stretching after everyone left on Thanksgiving day. I picked it back up Friday (I had the day off work) with a barre class, a run, and my PT. I continued today with a trainer ride and more PT. I wasn't "burning off my dinner." I was training because I like to train.

I found a few memes that perfectly sum up my feelings on the matter:

I plan on getting back into my normal eating routine for December, indulging at parties and gatherings when I want. I won't "burn off" those meals, either. I'll eat what I want, train when I want, and enjoy myself — and I hope you do, too.

Week in review Nov. 18-24: Finally, some heavy weights and PT

Finally, something resembling a good week.

I got back into something resembling a groove last week. I rode the trainer or ran after work Monday through Thursday, I did a long trainer ride Saturday, and I did a longer-than-usual-but-not-quite-long run on Sunday. It was pretty much a normal week.

I was also able to rally Saturday and Sunday for one more thing each day, my heavy/body weight routine on Saturday and, finally, some PT/pre-hab on Sunday. I went back through my logs and it had been three months, almost to the day, since I last lifted heavy. Ugh! Two days later and I am still feeling it. I really struggle in the evenings making time for PT after a workout but I didn’t let myself have any excuses Sunday and I got it done.

For a couple of weeks now, I have been having some pain in my outer hip area … on the left side, where almost all of my injuries have occured. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the hip pain started up a week or so after I really started neglecting my PT exercises and let my weights slide to once per week on a good week. During resistance band clamshells and hip extensions hurt SO badly Sunday. I know I am letting my glutes get weak, and my hips are probably compensating, painfully.

Logically, I know I cannot keep neglecting PT as I get older but it is SO hard for me in the evenings after a long day of work, a run or trainer ride, making dinner, and getting to bed at a decent hour. Now that it’s cold out, it’s probably time to dust off the slow cooker and throw a meal in there a couple of times per week to save me an hour in the evenings. I did make a big pot of chili and a lasagna this past weekend, so that’s a start!

Anyway, last week’s workouts were:

Bike: Three times, all on the trainer, for 62.5 fake trainer miles in about 4:05. This is two, hour-long rides during the week and a two-hour ride on Saturday, all while watching The Good Place.

Run: Twice on the treadmill and once on the road for 18.5 miles in about 3:13. The treadmill runs were nice and boring 5-milers to not aggravate my hip/glute situation, and Sunday’s run was a nice, long-ish easy run around the neighborhood while the temperatures weren’t quite as cold as they have been and the sun was still shining. I took this super easy and did 7 running miles, which isn’t too shabby for taking two weeks off long runs. All runs started and ended with a quarter-mile walk, for the extra 1.5 miles.

Weights: One round of my heavy/body routine (stuff like pushups, deadlifts, shoulder presses, etc.) for about 1:15. I tried a 10-minute ab/core workout at the end of a Bob Harper (of the Biggest Loser) video I’ve been neglecting, and eh. I don’t think I’ll do it again, but at least I tried something new.

PT: One round of my running form exercises plus some rolling of my quads/IT bands and calves afterward for about 35 minutes.

Total: 8 sessions in about 9:08, a pretty good week for me these days.

I had some other fun in there in addition to the chili and lasagna: We hung out with friends on Friday night, we went to a nice breakfast out Saturday, I had a long-overdue Skype call with my sister, and I made a couple of fun desserts yesterday (although it remains to be seen if any will still be around Thursday!). This week, I am hoping to get in nice workouts early in the week, take Wednesday off for something that rhymes with schmirthday, and eat too much for Thanksgiving on Thursday. I do have Friday off work so I’m hoping to get in a nice run and maybe a barre class, and then be in a good position to get some longer training done over the weekend. And do some relaxing, of course.

I am very much looking forward to a few days off, turkey, and Thanksgiving treats. Whether you celebrate or not, I hope you all have a great week.

Week in review Nov. 11-17: A birthday and a tight IT band means I’m still not back on schedule

Not a great week, but most of these were solid.

I’m a bit bummed because this last week was another training flop. I had high hopes that we’d get back from our Traverse City/Chicago getaway early enough Monday that I could fit in a trainer ride, but the weather was so bad we didn’t get home until almost 10 p.m. I knew I’d likely be taking Saturday completely off training to celebrate my husband’s birthday at the college football game, but I ended up inflaming my IT band during my speed run Friday badly enough that I could barely walk Saturday. I was still in a bit of pain on Sunday, so I decided to play it safe and not do anything.

As a result, I don’t have much to report. The workouts I DID do were pretty good, though: A nice and boring treadmill run; a good speed run of descending miles with the last at a 8:27 pace, which was challenging but doable for me at this point in my fitness; a hard trainer ride during which I didn’t need to take any breaks; and my first barre class in more than a month. So, four workouts Tuesday through Friday with quality over quantity, I guess? It’s something.

Anyway, last week was:

Run: Twice, both on the treadmill, for 11.5 miles in just shorter than two hours.

Bike: One trainer ride of 16 fake trainer miles just longer than one hour.

Weights: One hour-long barre class.

Total: Four sessions in just about four hours.

I am really, REALLY hoping I can get back into a routine this week. I want to have some solid habits back in place to offset some of the turkey and sweets I’ll be enjoying regret-free over the holidays. Except for typical vacation and birthday celebration eating this last week and a half, I actually have been eating spinach and lean meat for breakfast and bringing a salad for lunch every day, so I have that going for me. But as much as Oct. 31 through Jan. 1 is a long string of candy, birthday sweets, and holiday cookies, I don’t need to indulge EVERY day.

Here’s to another week. Hopefully I can get through it with limited IT band tightness and sugar highs, and lots of solid training sessions.

Another bump in FTP!

I need to spend more time here, working hard.

In early October I re-tested my FTP (functional threshold power) to see what gains I have been making on the bike trainer. It didn’t go well.

It started off feeling really hard and I knew right away it wasn’t going to be pretty. I couldn’t keep up with the wattage targets and was at failure much earlier than I would have liked or expected. The suggested new target afterward was lower than the previous by 5 points, so I declined it.

I’m not sure why it was such a dud – it had been a weird week of family in town and then a college football homecoming game, so my schedule was a bit off. I don’t remember my eating or sleeping being particularly bad in the few days before except for general not sleeping enough during the week and life stress. I had run the day before, but it was nothing too strenuous. It was probably just a bad day.

So, earlier in November, about 3.5 weeks after the first test, I tried again. This time the trainer gods smiled down upon me. I could tell from the beginning that it was going to be a good test, and I was able to keep increasing my effort for far longer than the time before. In the end, I had a new, shiny FTP a full 4.9% higher than my last successful test in mid-August. Woo hoo! I had been expecting only an incremental gain (my last two increases were 2-3%) so I was pretty stoked to see such a jump.

… That is, of course, until my next two rides when I actually had to try to sustain something close to that new power goal. One of my go-tos on Trainer Road is Gilbert, during which you ride steadily for 5 minutes just below FTP, then increase for 5 minutes, then recover, for four intervals. This time around, I had to take a break halfway through every 10-minute interval. But that’s OK, because the next time I do this, I hope to have improved to the point where I can take no breaks, or at least get a few minutes into the increase before I have to dial it back.

If nothing else, this was a reminder that progress may not be linear all the time, but forward is still forward. If you keep working hard, you’ll probably get better – what a concept! I want to test one more time before the end of the year to see if I can get a little better with some more hard work. In the meantime, it's all about putting in the time and effort to keep increasing the engine.

November 4-10 in review: Vacation not-running

Bike, run, head out of town.

Well, I’m glad I front-loaded some workouts last week because running on my mini-vacation did not happen. I brought clothes for a chilly outdoor run and a hotel gym run, but I was neither brave enough for the ice and snow that blanketed northern Michigan, nor disciplined enough to get out of a comfortable hotel bed on less than 8 hours of sleep to run before breakfast and checking out.

However, the extra-long weekend was still a lot of fun. We had to skip a winery event because my little car literally could not make it up an ice-covered hill, but we made it to several other wineries and several breweries, and did get some exercise doing some light, snowy hiking on the trails in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. We couldn’t do the dune climb in the snow but we probably got in a good 4-5 miles of light-to-moderate trail hiking. I should have worn my Garmin! There was a part hiking up a ski trail that we were peeling off layers in 20-degree temperatures, we were working so hard. The views of orange leaves against the white snow was gorgeous!

After our jaunt up north we headed to Chicagoland to surprise a friend for his birthday, which we pulled off successfully! We did a little walking around Chicago on Sunday and some 12-ounce curls, but I only logged three real workouts Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before heading out of town Thursday morning. But, that’s ok – it was nice to take a break and get away from it all for a few days. And now my wine cabinet is full of cherry and dessert wines from the Leelanau Peninsula. Yum!

The workouts were:

Bike: Twice, both on the trainer, for 32 fake trainer miles in about 2:05. Both of these were at my new FTP (update coming soon) and I was SUFFERING, especially on the second. I have never had to take so many breaks for a trainer ride. But now I have a goal to come back and do that same ride with fewer breaks.

Run: Once on the treadmill for 5.5 miles in 57 minutes. A boring, steady-state run to get in some mileage before heading out.

Total: Three sessions in 3:02.

Any activity I can get in during a week that includes heading out of town is a success in my book, so we’ll call it a stepback week. This week I am ready to get back into a groove and burn off some of those party drinks and vacation breakfasts, and to make sure I’m securely on the wagon when the holidays start coming fast and furious in a few weeks.

In the meantime, enjoy some beautiful northern Michigan hiking pics:

October: Not bad training through football, fall, a 5K, and more

Not a shabby breakdown for the month.

October had a bit of everything – family in town, football games, a 5K, sickness, and passing out candy for Halloween. The way the month was all over the place, I’m kind of impressed I kept up with any kind of training schedule at all.

I ended up with about 30 hours of training in 30 workouts, which makes me happy. I counted 8 (!) days off from training for the month for sickness, Halloween, or whatever, so that works out to about 1.4 workouts per days I did workouts. Not bad! Any time I can end up with about a workout per day and about an hour per day average for the month, I’m going to feel a-OK about that.

I did start off strong-ish for weight training and PT but petered out with both by the end of the month. I also didn’t do nearly as much yoga as I should have, especially since I increased my running mileage a bit and was a little tight and sore as a result. But I did do some good rides and runs, and it showed. I built up to 8 miles running in October, and did a fun 5K with my husband. Cycling was less exciting, as I had my first failed FTP test, but I got right back in the saddle and kept working. I watched a lot of Netflix this month.

October’s numbers worked out to be:

Monthly running mileage since December.

Run: 12 times, 10 on the road (including one race) and twice on the treadmill for 70.75 total miles (including my usual quarter-mile warmup and cooldown) in just longer than 12 hours. Wow! I am happy to have built slowly and steadily enough that I feel I can have a good month. I’m still running three times per week most weeks of one easy, one speedy, and one long-ish. I want to add one more easy run in there somewhere, but I feel there’s other, lower-hanging training fruit I need to look at first.

Monthly cycling mileage since December.

Bike: 9 times, all on the trainer, for 177.5 fake trainer miles in about 11 hours, 45 minutes. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my overall bike time and run time are so similar – I attribute that to doing a couple of 2-hour rides. No, it wasn't the greatest mileage month, but I still did a decent amount of work.

Weights: 4 times, 3 videos and 1 barre class, for about 4:15. I started the month off strong and petered out.

PT: 3 times for about 1:45. Again, the month started off strong and then PT got abandoned.

Yoga: 2 times for about 30 minutes total. These were two quick sessions Sunday evenings and not nearly enough for how tight my hips, hamstrings, quads, and calves are.

Total: 30 sessions in about 30:17.

I'm only 23 minutes short of what I did last month, even though I logged 3 fewer workouts this month. I am keeping up my routine most of the time, adding mileage where appropriate, and taking breaks when needed. Considering all that, I'm pretty pleased with how October shook out.

I know that I'll be out of town for a couple of days in November, and the holidays are on their way, so I don't know what this next month will bring. I am banking on all the good rides and runs from October to give me momentum into another good and productive training month.

Week in review Oct. 28-Nov. 3: Run, ride, trick, treat

Not logged is passing out candy time.

Ugh, I am WAY behind in my posting. I have so much to talk about – October wrap up! Another FTP test attempt! – but last week was a bit tricky, and I’m just now feeling like I’m catching up.

The week started off weirdly by doing my “long” run from the week before on Monday, since that whole week and weekend had been thrown off by getting sick and a gloomy, lazy Saturday. Because of Halloween falling on this past Thursday, I knew I needed to stick to a strict run-bike-run every other day schedule this week. I wanted to go for one last after-work run in the daylight on Friday, before Daylight Savings ended; I wanted to get back on schedule for my usual long trainer ride Saturday and “long” run Sunday; and I knew we’d be celebrating my dad’s birthday on Sunday and would need to run in the morning.

So although I had a super high-for-me-right-now run mileage, that was because I did two “long” runs, on Monday and on Sunday. I ended up skipping my trainer ride on Thursday to go pass out candy and eat my weight in pork carnitas at our friends’ house (totally worth it). I am bummed I ran out of time to do “other” workouts, but I did make runs and bikes the priority, and I did get my flu shot, AND I did a bunch of healthy food prep during the week. Healthy eating is definitely a time investment!

But, enough complaining. I managed:

Run: Four times, three on the road and once on the treadmill, for 29 miles (!!!) in 4 hours, 50 minutes. Like I said, this is two “long” runs so this high volume (for me at this point) is an aberration. A few notate bene:

• Monday’s run of 8 miles felt pretty good until some IT band tightness at the very end. I enjoyed what is probably my last short-sleeved run of the season, but very stupidly wore sunglasses (prescription – I don’t wear contacts). I stopped way too many times to take pictures of pretty leaves, which didn’t help racing the sunset, and could barely see by the end because it was dark and/or blurry! Funny in retrospect, but in the moment I was worried that I was going to trip over my own feet and/or get axe murdered. Run miles averaged about a 9:47 minute per mile pace, a decent long run pace for me.
• Wednesday was cold and rainy and there was no way in hell I was running outside in that miserable weather. Call me a lightweight or whatever you want, but days like that are why we invented treadmills and gyms. 5 running miles that were boring but felt fine.
• Friday I HAD to get outside to enjoy my last after-work daylight run. It was brisk but not really cold. I did some random speed work of quarter, half, and three-quarter mile pickups, and saw a quarter- and a half-mile split that both were sub-8, which made me happy.
• Sunday I took advantage of the early daylight and got ahead of a busy day by getting up early-ish and doing my run in the morning. I was sluggish for a couple miles before my fuel kicked in, and my hips and IT band were a bit tight by the end, and it was legitimately cold, but I survived to tell the tale. 8.5 running miles worked out to an average of about a 9:39 minute per mile pace; again, not a bad pace for me.

Bike: Two rides, both on the trainer, for 37.5 fake miles in about 2:39. This was an interval ride on Tuesday and a longer ride that included another FTP test on Saturday. I was not going to give up Halloween carnitas for a ride, or wake up super early and squeeze it in, so I’m happy with this.

Total: 6 sessions in 7:28. It’s a little skewed because of the two long runs and one long ride, but it’s still an average of more than an hour a day, so I’ll take it.

It may not have been a spectacular training week but I ate well, got my flu shot, hung out with friends, went out to dinner with my husband, celebrated my dad, made a big batch of tomato sauce, and had a bunch of other fun and shenanigans. Oh, and ran and rode a bunch too. Overall, it was a pretty good week. I’m happy with it and looking forward to the next.