Looking back at March: Not great running but some other good stuff

March training by hours, ish.

I didn't hit many of my goals for March. I didn't run 100 miles, I didn't do yoga twice a week, I didn't do as much pre-hab as I wanted.

But, although my run numbers were down, I did a lot of building up in other areas. I managed to lift weights 6 times, twice as much as for February. And I finally added some biking back into the routine.

By the numbers, I managed:

Runs: 13 total, 8 on the treadmill and 5 on the road, for 75 miles in about 12.5 hours.

Like I said in my previous post, part of the reason that I have low speed and mileage is because I've been running with my husband a lot, and I'm totally OK with that. Between that, and missing runs here and there, and recovering from my quadruple race weekend, that chipped away at my goal. I'm a little bummed but not going to dwell on it. I'm still ahead of a 100-per-month goal for 2017.

Weights: 6 times, working out to 3 heavy/body sessions, 2 barre classes, and 1 video, in just less than 7 hours. This averages out to 1.5 times per week, so I'll take this as a mild success. I got out of the rotation once or twice, but was able to bump up a few weights and reps over the course of the month.

Bike: 3 times, all on the trainer, for 2:30 total. 2 of these were warmups for weights, and the last was an actual 1.5-hour workout. It does feel good to get back on the bike and work some different muscles again.

I decided I am going to get more serious about training and just spent my REI dividend on a new computer, a cadence sensor and a speed sensor. More to come.

Pre-hab: 4 sessions, 3 on my own and 1 runners' clinic, for about 1.5 hours. This was pretty far off my goal of 3 times per week, which is a big bummer. But... it's still twice as much as I did in February, so I can't be too bummed.

Yoga: 3 times, all self-guided, for 1 hour total. Like everything else, I would have liked to do more, but at least I did something.

Total: 29 sessions in about 24.5 hours. When I look at it that way, that I averaged something almost every single day, I feel a bit better.

Overall, a decent month. As always, I'm limited by hours in the day and just need to do the best I can. On to April.

(Probably) March's running total

Still nothing to sneeze at.

It looks like I'll net out at 75 running miles for March.

I had wanted to do 100, but since a significant number of runs this month were slower and shorter runs with my husband, I lost mileage here and there. Eh, I'm really not even mad about it. I still got out and running, which was more important. And I'm not planning on doing 25 tomorrow, ha.

Plus, it's still significantly higher than last year, when I was still building back. And I am grateful that my body can handle this kind of mileage again.

I do want to kick it up for April, though. Can I hit 1,200 this year? Can I beat my record of 1,313? It'll depend on how healthy I am and how my body cooperates, of course.

Week in review March 20-26: Lots of blah with a couple good workouts

Not great, not terrible.

Last week fell somewhere between great and terrible. I didn’t do a whole lot of running, but I did lift weights twice and do my first “real” bike workout (one that wasn’t just an easy spin to warm up for something else) in a long time.

I had a lot of unexpected rest, though. I started off the week strong with barre Monday and a run Tuesday, but Wednesday was a crappy day and I wasn’t feeling great, so I curled up on the couch with the mutts instead. We had plans with friends Friday, but a sick kid forced them to bail and I curled up in bed with the mutts instead. (Sensing a theme here?)

After a decent night’s sleep I had a good bike workout followed by a good weight-lifting session Saturday, but Sunday was a big event in Detroit and we had friends over for that, so the day was pretty much shot. I was able to do food prep and some pre-hab Sunday evening, which was better than nothing, obviously. Plus having healthy food ready to go goes a long way to setting a healthy tone for me for the week, I’ve found.

It wasn’t much, but last week consisted of:

Run: Twice, once on the road and once on the treadmill, for 13 miles in a bit longer than 2 hours. Tuesday was a fun run, half with my husband and half with my crazy lab mix, on the road. Thursday was my first speed run in a while, and it felt great to be running “fast” (actually: less slow) for the first time in a while.

Bike: One trainer ride for about 1:30. This felt OK! I warmed up, did a few big ring/small ring intervals, and cooled down.

I’ve been doing a lot of thining about how to best approach getting back on the bike. I really can’t justify the cost of a power meter or a smart trainer (especially since they cost more than what I spent on my bike!), but I think I’m going to invest in a better bike computer and a cadence/speed sensor. It’ll give me a better baseline for trainer workouts and I’ll have an easier time measuring improvements… assuming they actually come.

Weights: Twice, one barre class and one heavy/bodyweight routine, for about 2:20 total. Yes, I lifted weights for longer than I ran.

Pre-hab: One rotation of glute/core moves from a recent runner’s clinic for 26 minutes. I could have done an extra 4 minutes of planks or whatever but it was already past my bedtime.

Total: 6 sessions in about 6 hours, 21 minutes.

So yeah, somewhere between great and terrible. No swimming, no yoga, and not a lot of running, but some decent weight-lifting and cross-training. I traded some training time for fun time and not-feeling-great time, but it was nothing out of the ordinary, and I got some decent workouts in anyway.

Another week, here we go.

Random thoughts about time limitations

There’s a meme floating around about how you need to “choose two” of the college experience: Good grades, social life, sleep. Meaning you’ll have time for two, but not all three. (I went with grades and social life, living off a steady diet of Mountain Dew and catnaps.)

Apparently, this is a thing: Randi Zuckerberg said pretty much the same thing a few years ago. Pick three: work, sleep, family, fitness, friends. My three are usually work, family and fitness, but sometimes work, family and friends.

Yesterday I felt like I was living a version of that. Choose five: Sleep, work, grocery shop, cook a healthy dinner, prep food for the next day, walk the dogs, run. I skipped the run and a full night’s sleep. I can’t skip work, obviously. The grocery shopping/cooking/prepping kind of go together to make sure I can, you know, eat. Husband was working late so I had evening dog-walking duty. And poof, it’s 10 p.m. and I’m crabby and need to go to bed.

There’s also a meme going around about how we have the same number of hours in a day as Beyonce, but I’m pretty sure Beyonce doesn’t need to work a 9 to 5, do her own grocery shopping, walk her own dogs, cook and prep her own meals, make her own appointments, etc. etc. etc. either. Not being able to do it all can be a real downer sometimes.

But, when I was feeling down yesterday about not being able to do it all, something else happened that made me feel like a badass. Making small talk before a meeting officially started, I discovered no other person in my meeting (all women) knew how to swim. Yeah, I’m not a very good swimmer, but I do know how to swim, I swim in a pool occasionally, I swim in a lake very occasionally, and I race in a lake very very occasionally.

When you think about it, how many people have the guts to actually to swim in a lake as part of a competition? I left feeling a little better about myself.

It's been another long day of work, errands, running, and cooking, and it's past my bedtime, but at least I got to run today. =)

What will be my next adventure?

What's next?

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what’s next for me, my training, my running, my multisport, my whatever I choose as my next adventure.

I’m discouraged that my running has been anything but fast lately. A lot of that is for a good reason: I have been doing a lot of runs in the past year with my husband, who is slower than me. If I have to choose between a speed session and a run with him, I choose him, every time. I’m trying to get him fully over to the dark side and become A Runner.

I track my workouts on DailyMile, and it keeps a top-five list of fastest runs and longest runs. Depressingly, I noticed that I have only run three times since March 2016 at a pace faster than 9 minutes per mile. (And one of those times was being dragged around the neighborhood for 2 miles by my lab mix, so that barely counts.) When I was considering building off my Gasparilla Ultra Challenge weekend for a spring marathon, my ultimate reason against it was that if I commit to a marathon I want to try for a PR, and I am nowhere near PR shape.

So, yeah. Speed isn’t my strong suit right now.

But here’s the thing… the run has always been the part of triathlon I have sucked the least at. I’m a mid-pack swimmer at best, and an overall bad cyclist. And when I eventually do start building back, I’ve got a long way to go. I’ve gotten on my bike twice this year; the last time I did a real bike workout and not just a warmup for lifting weights was July. JULY! Swimming is a similar story: I swam once in December after most of the summer off, after a DNF and a DNS at swimming events.

Yeah, I was having some health problems over the summer that manifested as anxiety, and had to get out of the pool multiple times because of panic attacks. I’m in a much better place now, seeing a new doctor, taking new medications, and on a completely different diet. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve built from nothing, either. I started swimming again six years ago, having not swum a single lap since freshman year of high school. I finished my first triathlon with the 10th slowest swim time of the entire field, spending part of the race legitimately afraid I was going to die, and worked my way up to MOP and consistently improving pool times. Although I’m a terrible cyclist, I know that consistently getting out there on the roads makes me a bit less terrible, and have seen incremental improvements in speed and bike-handling skills from season to season.

I think I need to decide if I want to spend my precious free time trying to improve at things I’m not really good at, or try something else (knowing I probably won’t be good at that, either). I’d like to start playing tennis again, take a ballet class again, finally try indoor rock climbing, maybe do something insane like Krav Maga or at least the occasional self-defense class. I’ve got pesky time-suckers in my life like a full-time job, a commute, a husband, a need to eat healthy meals three times a day, and a need to sleep occasionally. I don’t have money to blow on a new smart bike trainer. And although I refuse to live in fear, I still have to be careful of things like running alone on dark trails.

I guess that was a really long way of saying "I don't know what's next." Most definitely running. Probably other stuff. I don't know yet. But I'll figure it out eventually.

Week in review March 13-19: Ugh, blah, yuck, etc.

Not a lot going on last week.

Last week: Ugh.

It didn’t start off great. I was sniffly for much of the day Monday, enough so that I curled up on the couch with a blanket after work and didn’t do much more than eat leftover (homemade, dairy-free!) lasagna.

I felt better by Tuesday and got in a decent treadmill run, and a weight-lifting video Wednesday. Hooray! My husband wanted to go for a run Thursday so I traded my speed run for an easy run with him, because I’m trying to encourage good habits, after all. =)

But I ran errands after work Friday and the last one was so frustrating I didn’t want to do anything else until friends wanted to meet for a drink later. Saturday morning, a friend wanted to go out to breakfast and to the market, and going with three people always takes a lot longer than with two people, so by the time we got home, I had pretty much resigned myself to being a couch potato.

Excuses, excuses. I know, I could have held firm and stayed in, but what would the point have been? I like training, but I also like going out with my friends from time to time.

I was able to rally a bit yesterday (Sunday) for a few easy miles and then a few additional miles being dragged around the neighborhood by my hyperactive lab mix, but between college basketball (go Blue!) and food prepping, I didn’t have time for anything else. I go to bed late enough as it is.

By the numbers, it was:

Run: Three times, once on the treadmill and twice on the road, for 16.75 miles in a bit less than 3 hours.

Weights: One video for 55 minutes.

Total: Four sessions in a bit less than 4 hours.

Of course I know logically that I can't kill it every week. I'm going to be sniffly some days, I'm going to want to lay on the couch and watch basketball some days... that's just a fact of life. Still, not even 4 hours is a bit depressing.

Oh well. Not much to do except buck up and do better this week.

A whole lot of nothing so far this weekend

I have been a big, lazy blob so far this weekend.

Last night there was a lot of this:

Cuddling with the mutts.

And this morning there was this:

Yummy breakfast out.

Later there was more of this:

Scratch my belly, Mommeh.

I did try a new recipe today, so I guess that's something?

Cashew, onion, garlic, sweet potato, nutritional yeast "cheese" dip. It's good!

And I did make this amazing dinner:

Roasted chicken, broccoli, butternut squash, and wine. Delicious!

But other than a nice, long walk with the mutts and walking around the farmer's market, I haven't done squat for activity today.

Oh, well. I did get lots of relaxation and dog-bonding time in. And some time with my husband, too, I guess. =)