Take Responsibility

Are you guys tired of hearing me rave about K-Star and MobilityWOD yet?? Ha! Sorry. I'm going to do it just a little more today.

One thing he says quite often in his videos is "Take Responsibility. Make A Better Choice." I love that because it really can apply to just about any aspect of our lives, right?? It drives me NUTS when people are constantly blaming others for their situation in life... whatever is going on with me (good and bad!) is a direct result of the choices I have made and I need to take responsibility for that... If I am not happy with my situation, I have the ability to change it by making different choices going forward. Simple. Profound. Boom.

So. I feel fat right now. You know why? Because I suck at controlling myself around peanut butter and almond butter. I know those foods pack right on my stomach/thighs/ass but I've made the choice to eat them (a lot!) lately anyway and now I'm living with the consequence of feeling fat. I take full responsibility for that and will pay the price if/when I see pictures of myself in a bathing suit this weekend.

Moving on. I just finished up a little 3 day block of crash training. Nothing really that big but 3 days in a row totaling 4+ hours each day and it has left me feeling satisfyingly fatigued. I swam 3x, biked 3x, ran 3x, and lifted weights 1x. No one session was extraordinary at all- in fact, much of the training was actually very skills focused.

In swimming, I've been working specifically on my kick. I don't really use my legs much at all when I swim. For an Ironman, this is really perfectly acceptable and maybe even preferred. BUT, for shorter races (and I have 2 of these coming up in the next few weeks) where swims last <30' and do not allow wetsuits, its not a bad thing to have the ability to kick in your toolbox. I can tell you right now that a couple of the girls who will beat me out of the water on Sunday use their feet very effectively when they swim. So, if I want to stay near them, I need to use my feet more effectively too! I've been focused on that the last two weeks and I'm seeing some improvement there I think. It's really just a coordination thing and when you're in love with your pull buoy, as I am, you don't tend to get a lot of practice coordinating the timing of your kick. I take full responsibility for this so I have been making different choices in the pool to address my dissatisfaction with this. For example, I did not use my buoy at all today in the pool. (Nalani would keel over and die in disbelief if she reads this. Ha! I cannot remember a training session where I didn't use a buoy for at least part of it?!? So today was quite special.)

On the bike, I've been working on making some changes to the alignment of my hips/knees/ankles as I pedal. There have been a couple recent videos on MobilityWOD that discuss this exact thing and I realized that I was doing exactly what he was saying to NOT do... so I headed out this morning and did a little field testing on myself with my power meter and focusing on some different things... Interesting when I made the changes he suggested I stopped 'dumping torque' as he likes to say and my watts went up! I should not be surprised... everything else that guy has said has been spot on but seeing such a black and white immediate change was pretty cool.

On the run, pretty much every session lately is a technique based session. Mostly b/c I believe the #1 thing I must do at this point just to stay injury free is learn to run correctly vs just going out and putting one foot in front of the other... My main cue has been to drop my foot right under my center of mass vs letting it stretch out ahead of me. I also think about keeping my core engaged so I don't arch my back, lifting my heels a bit behind me (engage hamstrings!), and keeping cadence up. I def still have a lot of room to grow here but in good news, I can feel it immediately now when I lose focus and start over-striding or leaning back. The hip mobility stuff I've been doing is helping a great deal in this area as well b/c the basic ability to extend ones hip is sort of an integral part of being able to run correctly.

So, two weeks til Honu. Yikes. I'm actually going to try to get in a quality brick session this Sunday in the form of the Honolulu Triathlon. My swim and bike are not outstanding at the moment but they are fine, and I think I'll be capable of covering 6.2 miles without injuring myself. Maybe even without walking. We'll see. However it turns out, I'll take full responsibility for the outcome because it will be a culmination of all the little choices I have made over the last few months...

I swear I am not going to eat ANY peanut butter or almond butter between now and Sunday. And I know I'll adhere to this rule because both jars are currently empty (yes- have been licked clean by the dog) and I'm just not going to buy more for a while. ;)