How To Get Your Kid To Eat Vegetables

Tonight we had a couple of the neighbor girls over playing. I made a big one-pot dish for dinner (super simple in the rice cooker just make rice then add a ton of steamed spinach, 2 cans of tuna, some mayo, relish, pesto sauce, salt/pepper and mix it all together!)... Anyway, Moana was the only one who would eat eat because it had spinach in it. After the girls left I told Scott that I sure am glad we taught our daughter to not be afraid of vegetables. I know it is taboo to tell other parents that they're doing it wrong, but any parent who insists that their kid just won't eat vegetables is doing it wrong. You know how to get your kid to eat vegetables? It's simple. #1) Eat vegetables yourself. #2) Don't give them an option of something else instead. The girls that were over tonight knew that they could go home and eat something else. Moana knew that if she didn't eat the spinach rice and tuna, she wouldn't have anything else to eat. That's how we operate and guess who eats any vegetable cooked any way? It's really not rocket science. I mean, eventually they get hungry.

Anyway. Off my soapbox.

So I'm finishing up my first week with my new coach and I'm super happy! I think the coolest part is knowing that I have someone on my side who is watching and paying attention and actually genuinely enjoys reading the notes I write about my training each day. I've missed that feeling this past year while trying to coach myself. I know different athletes want different things from their coaching relationships... I think what is currently most important to me is knowing that my coach is genuinely interested and is on my team. I have a new athlete who just started with me this week and she emailed me and in the first sentence she apologized for bugging me ... Right away I wrote back and was like you're not bugging me!! That's terrible for an athlete to feel like they're bugging their coach when they send an email. But I have felt that way. It sucks!

I'm 4 weeks out from the Double Roughwater 7K ocean swim... It's a good time to really try to wreck myself in the pool! Really what I'm looking to do is train my brain to handle the monotony of swimming strong for extended periods without breaks. This morning I swam alone because Mark didn't show up. 6x1k descend 1-6. How's that for a monster set? I've done 5x1k but never 6. I've only ever given 6x1k to an athlete once... It was years ago she was training for a channel swim and she loved her 1000 repeats. I give 4x1k all the time to ironman athletes. But 6x1k was something I really had to wrap my head around.

I brought some treats and ate one after #2 and #4. They worked a minor miracle! I swam the first 3 (LCM) in 16:11, 15:59, 15:41. Then added paddles and went 15:39, 15:24, 14:56! Pretty stoked about that last one. I checked my watch at the 500 and saw 7:31 so I knew if I worked it I'd get under 15min and that was motivating so I wrecked myself that last 500. Consequently I spent the rest of the day feeling like I needed to just stay curled up in a ball. Long hard swims do that to me.

No time to curl up in a ball though b/c I had a bunch of programs to write and some phone calls to make and some social media buzz to attend to. Woot! Happy to say I'm on the Coeur Sports Team again for 2017. This will be my 4th year with this team and without a doubt can say I'm honored to have the opportunity to continue to be a part of this group. They make the best tri kits around (#noangrykitty!) and they're great people who stand for values I believe in. It's so easy to support this company! I feel sort of lucky that I got in during their first year because its harder and harder to get in given how their popularity has grown...

And before I sign off I'll note... I did my first 'real' runs since Vineman this week! I ran (ok, jogged) 15 min twice this week! WOOT! On the comeback trail!! Lol. Felt ok while doing each of those. The day after each I felt something not quite right in my left leg. It's not my hip though and it doesn't feel like bone, so I can't decide if its something I should be worried about or if its something I can manage and jog through? It just feels like I've got a couple of giant spasms in that left lateral quad. I can feel the muscle spasms when I try to roll it out- they're huge and they 'jump' as I roll over them (it hurts!). If that's all it is (muscle spasms) then normally its nothing I would worry about. My biggest concern is why I can't get them to release? My fear is knowing that when my bone was compromised, the way I felt it was that the surrounding muscles were all essentially shut down and non functional (i.e. at Vineman I felt that 'mechanical' failure where muscles just wouldn't function on that side)... After Vineman I was ridiculously sore on that side and that soreness just wouldn't go away like normal muscle soreness does... and my glute med shut itself down and wouldn't function at all... So I know that it's not unheard of for muscles to operate (or stop operating!) in a way that protects bone when its compromised. Anyway, that's my fear. I hope its unfounded!! I guess we'll find out as the weeks go by. I keep rolling this quad and trying to get the muscle to relax. I'll jog 15min again tomorrow and will continue to monitor it.