I told her I feel less of an urge to write the blog and I think it's because I (mostly) see this blog as a way to write about and share my training... but currently I'm sharing all my training with my coach (who pays attention- yay). Plus, it's all on Strava. So writing about it again here would just feel like complete overkill to me, I guess. But if you're not my coach and you're not on Strava, here's a basic summary:
It's going well! I feel like I am regaining some of the old "me"... The "me" from years ago when I trained kind of a lot and often felt like a machine. The "me" when I'd be melting into the couch thinking OMG there's no way I can go train again right now but then I'd start and surprise myself by not feeling so terrible. I like that athlete and I have missed her.
My hip is apparently all healed up. I'm running again and have no lingering niggles or injury issues <knock on wood>. Fwiw, I built that run pretty patiently with short frequent easy easy jogging... starting 3x/week for 15min then working toward 3x/week for 20min then eventually 5x/week for 30min. Then one of those runs got longer and that "long" run felt like it always just totally sucked, but now that's getting better too. Now sometimes my 30min runs have become 45min runs and sometimes they include hills repeats or short efforts where I pick up the pace. It feels like its been a reasonable build and while I'm still not where I used to be in terms of speed/distance, I'm WAY closer than I was 3 months ago and have hope that 3 months from now I will have nothing to bitch about.
Riding is going well enough. I'm doing a ton of it in my garage these days, which I actually enjoy a lot more than I ever thought I would. I like the control I have over watts and effort when I'm on my smart trainer. I like a lot of the Trainer Road sessions. I like the idea of not being smushed by a car. I like not worrying about a mechanical or a flat tire. I like not stopping at stop lights. I like that a 3 hour ride takes 3 hours, not 3.5 hours. I like watching Netflix. I worry that I might lose some of my confidence and/or skills on the road if I ride inside so often. But then maybe once/week I go ride outside and realize that I'm not losing my confidence and/or skills at all, so I stop worrying about that.
I've raced a little bit so far this year... Just short little local races for fun and to check in on where I'm at. I did the 3 run/swim biathlon races that Waikiki Swim Club puts on every winter. They consist of a 5k run straight into a 1k swim. My 5k got faster with each race so that was fun. And I won my AG at all 3 of those so that's also fun! Those were really low key non-stressful events that didn't make me nervous at all.
Yesterday I raced a short 20k TT on my bike and was nervous as hell. Not sure why so nervous? I cared more, I guess. Plus, I knew how much it was going to hurt. Bike TTs have got to be just about the most painful thing we do. Instructions from my coach were to ride hard and for the love of god, wear your heart rate monitor... He just wanted the data afterward, which I totally understand. I didn't want to look at HR while racing b/c that would freak me out, so I had my garmin set so I wouldn't see it until I looked afterward. You know how they say your max HR is ~220 minus your age? That would put my estimated max HR at 177. My avg for the last 20min of the TT yesterday was 176 (max 179) so you can guess about how big of an effort that was for me. I couldn't have pushed any harder. I landed 2nd in a close race for top 4 and came away feeling happy with that effort.
In non-training related news, our animal sanctuary has expanded. Long story short, I adopted another dog who had been abandoned and was in need of a good home. I worried that he might have a legit case of anxiety disorder, because he seemed like an extremely *nervous* dog when we first got him. Pacing and panting and just seemed like he could not relax at all... But he absolutely adores Maia and he follows her around everywhere. He loves me and our whole family as well- very loyal dog. Moana named him Duke and that fits. His anxiety disorder disappeared after his first day with us and now he's just a normal happy dog who plays and eats and sleeps like a normal happy dog.
It feels really good to be able to provide a life like that for a dog.
Or in our case, 2 dogs. And 3 cats. All of these animals as one point were just dumped on the street. Now they all lead happy lives at the #SimmonsSanctuary :)
Scott said no more animals. Fair enough. So that's it for now!
