Connecting the dots

I have been realizing the past few days that I don't necessarily connect the dots from fitness-weight-exercise(and the fun of it) to health. I guess I know in my head that they are vitally connected but my choices about eating and moving basically give overall health no regard.

My mom is having some surgery in a few hours, and probably more to come, and I am sad and semi-annoyed that she never gave her health much notice. But I guess I am not a great example of taking my own health deliberately seriously. I just lucked out to find activity that I love and some amount of balance in my food choices (although I have been stress eating pretzel M&M like nobodies business this week!) but I have only a vague notion of how that is affecting my health and longevity.

It is 1:30am and I'm tired but I can't decide whether not making the direct association is a good or bad thing?
I know that taking care of future-Amber is my job and there are people in this world who expect me to do a good job because they love present-Amber and want to get to know future-Amber. So I think I should take it seriously for them.
On the other hand, I like the idea that if I just live as present-Amber trying to stay sane and balanced and trying new physical activities and remembering how much I love the adventures that running/triathlon have given me, I will be doing enough to protect future-Amber. This route allows me to stay sane and happy but may lead to poor choices for lack of perspective.

Hmm, I'll have to think about that one. One thing I know for sure is that neither present nor future me likes referring to myself in the 3rd person; so that'll have to stop.

Ladder, climb, ladder, climb, brick

I had a most excellent training week this week thanks in part to my sweetie and the Luna Chix

Monday: I did swim workout #9 from my team in training OYO swim workout lists. This one was a long ladder, recovery, short ladder as the main set. Long ladder was 50's up to 250 and down with a :20 rest between rungs, for a total of 1250. Then 200yd recovery followed by a shorter ladder with :10 rests, 25's up to 100 and down (for a total of 400). With the warm up and cool down this was the most yardage I've swum in quite a while. I was beat but I do love ladders; they allow me to focus on one small task at a time while sneaking in a focused workout.

Tuesday: I went for a ride with the Luna Chix who are seriously awesome. We did a few miles down the trail then went off trail to do a loop of Hollywood Hill. This hill is pretty sucky because it is a) kind of long, b) pretty steep then sort of steep, c) has a bad shoulder at the beginning (the road shapes up a bit later). But the ladies riding and the Chix were motivating and with a bit of huffing and puffing I made it up. At the top we gathered the group (LUNA has a no-drop rule) and a woman and I talked Garmin. She has the 310X and LOVES it and I was telling her how I saw some bloggers putting it in their caps to get OWS distances.

Wednesday: I was oddly sick to my stomach so I basically lay motionless so as not to disturb the party that was going on in my gut.

Thursday: My sweetie convinced me (and joined me!) to go to the gym and get in a good run workout. For some reason at this particular gym on one particular machine (which is SUPER ghetto) I seem to always get in a nice, solid, well planned out workout. On this day I did a mile warm-up and then a stepwise increase in speed and incline. I started at 6mph with no incline then added 0.5%incline and ran 0.25mi then upped the speed to 6.1 and ran 0.25mi. I repeated this up to 6.3 and 2% then cooled off. I got in a total of 4.5 miles! Felt good and luckily I was wearing my brand new bondi band cause I was sweatin! I'm not sure how I'm liking the Bondi-band overall, because it slips WAY too much but as a sweat sponge it is A+.

Friday: the Captain and I celebrated out 1.25 anniversary and the Seattle weather celebrated with us and gave us a most gorgeous day. We went for a great ride after work; we rode down from our place which is on a hill similar to the one Heidi lived on with her grandpa, proving again to myself I am slower only downhill on my bike. I also rode up this hill with quite a bit of standing and puffing! Felt like quite a feat. We then hit up The Rock for some late night happy hour wood-fired pizza. He is an awesome riding buddy and a fun pizza buddy too. I can't believe it has been 16 months.

Saturday: Spring cleaning, blech. I did decide I want a treadmill at home and am now on the lookout for sturdy dreadmills that have a small-ish footprint.

Sunday: THE BRICK! The cap and I hit the road for a 12mi ride. Just over halfway into it the Seattle weather turned on us and it started pouring. The Cap is such a good cyclist…he even paused when we passed a group that looked in distress to ask if they needed help :). The rain let up at the end of our ride and I left my bike with my sweet and headed out for a run. At first I didn't believe my Garmin. It said my pace for the 1^st half mile was 8:55!

What is crazier is that I basically kept that up for 3miles!

Mile 0.5-1.5=9:18

1.5-2.5=9:17

2.5-3=9:18

Total run time was 27:40!

 

I was shocked. I think the tired feeling in my legs reminds me to keep them moving.

 

Tonight I am taking a rest night. Overall it was a pretty good training week.

Critique: Swim more

Compliment: Feels like my training fit in with life pretty well this week which is truly my overall goal.

 

 

 

Breaking the rules

And maybe it helped!

 

I ran another race before doing a race report for the donut dash.

 

It is a janky little run that I've done for the past 3 years (WOW!). NARAL's Run For Your Rights. It is a totally low key 5k run around Greenlake. No timing chips, lots of dogs and strollers. Usually really hilarious protesters.

 

It is timed by a stopwatch but according to my Garmin (and the stop watch yielder) it was a PR at 27:52.

 

Maybe I'll do a race report before Issaquah…but maybe not!