Week 7: Not Really a Training Filled Week

For the holiday I zipped off to Boston to spend it with my dad and his new wife's family. Got in minimal training and maximum drinking. Not really, it just sounded good. I brought swim and run stuff and managed to only use the swim stuff once.

Monday - Rest Day
Thank god.

Tuesday - Spin

The pool is officially closed in my neighborhood so I woke up and did some spinning. I think the novelty is wearing off since about 5 minutes in I am kinda like, ugh, 55 more minutes of this. But then good music comes on and before I know it I'm done.

Wednesday - Track

Left for Boston. Flight was not so early but early enough that I couldn't get a run in. The airport was surprisingly calm. I dropped my bag at the curb and headed for security (I checked in on line the night before). At the gate I ran into Manlio. I don't see that kid enough. Another Bostonian. I lucked out with the Economy Plus section which was awesome. As soon as I got on the plane I passed out for about 3 hours. Planes do that to me. It must be the drone of the engine or the air or something. I did hear that when I was a baby and couldn't sleep my mom would drive me around in the car. Maybe that's it. Got into Boston around 5pm, got to my dad's ate and passed out.

Thursday - Thanksgiving

Determined to stay on my "diet" and not over eat the entire day or drink too much. Started out with cereal, then carrots then I was pretty god damned hungry and scarfed about 3 deviled eggs when they showed up. Then some chips and spinach and artichoke dip...which turned out to be not so good so ditched that. Then dinner. My Dad started a new thing of grilling the turkey. It was pretty kick ass. Another turkey was also roasted in the oven. The guests were all of my dad's wife's family. I met them at the wedding. Not an entirely comfortable situation. If you can imagine everyone knowing everyone else and being the one person who no one knows and trying to act, um, like it's not a big deal. heh. Quote of the day, in regards to the hot tub my dad installed this summer, as said by David, the husband of one of the wife's sisters, who is a tried and true New Englander AND a cop: "Aww, Pam, lookit that hot tub...I can just imagine sittin' out theyah in a blizzahd drinkin' a bottel-ah wine...tha' be friggin' awwwsome!" It doesn't get any better than that, people.

Dad with grilled turkey

Friday - Swim
Dad drove me to the YMCA in Worcester (or if you're from the area Wuh-stah). I swam for about an hour in the four lane pool where there was only one other person. It was nice. Then my dad picked me up and went back to the house to do some attic cleaning (while my dad went to play in a disc golf tournament...uh, really) and to get ready to go into Boston. That attic is a friggin' goldmine people. I look at the boxes and boxes of stuff my mom saved from my childhood and am simultaneously pissed and stoked. Pissed that she saved EVERYTHING and now I am forced to go through it to get it cleared out of my dad's house and stoked because...I am so selling that complete Barbie Swing Set that is in it's original box on eBay. Cha-ching! Although, there is a lot of stuff to sort through. I would really like to know what my mom was thinking when she decided to pack up and save my entire lip gloss collection. What also makes the sorting through of one's life complicated is that it seems I was a pretty, um, paranoid child. Maybe paranoid is too strong. Let's just say that I probably didn't trust anyone since, as I go through the stuff, I start to remember my old habits. That seemingly plain, innocuous miniature basket is more than just that. Inside it is a smaller basket, inside that a smaller box, inside that a packet and when the packet is opened there is money. I did this with everything. That is why it's so difficult to go through this stuff. I can't just say, oh this old music box and toss it because, as I discovered last year, inside a secret compartment was a stash of about 20 silver dollars. Oh that silly little Hez. What a weird little girl.

Caught the train into Boston and Karen picked me up. She drove me straight to this woman's house to look at a 1974 Raleigh that I found on Craigslist. It was perfect and beautiful and in much better condition than mine was. I was so grateful that this woman held it for me for a month. Bought that suckah. Went back to Karen's and ordered Thai food and had an evening of playing Canasta. Back in the day, Karen and I were like an old lady couple. Wednesdays we played Canasta, Thursdays we went to Bingo, Saturdays we went to Joe's Bar and Sundays we went to brunch at Johnny D's...every week. Then for one week each summer we vacationed on Martha's Vineyard. Yes, people thought we were gay. That is probably why neither of us ever had a boyfriend. In fact it was realized, quite unexpectedly, after one of Karen's co-workers approached us at lunch one day (I used to walk over to her office and have lunch with her) when he asked, "are you guys dating?" We were all, bwaahahahaha! Then he walked away and we just looked at each other like, SHIT.

Hez and Ren

Saturday - Brunch
Our old pal Laura, who was also part of the brunch club, met us at Johnny D's and it was like I had never moved. Oh Boston. Sometimes I miss you and sometimes I think...never again. I spent the rest of the afternoon with Laura and then Karen drove me back to my dad's with my new bike. I walked right into the beginning of dinner with my dad, Pam (the wife) and their neighbors. In about an hour everyone was wasted on Bourbon and wine. I managed to avoid that combo. My dad was really stoked about my new bike. At one point I thought I would join him outside to help with the grilling and I caught him in the act of taking my bike off the porch. I was like, are you going to take it for a ride!?!?! He sheepishly grinned and said, I was gonna! Busted. I let him do it anyway and he came back just raving about how it handled. He'll be shipping it out to me this week. After dinner and some ridiculous cheesecake and eclairs I decided to get in bed and read while the adults goofily undressed and made their way to the hot tub. I was staying out of that situation.

Reunited

Dad with Bike

Sunday - Home
Spent the morning boxing up some stuff from the attic that I absolutely needed shipped to me pronto. Including all of my metal LPs. Yeah! Seems like I need to get a turntable...and a stereo...oh and speakers. Hmmm. My dad drove me to the airport and again I sailed right in. There was no line at security. Ran into Manlio again and chatted. Was dismayed to see I was in a row with a mom and her sick 3 year old. Turned out to be not an issue because I had the outside seat. Flight was really long. Glad to be home with the kitties. Photos here

Week 6: Team Darkness Wins!

This past week was particularly emotionally gruelling for me and required doing a lot of "inner" working out. Oh, things like: revisiting positive behavior, quieting the negative tape that constantly runs in my head, gratitude journaling, meditating, praying, self-care and KICKING ASS IN A TEAM COMPETITION! Whooo!

Monday - Rest Day
Called in sick because I just could not deal with people. Very hard day.

Tuesday - Swim
Did not want to go but forced myself up and made my way to the Garfield Pool. Had very low energy reserves as I didn't eat much of anything the day before. Was supposed to swim 1700 yards, which would've been 2200 yards in my pool. Managed only half of that which in my pool was 1100 yards. I know. Math is hard. I really was going to continue on but about 800 people got into my lane and started acting retarded. Like cutting me off when I was clearly going to start swimming. It seems that the eminent pool closure on the 19th had everybody and their brother wanting to get in some lap time. Just when I was about to loudly exclaim, "east coast style," what a dick this guy was, I decided it was time for me to go. Went to work. Came home and did my core routine. Three sets of everything: plank, side plank, lunges, calf raises, birdmans, donkey kicks, crunches. Totally dying.


Wednesday - Track
I just really hate working out after work so I was excited when Yi suggested to do the track in the morning and then catch a seminar at Sports Basement that night. Got up at 5am and met Yi at Kezar. We ran around for a 15 minute warm up and then did our 30 minute marker set. Throughout training, we'll do a marker set every month to determine our improvement. Last month Yi and I ran 10 laps in 30 minutes. This week we ran 10.25 laps in 30 minutes. Not a huge improvement, but an improvement nonetheless. The big news is we started our laps running one revolution in 3:40 and ended our last revolution in 2:53. Hi? Studs. We shaved off over a minute. Went to work. Went to Sports Basement and sat through a pretty retarded seminar on nutrition, cardio and strength training that really told me nothing. Was comical tho. Learned one thing.


Thursday - Bike
Nothing exciting to report. Was supposed to swim but was too lazy to go to the pool so I rode in my kitchen for an hour with my new knowledge of lower heart rate = fat burning. Rode at a low level 3 the whole time except during an exciting part in a Barkmarket song where I sped up to level 5. Went to work. Went to a tech industry party with Ian and wanted to stab myself in the eye with an ice pick after this overheard conversation:

Guy 1: What's new?
Guy 2: Got a new car (reaches in pocket and pulls out the VW flip key and shows it to Guy 1)
Guy 1: Hmmm (reaches into his pocket and pulls out his own VW flip key and holds it out)
Me: (retching in corner)


Friday - Swim
Yeah, well. One class of red wine diluted with half a cup of ice and getting home at 10pm killed my morning workout. Slept in. Went to work. Went out.


Saturday - Team Run/Swim Workout
Reverse psychology did not work and I ended up drinking too much and staying out too late on Friday. Woke up at 6am and felt ok but as soon as I stood up realized I was probably still drunk. Sent a text to Yi that said : happy hour + friend in town + wedding guy = i'm not working out. Remained in a vegetative state all day. Saw a movie with Ian and ate a mediocre burrito. In pajamas by 4pm. Dreaded the next days workout all night.


Sunday - Team Competition, Ride 'N Tie

DID NOT want to do this. Last week asked John Fry to be my partner and regretted it shortly after. I just wanted to bail so bad and was hoping John would too, since part of the competition included costumes and that so was not happening for either of us. Received an email at 5:30pm on Saturday night from John saying his mountain bike is a go. Shit. We both decided not to wear costumes and accidentally showed up in the same black ensemble which immediately made us Team Darkness.

Team Darkness

Ride 'N Tie is a game for teams of two. The team shares a mountain bike. One person rides while the other runs. Both members start at the same time. The rider rides to a certain point and then drops the bike and starts running. Then the first runner picks the bike up when they get to it and starts to ride, passing the runner and repeating the cycle. It's kind of a leap frog with a bike and running. Luckily I am a good rider and John is an excellent runner. We had to do 4 laps of a 2.25 mile loop. At the end of each lap we had to run together to the top of a hill and engage in 'activities' like throwing a Frisbee into a bucket, doing a 3 legged slalom course, guiding your blindfolded partner through a slalom course, who holds 5 packets of Gu between their legs, answering a quiz etc etc. For each completed activity we get points. If you can imagine, your so physically depleted at the end of each lap that these activities are all but impossible. By the 4th lap John and I had perfected our leap frog strategy and ended up coming in 4th overall with a time of 1:18. However, everyone picks a number from a hat and that number gets added to your overall time so that everyone has a fair shot. THEN all of our points from our completed activities gets deducted from our time (um is anyone reading this? it sounds pretty boring).

At the "Gu in the bucket" challenge

Anyways, so John and I were sitting there with all the teams while the winning places were being announced. The coaches started from the bottom and everyone got a prize. With 4 teams remaining to be called John started uneasily looking around at me like, um, they totally lost our team card because there is no way we are in the top four. When it was down to two teams the coaches asked us to stand up and John and I were like, holy shit. Turns out we won with an adjusted time of 52 minutes (our time minus all our activity points). Yay! Team Darkness kicks ass.

I won an insulated water bottle and a Pete's coffee card. Ok that was a boring story.

Week ahead
Going to visit my dad and his new-ish wife and her family for the holiday. I have mapped out local pools and running routes and possible spin classes.

Recovery Week

This past week was our recovery week. The cycle runs 3 weeks on and then one week less on. I was having some interesting feelings, both physical and emotional, which kept me away from actually training with people. Ironically though, it was my busiest social week in about 6 months. All in all a pretty crappy and unfocused week.

Monday- Rest
Thank god.

Tuesday - Bike
Set up shop in the kitchen again. Not really into the whole time change thing, meaning that it's light out in the morning when I want to "ride." There is something so satisfying about cranking music and riding your bike in your kitchen at 6:30am in the dark. Rode hard even though I am supposed to be taking it easy. It was all about cadence, this ride, and staying at about 100 revolutions per minute. Hard. Especially when you don't have a cadence meter and you have to count every 15 seconds here and there. And also when you have a knee with an issue that particularly hates it when you spin really fast for 60 minutes.

Wednesday - Bike...
It was really supposed to be run day but I was kinda tired from a rock show the night before and had plans to go to DJ Ted's new indie rock dance party that night which required me missing track. Hi. Free vodka drinks for an hour. Came home from work and in order to keep myself from falling asleep rode my bike for an hour. Took a shower. Picked up Ian and headed down to Harlot where I proceeded to drink 4 free vodka's and soda and dance 2 hours straight. Did someone say recovery?

Thursday - Can't move
Swim day really. Can't remember if the pool I go to is closed now for repairs and decide not to chance it at 6:30am....plus I am really hungover from the night before. I had anticipated this and had set my alarm to 7:45am. While I was laying in bed trying to get up, I realized I had a Chiropractor appointment in 30 minutes. Crap! Feigned sickness when I called to cancel. Stayed in that night and missed the Cycle Team alumni evening. Sorry guys.

Friday - More biking
Had plans to see Redd Kross with Misty and couldn't take being at work any longer. Left early and came home to, you guessed it, ride my bike some more. It's just too easy when it's sitting in your kitchen and all you have to do is get on it. Plus I had about 4 hours to kill before I was going out. More riding. More cadence checking. More sweating my ass off. And interestingly enough, some sobbing. Why am I crying while riding my bike in my kitchen in the dark? Ya got me. (loser!) Went out that night and had a great time at the show. Remembered why I love Redd Kross so much. Went out after and, you guessed it, drank more than I should've. Late night. Fun but late.

Saturday - Iron University
Well, felt pretty guilty about not going to this but after an AIDS Ride, 2 seasons of the tri team and one summer of the cycle team, I felt I had a pretty good grasp on nutrition and bike maintenance. Plus I got in at 3am the night before. Gloriously woke up at 10am. Holly came by and we went and had some coffee at Philz and some pretty excellent pastry. Came home and made chicken soup then lounged around all day.

Sunday - Swim
Didn't want to go to this. Just not feeling really social and in the mood. Woke up at 5am and with some time to kill before having to leave at 7:30am, decided to be productive and do some core exercises. Hopped in the car and drove to Moraga for our workout. Weird morning. Went the wrong way on 580 and had to back track about 10 miles, felt melancholy and homesick for the East. The road to Moraga was very New England-y. Got to the aquatic center and didn't want to "iron mingle" so stayed in my car until I absolutely had to get out or I would've looked rude. Sad to see that no one I am really close with was at the work out. Got a gentle reminder from my mentor that he has access to my fundraising reports and that I have a big ol' ZERO balance right now. Yikes. Swam drills and laps for an hour and a half and tried not to constantly "win" against my lane partner, John. Funny thing, that. Had to beat him every time. Got to the end of the lane and told him I was making a conscious effort NOT to get to the end before him. He replied, "No worries, I don't have an ego so beat me all you want." To which I just blinked at him in the "I don't understand what you are saying" kind of way. Then silently freaked out that well, obviously, *I* have an ego. Shit. Coach Nancy set up lanes with some swimming "accessories" for us to try. Paddles, flippers, braces, snorkles and a weird MP3 player. The "headphones" fit not over your ears but on the side of your face around your jaw/temple area. Sounds like crap out of the water, but in the water? Amazing. I put it on and freaked out. 1) because dude! it's music UNDERWATER! 2) I kept forgetting to take my face out of the water to breath and 3) Not a great song for swimming, hellooo You Take My Breath Away!?! That is something I don't really want to hear while I am underwater. Came home and just really couldn't function. Got in bed and woke up 2 hours later. Got an invite for late afternoon drinks. Laid in bed another hour contemplating my outfit and how to be social. More drinks. Came home and had panic and anxiety attacks all night in between nightmares. Interesting. Woke up exhausted. Called in sick.

The Week Ahead

• Getting my fundraising letters out because, helllooo, I have to raise $1000 by December - Donate here
• Getting back on track
• Refocusing
• NO drinking
• Remember why I am doing this - cancer sucks and (our motivational quote for the week)

Swim 2.4 MILES; Bike 112 MILES; Run 26.2 MILES – BRAG FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!

Week 3-ish

This week was kind of a bust for me. Seems that I can't actually go out and have a social life AND train. I fell asleep at 8pm three nights this week. One of those nights was a Saturday. WTF!?!??

Monday - Day Off
Did core: 3 sets of front and side planks held for 30 seconds each (don't try this at home), crunches, boy push ups (4), girl push ups (26), donkey kicks, squats, calf raises, bird dogs.

Tuesday - Swim (yards 1600 - but really more since my pool length is 33 yards...uh just did that math so that means it's really 2100 yards. AWESOME!)
Woke up at the usual 6am and headed for the pool. Pretty uneventful swim. Did some drills and couldn't remember what one of the abbreviations stood for so made something up. Nearly drown on the side kick. During the entire set concentrated on the position of my arms. Not a comfortable way to swim. I really hate swimming. I mean, I love it! Groan.

Wednesday - No Track!
Did some spinning in my kitchen instead. 70 minutes of an exertion effort of level 3 (for me that is about 140 heartbeats per minute) with three 6 minute sets of level 5 (160 beats per minute). H A R D. Started to wear wrist sweat bands to keep my handle bars from becoming soaked. Crank tunes in kitchen and try to sing along. Reoriented bike set up so I am actually looking out my kitchen window into the yard, instead of at a dark living room. SMART.

Went to Yi and Heidi's fundraiser at night. Lasted until 10pm which was a minor miracle. Speaking of fundraising...donate here!

Thursday - Swim
Well, dontcha know. If you are used to going to bed around 9 pm and you end up staying out til 10pm and drinking one beer...you're kind of a mess the next morning. Slept in. Did nothing. Felt guilty.

Friday - Athletes enhancer day (pick the sport you need the most work in)
Um, yeah. Skipped this day too.

Saturday - Team workout.
We had a cornering and descending clinic and then a short 11 mile ride following the Escape From Alcatraz route, followed up by a 30 minute run and an excruciating hour of core and leg drills. My chiropractor summed up this workout pretty well for me when he said, "Sounds like it would be pretty boring for you...almost like you could start your season 3 months after everyone else." Yeah! Dr. Rabbetz I *heart* you!

Went out on Saturday night and drank 52 beers which means...

Sunday - didn't happen.

NEXT WEEK - The Recovery Week awwww yeah!