Yeah, That Tri Sucked It

I promised to let you know how I did on my last tri, and here it is, almost October. Good thing you're not on the edge of your seat.

For the record: my time was only a couple minutes slower than my average. Mentally, I felt like it was 20 min. and falling.

I can't stand doing something poorly -- whatever the reason -- when I know I can do better. The swim was actually fun, despite the fact we swam parallel to the shore in barely deep-enough water, and we had racers washing up onto us. We all basically got the same swim time and were completely exhausted, trudging out of the water slower than I've ever see racers move. I like the rush of being thrown around by waves, which is why I can call the swim fun.

The bike was good -- not amazing, but solid. I can live with that.

The run sucked it. I was winded, zapped, and -- this is my own damn fault -- bonking, meaning I ran out of energy. That has nothing to do with my health or limited training; it was complete idiocy that I forgot to have some sort of a breakfast. So that's what really got me. I was so mad at myself I started crying at times. I tried to imagine someone telling me I'd win $1 million if I went just a little faster yet could not go faster. Knowing this was a sprint triathlon and that I was going so slowly still makes my blood boil.

Am I glad I did it? Now I am. Am I going to do another tri? Of course. I just don't like excuses, and this race forced me to come up with a lot of them.

July 28 Triathlon, I Will Rock You (or At Least Show Up)

The past few tri seasons just have not been ideal:

2010: Recovering from pneumonia is not a good way to enter a training season. But, I still managed to finish Chicago Triathlon. Despite, the chest cold, asthma attack, and 20-min. stint in the medical tent, I had a better time than healthy people in my wave -- and still came in 17 of 219 for swimming in my age group. 

2011: Thanks to the wedding and my dad's health, there wasn't a lot of time to train. Yet I had my best tri ever at Pleasant Prairie, coming in with a PR on a beautiful day. I needed it. That said, I couldn't get in a second race -- just too busy, and not willing to risk skidding off my bike 1.5 weeks before my wedding.

2012: I can't say that my April ankle sprain completely derailed my training because I was able to spin (mostly), but it did sideline me from running for 2 months. OH, and breaking my arm Memorial Day weekend did not help matters either.

Now that I am just getting back to running, swimming, and cycling (I think -- I was just about to get back on the trail...) I have a head cold. The South Shore Tri is two weeks away. I'll be there, but I just keep thinking: it's not as bad as I came into the race in 2010.

If I've proven anything, it's that I'll still show up. I'll get you, triathlon, just you wait.

I Quit A Race. Am I Un-American?

This morning was the Bangs Lake Multisport Festival, where I registered to do an aquabike --  a 1.5k swim and a 38k bike. I call it Sara's God's Gift to Racing because I don't train on the run well.

As I wrote yesterday, I was totally unprepared for the race but decided to go anyway. I even thought deeply about it, writing that I do races because of motivating factors such as my mother's health problems.

Well, that's deep 'n' shit, but I found out the real reason this morning: they're fun. I could get my health kicks doing myriad physical activities, but you don't get up at 4 a.m. and hit the water before 7 without some enjoyment in the competition and accomplishment.

Lest you get the impression I skipped through the race with a smile on my face and determination this morning, the truth is I chose to only do the swim and ... not finish the race.

GASP! I feel so un-American. Who quits a race? I should be writing about how visions of my mother in pain inspired me to grit through my own mental block and how I knew that I'd feel shitty with a big ol' DNF (did not finish) next to my name in the race results. I should tell you that the pep talks talking to my fellow-athlete friends this week worked.

To a degree they did -- after all, I did show up after weeks of doubt.

I think the decision was technically made for me before I went to Italy, when I realized how far off my training goals were and knew I'd never catch up. When I chose to order three courses at dinner for two weeks and walk around sampling gelato three times a day in lieu of swimming, biking and running (and no, my bike tour through Tuscan countryside -- a clever way of sampling wine and olive oil -- didn't count), I knew I wasn't setting myself up for success this season.

When I woke up this morning, the first thing I thought was, I don't want to do this -- not in a dreadful way, but in a I-don't-care kinda way. The only dreadful thing I could think of was trudging through a race I knew I was capable of doing better.

So why did I even show up? And why did I confirm my registration this week -- already in full-on doubt mode -- after a snafu showed I hadn't yet been charged for the race?

It's because I'm an optimist and have it engrained in me that you should never, ever quit unless it's absolutely necessary. Broken appendages. Malaria. A death in the family the day before. I can't say all the athletes I hang around are hard-core, but they fall into the give-it-your-all group. Heck, even when I say I do races for fun, part of that fun is knowing I've done what I can to put in a good showing, even if only for myself.

People who don't quit are celebrated. People who do quit? I'm guessing they generally don't talk about it unless they have one of aforementioned good excuses.

I'm actually proud of decision because I know this one race doesn't make or break me, just like this off-season of sorts doesn't ruin my chances at future success. But am I afraid a potential client or employer or athletic compadre will read this and think of me as a quitter, someone who can't get over a mental hurdle? Absolutely, even if I have a thousand reasons to defend my decision and character ("I was exhibiting signs of malaria." J/k).

On the shuttle bus to the race start, a cheerful woman sat next to me and asked, "So, are you ready?"

"Actually, no!" I replied. "I haven't really trained, so we'll see how this goes."

"Me too!" she said. "But after all, you do it for fun, right?"

Absolutely. And that's why I will NOT be hopping on that bike, I thought.

I had fun giving it my all at the end of the swim because I knew I didn't have to conserve energy or breath for the bike. I had fun looking down at my watch to see I shaved two and a half minutes off my time. And I had fun packing up my transition area knowing I didn't have to do that hilly ride!

See?  A good time was had by all.

MISSING: IMMUNE SYSTEM; REWARD IF FOUND

MISSING: IMMUNE SYSTEM
 29YO, F, HEALTHY EATER, TRIATHLETE
MISSING IMMUNE SYSTEM SINCE JAN. 1, 2010.
RESPONDS TO "DAILY VITAMIN," "ECHINACEA GOLDENSEAL" AND "FRUITS AND VEGETABLES"
IF FOUND, PLEASE CONTACT AUTHOR OF THIS POST.
***REWARD***

I'm sending a plea to my missing immune system to come back or be found. Since coming down with pneumonia, I've been wooing it with tons of fruits and vegetables and rest. Alas, I find myself sick with a sinus infection again. Where did my immune system go? When will it return? And what is this delicate line between pushing yourself and overdoing it?

As I train during race season I face that quandry all the time. Striking the balance between going hard -- either in duration, intensity or schedule-wis --and consequently getting a little sore or tired and going hard and getting injured or worn down to the point of being unhealthy constantly plague me. I generally can avoid the latter. Apparently not any more.

My definition of "going hard" has changed. I last wrote about how great it was to do yoga/pilates/core work for an hour in the mornings, and then last week I resumed swimming followed by core work at the gym. That was fine, until an overnight trip to New York. On day two, I hit a wall and felt really exhausted, despite getting a full night's sleep. And then I sat on a delayed plane for a couple hours and inhaled airplane air.

Whatever the cause -- not being able to handle New York's fast paced with still-recovering lungs or sitting on that plane -- I'm sick now. I hate this.

We have a dream vacatin planned less than a week away, and I want to be healthy by then, dammit. I have five days to feel better.

I'm considering wearing a mask during the flight. Sounds crazy, but apparently I can't risk it. This sucks!

Kissing my hard work goodbye

So this entire time I've been sick I've been gauging what my body can and can't do.

Most of the time I want to lie down but I do walk around the house or just take on something -- wiping off all the touch points in the house with a disinfectant wipe, for example -- to move around a little because I feel like it's good for me. And then I'm tired.

Or take today: I had a half-hour conference call this morning to organize my team for the week ahead (I'm project manager for one of the mags I work on) and then spent an hour-and-a-half cleaning up my inbox, replying to little stuff. That tired me out. So I had lunch and rested, and then had an hour-long phone call about work, which I couldn't reschedule. Then I was really exhausted.

I watched a movie -- resting, right? -- and wanted to watch another, which meant I had to check the mail to see if Netflix came. The climb three-flights up exhausted me, on top of making me dizzy (I'm frequently dizzy thanks to the Levaquin). I say down and watched something else.

I got tired of resting and realized my butt hurt from all this sitting around.  I decided to try to balance on one leg -- only part of one of the core exercises I would do -- and found my body shaking, heart racing. That's what freaked me out. A few weeks ago I spent 45 min. doing core work alone, and that was after an hour's worth of spinning or swimming. How can I get to this place?

I know I'm sick, and the thought of working out, for example, doesn't appeal to me at all because my body isn't up for it. But I am walking around -- a lot different than when I had the flu and could barely get out of bed -- so I guess I just assumed my balance and something as simple as climbing stairs wouldn't be a problem.

I feel like all my hard work is slipping away. And not being able to do balance exercises to even keep it up a little bit really bums me out.

I have no idea when I'll be able to work out again -- I know it'll be a couple weeks yet -- and I have no clue when I'll get back up to where I was. I know I'll be fine for the races, but that's not good enough for me.

The Great Sickness of 2010: Day 18

Sickness blows.

I haven't felt well since Jan. 18. I remember it distinctly, because it was the day I put in a really good morning spin just shy a few hours before my flight to Las Vegas for the International Builders' Show. I felt great -- so great I wouldn't feel guilty about skipping a few workouts because of my travels.

That week was rainy and cold, and the days were long -- 18 hours or so. My colleagues and I were worn down. I came back on Friday not feeling like myself, then got hit with the Flu Truck the following Tuesday. I stayed sick for a full week, felt decent enough to go to work and move around for five days (nothing taxing! Just going through motions), and then KAPOWIE! "Fuck you, Sara" the flu virus (or whatever the hell it is) said to me. "We're not done yet."

And here I am, at home, again, waiting for it to do its thing to my chest, ears, nose and throat. I had a major deadline that I had to work through for a few days at the beginning of the week, but as soon as we were done yesterday I made a public declaration: I have been given sick days, and I'm going to use them. I'm still in bed.

It's getting a little tiring. I'm watching my muscles soften up, and it kills me; I had intensified my workouts and changed 'em up so that I was seeing a real difference in my body and the way my muscles toned. I bought two new swimsuits in Vegas! They dance in the back of my head now, as I picture mushiness and flab spilling over my new lavendar bikini.

Of course, I won't lose everything, and as Brian told me, I'm healthy enough (hah! really?!) of a person that my strength and muscles will come back easily. I felt so crappy when I had the flu, I didn't care about missing the gym. But now I'm in that feels-crappy-but-is-still-mentally-there state, where I can recall my old life, the real me. Not sick Sara. My coworkers look at me with pity and concern, and Brian checks in on me constantly and makes sure I have whatever I need to feel better. I appreciate it all. But more than two weeks of feeling like an invalid is getting annoying.

I'm so ready to get on with life. Hopefully, that's happening: I can breathe through both nostrils today, enough to be able to use a homemade Netie Pot. It's the little things, right?

Reminders from our friend Flu

I've been battling the flu for five days now. Five. I never made it to Memphis for Brian's grandmother's funeral. But the painful aching is over, my 100-degree fever has broken, I no longer feel like our apartment's heat is air conditioning and I haven't rushed to the bathroom in about five hours. Hopefully, I'll be able to sleep more than an hour at a time tonight for the first time since getting hit.

Flu's miserable. But getting hit with it has reminded me about a few important things:

1) I know my body really well. I got "hit" with my symptoms at about 9 p.m. on Tuesday. But the days prior to that, I knew something was up. I got back from Vegas on Friday, and all weekend just kept repeating, "I don't feel like myself -- not sick, just meh." I worked out Sunday, but it was so-so. I didn't have the energy I normally would have, even though I had gotten a few nights of good sleep. In spin class Monday, my joints hurt a lot and I had to cut my workout short -- same thing on Tuesday, when it felt as if none of my muscles had recovered from Sunday's or Monday's workouts. That was a huge clue something was up, and I resumed taking Echinacea Goldenseal. The big tipoff though was that I didn't care that I cut my workouts short -- I was just happy to stop.Which leads me to my next point:

2) When I'm really, really sick, I ultimately do not care about working out -- and that's a good thing. Give me a sinus infection or a cold and I'll quit working out after reasoning for myself that it's the right thing to do -- but I'll still count how many workouts I could get in, and think about next week's schedule, and ultimately ponder if it'll affect any of my races that are months away (it won't, but my mind will still go there). But when I'm really, really sick -- like with the flu -- I do not care. Even as I sit here now, 1,000 times better than I was a few days ago (hell, I'm on the computer and typing), I still do not care that I'm missing a workout because I still feel that shitty. I know some committed athletes would be beating themselves up or planning their next training session, and I'm thankful I'm able to be rational about working when I really need to rest up.

3) I completely and utterly appreciate having Brian around to take care of me when I'm in need. Even if I just have a cold or an upset stomach, Brian swings into caregiver mode. I try not to take advantage but do love that I can just relax and get better; knowing he's there is relief enough. He was at his grandmother's funeral this week, so it was just me. At times this week I was hunched over so much when I walked to the toilet I should have just crawled. I dropped things on the floor all the time with my weak and uncoorinated movements -- and of course had to clean up the red Gatorade I spilled on our new carpet and later the honey water I knocked over. These are extremely difficult tasks when it's difficult to roll over in bed. And when you run out of Gatorade or need Tums EX to keep your stomach from rebeling? I'm lucky to have friends who live nearby who picked up necessities, but it was awkward to ask and definitely inconveniencing. The second he came back, I already felt like I was healing faster -- it's clear I need him around. :)


4) My parents will still drop what they're doing to come take care of me if I let them. They're sick themselves and live 21 miles away, but they'll drop what they're doing to make me homemade chicken noodle soup and Jell-O, then drive it out to me through crappy Chicago traffic, with cans of Coke to boot (my mom's forgotten her own advice apparently about drinking clear liquids).

I didn't really need to experience Flu to know I knew my body; that Brian and my parents love me; that I'm not so addicted to working out that I can't take a break. But the reminders are good. They keep me in check. And we all need that, don't we?

The Bed Was Really Warm

Four days of the five-day work week I crawl out of bed at 4:52 a.m. By 5:12 or so I'm at the gym, and by 5:17 you can find me in the pool or setting up my bike in the spin room.

This morning I made it up half the stairs to the spin room before I stopped dead in my tracks. "I am too tired to work out today," I said out loud, a declarative statement to make it real. I was back in bed -- still warm -- by 5:30.

This decision normally kills me -- I genuinely feel better if I work out, especially during a holiday week, when I'll likely miss a workout or two -- and I think part of why I'm writing about is that it isn't bothering me, despite how weird it feels to skip a workout, unplanned, during the week while I'm healthy.

The goal today was to move my "day off" of working out to later in the week so I could get one last good workout before Christmas. And the goal of every morning is to get past the initial resentment of crawling out of bed. I do it all the time and like it -- even on the toughest days, I'm good to go once I get to the gym and, at the least, will do a very low-impact workout if I'm not up to speed. Not today.

My legs lacked strength. My eyes hurt from not getting enough sleep (it'd taken a while for me to fall asleep last night). I could barely process the thought of cycling up hills or doing jumps on the bike, let alone getting on a bike and taking orders from a spin instructor to go harder and faster.

I've overlooked all these things before and chugged through, or I've rearranged my workout schedule so I could still get the same number of workouts in and catch up on sleep. I think I'm secretly afraid that once I cave, I'll be tempted to skip again. You know of that slippery slope most people go through;I don't want to be one of those people who falls off. That said, I'm not most people, and I know it's good to catch up when you need rather than stress over about it.

Doesn't mean it's easy.

Survival Mode

It's 6:03 a.m., and I should be in the pool.

I'm drained and need to stay well. I have a scratch in my throat (allergies?). Heck, I should also be in bed.

Instead, 2 min. 54 seconds into my workout I left the gym this morning to work on my resume (gotta be prepared for the unexpected), or my ad assignment that's due tonight that I have yet to come up with, or leave early for work to get an issue off to the printer. I'm choosing to blog for therapeutic reasons first.

Yesterday was a hard day at work. Our office rock, my boss, was fired. I don't want to compromise my job and will not go into specifics. But yesterday's kick in the gut will be hard to recover from. Cumulative bruising does that to you.

I wanted to stay in bed this morning, but I went to the gym to relieve stress. Maintaining my workout routine is really important to me when I'm the most stressed. But being at the gym in itself was stressful because my body was tired, and my mind angry, and my lats and knees sore from this weekend's 5k (see next post).

I realized when I got home from the gym this morning I didn't know where to start. So I'm blogging to focus.

It's 6:09, and that was probably the best six minutes of "work" I spent in 24 hours.

Please keep me in your thoughts.

The Song Title "Help, I'm Alive" Kinda Makes Sense!

I'm exhausted. I worked until 6 today but immediately switched over to homework for class. It's 7, and I'm not done with that but need to get home to eat and have a change of scenery. Last night I couldn't do as much homework as I needed because I was judging digital awards for the American Society of Business Publication Editors and totally underestimated how much time it would take; I spent 8 hours yesterday alone, and that was my working efficiently. The day before I was at my parents' place from 8 to 6:30 helping them with a garage sale of our family friend Lorraine's belongings (she passed away late July).

I have so much to do (homework, work for work, working out) and so much I want to do (hang out with Brian, watch Gossip Girl for the past two weeks, , blog, upload photos) and so much I need to do (write overdue thank yous for my birthday presents, get my car title changed to my name, shop for presents for my mom's b-day and friend's baby shower, write friends I've been meaning to for ages) that I don't even know where to start. Good thing I have most of the logistics of my trip to Maryland this weekend sorted out! (I'm not even close to worrying about packing.)

Some people would immediately give up training or working out, but I can't do it. I need exercise to keep me sane. But I also need to get shit done to stay sane, and I really want to see Brian more than I do.

I'm amazed at how much one class -- that really isn't that time-consuming, btw! -- can affect my schedule. Or is it just tempting fate so that everything happens all at once?

Foodie Overload

I still feel gross.

It's been a week since my my boyfriend's family's Labor Day Extravaganza, and I can still taste each and every cream-cheese- and mayonaise-based dip as if I devoured it seconds ago. I may as well have bathed myself in hydrogenated oil; it might have been easier to wash off.

Instead, I gorged on an amazing lineup of food: Chess Squares; brownies; shrimp n grits; eggs, spinach and goat cheese with onions; fritos; cream cheese and Pickapepper sauce; shrimp boil ... the list goes on. And none of the food was face value; the brownies had a layer of Symphony chocolate bar at the bottom; the grits were cheesy; the onions sauteed in bacon fat. I can picture my taste buds drunkenly stumbling and eventually passing out from gluttony. I don't want to step on the scale.

I feel this way after this weekend every year. Labor Day with his family is pretty simple -- his parents, brother and sister's family all I've get together at a lake house in Arkansas to hang out, ride in a pontoon boat and eat. I vowed this year to only gain a pound that weekend, even though I know I won't weigh myself. I might actually be making up for it a bit because I've been sick the past few days and surely consumed less calories than normal.

Usually I can take a weekend and indulge -- I'm specifically thinking of our now annual trip to New Orleans' Jazz Fest that's filled with nothing but oh-so-tasty fat grams -- because I'm mid-season and therefore have a great metabolism and a regular, solid workout schedule. But Labor Day weekend follows the weekend of my last race, the Chicago Triathlon, which signals the start of September: my month off.

I've tried to maintain a constant stream of veggies. Honestly, I pry won't feel back to normal until I'm working out regularly again. Maybe that's my problem -- not the food.