Goal Setting:

Goals:  I Will Race This Summer

Summer officially starts June 21 so I have time to get healthy and to start doing some kind of training.  I  know my training load will be pretty damn light to start with but it will have to do.  I've set my sights on just one summer race. I'd love to pin my sights on a fall race destination but my goal it health first. If and when that comes together and the budget allows, I'll specify a fall goal.  First things first as I'm not sure yet how soon my training mojo will return.

Goal Race: Edmonton Swim-Run, Sunday August 4

There are a few reasons for this one:

1. It's new and it's something I haven't done before.
2. My cycling is pretty good so I know it will always be there.  Swim and run training require me to set some goals and a schedule in order to get going.
3. The run is mostly trails and that's my favourite kind of running.
4. The swim is in the river and that's been my favourite local open water swim venue. I know it well.
5. Swim run is traditionally done in a team of 2. You do it in tandem with another person. It takes a fine balance to manage pacing with two people with different swim and run capabilities.  The extra element to training and racing will be an interesting layer of challenge to doing a new event:  where do I find the right race partner?
6. The race takes place in nature and the river is a dynamic environment so time goals are difficult to guess-timate. So, I won't set a time goal for anything segment or for the event overall.

Create A Path

I've picked a goal race on August 4, just over 3 months away.  I'll be starting from a lower fitness level than I'm used to so my finish goals will have to be appropriately modified.  My goal is simply to finish.  I'll set no time goals since I'm healthy and happy.  I don't yet know when the journey can start but the earliest possible start date is still a few weeks away.  Until then, my goal is to simply find the energy to go for a walk. We're out of cat food, so I'll walk to the store to pick some up.  Multi-tasking at it's best. Right now, though my path out of the deep end remains undefined.

Sometimes Life Gives You Lemons But You Can't Make Lemonade

Wow, this has been a tough one for me.  After a really strong indoor training season and a great start on a half marathon training plan, the snow finally left and warmer temperatures returned.  Finally, it was time to go ride outside.  Yay!!  This is one of the things we look forward to all winter.  It's one of the things we picture in our minds when we ride the road to nowhere for so many indoor hours.  On top of it all, April 21 came and it was a day I'd looked forward to for months.  Together with warmer that seasonal average temperatures, it was also the day of the one concert I've looked forward to all winter. My favourite, favourite band, Metric was in town together with the awesome band July Talk and I had tickets.  So, how did April 21 work out for me?  Well, it sucked a big bushel full of lemons.  In fact, I'd been neck deep in lemons for over week and there is no definite end in sight for another few weeks.

Lemons In The Form Of Shingles

Actually, the lemon in my life started with a pain in my shoulder on Friday, April 12 and I didn't think much about it.  I get a muscle pain in that area all the time and usually a good massage will do the trick. It worsened through the weekend and migraine headaches were added to the mix for kicks and giggles.  I couldn't find any comfortable position to sit or lie down.  I just hurt all over.  The one thing that I didn't think much of that should have been a big hint was the fact that the skin on my left arm was really sensitive to touch, almost as if I had a sunburn.

By Monday, I was desperate and thought a massage might help. Luckily, I was able to get an appointment for 1PM. She was probably using moderate pressure as we had discussed but that ended up being one of the most painful massage experiences of my life and it wasn't that the massage therapist went any harder than usual. The nerve sensitivity caused by the virus made me overly sensitive to the pressure.  The massage did loosen up tight muscles so there was a bit of a silver lining there.  I did make it to yoga class that evening and that was the only mild relief I'd had in 3 days.  As it turns out, mild exercise is a good distraction from the pain.

Tuesday came and I still felt like I'd been hit by a truck.  Then, once my bleary eyes started to focus, I finally noticed the new rash on my chest and upper back.  Yup, it was shingles.  The rash didn't hurt but just about everything else did.  At least now we knew what we were dealing with and drug therapy was going to be needed.  I did get that sorted out with prescriptions for the anti-viral and Tylenol 3 for the pain so my week-long medication protocol began.  Sadly, when the drugs ran out, the pain persisted and I was quite miserable and unhappy.

The rash is actually quite minimal. It never really hurt or itched. 

And the rash on my back is even smaller - it's really just 4 blisters spread in a line across my back.

A common complication with shingles is post-herpetic neuralgia or PHN.  Basically, nerve damage caused by the shingles virus causes the damaged nerves to send random, uncontrolled pain signals to the brain which causes a burning or throbbing sensation.  So, that's where I'm at.  That is my lemonade and it sucks.  So much.

Lemonade

I am not super anxious to return to training right now, simply because I'm just in too much pain to event think about it.  With the right dose of pain medication, I can start doing a little more than getting through a day at work and going straight to bed.   The doc said nothing, absolutely nothing for at least another week and I am quite happy to oblige.  I thought I'd start by helping my husband make supper tonight.  This is what I've come to. From being an actively training triathlete to trying to make salad.

I love lemonade. But if that's all I could ever drink, I'd tire of it mighty quickly.  I know I'll get a little better every day and I know I'll slowly be able to increase my activity level but my dilemma now is going to try to be self-aware enough to know when to start and how much is enough.   I am not the first triathlete or endurance athlete to be kicked to the sidelines by shingles and I certainly won't be the last.  There is still no one proven path back to health and training but there are multiple reports of athletes who jumped in with too much too soon.  These athletes suffered from things like:

• sub-par performances,
• prolonged recovery time
• recurring neuralgia pain
• subsequent additional breaks in their training due to illness  

One medical journal report I came across explained it exactly right:

"The variety of factors that compel highly trained athletes to exercise so intensively and work through difficulties could be disadvantageous in this situation."  

In other words, that very work effort that allows us to push ourselves hard to get the most out of our training also allows to overlook some serious signals our body is sending out that it needs attention.  I don't want to be the example of what happens when you do too much too soon. I want to be healthy, fit and active 10, 20 and 30 years from now.  All of our training should at its root be about health as much as fitness and don't assume that health and fitness are the same thing.  Training in our sport should include about making positive lifestyle decisions. During training season, we rely on our physical health to back up our training.  When our health is compromised, our focus should be on doing everything we can to return to physical health.  The race you're training for will be there again next year or there will be another race. It really isn't the end of the world to sit out a race or a month of training when the payoff is a faster and better return to health. It might suck a little but it's more important to live to race well another day.

Eddie curled up under my arm during nap. He knew I was sick and was willing to offer some warmth and comfort. At least that's what I tell myself.

What I Did With My Lemonade:  Metric & July Talk Concert

I went to the concert and it was more awesome than I could even have hoped for. July Talk was likewise fantastic. I loved, loved, loved them as much as I could under the circumstances. Rather than jumping around on the floor with the masses like I would have had I been healthy and properly hydrated, I sat quietly by myself in the stands and just enjoyed the music, the distraction and people watching.  Here's something I figured out pretty quickly - the neuralgia in my hands made it too painful to clap. But I did enjoy the performances immensely and regret that I was unable to express that at the time.

My final thought of the concert is this:  for those of you looking for some new high energy tunes for your playlists, you need to check out July Talk if you haven't already.  All my friends and training partners know that Metric is already on every playlist together with Blondie and Bowie.

The Future of Lemonade?

So now, my plan just over 2 weeks in is to try to go for a walk tomorrow and every day thereafter until I can do more.  The current meds make me loopy enough that bike riding will have to be limited to indoor stuff so I'll hopefully be back on Zwift next week.  We're taking this one day at a time.  I'll be back to form someday.  I miss it.

7 Habits Of Highly Effective Athletes: What Can I Do To Get The Most Out Of My Training Time – Part 1

Sometimes, life and work gets in the way of training and none of us look forward to it, enjoy it or deal with it particularly well.  Then when you try to jump back into regularly scheduled training, it can be uncomfortable.  As I’ve now been able to get in some running again after an unplanned 2 week break, aside from being aware that it doesn’t quite feel as fluid as I want it to yet, I am finally able to find those quiet moments to be silent and just consider it all.  Here are some of the thoughts that have been bumping around in my head now that I have time to run again;

1. Could I have managed my time away from training better and kept some level of fitness up?
2. Am I just lazy and was I looking for an excuse to have to some time off?
3. What can I do better to make my training as effective as possible?
4. What are my goals with all of this?  Racing, training, health??
5. Should I turn right or left here? 

So, yeah, my mind was all over the place.  But, when I force myself to focus on the real issues and the solvable problems, I realize that, even if I could have carved out time to get a few workouts in, unanticipated time off happens to all of us at some point.  If it’s not due to work, it could be illness, injury or family time as the cause.  (And BTW, I did decide that I’m not entirely lazy even though I definitely enjoy pretending I am sometimes.)   My ‘A-HA’ moment came when I recognized that the one thing that I can always control and improve on, that I can blame on no one else, is the effectiveness of training.  Whether I have limited time or a lot of time to train, training should always be purposeful and effective.  That let to the consideration of what effective training looks like:  what habits could I adopt that would move me in the right direction towards more purposeful, more effective training, to allow me to optimize the training value of my time. 

I turned to Google, and asked for the “7 habits”, hoping to get one quick and perfect answer.  Google found a few lists for me but no one list was quite the right fit for me.  However, there was enough food for thought to get me started.   So, here it is, my own personal list:  My 7 Habits to Better and More Successful Training.   Take a look, maybe there are a few takeaways that you can apply to your own training.  Like me, maybe you can do better.  And if we can all do 5% better within the same time constraints, that’s just free speed, hopefully.

1                Have a goal (or two).

How else can you make sure you are training with purpose, moving towards some goal, unless you actually have a goal.  I don’t feel that I have to have a race in order to have a goal.  Fitness and health should always be part of the goal and sometimes, that might be enough. I like to have an event or time in mind as goal but there have definitely seasons where my goals were more about fitness that racing.

2.            Make a plan and make sure it allows you to have a life.

          A training plan has to fit within a balanced schedule that allows time for work, family, recovery and anything else that need to be done.  As much as a great workout can help clear my mind from the stresses of the day but when trying to fit in all the workouts becomes a source of stress and impacts family or work commitments, something will fail in the long run.  Prioritize your time accordingly and reflect on whether the goals are reasonable for what’s going on everywhere else in your life right now.  If you have to adjust your training or your goals, remember there will always be another race or event at another time.    

3.            When you train, commit to the workout 100% and get it done.

Do the work and make it count.  I always opt for quality over quantity.   Having said that, not all workouts should be hard efforts – train hard when it’s appropriate and training easy when that’s the right thing to do.  In a nutshell, do the intervals that are appropriate and prescribed for the time of year and progress level in the program.  Train hard and ‘fast’ when appropriate; train long and controlled when needed.  Trust the plan and do the work.

After this bike session, I didn't have the energy to sit on my bike anymore. It was an awesome session.

4.            Develop a strong foundation and keep it strong.

Before I started triathlon, I spent most of my training time in a gym, either weight training, doing fitness classes or using cardio equipment like stair machines, spin bike and stair climbers.  While I needed to build my aerobic base to do triathlons, I remained remarkably resistant to injury.  Looking back on it, I know now that my weight training work gave me the strong base of support I needed in order to safely build mileage.  And in order to maintain strength and power and to combat the inevitable effects of aging, continued and consistent weight training remains important.  I don’t spend a lot of hours in the gym, just a few 30 to 60 minute gym sessions a week are all it takes to stay strong.  Like any of my other workouts, I try to make the best use of my time at the gym: get in, get it done and make it count.

There's nothing about dumbbells when you use them right.

But that’s not all an endurance athlete needs in order to have a strong foundation.   To me, foundation addresses two other critical factors:  technique and range of motion (flexibility).  I always, always try to focus on proper or better form in any aspects of my training. Better form and technique makes for a more efficient athlete.  As for flexibility, I try to get to my favorite yoga class every week.  I don’t make it every week but I do spend time in the evenings working out the kinks on the living room floor.  I do some stretching and some yoga poses and the cats think I’m playing with them.  I call it Cat Yoga and it’s become our thing.  Whether you have cats or dogs or neither, flexibility work will help you maintain range of motion which will help give you more distance per stroke in the swim and better efficiency, comfort and resilience on the bike and run.  

For now, I’m going to stop there.  The final 3 habits are less about training and more about supporting your training.  You’ll see what I mean when you get to “7 Habits, Part 2”.