How about a Mr. Tea update?
After a few weeks of many ups and downs, this week is the best week he has had. He is still restricted to 20 minutes of walking a day. His pain is noticeably less. That's been the hardest part. You can never know what it's like to feel completely helpless until you have to watch someone suffer. This week has been better, though, much better. He was able to sleep through the night for the first time, last night.
My off season just started. I looked over my season, (races, training, nutrition). I considered my goals for next year. I didn't really expect to do this right now, but maybe coming off my season, recovering from my season and having a clear head, means it is the right time.
I went over to my keyboard and started pounding out goals. I accomplished everything I wanted at the sprint distance. I knew what I wanted to do next but no idea how to get there. I need help.
I hammered out a novel and sent it over to Liz. I'm sure I'm not the only athlete to send over rambling emails. I listed where I am; what my long term goals are; what I thought would be good short term goals to get me to the big ones.....and I sent over a tentative race schedule.
We went back and forth for awhile. She advised against doing the 70.3 (given my goals). That's now off my calendar.
When we finished, I had a clear plan of what next year would look like. We figured out when I would race and what distance. I gave her certain goals and left them with her....it's up to HER to figure out how in the hell to make this all happen. My job is easy. I just have to do the workouts.
Besides all that and when I returned from vacation, I decided to get back onto my nutrition plan. It was totally fun stuffing my face with all the food.
But I felt it. I was ready to get back into it. For me, it works really well to let loose: go on vacation or really enjoy holidays, just eat whatever I want for a time. When it's over, I'm incredibly motivated to go back to my normal eating.
For the past 2 weeks, I've done just that.
I looked at my nutrition for the past year. I could easily see where I did well and when I struggled. I decided to take the off season to experiment a bit more. I also decided that I would drop a little more fat. I gave myself 3 weeks to find my starting point. In another week, I'll take down my measurements and decide what I want to do.
One of the things that I'm doing is more of tapering my carbs throughout the day. Instead of just randomly eating throughout the day, I'm putting more thought into it. My breakfast will, now, always have some sort of potato. I've found that this is really giving me a boost throughout the day. In the past, I would just have eggs and veggies for breakfast. Then at lunch, I'd have potato or rice. So far, this new structure seems to be working much better for me. My volume is low enough that I don't have to have those carbs at every meal, but having them at breakfast has been a game changer for the past 2 weeks.
I did the same thing with training. I looked back over where I did well and other times that I didn't do so well. I know that moving to the Olympic distance is going really challenge me with increased in volume and intensity. I feel really good about the strides I made at the sprint. I feel mentally ready to really tackle the oly for the first time ever.
REALLY GO AFTER IT....not just muddle through it.
What else can I say? The rest of Oct, Nov & Dec are my off season. Then, I get ready for my early season races.
I have some running races coming up (including my BIRTHDAY 5K) and the Turkey Trot (for family bragging rights). I'm taking time off from Strava. (My workouts automatically upload as private. Unless I make it a point to change them, you won't see much there).
I will blog. I tend to get more introspective as the off-season goes on. Hey, what else will I do when my time isn't filled up with training?
This weekend is my Birthday 5k.
Don't worry. We'll return to the CRAZY in January.
