Adjusted Reality

I ran a 10k. It’s been a minute (or something like 10 years) since I did a standalone 10k not after a bike.

Here’s what I wrote on social media that day:

I signed up for the Cap10k this year one for a few reasons. One, I’ve never done it. That’s crazy! Two, I wanted motivation to keep running longer than 5k after the Austin Half Marathon and to push myself to run a little faster.

Not much of that training worked out. After Covid in January, I slowed down to keep my heart rate lower while training. This adjusted my running gait. Doing that knocked things out of alignment, and I developed cranky hip syndrome (this is the technical term for it, for sure), which forced me to stay at that slower (11:30-12 min miles) pace during runs since then.

After some chiropractor intervention, things are much better, and earlier this week I pulled my flat 5k pace back under 11-minute mile pace. Progress! So, I showed up this morning hopeful but ready for a jog if running faster didn’t pan out. Ten-ish minutes per mile felt challenging but doable on the hills, so I pushed myself to stay there even if it sucked running some of those steep hills. Halfway through, I got 1h5 mins in my head as my goal time, but I had to speed up.

Thankfully, the second half had fewer ascents, but GOSH my legs were thraaaashed running up 15th and Enfield hills. I stuck with it and tried to go to the happy pain place. I was close to that 1h5m so I gave it what I had the last half mile or so downhill and came in at 1h5 and 15 seconds. (10:19 pace) Top 40% overall, top third female, top quarter masters, top quarter age group. This race is truly against myself and my own goals since it’s so large but nice to see I’m not doing so terribly compared to the masses.

I don’t hate this at all. Y’all, I’m not a hill runner, up or down, and this is honestly faster than I’ve run even on flat ground for a while. It’s a nice sign that I am ready to push myself this year to do some faster runs because they’re in there, just waiting for me to get over the fact that it’s EASY to go out and run easy. Time to find the pain cave again. Maybe that’s the big scary that I need right now.

Unfortunately, the next day (why is it never the same day?) I was limping around on my hip, and it’s persisted all week. I visited the chiropractor yesterday, and she put me back in alignment but I’m still some days away from running. I also spent the week doing that pouting thing I do, sabotaging myself by eating too much, kinda slacking on workouts, and not doing all my recovery. I also felt draggy as hell for almost the whole week. Garmin said I was sleeping pretty well, but I just felt like my batteries weren’t charging up until literally today.

It’s not been all that bad – I’m keeping up with strength training, I’ve swam both weeks, cycling is happening, and 8-9 logged hours of activity (with walks) doesn’t suck. But, it’s not enough for how I’m eating and drinking, I suppose.

So, I can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution. For the last month or two I think I’ve been part of the problem. Time to be part of the solution.

So, reminders to myself:

• The gym is half a mile away from the house. You have a home gym and bike trainer. You are either home or work from home 5 days out of the 7 and the other two, you’re home at a decent hour. No excuses not to swim, bike, do weights, or do the arc trainer.
• Recovery items like the roller do not function as recovery when you give it the side eye and slink past it
• Stretching only works when you do it, not just think about it, dreading it for more than the five minutes it would take to do it.
• These things still exist after 5pm/after work, even if you wish them and will them not to.

And an additional one:

• Your book isn’t going to get edited by procrastinating it by writing blogs/doing whatever

I hadn’t touched it in 2 weeks before this weekend. This isn’t normal. I made such a solid effort to get to the end of the first draft and the first editing pass, I should probably give myself a little grace here. But, I’ll admit, I’ve been less than motivated to pick it back up, finding other things to do instead. In what I’ve learned with writing, motivation doesn’t always just appear when you ask it to, sometimes you have to force the issue. I need to remember that sometimes the Muse comes to you, and sometimes you have to summon her.

The good news is that I made great strides this weekend and am about 1/3rd done with the second edit pass. I think I’m in a hurry because I want to read my draft again and share it with Joel (and that’s a great sign!). I just need to commit to a chapter, or just some pages, every time I sit down with any spoons left in my drawer after work.

It’s not all rubbish, I promise. Here are some good things I/we have accomplished in the first half of April

• Taxes are done, and we got confirmation we don’t really need to pay quarterly/hire a CPA like we thought and we owed less (and have a plan to hopefully owe MUCH less next year).
• Bathroom remodel starts Monday. This will indeed throw my life into chaos for a bit, which is why I’m reminding myself of all the reasons this doesn’t need to disrupt my fitness.
• The pool is on its way from brown to clean! So, like full scale adulting this April is a go!
• Paris pictures are very much in process. Perhaps it’s a little procrastination of book editing, but it would take an act of god for me to not finish the last 50 or so this month! Now I need to figure out what’s next.
• We are really close to booking our end of year trip to Bonaire! Joel got cleared by his doc (not that there were questions but apparently for men over 45 they can ask for a doctor note) and we’re excited to go for another week of diving after we make sure we get our gear serviced.
• Our plans for late summer are up in the air dependent on work travel, there are probably different options depending on where the origin point is, but we’re considering options there too.
• Debating between camping and Mexico next month. I know, wild variation. Camping was the plan, but we have been over a year without diving so we need to log a dive before Bonaire or they will make us take a refresher course. Less likely when shore diving in Cozumel. 🙂

So, I just need to get back into the habits I had made earlier this year and make the numbers go down.

• Raising my activity levels/daily calorie burn a little. No preference on how it happens (walk, bike, elliptical, swim, run when I can run again), but it needs to happen.
• Eat less than 1200 calories a day + activity and THATS IT. Not “sorta kinda oops too much today oh well”. Do this by logging your food as you eat it, not 2 days later and then acting surprised.
• For the rest of April, back to aggressive recovery. Every day I will: stretch, roll, boots, ice, and do the silly crab walk things. I can go back to two things per day once I’m reliably running again with no pain.
• Go back to doing my meditation at least 4-5 days a week not “oops I did it once this week”.

This blog space is repetitive. I say the same things over and over because they’re easy to say and difficult to follow and re-affirming them in text is a way to get back on track. It’s easy to fall off good habits with a “treat yo self” attitude once or twice and then you realize it’s been two weeks and the trendweight, she’s going up. So, I need to do the right things. I’d like the numbers to go down. I’d like to not be limping around. I’d like to have a second pass readable draft. I just need to remind myself to be part of the solution for these things instead of the problem.

And, not always in the good way.

Not that it wasn’t a very nice month full of very nice things, but a lot of those things had a lot of calories in them and made trendweight very sad. It’s not like this is an anomaly but still, I start every March going, “why yes, I am going to celebrate our birthdays as a day of celebration and not a month, and this will keep me going towards my goals.”

And then…

…I’m over my calories pretty much every day (by a significant margin) until March 17ish. Ah well. What goes up also must come down (or I say it must), so we are back to clean living and abiding by the numbers, not just what I feel like.

• Week 1 (Feb 26): 1249 OVER
• Week 2 (Mar 4): 715 OVER
• Week 3 (Mar 11): 1153 OVER
• Week 4 (Mar 18): 1397 UNDER
• Week 4 (Mar 25): 1 OVER (lets call it a tie)

It usually takes 2-3 weeks of habit to show on the scale, so I’m guessing the weight will start going down – should I continue the trend of not being a jerk with food – this week or next. Hooray! April should be back to normal, not alllll the celebrating, so goals here are same as they ever were – log all foods, stay under calories for the week, and be no more than 182.4 lbs on April 30th (let’s see if we can make up a little bit for a lost March).

#2 Running and Stuff

I keep thinking my hip issue has cleared up, and then it comes back. Right now, it’s feeling great but I keep saying this and then a few days later… BOOM. I really would like this to get resolved so I can get back to running faster and more often. However, my on-again-off-again relationship with running means my enthusiasm for triathlon has resumed a bit. Cycling (indoors and watching Bloodbowl games) is a thing in my life again and with Joel out of town last week, I managed to get to the pool TWICE in March and once this evening.

Things I have learned:

• If I am to ever swim regularly, it is probably going to just need to be on my own initiative/schedule, and let Joel find his times separately. We just never find the time during the day that works for us to go together and lack the enthusiasm at night. Monday night seems to be a magical exception so we will continue to try for weights n swim Mondayz.
• I can absolutely bribe myself to do 30-60 mins of biking with the promise of watching a game or two and some sort of candy snack every 5 mins (like an M&M).
• I think I need to figure out how to change my stride/pace back to run like I did pre-Covid. This issue developed after I got back to running and intentionally slowed down 1 min/mile to keep my heart rate lower. Now, the stupid hip is keeping me at that pace :P. Maybe I just need to force myself run faster? Who knows?

Check out the difference between the first half of the month and the second, especially that week I was on my own.

Now, remember, it doesn’t log walks, I walked 64 miles this month (24 hours) and that’s not nothing. Check those activity times – 8-12 hours a week – I’m walking A LOT. But besides that:

• 1100 yd swimmming (22 mins)
• 47 miles cycling (3 hours)
• 16.2 miles running (3 hours)
• 4 sessions elliptical (2hours22min)
• 11 sessions weight training (5h37min)

So, that means I walked a little over 2 miles per day and did 30 mins of other tracked activity. That’s honestly pretty great and healthy… just not for the amount of food I ate in March. So, I need to either ramp this up a little or ramp that down. Probably a wee bit of both.

In April my goals are:

• 3x week weights, non-negotiable, at the gym as often as possible, up the weights at home if I can’t.
• Swim once a week. Just friggin’ do it. Yes, it’s not an efficient use of my time as a workout due to prep time and waiting for a lane sometimes and all the rest of it. Yes, I’m going to do it anyway.
• Bike at least once outdoors and see if that can resume some enthusiasm with that particular sport.
• Run a 10k on April 7 and then do whatever running makes the most sense to rehab the hip (none, short, fast, treadmill, sandwiched with walking, bricks, etc etc etc)

#3 Adulting

This month we shall do the taxes and get the things for/clean out the things to remodel the bathrooms. All this stuff has to happen in April, no getting out of it, and I’m sure by the end of the remodel I will not want to do any dang thing else for about a month. Only exception is prepping the pool for the summer. We’ll do that. So, yeah, garage and fridge – maybe in June?

#4 Fun Stuff

Everything has truly taken a backseat to Book 2’s completion and first editing pass. And I did it! Kinda. I have two “notes” left (find a good place to add a specific scene/conversation and make the ending better). I believe it’s currently readable as a first draft, but obviously needs some improvement. I spent more time in the second half of the book on my first pass edit noodling over word choices (did it need it more or did I just have more patience? I’m not sure). I did deliver Joel a plane draft at midnight before his morning flight the next day and said “don’t read the last two chapters”. He only read the first 5 chapters and is kinda now waiting on me to give him the go ahead for a full read. I’m stalling. In April, I want to get a full and complete grammar/word noodling and voice pass and re-read the book myself.

I did have a great and productive photo sorting day and have everything from Paris now ready for editing. I certainly didn’t finish this month (still on the Louvre) but the big hurdle (picking which pictures to edit out of literally thousands!) is done. I’m three sets away from done with the Louvre, so my goal in April is to finish Paris and move onto something else.

I’ve looked at my guitar and paints a few times. It’s fine. I’ve been writing and playing outside and it’s fine, maybe there will be more crafty stuff over the summer when it’s too hot to spend hours tromping around the neighborhood.

So, April is about:

• Actually freaking focus on making some scale progress. Track daily, don’t go over calories, weigh almost every day, and stop with the unearned treats.
• Do the normal weights stuff, add some biking and swim once a week, run less but faster after the race
• Get the bathrooms redone, prep taxes, get the pool up and running
• Word noodling pass on the book and Paris photo editing

And… enjoying as much outside time as possible before it gets too hot. All the walks to all the things.

I just spent five nights camping and all I got was my patience back. And a little older.

‘Twas a really, really nice time to disconnect. I kind of screwed it up a little by doing a lot of editing of book 2 early on in the trip (but I was enjoying myself! honest!), though I also enjoyed a ton of hiking in the sunshine and a full day of read/napping, so I came back super refreshed. I did jump right back into the frying pan with the roughest 2-day workweek evar, but I digress. I am still not sure how it was Feb 29th and I blinked and now it is March 10. I’m convinced that time is all made up.

Figure I’ll get back to that trip once I sort out the pictures (though, honestly, daily hikes, great food, time to relax was a great TL;DR), let’s do that thing where I do a monthly update on goal progress.

#1 Lose 12 lbs or track 365 days

Check and check for February. I started the month at a trendweight of 186.4 and ended at 184.2. That’s 2.2 lbs lost, much more than the 1 I’m shooting for, so I’ll totally take it! So far, March is very much trending in the right direction as well, however, it is a (delicious and awesome) minefield of birthday celebrations, so I just need to stick to tracking each day, even if I’m over, and stay as active as possible. Knowledge is power. Goal is 183.2 or lower on March 31. My trendweight is actually real close to that already so I just need to not completely screw it up for the next 21 days.

• Jan 29 – Feb 4 calorie deficit: 1191 under
• Feb 5 – Feb 11 calorie deficit: 126 under
• Feb 12 – Feb 18 calorie deficit: 591 over
• Feb 19 – Feb 25 calorie deficit: 1737 over

The race kinda screwed things up but I truly believe that a few hours of racing keeps your metabolism higher for a few days (definitely noted in how hungry I was Sun/Mon/Tues). First month of March while camping is going to be similarly over, but I’m still making progress. *shrug*. I just need to be consistent, not perfect, I guess.

Keeping track from early January, my worst trendweight was 188.0, so at the end of February, I have lost 3.8 lbs. Almost 1/3rd to my goal. Yay, let’s keep it going!

#2 Continue to earn my right to run

I lost it a little bit last month, but I’m back, baby (2 mile run Friday, 4 mile run today)! My hip did the cranky thing in February, which meant I only ran a few times, and then did a half-marathon and went walk-only for the rest of the month. It’s not even worth sharing the normal garmin calendar because it doesn’t show walks and that’s like the majority of my activity this month. So, stats instead.

• Running: 34 miles, including a half marathon at 2:39!
• Cycling: 31 miles. Basically just 4 trainer rides.
• Weights: 11 sessions. This just works out to missing one session on race week. Can’t complain.
• Walking: 36 miles. Most of the second half of the month was just walkies
• Elliptical: 1 hour/3 sessions.

This works out to about 7-9 hours of logged activity per week. Can’t complain even if a lot of it is low intensity!

This month, I’m back to running and prepping to yet again participate/maybe race against a projected time for myself in the Cap10k on April 8. I’d love to let the legs loose on this one a little bit since the distance is comfortable, but the course is super hilly (similar to the half marathon, some of the same streets even), so we’ll see. The goal here is mainly to meet up with some friends and have an excuse to keep running longer than 5k for a bit.

I very much slacked on weights this week, since I was camping, so I’ll just resolve to hit it the rest of the month. A few sessions missed isn’t the end of the world as long as I have overall consistency, and we have appointments next week so we can’t skip it!

Other than that – I need to decide whether I actually want to triathlon this year. The enthusiasm for biking and swimming is at an all-time low. I am guessing when it gets warmer it will come back, but I just don’t know if I feel like racing tris this year, which is a weird thing to say. I’m down for some more running races, but all the bike gear and swim gear and riding the tri bike outside just sounds exhausting and I feel, honestly, kinda burnt out about it. I think I’m going to wait and maybe sign up for things at the last minute instead of committing to see if I even want to swim/bike/run instead of solely focus on running/weights/weight loss. Then again, next month I could be talking about how sick I am of running and how biking is the best and I’m ready to race all the races. We shall see.

So yeah, this month is all about resuming my 3x week runs, hitting the rest of my weights sessions, and getting enough other cardio (walking, elliptical, biking, swimming?) to stay active and offset my noms.

#3 Adulting

I did absolutely nothing here. February was a rough month. The fridge still needs to be cleaned out. With all the work/birthday/social stuff going on, I give it about a 50/50 chance in March. Let’s move on.

#4 Happy Fun Stuff

I’ve picked up my guitar a few times, once my acoustic whilst camping and ow, my fingers. Those strings are tough! I have really, really slacked on photo editing. I would really like to make some progress here. Not sure if it’s simply lack of enthusiasm/overwhelm with the Louvre photos, or just the fact I’ve been super dedicated to finishing my book… which I have! At least, sort of.

I finished all 108k words of the first, crappy draft, complete with THE END and an epilogue. However, I wrote this one in such a different way, I am not sure if it needs more or less editing. Book 1, I read drafts and edited a lot along the way. I also watched sessions, took notes, and then later took those notes to dialogue and prose. Book 2, I barreled through, not reading my draft at all, minus occasionally re-reading part of the previous chapter to get my brain back into the flow. I also wrote much of it while listening. I’d just watch parts of the session, then pause and write it out, then unpause and listen, rinse and repeat. It was more efficient… we’ll see how good it is.

I’ve read the draft through once as more of a “am I enjoying this” pass, and good news, I did. I don’t absolutely hate it. That’s something. I have some passes left to do though:

• Regular old grammar/flow pass. This is my favorite! I love noodling on wording, and I will do it forever if given the chance.
• Tying up loose ends pass. There are a bunch of lanterns. I either need to hang them (and make it clear the loose end is still unraveled by addressing it) or put them out and connect them to something already going on.
• The “make it more about the main character” pass. IRL this part of the campaign was definitely not Fork-centric. For a narrative in the first person, it has to be. I’ve added some things to get some character progression and a moment of change and some incremental steps to some of the character’s long-term goals, but I need to make sure it’s enough and add more bits and pieces through the story beyond the one cool moment at the end.
• Voice pass. Each character has their own voice and I’m not sure I hit that well typing out dialogue very quickly with the first words that came to mind.

There may be more, but this is what occurs to me now. I had a goal to finish editing by camping (didn’t). I’m now trying to get Joel something he can read on his plane flight home from traveling later this month. I don’t think I’ll hit all these things by that time, but loose ends and make it about Fork passes are the most important. The other two I can tweak and play with forever. In fact, I re-read Book 1 recently and GEEZ I want to jump back in and edit that one more now. Nope. Focus ahead. This is why I’m writing all of them before I publish anything.

So, March. What do?

• Track my food daily, do the best I can on birthday celebration days, try to make up for at least some of it with activity and being under calories other days
• Run 3x week, weights 3x week, other activity as I can/need for moar food in my face
• Clean the fridge (?)
• Work on some Paris photos. Really. Even if I post one set a week. Make SOME progress.
• Loose ends and Main Character passes, cut Joel a readable draft, and then grammar/flow/voice passes (maybe into next month)
• Enjoy the beautiful weather!!!

I ran (I can say this without irony, minus some short walks because stupid hills are stupid) the Austin Half Marathon yesterday.

Two weeks ago, I was just getting back to the tail end of my training after Covid. I successfully did 10.5 miles, but the two mid-week runs that next week, my hip flexor felt… off. So, I decided to pull the plug on running until the race and aggressively rehab (boots, ice, massage gun, stretch, roll every day). I did a test run Wednesday off the bike and it didn’t feel bad during but didn’t feel completely awesome after. So, I went back to aggressive rehab and figured que sera, sera. I’d start the race and see what happened.

The day before, we ate very normal things: a rotisserie chicken, potatoes, and veggies for lunch, and a turkey sandwich for dinner (switched up the normal order though because the chicken arrived hot and fresh from the store, wasn’t passing that up!). We had planned to take a walk to stretch out our legs but sheeeesh it was frigid and windy, so we skipped it. It’s been in the 60s or 70s every day for weeks, but a cold front blew in Friday afternoon, taking it down to lows in the 30s and highs just barely at 50 this weekend. Back up to 70s today!

At first, I was fretting about the temps (32 at the start), and overprepared with layers forgetting 30s, sunny, and little wind is actually a great race temperature – it’s just been a minute since I did a run only race. I got to the gear check with about 20 minutes before official start time, deciding between two layers of sweatshirts and a garbage bag (which provides excellent disposable warmth) and ditched everything but the throwaway black hoodie I picked up at goodwill the day before. We got started about 15 mins after official race start, which meant we were close to the back, and that was fine with me – I didn’t need to get caught up trying to catch faster people.

However, that meant a lot of dodging and weaving, which actually seemed to be okay on my hip, it liked the variance of different surfaces and angles. The first three miles were mostly uphill going south on Congress from the bridge, and my pace was in the 11s, but I felt oddly fine. Happy even. A starbucks coffee pod – which is for me absolute overkill rocketfuel – was keeping me smiling and bopping to my music. I ate one small chew every mile I didn’t take a gel, and I took the first one at mile 4. More caffeine! Wheee! I really and truly thought I might just speed up and negative split the race with how I was feeling right around halfway.

Really and truly, up until a few miles to go, I spent the morning enjoying the weather, my caffeine buzz, and my playlist thinking, “gosh, this isn’t so bad, what the heck was I worried about?” Joel and I were running different race plans and paces, so we just kept texting back and forth with progress. I’m impressed texting and running is something I can do without falling on my face. Then around mile 8, I had to walk a hill, a very short steep one, and then got right back to running. I was well ahead of my (slower than normal but achievable) goal pace of under 2:30, so I didn’t worry about it.

Then, I was reacquainted with Enfield, which is frankly, just dumb. I’d blame it on the fact that I was underprepared, but I remembered walking some of these when I was in fighting shape. I am not sure why every race course that goes through downtown has to be on this street, but it has entirely uneccessary ups and downs. I saw my goal time feasibility slip away somewhere between mile 11 and 12, but I couldn’t really do anything when the steep inclines threatened leg/back cramping (both downhill and uphill).

The last bad hill at the mile 12 marker was the one where you have to run a very steep long downhill just to get to a steep uphill and you question WHY, for the love of peanut butter, why do we have to go so far down just to go so far back up again. As I was making the face pictured above, I noticed spectators were handing out Fireball shots. I took one, which I never do in races. Once I summited the hill, it was just enough to loosen me up and I ran the rest of the way in, no more crampies. I’m not saying it’s race strategy in the future, but it certainly worked for me this eighteenth of February in the year of twenty twenty-four and I will take it.

Somehow the Enfield hills weren’t enough and instead of sending us directly down Congress, we had to weave through other streets and find JUST A FEW MORE. My adjusted goal time was 2:40 and I hit the finish line at 2:39:54. Can’t complain.

Then, after making my way through the finisher corral, I sat on the ground, ate my pretzels, vibrated with too much caffeine still in my system, and was thankful I didn’t ditch my throwaway hoodie (it rode 12.5 miles with me tied around my waist) because I was shivering again by the time Joel joined me to make the trek home. Yesterday was a smorgasbord of air-fryer snacks and whiskey (it was a few glasses before I could actually walk around without cramping, heh). Today, I’m super hungry and imagine I’ll eat a little more than the calories say I should (1200 ain’t happening today and I am not exercising!) but will be back to normality by tomorrow.

Hopefully my legs get with the program. I mean yesterday was OWWWW my everything. This morning? Cranky hip is mildly cranky. I’m kinda shuffling around today because of general soreness. I think I’m probably going to skip running this week and prioritize walking and biking and weights and maybe get my arse to the pool for a swim, finally. Longer term (as in, maybe in a couple weeks), my run focus will be shorter (5-10k max) and faster. I want to try to keep that base over the summer if possible so I can try this again next year. But, like, 3M. Or something else late fall. Not this stupid race of stupidness.

All in all, glad I did it, glad it’s done. The main motivation for signing up was to get me to increase my run endurance over the winter, which I did. With Covid, and then my hip, I had feared I’d just limp this one in, but I was able to do more than that on the stupid hilly course of stupid stupidness. All smiles now.

Not even one month into 2024, and life threw me a curveball.

When we last spoke, I just ran my 10 miles, and I was feeling pretty good about all the things. Joel had been under the weather, but all signs and portents pointed it toward NOT Covid. That lasted until the next day when he took a test and found it was indeed Covid. Bleh.

I tested negative. Since I’d been taking care of the poor guy for two days breathing the same damn air, I figured I had it or I didn’t. I frontloaded my week with some weights and biking just in case since I felt fine. That Wednesday, I woke up absolutely flattened. I couldn’t get out of bed, my batteries just stayed somewhere between .01% and 0% charge all day. Making food was impossible. Getting chips from the kitchen was half-marathon worthy. Even digesting food was difficult. It wasn’t that I was nauseous, my body was just like, “this is hard, yo!” and noped out. I pretty much slept all day.

Thursday, I woke up weirdly fine. I felt like I had a mild cold, or bad allergies. Totally able to work and go for 2-3 mile walks. I tested Sunday before I rejoined the real world and found out, “Surprise! It was Covid!” My symptoms were totally gone by the next day or two, and the only thing lingering was my brain wasn’t quite as sharp as normal.

On one hand, I was extremely fortunate to have such a mild case. On the other, I can see how this damn thing spread so much this time. It was indistinguishable for me from a 24-hour flu-like illness with bad allergies, both of which are super plausible in Austin in January. It was definitely not like 2022 Covid with a week+ of low energy, stabbing sore throat, aches and pains, and where the idea of doing anything besides dragging myself around the house would have been laughable.

I REALLY wanted to start running again as soon as my symptoms were gone, like I said, I felt totally fine. But I had enough people send me articles in caution of my plans, I waited the minimum of 7 days from symptoms abating before I took a very tentative 20-minute jog, keeping my heart rate really low, and I felt GREAT. I did a little more the next day, and a little more two days after that. I kept up with the strength *pretty* well the whole time, considering. I managed two sessions a week the two weeks I was Covid-ing, and was back to three sessions last week and even upped some numbers. I walked 28 miles over the last three weeks of sickness and recovery.

Yesterday, I set out to do a long run. I had in my head “somewhere between 3 and 12 miles” which is weird, but let me explain. I prepared for a situation where I actually wasn’t indeed recovered and would be okay calling it if I felt crappy. If I was doing optimal training, this would be my 12-mile week. I made it 10.5, which I’m actually pretty thrilled about. My muscles got tired a little quicker, but my endurance felt great. I had a wonderful first 4-mile loop, pretty good second 4-mile loop (though muscle fatigue set in around 6+), and I decided 10 was good enough, then it was close to 2 hours, then it was close to 10.5. My legs were much more tired after this one than the last one, but I still feel like with race energy, more fuel, and more caffeine I’ll make it the 13.1 just fine.

My goal here is to just survive this race, get my medal and t-shirt because I totally don’t have enough of those (but Austin Half shirts are usually pretty choice), complete the goal, and then resume running 3-ish times a week with a max of 10k. That’s my happy place right now. Running for an hour – yay! Running for two hours – ehhh. I’ll get back there eventually but I’ve had enough of it for a while. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll figure out the speedwork thingee this year.

I covered the training part of Covid pretty well, which obvious wasn’t great, but let me also discuss food/scale. I can’t complain about this, and TBH, the point in which my weight really started to go down was when I got sick. *shrug emoji*

I didn’t do a great job keeping up with my written-out sheets, but I’d give myself a B+ with everything else. I tracked every day. I weighed most days. I meditated most days. I did two forms of recovery most days (I think every day but the sleep-for-15 hours day). And at the end of January, my trendweight was right where I asked myself to be: 186.4. My goal will be to be at the most 185.4 by the end of February, and spoilers – if I don’t screw it up, I’m making great progress and almost there ALREADY!

• Week 1: -718 calories
• Week 2: 1511 calories
• Week 3: -1390 calories
• Week 4: -252 calories
• Week 5 (so far): 1191 calories

So, yeah, while I was sick, I made sure to not starve myself, if I needed extra food to have energy and feel better, I gave it to myself. And the scale did the right thing for once. I’m now back on track, February is looking great, so I just need to keep at it.

In the world of adulting, we have a date tentatively in April to get both our bathrooms remodeled. The planning process took about two hours, and then writing the biggest check we’ve written since the down payment for the house, but it’s all taken care of, and supposedly each one will be done in a week. I’m excited! Big 2024 adulting goal, check.

We also finally took down inside Christmas (what? we were sick, give us some slack) and mostly cleaned up the garage. We need one more push this month to get the last 20% and we’ll finally have both cars back in! Woo!

The last adulting thing I have on my list is cleaning out the fridge. This one is also on the list for February – we normally get forced into the issue because of a freeze/power outage (at least the last three years), so if this doesn’t happen, we’ll just do it the old-fashioned way, not under duress, later this month.

I had dealing with the pool on the list but by this point, we may as well wait for it to get a little warmer and just start getting it prepped for use. The benefit of getting it covered over the winter is not a big deal anymore since the leaves already did their thing this year and we did two rounds of major leaf patrol. At least we have the big cover for this fall when it’s time to put the pool to bed for the year.

Onto the fun stuff! I picked up my guitar three times. It was nice to reconnect with it. My fingers are a little clumsy, but I remember how to play even after a few months. I finished the last Germany 2023 pictures this week and have started to sort Paris 2022. I’m making a goal to get through them (at least sorting them, if nothing else) by end of February. I’m at 93k words in Book 2 and truly closing in on the ending (the weekend I was sick I just really zoned out and wrote all day both days and made some great progress last weekend too). I’ve got a goal to get an editable draft done by birthday camping time. It’ll be close (possibly done DURING the trip, hehe). I haven’t touched my paints, and probably won’t until after the draft is done.

We decided, after much looking at tropical islands, to go camping at Canyon Lake for my birthday for 5 days. Everything was super expensive during my birthday since it butts up against spring break. We also had some questions about whether we could travel that far for reasons that are reasons no longer, so we just made the call to just chill out in the urban woods for a few days and go on pretty hikes and Joel will make me some excellent food in celebration of my progression to my next triathlon age group. Still need to arrange the rest of the year for travel, I am still planning on a Bonaire trip and something in Europe. February goals? Probably.

So, this tiny little short but longer than normal month, goals are:

• Survive the half marathon, and then keep running after but shorter
• Weights 3x week non-negotiable
• 29 days of counting calories and 185.4 or lower trendweight
• Clean out garage and fridge
• Finish sorting Paris photos
• Finish first edit readable draft of Book 2
• Plan travel for the year

Sounds like a lovely month to meeeee!