Food Is My Frenemy!

WEEKLY WORKOUTS
SWIMMING 3:15 (3 days)
BIKING 5:35(2 days)
RUNNING 3:45 (3 days with 2 bricks)
WEIGHTS 1:00 (2 days)

Anyone that knows me knows that I'm a foodie. I can literally spend hours talking about food. Yes I can be a food snob, but I really just love food. I love good for me food. I love bad for me food. I love to eat food. I love to smell food. I love to talk about food...plain and simple I love food. Unfortunately this love for food has gotten me into trouble. Nope not with the police, but the 20 pairs of designer jeans in my closet. Seriously NOTHING fits. I go to work in sweats and a T-shirt and seldom go out in anything other then that since for the most part I'm training or grabbing a casual bite to eat. Needless to say, on the occasion that I do go out, I'm in a bind. It's amazing with the amount that I work out that I am not losing weight. Well, it's really not that amazing considering the food I consume. I won't even go into detail because it will either make your jaw drop, throw out some explatives or possibly laugh at because of how bad it is. About a month ago I had a nutrition and lifestyle consultation with Andrew. He "scolded" me for my food diary. Funny thing is, that's when I was being good. I attempted a gluten free, organic, which didn't last too long. Well, starting this week I'm attempting it again. I will try to knock out the processed foods, which will be the hardest thing for me to do. I am however allowing myself 1 cheat day. Normally a cheat day means an entire grocery store, so I will limit that as well. I know me and if I cut it out entirely to begin with, I will go insane and likely binge later. So on top of my training, I am incorporating a healthy lifestyle as well. This won't be easy for me, but it's something I need to do.

I had my longest continuous swim to date, which was a 1x2500. I've swam more then that in a workout, but not continuous. I was going at a moderate pace and had some sprints mixed in there. The sprints are making me faster, but honestly the best part of them is how much they break up the workout. I did have to stop for a split second a couple of times because my goggles were giving me a massive headache over my left eye. It's been happening a decent amount lately, which means it's time to find some new goggles. Finding goggles is a horrible task for me. I have a small face, so the goggles tend to be rather big on me. They make women's specific and I've even bought kids in the past. Hopefully I find some that don't hurt after a 2.4 mile swim. Friday I had an amazing swim workout that incorporated sprints and drills. Such a good feeling when you have an awesome workout.

We had some good weather this week and I was able to take Lucy out for some hill repeats on Tuesday. They honestly weren't as bad as I thought they were going to be. Normally when I do them I try to sprint up the entire hill, but Andrew just had me doing 15-20 seconds, standing up, doing a full sprint. I was supposed to have a 5 minute recovery spin between each sprint (there was a total of 6), but there were a few sprints that ended up having more recovery. It wasn't because I needed them, but it was a little farther then I thought to circle back around. My 30 minute run after that was good until the last 5 minutes when my legs literally just became dead. There are 2 hills at the end of the route that just killed me. My neck, shoulders and scapula were pretty tender after that workout. I had an extremely crappy and miserable 4:20 minute ride on Saturday. I've decided not to go into detail and complain about it because I want to focus on the positive this week. It seems like I'm always bitching about the bike and I just can't do that anymore. We all have shitty workouts occasionally. As Andrew said to me, "you're training for an ironman not a leisurely weekend bike ride." You know what, he's absolutely right. It's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to make me uncomfortable and I always have room to improve. If that wasn't the case, more people would be training for an Ironman. I have a bike fit on Tuesday, so I hope that will help me with the issues I'm having on the bike.

My Wednesday run was tough. I didn't do my normal route and some of the hills were pretty challenging. I'm not a big fan of running on the sidewalks, especially when it's wet out. I had 6 sprints and I felt like I was sliding a little bit when I did them. Today I had a great, long run. I had an 1:45 run, with the goal of doing a negative split. I had a negative split of 2.5 minutes, which was good. I remember a 1/2 marathon I did after coming off of an injury. I was running with a friend that was injured as well, so we decided to run it together at a slow pace. I felt so good with about 3.5 miles to go, so I went ahead of my friend and ended up with a pretty decent time. I guess sometimes it pays to go out slower. That's how I plan to run the 1/2 marathon on Sunday.

My shoulder is getting a little better. I've been icing a lot and had a good massage to it on Saturday. I also realized that I need to lay off picking kids up with my ride arm. I'm now focusing on carrying them in my left. I think it added a lot of stress to my problem areas. This week I was doing well mentally until Saturday, which turned into a mini meltdown. Luckily my friend Stevie and Andrew helped me get through it big time. Sometimes you need to be talked off the ledge and I'm glad they were there to do it for me. I have a lot of people that I can go to in my network, but I'm glad I went to both of them. Thanks boys! Here's to another week of training.