Week 5: When Life Gets in the Way

This week was a lesson in one of those trite expressions that you hear all the time, but rarely think about: "You can't do everything" - or, said another way, "Something has to give."  Last year when I was training for Ironman Florida, these expressions rarely proved true for me.  Work was somewhat easy, as I was in a routine, I had plenty of people to help with Sierra on my long training days, and my boyfriend was my main training partner.  It was truly realistic to make my training my number one priority.

But this year, I am faced with the challenge that 99% of the age-groupers out there who take on the Ironman challenge - I will often need to give more priority to pieces of my life other than my training.  This week was a good wake-up call to this fact.

• Monday was moving day!  Very exciting!  But I started early, getting out of bed at 5:30am, packing up my corporate housing apartment, and headed over to my new place to take pictures before the movers were scheduled to be there at 8am.  As Monday is my typical rest day, I was ok to not train.  But even though I had a couple of nice young gentlemen moving all my boxes for me, and reassembling furniture, I was still on my feet all day - unpacking, and wracking my brain for where to put everything in my new place.  I went to bed completely wiped out at 9:00pm.
• Tuesday was a good day for a recovering swim before work.  I took it pretty easy, swimming for about 45 minutes.  After work, I spent an hour on the phone with my boyfriend in Boston, giving him a Facetime tour of our new apartment before heading out for hill repeats.  I managed to get in hill repeats on the 65th St. hill between Ballard and Phinney, between 3rd Ave NW and Greenwood Ave.  It's a .25 mi. hill, and my training schedule called for 8 repeats, but my legs were still aching from Monday, and on repeat #5, I felt my knee buckle and knew that 6 was all that I was going to do.  I was proud of myself for getting out there at all.  Before going to bed on Tuesday, I made it a priority to set up my trainer for a Wednesday AM workout... 
• Wednesday worked out great, with a trainer ride in the morning focused on long threshold intervals (two intervals, 20 min. each).  Feeling good up to this point, even though this day was supposed to be a brick workout.  I skipped the run because I slept in a bit and couldn't fit it in (yes, still recovering from the move, I felt!).  I had a work dinner on Wednesday night, which kept me out until 11pm, so needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night.
• Thursday was feeling like it was going to be a wash because I only had five hours of sleep and wanted to get in a morning workout because I had plans for drinks after work.  I had planned to do a swim, but ended up prioritizing a strength workout - a whole 50 min, full-body session.
• By Friday, I was feeling a bit back to normal, with my regular Friday morning run around Lake Union.  I took advantage of feeling relaxed on Friday night, and had an easy evening at home, making dinner for myself in my new apartment.
• Saturday and Sunday included two of my four planned workouts - a long run (10 mi.) and a long ride on the trainer.  But I skipped the extra swim session and the extra strength session after my Saturday 10-miler wiped me out more than I could imagine, and my Sunday group ride got hijacked by my inability to find the right gear amongst my unpacked boxes.  I used Sunday to go to the bike shop to buy what I needed to get myself organized, and managed to get in a 2-hour ride on the trainer.

All said, I did better than average.  But I'm not used to not following my plan 100%, so it feels like I let things slide.  But, in the spirit of the lesson of the week, I'm truly ok with this and feel like I did what was best for my physical and mental health.

Plan vs. Actual:
Swim:  plan 1:30:00, actual 0:45:00
Bike:  plan 5:15:00, actual 3:05:00
Run: plan 4:45:00 (28 mi.), actual 3:18:00 (21.5 mi.)
S&C:  plan 1:00:00, actual 0:50:00