Letting your body be the guide

My last posting to this blog made note of triathlon training. My “official” training for the Olympic Distance Triathlon in which I hope to participate on August 1, 2015, begins tomorrow. I started the year using a paper calendar to log my workouts that begins its weeks on Sundays. After much mind-twisting and mock emotional angst, I decided that I could adapt to the change and treat my workout weeks as beginning on Sundays and ending Saturdays, instead of following a convention of ending the week with the end of the “week-end” — Sunday. That means that officially the training began today. So how did I do?
A simple answer is that I did great. I went to a wonderfully intense ninety-minute yoga class and followed it with an 1,800 yard swim. Another simple answer is that I did it wrong: I overworked myself and didn’t do what the plan prescribes.

And, this little dilemma has been my Achilles heel ever since I began following training plans to prepare myself for major fitness events fifteen years ago.

The simple truth is that plans and life don’t always map onto each other together. The day of the scheduled 50-mile bicycle ride might be the same day that you’re involved with an all-day workshop on turning your kitchen into a farm-retail enterprise. The 10K fun run that you signed up for on April 11 might be too many miles for what the plan says you’re supposed to be running at the end of Week 2 of training.

And what the plan says is enough distance might be not enough, based on your fitness readiness in whatever discipline is being emphasized. Or it might not be enough because you’ve already gotten comfortable doing much, much more. My swimming and my bicycling illuminate this issue quite well. When I’m in the swimming pool, I often feel as if I’m in my second home. Swimming feels to me like meditation and yoga. It relaxes me, elongates me, and tones my body. It quiets my mind, and it seems to break up any tightness that might have built up in my knees, hips, or shoulders from pounding the pavement or spinning on a bike. I logged 1,500 yards twice in the past week. It only made sense to bump that total up a little for this week — with a goal of trying to hit the pool three times in the coming week. Except that the training program outlines three workouts of 750 to 1,500 yards each.

By contrast, there’s still snow thickly coating the ground where I live. The roads are relatively clean, but the chill winds still make outdoor cycling a bit of a challenge. I know I can hit twenty miles — the maximum workout proposed for Week 1 of the training plan — on an indoor bike. But doing it outdoors is a different story. Coupled with that challenge is the fact that cycling for training purposes requires a longer time commitment. The 18-week plan I’m following starts with three workouts a week, of 15 to 20 miles each. Quickly, the distances escalate, with a 30 miler in Week 5, a 40 miler in Week 7, and a 50 miler in Week 11. Will I be ready for those distances when they come? Will I be able to make the time for such distances when they come?

The Olympic Distance event interests me because in the two years that I have tried to train for it I have found it to be somewhat intimidating. On the surface, the distances seem manageable: a 1,500 meter swim (about nine-tenths of a mile), a 24.8 mile bicycle ride, and a 10-kilometer (6.2 miles) run. I registered for the Fronhofer Tool Olympic Distance Triathlon in 2013 because it was taking place within an hour’s drive of my home and had an advertised maximum finish time of five hours. I figured that this would mean that I would finish in about four hours with plenty of back-of-the-pack company.

I was partially right. I finished in four hours, though probably would have finished in about three hours and 40 minutes if a flat tire hadn’t stymied me. However, there was no back-of-the-pack company. I was dead last. Athletes who had completed the run and had refreshed themselves were leaving the park where the event began and ended as I was pulling in on my bike, with the 10K run left to go. Even if I hadn’t had the flat, I wouldn’t have had much company. There was only one participant behind me when I sprung my flat. She passed me as I was going back to find some help at the last support station.
I learned later that the Olympic event is “competitive”, even for enthusiastic recreational athletes. Enthusiasts tend to show up for Sprint Distance Triathlons in droves, but fall off rapidly when it comes to longer events. I have always considered myself more recreational than competitive, so I also wondered if I should try for a shorter event.
I decided to give the Olympic Distance another try this year for a simple reason: I like the distance. I like the challenge of the training and I like the feel-good aura that follows the workouts. I hope I do better than I did two years ago, but I also have prepared myself to finish last. My logic is that the goal is not the race, but the process of learning how to train effectively enough to do the race.

With that goal in mind, I am looking at the training plan — from a Beginner Triathletes website — with my own body in mind. It calls for three workouts a week in each of the three events that comprise the triathlon: swimming, bicycling, and running. It recommends additional time in the weight room, as well as several optional additional workouts each week during the more intense training periods. Because I know that I can finish each of the distances in the physical condition that I am in right now, I am treating the plan as a guide, rather than prescription. Instead of weights, I would like to do yoga because yoga, like swimming, rejuvenates my body and quiets my mind. While I would like to build up my cycling speed and endurance, I would like to treat the weekly distances as suggestions, rather than rules. In the longer term, it seems as if it is consistency in rigor — rather than grueling rigor in and of itself — that will be the best marker of success.

So we will see how the training goes — and if the goal of learning can be the ultimate race for success.

Wish me luck. I’ll keep you posted. If I don’t, keep me honest and ask me how the training’s going.

Being selfish

I recently changed my profile picture on Facebook to the photo that graces this blog. The image was taken March 13, just before a pre-St. Patrick’s Day fun run sponsored by a running store in the community where I live. I change my Facebook images often, mostly for fun but also partly to establish a theme for the next few weeks or months that the photo marks my identity. I chose this image of running because it was the most recent image of me running, and, well, to admit to being vain, because I felt it made me look good.
The photo attracted a fair number of “likes” from friends in the Facebook world. It also drew a question, “What is your secret?”
I happened to see the question on a morning when I felt a bit out of sorts. My knee-jerk instinct was to post a response that was honest but not very positive, if not understood in context: “Allowing myself to be selfish.” I chose not to make that response because I wanted to reflect on this thought a little. Why was it the first response that came up? Why might it be misunderstood?

So, a little bit of back story. Mid-March is one of the crazy-busy times of year for those of us who teach for a living. It is especially crazy when you’re also a parent, working a second job, or like me trying to finish revisions to a book manuscript and start your spring garden in seedling trays indoors. And be a good wife, and a good teacher, and a collegial co-worker, and a good civic activist.

In short, there are too many activities going on in a single day to possibly complete on time. Which means that inevitably the sun sets and the day ends with one or more items on the to-do list that did not get done. This means often that one looks for something else in the game plan that can be sacrificed so that all of the necessary things can get done. Often, the first thing that gets sacrificed is self-care: creating the space in the schedule for exercise, taking the time to prepare healthy meals instead of resorting to take-out, getting eight hours of sleep, even perhaps the extra few minutes to trim toenails, floss teeth, or rub moisturizer into winter-parched skin.

All of these aspects of self-care are important. Nearly everyone probably is guilty of letting at least one of them — if not all of them — slide when the life pace gets frantic. I think the one that falls by the wayside the most is exercise because exercise is a commitment that often requires saying no to others in order to say yes to yourself.

Over the past two week, I have been trying to get myself onto a schedule that mimics triathlon training in the hopes that the schedule will help me do a better job than I have done in years past in preparing for such events. I did have some successes: I did two short workouts in a single day twice during the past week, and I did manage to work in three cycling workouts, which for me is particularly difficult. With the success came some challenges: I devoted time — time that some would say could have been spent on other things — to mapping out daily plans to incorporate the workouts. I also devoted the time itself to doing the workouts. And as I was giving time to exercise, I found myself wondering why.

I am not an athlete, in the sense of being someone who can expect to be a contender in a race. I usually finish races near the back of the pack, if not in last place. I know that exercise makes me feel good because it gets me out of my head and into my body, but I wonder at times if my head is the better place to be, given my work and all of the commitments to completing projects that go unmet day after day. Shouldn’t I be putting the time into grading papers? Shouldn’t I be getting that long overdue project done? Shouldn’t I be cleaning the house?

“How are you doing on your book?” my husband asked me, pointedly after I scooted out of the YMCA where I had gone to swim — ten minutes later than I had promised to be.

The answer wasn’t a good one, and I have promised myself that I will do my best to push through the other piles of work to get to the finish. But I know that there is a lot going on and that the easiest way to wrap it up is to put the exercise on hold. To do that would be the unselfish thing, it seems. To sacrifice an activity I love for the greater good. But I find myself resisting that lurch because, frankly, I have to be selfish, for myself.
And so, that is the secret. Making sure to be selfish, at least a little.