Thursday, July 14, 2011

A Quick Status Update

Ok, so I'm knee deep (or 10 days) into this training program. And man am I looking forward to the rest/easy days I'll have next week. I'm seriously earning them! I love how having a plan is keeping me so focused. I know exactly what I have to get done each day and I'm doing it. Succeeding in that makes me feel so accomplished. Even when I'm tired, I buckle down and get the work done and I (almost) always feel better for having completed it.

Take last night—I have never seen the water at Jamesville Beach so choppy. I've also never swam in water that rough. But I dove in and did it. It certainly wasn't pretty. I switched from freestyle to breast stroke pretty frequently and kept stopping to find the buoys. I also swam around the wrong buoy, so I went further than 600 meters. It took me about two minutes longer than normal. But from there the rest of the triathlon was great. I felt decently strong on the bike (just a little sore) and great on the run. I was trying to take it pretty easy and just get my 30 minutes in, but I finished the 5k in about 24:30 and jogged out the last few minutes to get to my daily run minimum.

The thing I've been noticing about the effect all this training has been having on me? It's on my mind more than my body. I feel really peaceful about things that are going on in my day-to-day life. A stressful project at the office? I can leave it at work and it doesn't bother me at home. I think I'm actually becoming a better problem solver, too. Things happen and I take care of them. If they don't go my way then so be it. I'm really enjoying this new me that doesn't stress over every little minute detail of who said what and what did they mean and what do they think of me! (Does that make any sense?)

There's just one small problem...I've been noticing that my calf is starting to twinge like it's about to cramp up. It happened in the pool on Tuesday during a hard sprint and again tonight during speed work. So I just had a banana, a sweet potato and a glass of coconut water for dinner. I'm going to be more aware of how much water I drink each day, too. I know I've fallen out of my old gallon-a-day habit. Does anyone know of any other calf cramp remedies? I'm going to try rolling it out on a frozen water bottle. But I'll take any suggestions you've got. I want to nip this right in the bud before it become a problem!

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