Be Stronger Not Faster

There has been a shift in my thinking when it comes to my workouts.  It started a few months ago.

I was doing a swim workout and Bri and been talking to me about doing better with my pull.  Basically when my hand goes in the water I need to do a better job of using my hand like a paddle so I propel myself through the water better.  I wasn't surprised that she mentioned this because Jon had also mentioned it before a time or two.

I am swimming and working on getting my hand to be placed right and really feeling it pull.  With me and swimming I often find that when I focus on something I forget to do other things.  This means things can fall apart.  A lot of times when I'm learning a new thing in the pool my swim times go down for awhile.  Once I get the new thing dialed in better my times get faster again as I am able to do all parts and pieces together better.

Not long after this I had a day where I was really tired.  More tired than usual which is always a bit daunting since I'm pretty tired most of the time.

I was supposed to do eight 100's at my best pace.  There wasn't an expectation of a particular time, just that I would give it my all for each 100.  Usually my best effort on the first one is faster than my best effort on the last one.

Not always fun to have a series of intervals that are supposed to be your best effort when you are tired and don't even want to do the workout at all.

I decided to not focus on being fast.

I was going to focus on being strong.

I was going to work on reaching really well and pulling hard and keeping my body lined up and keeping my kicking strong.

Did my warm up.  Did my drills.  Did my builds.

Now it was time for the first 100.

Strong not fast.

I felt good.  I felt streamlined.  I was working hard.  I was working at staying relaxed and breathing well.  Bri always tells me to absolutely give the last 25 yards my all, I can breathe when I'm done.  lol

I got done and looked at my watch.

I had done a 100 in 1:52!!

I have been trying to do a 100 in less than two minutes since last summer.

I stood up, threw my hands up in the air and gave a big WOO HOO!  I'm pretty sure that I freaked out some of the 5:00 a.m. swimmers.  lol  I looked at Bri who was the lifeguard that morning and she had a big smile on her face.

If it worked to swim strong not fast once and get that result, maybe I should keep doing it and see what happens.

Every single 100 was under two minutes.

What the heck?

Bri told me when I was done that the other lifeguard had commented that I was looking really good during my builds.  Bri agreed and was pretty sure I would do a 100 under two minutes.  She loved that I did ALL the 100's under two minutes.  😊  I have to say, it is a seriously cool feeling to have your kiddo be proud of you.  Love my girl.

Coach asked me later what was different.

At first I wasn't sure.  I thought maybe that my form was more dialed in, or my pull was finally getting better.

But some other things have happened in other areas of my workouts that made me rethink that.

Coach has also been working on my bike skills.

Not too long ago I had to do hill repeats.  I rode out to a road that has several hills and picked the one that was long enough for me to be going up for the time that Coach wanted.  I would turn around, zip down the hill, turn around again and go up again.

I found myself working on the uphill part and thinking about just going up the hill strong.  I'm not going to go flying up a hill.  Even fast riders go slower uphill than they do downhill.  I decided that if I wasn't going to go fast up the hill I would do it like my swim and just work at going up the hill strong.  I had pretty solid results on that ride.

I don't think it was a big aha moment.  Just a general awareness that has been growing over the last few months.  A big change in my own mind set.

My focus has slowly been changing from wanting to be faster to wanting to be stronger.

When I reflect on my Oregon Dunes Triathlon I realize that I had been thinking that way during that race.  I wanted to have a strong race.  Boy did I!!  It's been almost two months since that race and I'm still smiling.  😁

I have spent a lot of time being very bothered by being slow.  I want to be as fast as all my teammates.  I want to keep up.  I hate being slow.

I still want those things but I am realizing that I will be much more successful in the long run if I stay focused on getting stronger.

In my head I've had it backwards.  I wanted to get faster and that would make me stronger.  Now I know it is really the other way around.

Being stronger will eventually help me get faster.

Maybe this is something that is really obvious to others.  You might be reading this and thinking Duh!  lol  I know that my husband and my coach have both talked about this in many different ways.  Evidently I didn't realize that my thinking was backwards and what they were saying didn't really compute.  I was getting in my own way.

Seems like a small thing.  I'm not really changing my workouts.  I've always worked hard and tried to do all the parts and pieces the way Coach asks me to.

But I know as a teacher that sometimes the way a student approaches a hard task can make a difference on how the task comes out.  Perfectly capable and very smart students can struggle with something because they are so busy thinking about it one way they don't hear me explaining what they need to do in order to be successful.  When they finally are ready to really hear me and have that aha moment things get easier quickly.  They are so excited that it all makes sense and love being able to say, "I get it now!"  Best part of being a teacher!

From now on I'm working on focusing on being stronger.  Maybe the improvements that I have made the last few months are just because that is the normal course of where my training was going to bring me.  But I'm convinced the change in my focus is a big part of why I am seeing a sudden upswing on my improvements.  I have improved steadily since I started this journey but recently it has seemed more dramatic.

So now I have a new motto to add to the list of things I repeat to myself often as I'm working out.

Breathe, smile, have fun, repeat.

And now:

Be stronger not faster.

Not Easier but I'm Stronger

It's been almost a month since the Best in the West triathlon.  It was some time for rest and not worrying about a schedule or anything structured as far as working out went.  I could do whatever I felt like, however I wanted.

Work was crazy busy so it was nice to not have to worry about feeling like I had to do a workout.  At the same time it felt weird to not have the structure of a plan to keep me focused.  Without a plan it is way to easy to not do anything.  At least for me it is.

Then I got frustrated.  This sounds weird because I wasn't doing any workouts and so I wasn't frustrated because I wasn't doing well.  I was frustrated because I was tired.

My tired thing is a pain in the ass.  I had an appointment with my doctor right before school started.  Good news, my A1C number has gone down a little.  Yay!  Bad news, tried another test to see if he could figure out why I'm so tired.  All tests came back normal.

Last January I made a conscious decision to just learn to manage the tired since it's obviously not going away.  Especially since we can't figure out what causes it.  Overall I think I did a better job this past year not letting the tired keep me from doing what I wanted to do.  I have done better balancing and looking at my week and making sure that I include what I need to get the down time or rest I need.  Sometimes that means saying no to fun things with friends, which is hard.  But I have a limited tank of energy and I'm learning to conserve it better.

I thought with the break in my workouts that I would not be so tired since I wouldn't be getting up to workout at 5:00 a.m. a couple times a week and then working out again after school.

Nope!

I was actually MORE tired!  What!!?

I got pissed off.

I'm driving home from work and butt dragging and then getting up in the morning and driving back to work feeling exactly like I did the night before.  It sucks!!  One weekend I was supposed to go out with friends and I took a nap that was so long that by the time I woke up they had already gone.  Ugh!!  Then later when they were going somewhere new and I could meet them I couldn't muster up the energy to go.  That pissed me off too!

I had a few days of having an internal pity party.  Then it was time to get over it.

I got to go to the OSU football game and take my coach and his family along with me.  The weather was awesome and we had a great time.  I asked Jon when he was going to start me back on a routine. He said he thought I could have one more week without structure unless I wanted to get going.  I told him if I was going to be tired I would rather have something to be tired about.  At least when I'm working out there is a justification for being tired.

So I'm still butt dragging big time.  But at least I'm working out and getting something done even though I'm tired.

The goal this fall is to work on getting stronger so there has been lots of strength training and interval work.  I had to do some track interval work a few weeks ago.  I headed to the track to get it done.  I had to run for five minutes and then do 10 intervals followed by a 5 minute walk or jog.  Each interval was walk for one minute, run for three minutes at a 11:15-11:25 pace, run for one minute at a 9:50 or under pace.  That is much faster than what has been my normal pace.  I had to go faster than normal for three minutes and then go even faster.  Those one minute walk sessions went by way too fast!  I had to do a lot of self talk to do the last few intervals.  I wanted to just call it good after interval seven, eight and nine.  I was happy when I finished interval number 10.  I had to work hard to get that workout done.  I made the goal for almost every interval and the few I didn't were within a few seconds so a that was a good thing.

Then the next Tuesday I had a swim lesson with Bri.  I go in a little early so that I can get a warm up in before we get started.  I had done about 500 yards before my lesson starts.  Which is rather cool all in itself because just a little over a year ago doing 500 without stopping would have been amazing.  Now it's a warm up.  ;-)  Bri talks to me about my form and some things she wants me to work on.  Then she tells me that I will be doing 10 sets of 50 yards with a 30 second rest in between.  I am supposed to do the first one as fast as I can and then try and do the next nine as close to that speed as I can.  What!?  Ummmmm, okay, I don't think so.  It must have been on my face because she gave me the look that said, "Do NOT argue with me!" She also told me that I was not to do any of the 50's slower than 1:05.  

I took off for my first one.  Got back and she asked me my time.  57 seconds.  

Dang it!  It's like typing class.  Where the first class you take a typing test and then you have to improve and get faster than that score.  If you had friends that had been in the class ahead of you then you knew to go really slow on that first test.  That way you didn't have to work quite so hard to show improvement.  

I should have gone slower for that first 50 yards.  lol  

Except that I'm too competitive with myself to do that.  

Nine more times I would be gasping for breath at the wall, tell Bri my time and take off again. 

After the first couple of intervals she informed me that I couldn't go slower than 1:02 since I was doing so well.  

Great!

57

59

57

57

59

59

1:00  At this point she's telling me I'm half way there.

1:01  She says this one is the hardest.  The next two will be easier.

1:00  I don't think so!

1:01  Ugh!!

Then I had to do 25 yards with a 30 second break.  She said I had to stay under 32 seconds.  

I was SO tired!

30

29

27

28

27

28

28

27

I had to stop because the Masters swim group was going to start and we ran out of time for lessons.  Oh darn!  Bri had me do a 200 yard cool down.  When I got out the pool I was talking with Bri and she said she had to tell me something about my workout.  Turns out that the way these intervals work is that I'm supposed to keep doing them until I can't maintain the time/speed anymore and then she would have had me move on to something else.  Except that I kept hitting the mark so I got to keep going.  So if I had given up or slowed down then we would have been done.  But because I kept fighting I did the entire set of intervals.  lol  I was partly grumpy about doing more than I necessarily had to and partly proud that I was able to keep going like I did.  

This last Saturday I was supposed to do a trail run.  My last long trail run before my event next week.  I was supposed to walk the first five minutes and then run four minutes, walk one minute for one hour and 20 minutes, then walk the last five minutes. Which meant that it didn't matter if I was going uphill or down, if it was time to run, I had to run.  I did one of my favorite routes, the Nettleton/Davies loop in the Mac Forest.  I have run the entire thing before, which was work but I did it.  Taylor and I had done this route the week before and walked up the hills and ran on the downhills.  Ended up with a time that was just about the same as the time I had run the whole thing.  I was curious to see how I would do with this run/walk method.  

The direction I started is uphill for about 1.5 miles.  Not horribly steep but steep enough.  I was not breaking any speed records but I worked at just plugging away.  

The first half of the run was in the fog.  Quiet and still in the forest.  I couldn't see far.  Was glad I had the puppy to keep me company.  ;-)  When I turned to come back on the lower road I started to come out of the fog.  I turned a corner and suddenly there was sunshine and blue sky.  So beautiful!!  I had to stop and take a few pictures.  

I got to the end of the running portion and had my five minute walk left and I realized that I was almost back at the gate.  I didn't know what my average pace would be but I knew that I had just done this route faster than I had ever done before.  I was a very happy trail runner....and a very tired trail runner.  

While I was running there were times I didn't want to keep at it.  I didn't want to push hard to go faster.  I wanted to walk more and run less.  I wanted to slow the run way down and settle for my old normal pace.  

Why does it always have to be so hard?

I have been told this quote before.  I even have various versions pinned on my Health Motivation board on Pinterest.  The last couple of months have been showing me that this is indeed true.  I keep pushing and working.  Which means I keep struggling.  Sometimes it goes epically bad.  Other days I feel like I kicked my own ass.  

Just like when I started running. 

As long as I'm trying to be a better, healthier me then it will never be easy.  But the hard will be in a different place then it used to be.  

I have to remember that and keep things in perspective because I'm my own worst enemy at times when it comes to being frustrated and having self-doubt.  

I have come a long way in six years.  

I have come a long way in just the past year.  

But if I'm always setting new goals and trying new adventures then there always should be an aspect of hard and challenging.  Otherwise I'm just stagnant.  Which really isn't much better than when I was a couch potato, the stagnant is just disguised better.   I don't want to be someone who settles for where I am now.  That applies to all aspects of my life, mental and physical.  

This is the fog I had been running in at the start of my trail run.

Change in the weather when I got on the other side!  So beautiful!!

My running buddy.  She's getting used to mom being faster.  ;-)  

Never thought I'd go this fast on a run with this kind of elevation.

A few years ago getting an average pace of 13:34 on a flat run would have been amazing.  Doing it with 719 feet of elevation is freaking awesome.  Good for me to remember that!!!!  

Sunday Joe and I did a short walk at a place in Albany we hadn't been before.  It's called the Talking Water Gardens.  It was very pretty with nice trails.  It will be a great place for runs that aren't super long but we don't want to do on the roads.  I loved all the fall color and I loved hanging out with my favorite guy!  

I'm doing the Silver Falls 7 Miler race on Saturday.  I had a huge PR last year (because I basically walked it the year before.)  I'm excited to see what I can do this year.  I'm more excited about spending the weekend with people that are fun, caring and are challenging themselves as well.  So much better being a part of all the fun instead of just being on the sidelines.  

Glad I'm getting stronger. 

Perspective

I am just under a week away from the Beaver Freezer Sprint Triathlon.  I'm nervous and a bit excited.  I know it's not the big one that I'm working towards but it is part of the process.

We spent some time this past week in a cabin near Mt. Rainier, Washington.  It was beautiful. My coach accommodated the fact that we would be out of town so most of my workouts were walking, running and strength training.

On Tuesday I was supposed to do a 4 mile walk/run.  No pace set, no time to get done, just do 4 miles.  I walked the first mile with Joe since he was supposed to do a 30 minute walk and then did the rest running, mostly.

I didn't try and go fast.  I stopped a bunch of times to take pictures.  I enjoyed being out and moving.  It was nice to not have any pressure (self-inflicted usually) to do anything specific.

I was trotting along and began thinking about how I was on vacation and running.  Not too many years ago those two things together would not have sounded like a fun thing at all.  After all, vacations are about relaxing, taking naps and not exerting oneself too hard.

But I found my run to be awesome.  I got to be outside, no music, just listening to the creek I was running near and looking at the clouds move through the hills that were in view.  I looked down at my watch at one point and realized that I was running at a 12:30 pace and wasn't really trying to go fast.  A couple of years ago I would have had to work really hard to get that pace.

So that got me thinking about perspective.  I often get frustrated because I am working really, really hard and I don't feel that I am getting anywhere.  I'm running in place and getting nowhere fast. But the reality is I have made a lot of progress.  Some physically, a lot mentally but all of it progress.

Sunday morning at the start of Spring Break Joe and I headed out early for our weekly hike.  We would be taking off for a wedding in Washington later so we wanted to be sure to get our hike in.  Joe suggested we hike at the Peavy Arboretum and I thought that sounded great.  We haven't done that hike in a couple of years and there are lots of little side trails to take and explore.

The start of the hike is going up a steep hill and then there is another spot during the hike where we have to go up another big hill.  As we were going up the second hill I was thinking about the first time that I had done that hike.  I distinctly remember a very slow trudge.  One slow, legs aching, out of breath step at a time.  I also remember Joe walking backwards and holding my hand and pulling me along.  I was so frustrated.  I was never going to get faster, be able to breath better, do more than trudge up a hill like that.  That's how I felt at the time.

To be honest, that's how I still feel a lot of the time.  Slow, breathing is hard, I'm never going to be better or faster.  Why does it always have to be so hard?

But as we were hiking I realized that my legs weren't aching.  While I was working hard my breathing wasn't terrible.  Not great but not terrible.  My heart rate was staying below 150, which is really good for me going up a hill.  I wasn't running but I wasn't trudging either.  I was working hard but at a whole different level that working hard had been so long ago.  I suddenly thought of a quote that I see often online when I'm looking for motivation:

I often forget that while I still struggle, and things are still really hard it isn't because I haven't made progress.  It's actually that I HAVE made progress but I'm still working really hard.  I'm not settling for just getting better at the old level.  I'm always pushing to do better than I am today. This is a good thing unless you don't keep things in perspective.

Ran this single track for about 1/4 of a mile before turning around.  

The snow level had dropped overnight.  I loved the way the clouds moved around the hills.

We got to see a herd of elk when we were making a trip into the small town near our cabin.  They were grazing in a field by the road and then jumped the fence and crossed the highway.  It was awesome!

The elk were so cool to see.

I am not where I want to be yet.  I'm probably not ever going to be where I want to be.  That happens when you keep setting new goals and trying new things.  A few years ago the thought of doing one triathlon sent me spinning.  Here I am almost three years later and I'm signed up for FOUR triathlons and one of them is an Olympic. What the heck? And after I get through all of those I will have new goals and new challenges that will probably scare the crap out of me all over again.  lol  Keeps life interesting!

The new thing to work on for myself is to keep my perspective.  I may be traveling down this road slowly but looking back I realize that I have come a long, long way.  Glad I was willing to keep working at it.  Time to keep things in perspective and be proud of what I have done and what I am currently doing.  And be excited (terrified?!) about the challenges to come.

Look for a race report for the Beaver Freezer next weekend.  I start in the 4th wave on Saturday, 9:00 a.m.  The plan is to swim hard, not fall down on the bike and have a big smile on my face when I finish the run.  :-)