Week 13 recap: Mom, you probably don't want to read this.

This is a nice illustration of how NOT to combine training and school…

2/21/2012

Summary of today (fairly typical for a Tuesday)

4:30 Wake up

5-7:30 Swim and lift weights

9-6:30 Class and lab

6:30-8 Attended a lecture/did some networking

8-9:30 Running and abs

10-? Dinner and homework (sometimes, not today) or sleep (usually)

I got home at 9:30, made a quick dinner and tried to work on my presentation but I was too tired and sore, so I went to bed.  

2/22/2012 

I woke up early enough to do my 45 min bike with 15 min transition run, but wisely chose to push it to the evening and start working on my presentation immediately.  I spent all day working on it but when 5 PM rolled around I hadn’t practiced it at all.  Someone in the lab I’d like to join told me that acing the presentation in this class was pretty much a requirement to join that lab.  So of course I was feeling a ton of pressure to do well, but when it came down to it, I was showing up unprepared.  I usually don’t get nervous speaking in front of people, but apparently when I have 40 minutes of information to go over, I haven’t practiced and I need to do really well, I get really nervous.  I stammered through the first couple of slides with lots of pauses, considered just running out of the room and never coming back, and finally got in to a little bit of a groove.  About half-way through though, I started to feel like I was going faint.  My vision got fuzzy, I broke out in a cold sweat, my ears started to ring and I got really dizzy.  I had to give the rest of my talk sitting down, still feeling weak and shaky.  So basically, it was an f-ing disaster. 

I got home, called Nate crying (the second time in a week he had to deal with that…) and finally realized that I wasn’t handling school and training.  I couldn’t just work harder and get it all done.  I had been prioritizing training and this time it really might have screwed up my future.  I decided to rework my goals and focus more on just finishing the race rather than pushing myself for a competitive time.  Finishing in 11.5 hours instead of 14 won’t get me in to a lab where I’d actually enjoy my PhD.  Given these realizations, I didn’t end up doing my workout, but did all of the reading for class the next day (which honestly, hadn’t happened this yet this quarter).

2/23/2012

I didn’t do my swim workout or my 1 hour bike ride today.  Mostly it was silly excuses: I still felt weird and groggy and didn’t want to pass out in the pool (I probably wouldn’t have), I wanted to arrive to class rested (I still fell asleep in class) and Gonzaga was playing BYU and I wanted to watch (and Sarah had a bunch of homework so I didn’t want to distract her by riding my trainer and yelling at the TV).

2/24/2012

It’s like I’ve done a 180; with lower time goals I have no motivation to do anything, so I didn’t swim again this morning.   I managed to work my 1 hour run in between experiments in lab.  I left lab with enough time to swim before evening commitments, but arrived home still without motivation.  I REALLY wanted to take a nap.  Then, (corny as this sounds) this quote on the inside of my ice tea label gave me the motivation:

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don't adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”  - Confucius

I made it to the gym and swam for 45 minutes.  I didn’t turn away when I saw that there were limited lanes available and I didn’t go home when I realized I could only get in part of the workout.  I did what I could and felt good about it afterward.  And I decided to go back to my old goals.  School WILL come first (because it’s not going to get any less stressful), but I’m holding on to that 11.5 hour, 6 hour bike leg ideal.  I need to approach training with a slightly competitive attitude, otherwise I’ll end up on that beach in Coeur d’Alene as unprepared as I was for my presentation, and I’d really rather not drown.

2/25/2012

Bike 3 hours with a transition to 30 minute run (I love running off the bike!)

2/26/2012

1:15 run, heart rate mostly in Z1 (126-145) because I was pretty sore.

2/28/2012

Fast-forward to Week 14, because most of what I wrote last week sounds pretty hypocritical (I can’t have a competitive time goal, no wait, I need a competitive time goal…).  So here’s how today has gone, as an example of how the school-training balance should be approached, and will continue to be approached:

I was up until midnight last night finishing a homework assignment, which I think I understood pretty well.  I set my alarm for 5:30 so I could get in my swim and still get a reasonable amount of sleep.  I turned off my alarm and got up at 6:30, so didn’t get to swim, but figured I was fine postponing it until Wednesday.  I went to class (prepared!) and lab and class and then to the gym to run for an hour and do weights/abs.  A new quarter starts tomorrow, so I don’t have anything that needs to be done for tomorrow’s class and can go straight to bed after the gym.  I also won’t be in my new lab tomorrow, so I’ll have plenty of time to fit in the swim workout and start working on the take home test that’s due on Monday.  If neither of those things were true, I would have done a short, high intensity run sometime today and not worried about making up swimming or lifting.  See?  Healthy plan.