August 25, 2011

Melt, a photo by leeroy09481 on Flickr.

Today was one of those days that started out with such good intentions. And which just fell apart little by little.

First, I have brutal PMS which means I am just ready to cry buckets at the drop of a hat. Today was an OYO bike/run day. First I was going to go for a ride with my helpful friend Mary, but then it turned out she had tickets to a show and couldn’t go. Which was OK because I had another plan.

After last weekend I made the decision that I want to move from toe cages to shoe clips for the bike. But I knew it would be scary and freaky so I thought, I’d get a bike trainer to practice on! Last night I went to Lily’s house because she offered to loan me her trainer while she was away. But her housemates were not home. Wah. No problem. I would get one on my own! How resourceful am I! Because I am going to need one anyway. I went to Craiglist and got immediately confused and then I got a cheapness attack and went for this bike trainer that costs $35. I have no clue about these things. The ones at my local bike shop are like $300. What is the difference? I had no idea.

I had a rather stressful hard day at work. Thursdays are often like that. But I left a little early and went to buy this trainer. On the way I suddenly got all paranoid about people getting murdered or attacked when they go to meet a Craigslist contact, so I texted my husband the address and phone where I was going, and said if you don’t hear from me, go here. He was like, what? Why would I not hear from you? And then I transferred my paranoia to him.

I found the place and it was like this ginormous overstock warehouse place, with basically shelves of junk all over the place. They had a whole shelf of these cheapie trainers. I got one and put it in my trunk. I even got a receipt and a 7 day return slip! (smart) Then I went to the fancy bike store to get the clip pedals. But then they told me I’d have to bring in my stupid shoes to have them fitted to the clip things.

That’s when I started to melt down. And realize that I was very, very very tired and hungry and I still had like a 75 minute workout ahead of me. I think I actually started to cry a little bit. My husband was texting me about “what is the dinner plan” and my brain just melted out my ears and I couldn’t even THINK let alone form a coherent dinner plan so I said we could get takeout from this place but then I couldn’t locate our daughter to figure out what she wanted which led to me sitting in the takeout place texting everyone in my family for like half an hour. Meanwhile I was getting more exhausted and overwhelmed.

Finally I got home and we ate dinner and I thought, OK, even if I don’t go out for a ride I can setup my new TRAINER and I can practice various bike skills and get a workout while watching some mindless TV. And we took the thing out of the box and we sort of set it up but it kept not really working right because the pedal would hit the round thing and well…..

It was the wrong size. It was for a 24-28 inch bike and I have a 17 inch bike. So it wouldn’t work. So I had to put it back in the box and at that point it was dark and I couldn’t ride OR run and I just put on my pajamas and cried.

That was my day. Tomorrow is a new day. I hate hate hate hate HATE missing any workout because it makes me feel like I will just get even further behind until I am just left sitting, old and out of shape and the last one on a rock somewhere. Or an iceberg.

Pity party! OMG. But today is over. I am going to bed. And tomorrow I will get up and in spite of the fact that I have to go to work all day on a day that is normally my nice workout-work parttime and do errands day, I will get a full real workout done tomorrow. I’ll get back in the saddle or in the pool and just carry on.

So the question for any coaches or mentors out there – if I skip a workout because I had a total meltdown, is it best to just SKIP it, or do today’s intended workout tomorrow? Hmm?

My workout buddy Lily has been in Mexico visiting her abuela all week and I’ve been feeling kind of bereft without her. It just isn’t the same! Before she left, we got a mani-pedi and had our toenails painted Team in Training Purple. 🙂

On Sunday I did a run on my own, around my beloved Lake Merritt. This is where I did a lot of my training last year and I’d really missed it. I love seeing the people of Oakland all out, some walking, some jogging or wogging and others just all-out fast athletes. Everyone’s out there. It’s just so beautiful. As I was coming around about 2/3 the way around, I ran into my friend Mary who also works at WW and who has done many of those amazing 500-mile bike rides. (whoa.) She had told me she would help me with my riding and I would help her (hahahaha) with her running. We started running together and I told her all the woes of my Sunday right, the toe cages and the horrible hill and all that. We got so involved in our conversation that at one point she didn’t see a little blip in the pavement and BOOM. She fell. On her face, and her hand. Blood was everywhere! I felt so bad for her. We made it back to her car and she washed up but man she is going to have one big shiner. It was so reassuring to talk to her up til that point though -she has helped SO many beginner, nervous, neurotic bike riders and I can’t wait to practice with her.

Yesterday was one of the first really, really warm days here ALL SUMMER (it’s about time, right?) and when I got to our regular gym pool after work, there were probably 100 kids in there. NOT conducive to lap swimming. They do an adult swim for 10 minutes every hour but that is hardly adequate. I was already really tired from a hard and long day at work. Sigh. So I decided I’d go to my college, which has a super nice aquatic center, and give that a try. When I got there, I had to park in a lot that was a ways away. Like a ten minute walk. So I parked and went up to the pool. They said I had to have an ID, because that is what they keep for security while you’re swimming.

My ID was IN THE CAR. Frack. So there’s another twenty minutes trudging back to the parking lot and back again. By this time I was fairly exhausted and annoyed. I slapped the ID down and they reminded me, “Pool closes at 7:30pm.” It was just about 7:00pm on the nose. Not nearly enough time. I was about close to tears at that point, but I went and changed, got in the pool and had just under a half hour workout. Once again my time ran out before my energy did. I didn’t get to complete even half of the workout that had been assigned to us. Of course at that point I COULD have driven back to the other gym, because the kids would have been gone at that point, but I just could not bring myself to do so. So that was it for my swim yesterday.

Today was a run workout. Normally they have a “captain’s run” (regional runs led by mentor coaches) but it takes place at the same time as my WW meeting so I always have to do my run on my own. I figured I would do the same interval run as last week and hoped it would be good enough. I went up to the park near my house and set my Runkeeper app to those intervals. Which included four 2-minute level 9 intervals. Man those things are tough. For at least two of them I stopped (for a few seconds) before getting to the entire two minutes. I haven’t quite figured out the right pace that is “almost all out” without just killing myself. Which is still glacially slow for any of the 20 year olds on my team. Oh well.

I was so glad I’d gotten the run done in the morning though. It feels so much better. Trying to get motivated to work out after a full work day is TOUGH. Which is what I guess I’ll be doing tomorrow. Tomorrow is supposed to be a bike/run. Oh man.

Lily offered to loan me her bike trainer, which is a stand you put your bike on and can use to work out – like making your own bike a stationery bicycle. I went to her house but her house sitters weren’t there tonight (drat). I was hoping I could set it up tomorrow and really practice my stop/start, on/off and also maybe work on dealing with the toe cages. Mary said she thought the shoe clips were 100% better than the cages, for a variety of reasons. I think I might have to bite the bullet but I have to practice before I go do our big coached ride this weekend. (up in Napa! Wine country! I might have to down a bottle of wine after this one)

So I’m plugging along. Some days I feel like I just haven’t gotten any better at all in a month. Other days I feel more optimistic. Tonight I’m just… tired.

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