I can’t believe it has been a month since I have updated this. In my head, while I’m training, I keep thinking, “*Subject* would be a great thing to write about,” but then it leaves my head as soon as my workout is done. The biggest reason/excuse for not updating this blog is because I have been seriously lacking in time and motivation to blog.

In the past month, I have been going through some emotional turmoil about an ended relationship and a friend who decided to take his own life. This has left me reeling a bit and has put life into perspective. It took about a week to recover from the passing of my friend. So I am doubley grieving right now. While it is hard, I am also very grateful for my training to keep my head from imploding from so much thinking!

Currently, I did 6/7 workouts last week, including 3 BIKE TRAINING SESSIONS! This is huge for me. How did I go from “hating” the trainer to doing THREE workouts? I changed my attitude. I have been repeating to myself that the trainer is not so bad and I have eliminated all of my negative talk about the trainer to my friends. Also, I’m in a biking group called “17 weeks to spring” (it’s now 14!) , where we meet once a week and get a coached hour of biking. It is great because we get to chat with other people who are also just trying to get their butts onto the trainer. Along with that, I have re-discovered the love of my telephone headset and look forward to catching up with friends while sweating and being out of breath. Also, I have two training buddies that I have sporadically been training the long training sessions with. We chat and watch a movie or “Dead like me” DVDs. It works.

Time and energy are my limiting factors right now. People often tell me that I have seemingly endless amounts of energy. They only say that because they don’t see me at the end of the night, after a few days of workouts, crying and stressing out about how I have to get up at 5:30am and I am so doggoned tired that I don’t even have the energy to brush my teeth. I have been trying to avoid this scene, but it has happened a couple of times. Usually, I decide that skipping the workout is better than spending my energy stressing about it. Ways that I am trying to avoid this is by eating high-calorie meals and drinking smoothies with Vega protein powder in it. Pasta is my friend right now. It’s easy, fast, and so tasty! Sleep is another thing that I refuse to compromise – I get AT LEAST eight hours of sleep every night. This weekend, I got more. Last night I got nine and I am feeling pretty good today. A lot better than last Monday, when I was tired from the moment I got up.

Weekends are prime training time. Yesterday (ie. Sunday), I swam for an hour (and sat in the hot tub) and then biked for two hours in the sunshine that streams into my livingroom in the afternoon (on sunny days). By the time 9:00 rolled around, I was exhausted.  This is basically my pattern: eat, train, eat, work, eat, train, eat, sleep. Fuel is so so so important.

Currently, my house is not as dirty as I thought that it would. Actually, I am pretty on top of things. As long as I don’t get behind in my cleaning, then it is all good. But as soon as the dishes start to pile up or the floor gets a little “too” dirty, then it is hard to catch up. This is why triathletes need a good wife or housekeeper. I wish I had someone who would cook, clean, exercise the dog, and sleep for me.

I have a confession… I have been a very bad vegan. My meals for the past month (on and off) have been based on the speed that they are made as opposed to their nutrition. This has had an effect on my training because when I don’t eat properly, my legs get very tired very quickly. So this is me committing to myself and the world that I will start to eat healthier meals starting NOW. No more pieces of toast with peanut butter for breakfast and lunch, cereal with soy milk for supper, soy ice cream after supper, and Clif bars to replace lunch. Instead, I commit to making more meals at home and eating the leftovers for lunch. I commit to oatmeal with hemp and flax seeds in the morning, more green leafy vegetables (which I love!), and more quinoa and rice with beans.

Every once in a while this happens… I get busy and out of the habit of cooking. All it takes is me making a commitment to myself to eat healthier and I will. This starts today, right now, this very moment! Tomorrow I am throwing a vegan potluck and it is going to be very fun; I am making vegan pizza and a curry; I will take and put up pictures of the food. It will be inspiring and will make the fact that we are getting a ton of snow not seem so bad. Hopefully.

I am making this commitment because I skipped another workout in lieu of work and errands and a seemingly endless amount of tasks to do in a day. It will slow down because I choose for it to.

This Saturday I did a very sprint triathlon. It was a 500m swim in the pool, 8km on the bike, and 3km on the track – no transitions. Overall it was great, but I really noticed how different it feels to do short distances as opposed to long-distance training. It’s funny because I felt like I was hitting my stride at about lap 8 of the swim, the last kilometre of the bike, and about lap 11 of the run (although I was getting tired for the last lap because I sprinted trying to keep up with the girl in front of me – thanks for the race, Chantelle!). My times were as follows:
500m swim: 9:07
8km bike: 16:44
3km run: 16:14

However, afterwards my neck was KILLING me. It created a very bad headache. So bad that I actually went and purchased some ibuprofen, which I never do. It helped a lot and the next day was not as bad. I just kept on stretching out my neck in hope that it would go away, which it mostly have. Upon doing some reading, apparently triathletes are more likely to have back and neck pain because they train a lot for this multisport.

On Saturday night, I went curling at L’s work social. It was great, but I sure haven’t used those muscles very much! So I’m a bit sore in my upper back and my hip flexors. It kind of feels good to be sore, though.

Sunday was kind of a bad day and I kept a low profile. My neck was sore and I had a headache and decided to suffer through the day. It ended not to badly and I just kept stretching it out.

This morning I decided to skip swimming because of my neck and went for a nice 5km run. I have to sign up for the marathon at the end of May, which I’m pretty stoked about. I have never run just a running race (since high school) . It will be a good experience, I think. Either that or it will scare the crap out of me for Ironman. Either way, it will probably be beneficial.

Food Diary for the Week
Monday
* run for 5km
Breakfast: Smoothie
Snack: Clif bar
Lunch: 2c. pasta with tofu and veggies (leftover)
Supper: Tempeh burgers with home fries from regular and sweet potatoes

Tuesday:
* a short 30 minute run
Breakfast: smoothie
Lunch: leftover pasta (AGAIN)
Supper: a wonderful stirfry made by my parloqual!

Wednesday:
Breakfast: smoothie
Snack: oatmeal
Lunch: leftover stirfry
Supper:

As my lack of posting confirms, my training has been sparse these days. I got sick again and it took another two weeks to get over. Now that I’m back to 100%, I’m back in the pool and back on the bike. It’s taking a bit longer to get back into running for no real reason.

This week I’m hoping to be back to 100% training. I was looking at my races coming up for the season. I have a busy summer ahead of me, starting off with a marathon at the end of May. This weekend is my first “race” with an indoor triathlon, with short distances, but should be a lot of fun. It’s a 500m swim in the pool, 8km bike on a Computrainer, and 3km run on the track; no transitions. I haven’t run 3km in a couple of weeks, though, so I should probably do a bit of running in the next few days. As per usual, my goal for this race (even though it’s extremely short) will be to finish and have fun. I’ll have to look up my times from my past year’s races so that I can try to beat my personal bests (PBs).

I was thinking of ways that I could motivate myself to consistently post on this blog since it is unlikely that it will turn into a website anytime soon due to monetary constraints and a lack of a website designer. So I’ll try to post my food on here as well as my training.

Sunday:
Breakfast: tofu scramble (~1/4 of a block), and fruit
Lunch: 2 pieces of leftover vegan pizza (1 veggie pepperoni, one vegetarian)
Supper: 1 bowl of African Sweet Potato & Peanut Stew with ~ 1/2c. quinoa

Monday:
Snack: 1 apple with ~1 Tbsp peanut butter
* Swim for 1 hour (~3000 m), bike to work ~15 minutes
Breakfast: 1 smoothie with ~1/2 c. soy milk, 1 scoop Vega protein powder, some frozen strawberries and bananas
Lunch: 1.5 cups of pasta with tofu
* Bike home from work ~45 minutes
Supper: 1 serving of stew, 1 bowl of stirfry veggies

Tuesday:
* bike slowly to University ~ 15 minutes
* VO2 Max testing
* bike to work ~ 15 minutes
Breakfast: 1 smoothie as per usual with ~1/4c. hemp hearts
Lunch: 1c. stew, 2 lentil rolls
Supper: 2 samosas, 4 chilli bites, a huge salad with tahini dressing
* too tired to do anything after that

Wednesday
Day off training!
Breakfast: 1 smoothie as per usual with hemp hearts, 1.5c of oatmeal with hemp hearts and apple, soy milk, and 1 tsp brown sugar
Lunch: falafel pita
Supper: Veggie burger and very bad for me fries and deep-fried vegetables from the Yard ‘n’ Flagon

Thursday
* ran for 30 minutes ~ 3km
Breakfast: smoothie
* bike to work ~30 minutes
Mid-morning snack: oatmeal with hemp hearts, soy milk, and b. sugar
Lunch: split-pea soup, lentil rolls
Supper: ~ 1 c. of tofu and couscous with veggies and salad with a strawberry vinegarette.

Friday
* swam for 1 hour ~2900m
Breakfast: smoothie
Mid-morning snack: oatmeal
(side note: I am very hungry. Last night’s supper was not sufficient for today’s swim workout, but I didn’t have a choice because I was at a meeting and I just ate what they provided. More protein was definitely needed.)
Supper: We snacked on some nachos with VeganRella and green peppers on it. We had a wonderful stirfry with quinoa. Very tasty!

Saturday – Indoorman Race Day
Pre-Race Breakfast: smoothie
* Race: 500m swim, 8km bike, 3km run
Lunch: 2 pieces of vegan pizza, some veggies and fruit
Snack: We shared the rest of the stirfy from the night before. I really could not eat enough. I was hungry the rest of the day it seemed.
Supper: We went out to Szechuaun 2 cold rolls with peanut sauce and shared a birds nest with hard noodles on the bottom and lots of veggies and tofu on the top. So good!

Sunday:
Brunch: Tofu scramble with two pieces of homemade bread toast
Supper: Pasta with tofu and veggies, including zuccini!

This week will hopefully look like this:
Tuesday: VO2 max testing, run afterwards, bike to work, train with tri club
Thursday: Run in AM, bike to work
Friday: Swim in AM
Saturday: Race
Sunday: Run