Second Wind Frazz

FRAZZ

(click comic)

How many days do I have?

Until the next Du/Tri? I have all of July to TRAIN!

This week I started up with my bike commuting again, so that has been good. I have to rely on walking to get to the store or when I want to visit Starbucks (Target) for my coffee. I don't miss going to my regular Starbucks so much even though school is out and it is much quieter these days.

Today I decided to do a quick run after arriving home - my ride home was pretty good with my average hovering around 15mph while going into the wind and the run felt surprisingly good. This is just the beginning of ramping back up for the All Women's Tri/Du event at Blue Lake - hope to have a team for this one because it will be totally fun!

Since riding the Tour de Blast I have decided that it would be good to drop some weight. That would greatly increase my ability to ride up hills, run like a fool and all other things that require me to move fast. So I have started to track my food intake on The Daily Plate (again). This is a handy tool that allows me to see what all I'm eating and helps me to make better choices so that I can reach my goals. It's not so much that I'm on a diet, but just making sure that I get the kind of foods that I should be consuming each day and balancing my carbs/fats/proteins. Today I did pretty well, with all the calories that I burned riding to and from work along with the walking to the store and to Mali's shop, I managed to have so many calories available at the end of the day for dinner which we usually try to keep pretty light and healthy.

Aaah, food....we have a new favorite that we tried this week Sushi Roll in a Bowl - I don't know why I didn't think of this myself. The first time I saw it was in the June issue of Prevention Magazine and I have been wanting to try it for at least a month now. It's a really fun recipe to do, it's almost like making salads, only instead of lettuce sushi rice is used. The rice is surprisingly easy to make and will easily feed four people. We had a few of our favorite sushi type items, cucumbers, carrots, shrimp, smoked salmon and a couple of other things and had a fun time making dinner together...it's a new favorite so it will probably be a regular feature since it is so easy.

So hopefully in the next month I will gain some strength, lose a few pounds and most of all stay PSYCHED!

Du #2

Or a Tri - as a team. Last week was a week off from serious running, riding and other things I should be doing to prepare for multi-sport events. I decided to ride to work today and make it a sprint, as much as I physically could. The ride was good and I feel a little tired still, but I can't stop completely. It's part of my obsessive nature. I really want to do the All Women's Du (or Tri relay) so I'll be ramping up the training again in the next couple of weeks. There is a 5K race in Ridgefield, so that will be a possibility, just to get out with a bunch of runners. Runners who are much faster than I am, but I need that so I know what I am capable of.

It is possible that I do a lot, but that's okay, I have all winter to rest ;)

I'm PSYCHED!

TIREDNESS

I didn't realize how tired how would feel after doing the Duathlon. Turns out my body is pretty fatigued. I spent the last 6 months getting ready for this and now that it is all over I can be tired. Seems weird that the tiredness only just now started. There have been other things that have caused me to slow down, but not to the point that I will put off a run or riding to work. I figure my "reward" is rest for this week. Did one brief run this week and Tom and I went for a ride this morning a short one (just 13 miles). It's all good though, because I don't feel the urge to push myself right now. I am reserving that for the next multi-sport event, the All Women's Triathlon/Duathlon on August 1st. With just over 5 weeks until this next event, I'm hoping to get a team put together and make it a relay - share the wealth of fun! I had a lot of fun during the first one and it is an experience that cannot be compared to anything else.

This was a fun event to do just to see if I could do it and see just how much effort I would have to put into finishing. Turns out I had to put a fair amount of effort into running the second run, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was a slow run, but really I didn't feel so different than when I ran my first 5K for the LIVESTRONG Challenge a year ago.

I like being active and challenging myself to do better. Nothing about the things I choose to do is decided on a whim. Since I had my brain tumor diagnosis 5 years ago, it has been my goal to experience as much as possible and not take life for granted. I would rather spend life being adventurous and have all these memories to look back on than to worry about my health. There is no reward in that.

Here's looking forward to more multi-sport events....I'm Psyched!