Audrey started cooking Saturday lunches!
In April , I ran ~132 miles and rode ~302 miles. April was really tough for some reason. Oh wait, it couldn’t have been the 2 travel races, wedding and traveling for a conference. It was the first time I missed some workouts just because I didn’t feel like doing them. It started with 3/31 and not wanting to trail run and that bled over to 4/1 and 4/2 where I just took days off. I also missed two other weekend training sessions in April (which are key workouts) that I had to make up during the week by adding the mileage in over the week instead of at one time. My wedding was around the corner, and the stress of procrastinating was probably most of what kept me from training. I can remember this is also the month where other things started to slip. Staying on top of emails. The girls school work. Clients. My second business. My book that I’m trying to get to publishing. Things were starting to get put on the back burner. My stress was high and the training wasn’t offsetting it. Sometimes, it was stressful trying to figure out how and when I’d get the training in. I was getting tired. I had to start delegating, at home and at work. My staff is amazing picked up a lot of slack at Nutriworks. Audrey started cooking more. We had to get sitters so I could train. I started wondering how in the world people do this type of training and hold down jobs/businesses, families, etc.
I was also still having some pain in my leg/hip area running and started seeing Dr. Mulhall and Active Spine and Sport. In all my injuries in the past, we can usually get them knocked out in a few visits, but this one was weird. It was moving around. It was mainly hurting during running. But, it moved from hip to quad to IT to the other leg, etc. After a few appointments, back to back, I ended up seeing him every other week for the remainder of my training (since he’s so hard to get into) just to work on whatever hurt that week. And, believe me, things were always there. He eventually managed all of it very well and I didn’t miss anymore training sessions because I was hurt. I cannot recommend them enough. During this time, I also started warming up before every running session and stretching after every bike trainer session. This was way past due.
Lisa Tilley! Find her on Facebook and buy her cupcakes!
Benbrook Bluebonnets!
On one of my normal Fridays rides with Eugene, Gary and Will, I got to meet Lisa! Eugene had hooked me up with her to do the cupcakes for the wedding! I had never met her, but her cupcakes are out of this world! This turned out to be the bluebonnet ride of the year!
I made another stupid mistake in April. Eugene invited me to a Sunday gravel ride. With other people. Generally, I ride long on Fridays before Saturday long runs. That’s how I would be racing. It was only going to be 50ish miles. I should be able to do that pretty fast by now. Insert the Gibsons (Erick and Traci) and Michelle. They showed up on gravel bikes. Me on my mountain bike. I tried to hang on for 20 miles. Then, my legs pretty much exploded. They took turns pushing me back. That ride ended up being short (I blame it on the rain…wink, wink). I also got to ride with Liz and Mark Wessels, Ronnie and Nanette again, Cindy, Rhonda and a few others I can’t remember names. It had been A LONG time since I’d been with a group ride. I forgot how much fun they are.
A lot of people asked me who was coaching me. Since I work with so many different athletes and I’ve been doing endurance events for 17 years off and on, I have a really good idea of what training should be like. I also know my body very well. And, I’m self-motivated. In December, when I signed up, I wrote out a training schedule for the entire year up to the events. For me, it’s to get an idea of travel dates for races, days I’ll be forced to take off because of events/traveling, what kind of time commitment I’d be looking at, etc. The schedule I wrote in December changed at least 4 times but it was a good start. Each week, when I was at the cave on the trainer, Madison and I would look at the schedule and have a conversation about it. In April, he was able to convince me that those days I missed in training weren’t a big deal and that I had a lot of consistency up to this point. He was able to bring me back to the big picture and help me understand how stress affects training. I had Gary Anderson (coached me for BQ), Steve Blackmon (heavily involved in training for last Leadville) and Madison all look at my schedule. I listened to their feedback and tweaked it. Then, I just followed it until something came up. Tweaked it. Followed it. Repeat.
