Proud

When I put my gi on tonight I suddenly noticed that I could tie the side-tapes up with no gaps. When I first started wearing it at the end of September I thought I'd made a terrible, god-awful mistake in ordering the size I did, and it was honestly embarrassing (not that I told anyone that). The pants were too tight round the waistband (as ever; I am an exceptionally stubborn apple-shape), the jacket gaped open over what I mentally refer to as either "my thundering great sports bra" or "my great white breastplate of doom". The gi was so stiff and uncomfortable - and let's not think too hard about the fact that I couldn't loop the belt twice around my waist and fasten it properly. Eldest's gi had already become soft and pliable from six months of washing, though, so I sucked in the flab and hoped mine would relax too.

I never for one moment contemplated the idea that I might shrink to fit because I know taking that mental highway does me no good. I don't have an eating disorder but my thinking about eating can become disordered, if you see what I mean. Emotional (i.e. "had a bad day, stuff face") and defiant eating (as in "how dare you tell me I can't have cake - I'm having TWO slices!") are crutches I'm working hard to be rid of. So that's why a properly-fitting gi took me by surprise tonight - I've achieved it without falling down any mental rabbit holes. I know I've lost about 4lbs over my 26 days of Janathon so far, but I don't put a lot of stock in scales. I think I can be pretty pleased, though and hope to keep it up.

There was a lot to be proud of in class tonight too. Sensei had done a demo at one of the local schools last week  - not Eldest's, but a demo is how she got started. No less than fourteen new under-tens and one as young as four showed up tonight - mostly boys but a girl here and there too; the class expanded by a third! The new kids were really well-behaved - admittedly most of them had parents sitting around the edge of the dojo, but still, it's easy to get over-excited when you're having fun and it's all new. All of the regulars were properly on their mettle tonight too - good loud responses, no slacking on the warm-ups, and all of us performing our kata together in front of an audience of new kids and parents was absolutely brilliant. We were AWESOME, I tell you. My punches felt great and my kata felt like it flowed really nicely. Sensei even did a black belt kata for us, which was a rare thing to see.

Our final bow, otagai ni rei, to the whole class felt overwhelming to me: fierce and proud of all of us. It's no wonder our club logo is a tiger.

Eat. Sleep. Train. Repeat.

Pretty much. Getting to the last week or so of Janathon now...I can't quite believe it's already been a week since I was last in the pool at Aquatics. This week has flown by with lots of ups and downs, both work and kid-related, and actually I'm really glad to have training as a constant in my life. Keeps me on an even keel when everything else around me is getting a bit stressy.

Karate was fun, as ever, even though I felt pretty lacklustre today. I got some good advice from a helpful Purple belt (I really need to work on my stances, that dodgy hip is causing me to leave myself too open), and worked with a new starter on her kata (she's doing better than I did!). But it was busy and noisy, and I missed one of our sempais. And I'm irritated that my box splits are getting better so slowly - the backs of my knees are just dreadfully tight still. Work in progress, I guess.

On the other hand I felt much better in my contacts today - I have yet another new combination to try on Wednesday; I'm really hoping this is the last time now because I'm sick of going into town every week. It's getting expensive...now that I'm losing weight (and my goodness, it's giving me a weird shape which I don't like at all - will just have to persist til it all goes!) it's much easier to find clothes I like. I'm being strictly one-in-one-out at the moment, but I gave my wardrobe a thorough sorting when I got in and there's no more leeway. No more cute dresses til Summer at least. I ditched four or five dresses which were two sizes too big for me, and put out a call for anyone who wants maternity clothes, too. That feels like a big step - I'm making myself a promise that I'm never going back to being as unfit as I was when I fitted into those clothes. There is no leeway here, no option to dress in something looser because I've had a few bad days and eaten myself silly. Down with this sort of thing.

Breathe

And so it goes. It was a massively tough warm-up session at karate tonight - many, many crunches (I don't do sit-ups - physio's orders), push-ups and so on, at least fifty of each and running too. Lots of sparring, which is hard on the joints as the venue is a church hall with an unsprung floor. It's much easier in the sports hall on a Saturday. Breath control was a big issue after such a brutal warm-up and I was glad we're working on that a lot at yoga at the moment as I was able to bring Jane's voice to mind - "Can you find that calm breath?" she asks us, and usually I can whilst holding a pose. It's a little more difficult mid-bout but I managed it a few times.

My kata was a lot better tonight and I got a verbal pat on the head for it from Sensei, which really helps. I didn't feel as mentally prepared for it as I should have done and a couple of the blocks caught me on the hop, but overall much improved - a real sense of knowing which way I needed to turn. Eldest's taikiyoko nidan is coming along nicely and she had a good go at seifa, one of the orange belt (7th kyu) katas, too. We practice a mixture of shotokan and goju; seifa is a goju kata. I'm afraid it makes me giggle terribly, though - it's a beautiful kata but when they shout seifa I hear the German seife. Which means "soap". Oops.

Pull-ups and all the other programs tonight. The planks are really starting to hurt - and show - now. I am trying to lose weight, sticking to about 1500-ish calories without eating back exercise cals excessively. I don't know if I am losing - probably too early to tell - but bits of me look like lumpy porridge rather than the smooth even podge I had before, and I go in and out in weird ways. I think this is supposed to be a good thing. I can at least see the shapes of muscle under there, anyway...

Downs and Ups

Just about sneaking a couple more Janathon sessions in!

I must admit, it's been a bit difficult over the last week or so. Snow-inflicted inactivity has stalled me in all sorts of directions. The desire to lose some weight leads to misery more often than not - sometimes I think weighing and measuring is the road to madness for me. It certainly leads to what I now recognise as "bad head stuff", anyway, which used to express itself as both low mood and a tendency to defiantly over-eat (as in "well, I'm never going to shift it, I may as well snarf down the entire bar of chocolate right now SO THERE!"). Since I more or less have the defiance under control, I'm left with low mood, which isn't a great mindset before a Masters session.

Sunday was a big pile of epic failbeans, then - I woke up fluey, poor progress with weight/measurement loss led to low mood and I wasn't hungry at lunchtime so didn't eat very much; certainly under 500cal all day. There were loads of new starters at Masters, which usually I welcome - there's nothing like sharing your enthusiasm with new people! - but it did lead to some fairly congested and cluttered lanes as everyone tried to sort out their speeds. Katie moved me up to Lane 3 (Lane 4 is the super-speedy types!) along with a few of the other folks I'd been lanemates with last year, but my attention was shot. I could barely wrap my head around what we were doing, let alone keep up. After a trying hour I bailed - it was obvious I wasn't in a good place mentally or physically. The coaches were both very sweet, though - I am dubious as to whether I'm ready for Lane 3 but it was nice of them to acknowledge I was still making progress no matter how crappy I felt that night. It's pretty much what got me out of the door tonight.

Dave had left extra training plans out "in case we got chance to swim in a public session during the week" and it was exactly what I needed tonight; I'm so glad I picked them up. I had a much better session - numpty-free! Actually it was amazing how quickly the lane cleared of, erm, head-up swimmers once me and my friend Mr RedShorts (I have no idea of his name, he's an older chap who swims a good fast breaststroke and is very good at lane ettiquette!) arrived. 300m warm up, 300m IM - which I switched to just freestyle/breaststroke alternates as it's NOT safe to do backstroke/butterfly with people who aren't good at sharing lanes! and then a 1950m endurance build, working up in 25m increments from 25m-300m. I was supposed to alternate easy and hard sets but I lost track of which were which and more or less did everything at medium pace. But it felt like flying anyway! Everything came together (yes, after the first mile...so predictable) and I was quite sad to find I'd completed the set and needed to do my 200m warm down.

Again, my tactic of "where would I be at this distance if I were at Salford?" worked tremendously well to get me through the tedium of a pool session. I just wish I could get my new cap to stretch a bit. It's bloody annoying. But I'm looking forward to getting out for a run on Thursday!

Week 1 of Janathon Done

Maybe not, but I'm working on it...

Well, that's a week down and I'm knackered - how about you? In the last seven days I've done two runs of 2-3.5km each, swum 2km and 3.5km (and outperformed my last times at those distances significantly), and lifted a whole lot of heavy things, both for the sheer awesomeness of lifting heavy and as a specialist swimmer's routine. I've tracked my food every day even though I HATE doing so, and tried to keep it mostly on target - I've gone well over on two days, but they were my swimming days so there was at least some compensation for snaffling up the Christmas chocolates. I've lost a pound - I guess it would be more if it wasn't for that! I've gone up to Level 29 on Fitocracy, am ahead on both duels (though only just on one and that'll plummet tomorrow because running points are rubbish - it's all dependant on how hard I work at Masters on Sunday!), and ranking reasonably well in all the challenges I joined. Can't say fairer than that, really! So Janathon is doing great things for me. Whether I can stick to it when the duels are over, I don't know - a girl needs a night off! We'll see.

Vorsprung Durch Technik

Trying out "a week's training per blog post" because I'm guessing people are tired of me cross-posting every entry to Facebook...

"When women first began to work out with weights, it was considered dangerous to have them lift anything heavy and so they were given only two- or four-pound wooden dumbbells. The fact that women lifted much heavier objects in the home seems to have escaped most of the men who designed the exercise. here two cheerful ladies work out in their street clothes in a photograph c. 1910 by Willis T. White." From Venus With Biceps.

I love that picture and quote, it makes me laugh every time - these ladies must have felt like they were lifting feathers after toting babies and coal and doing mangling! It is a good thing to remember that lifting weights which aren't as heavy as your handbag is a touch on the silly side.

So, not a post about gadgets (though I have a lot now, I should review them sometime). But advance through technical workout, rather than technology. Monday I should have been out playing D&D but it didn't go ahead for reasons, so out came the weights. I had a play about with some new lifts and bodyweight exercises, earning me two Fito quests and adding dumbbell flyes and seated dips to my roster of "things that are probably good for me" . A hundred dips hurt quite a lot, by the way.

Swimming on Tuesday was a full technical and speed session, the first I've done like this and oh boy, this had better be good for me because, well, ow. No letting the flow come with this one; it was all about living and dying in the seconds. I'm using the "How to cut 5% off your mile time" training plan from H2Open Magazine, which requires:

• 10 min warm-up
• 10 min drills on any weaknesses (so, everything in my case)
• 20 mins of 100m sets at 80% effort, 1min rests
• 10 mins of 25m sprints at full effort, 1min rests
• 10 mins cool-down (which I abused by attempting to learn bilateral breathing - it's improving)

I'd calculated from my last mile time (about 43min) that I needed to be doing my 100m sets at 2m 35 or less. It turns out I was doing them at around 2m 05, but the chances of me keeping up that pace for a full mile right now is about nil. Still, the fact that I can do it is a good start. Overall I did 1.9km in 50mins but there was a lot of stopping (for slow people at first, and then rest breaks between the sprints).

 Wednesday was a wash. It's usually a rest day but I'm in two duels so I did try some static/bodyweight work. Terrible, shouldn't have bothered. Those dips on Monday were killer.

Thursday is usually a run but waahwaah, horrible rain, so I figured I'd grab another swim, though it would only be an hour. 2.25km (90laps) in 59mins was marginally faster than previous times - factoring in numpty-stops I'd probably have got another 4 laps in before the pool closed. TriCalc rounded it up to 2.3kph, anyway. I'm hoping to get to 2.5kph so I can do the 5km Swimathon in 2hrs (thus being significantly faster than my time when I was 18) and finish a two-miler under 1hr 30 - although I won't know if I can do that til I hit the open water again (yes, still pining). It's probably a couple of minutes faster over the mile time tonight but there's a lot of work to do, and it's impossible to get an accurate read when you're sharing a lane with six other people, five of whom are numpties hogging the ends or so slow you have to stop behind them (seriously, dude, if three or four people are continually swimming into your feet you need to switch to the slower lane) and one who's snapping at your heels. I hate that, it means I can't switch off - I had to give myself a good shake-down at half a mile and refuse to let anyone else set my pace for me. Tuesday nights are so much better for serious distance.

Friday is supposedly the sacrosanct rest day. We'll see. These duels are tough going and there's not much in it.

Oh - I've lost 5lbs over the last month! That's down to nothing but tracking to about 150cal under 2000. Still really having issues over getting enough protein but it's definitely helped me to make better choices. Not that I was terrible in the first place, but it's things like being aware of that second biscuit, and reducing the pasta later if I do have another one.

Running On The Brain

Well, it was almost 12mins but that's neither here nor there - doesn't matter in the slightest right now. Tonight was about taking my brain out and reminding it that my body is entirely capable of running if it would just shut the hell up for a bit. So I walked up the hill, turned around and ran back down, exactly a mile, to prove a point to myself. The point was proved in less than two minutes, actually - I wasn't even halfway through the first track on my list before I was smiling and feeling light enough to fly home, and I almost certainly could have pushed on further.

That "I could do more" feeling turns out to be really important to me for the next session, though - I find I manage my expectations better if I stop with a little bit left in the tank each time. If I finish exhausted it's harder to go out again and push further; I guess I get worried that I've hit the "this far and no further" point. Fear is a big issue for me in fitness. One of my major worries is ending up with an injury that means looking after the kids becomes difficult or stops me continuing along my training path. That's not an excuse to take it easy but it does mean I need that little buffer to keep me moving along...or that carrot of "Ok, I did 5km and felt good...can I do 5.5km next time? 7.5km? 10km? Can I go faster?" and so on. It certainly works that way for swimming, anyway. I hate having to deload weights and go down then back up again, although I understand that can be useful. Stepping backwards to retrain in crawl when I was close to hitting the Ironman swimming distance in breaststroke was really hard - but with a creeping rotator cuff soreness it had to be done, and I'm half-way back to where I should be.

This interview with endurance swimmer Jaime Patrick popped up in my Twitter feed whilst I was writing and it's an interesting take...I don't think I'll get to ultra stage for anything but it's the same driver of always having a challenge in front of you. That's why I like the idea of Tri - I get three sets of sports to be challenged with!


Calorie tracking day 4: it's horrible, I hate it. I feel I'm eating normally and I'm well below my target calories, in fact I went over by 12cal today just because I had a scone with jam and cream...not a normal occurrence. Despite eating not much differently to usual I've had a headache for three days and am hungry a lot of the time. I'm sure this is just psychological. Tracking, however, has illustrated that I'm surprisingly down on carbs, usually low on protein and probably shouldn't indulge my love of cheese quite so much...but life without cheese isn't worth living!

Benchmark

No Monday run as it was absolutely hurling it down.

Aaah, Tuesday night swim. The night I usually do battle at the local leisure centre to get some clear swimming space (this is why I like open water so much - there's so much of it everyone has room! Unless you're doing those fancy racing turns round the buoys. Which I can sorta do). I was a bit late getting in tonight so didn't bother with the deep lap lanes, I'd only have had to switch pools five minutes later. The staff have very kindly noticed that there are several serious swimmers in the main pool after 9pm and they've been roping off a couple of lanes for us for the last few weeks. That's been very nice and made a huge difference to my times - and my mood! Tonight one of the lifeguards actually came and turfed three lads out of my lane for pissing about at the ends and getting in my way. They shot me the evils for about ten minutes but when it became obvious that I wasn't pissing about and was likely to be there for the whole last hour, they gave up. Muhahaha, etc. So I got a lane all to myself and it was a really good swim. I felt a bit sore in the upper arms for the first half-mile, fine for the second and that damn right shoulder started to play up towards 80 laps. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong and how to fix it. I definitely need a coach to take a look.

Um. Anyway.

I was late getting into the pool tonight because I was in the gym, chatting to one of the guys that works there. Registering for a triathlon.

Gulp.

It's nothing serious! ;-) The leisure centre is running an "indoor triathlon" event in September - the main day unfortunately clashes with Salford 5km but they're happy to arrange other times to do it, so I figure I can get it done towards the end of the month. No time to dither as the deadline for signups is Sunday, so it was sort of a snap decision...I'd never even been in the gym before today. It's a short tri - only half a mile to swim (32 laps, which going off tonight's times I can do in 20mins or thereabouts), 5km to run which should be easier on a treadmill (my outdoor benchmark is about 40mins at the moment), and a 10km stationary bike ride. I have no idea how I'll handle that and to be honest, I don't want to change anything until I get the race out of the way. My bike's ready to go, it just needs the lights on, so hopefully come mid-September I'll be able to have a pootle round and see how much it hurts.

Maybe it seems crazy so soon but I thought it would be a great way to benchmark where I'm at now with each discipline, and have something to look back on and compare next year. Plus it's only £10 to take part. I know I won't be fast and I've no chance of winning a prize, so all the heat is off.

Chap at the gym said there are serious-sounding rumours going around that the town may be putting on a proper triathlon next year. I dunno about that, though. A quick search tells me that in previous years the run has been up to the Tower and I am definitely not in any kind of shape to get up there yet. I've lived here seven years and still never walked up it!


In other news I have now tracked calories on My Fitness Pal for a whole two days - yaaaaaaaawn - and MFP told me off today for not eating enough. I can't wrap my head around it. I'm not snacking, sure, but I haven't really cut out all that much. I think my trouble is that I eat reasonably ok most of the time and then have silly binges. Oh well - we shall see what we shall see and I do think it's worth the experiment, dull as it is.