In the swim

I'll be honest, swimming is not my fave. There was a time I liked it, but I'm pretty sure that was more to do with my hot instructor than anything else. I try not to think of it as the necessary evil, because it does have its advantages. When it's howling with wind and pouring with rain, swimming indoors becomes the favorable option. It's also a little easier on the body and can aid in recovery. I have access (through work) to a pool that is under-utilised, and free! There is never the need to share a lane and as a result I no longer suffer from "lane rage".

The key to sessions is having a plan. I used to not and ended up swimming many a 1500m+ straight. It has its benefits but not every session. I write out my program and stick it to my water bottle. Then I have less thinking to do at the pool. Less thinking when the blood is elsewhere works for me.

The key to getting there in reasonable time is a dedicated pool bag. With my pull buoy (that doubles as a kick board),  goggles (I swear by Aqua Sphere), moisturizers (the chlorine is drying) deodorant (and stinky) and hair dryer. Not forgetting underwear works a treat if I wear my bathers to the pool too. I have spent far too much of my time looking for errant goggles. Now they live in the bag. The bag lives in the cupboard a cursory check to make sure I've got enough shampoo and I'm off.

Swimming presses my hungry button. I usually pack a few dates (nature's Gu) or a peeled orange that I can tuck into once I'm done.

Sun; brick session ride/run: Bike 1:23:16 | 31.6km | 22.7km/hr
Run 15:04 | 2.18km | 6.54m/km
Bike was all Zone 2, low heart rate. I could have pushed it a little more and still been within the zone. I got to practise a transition dismount. There's some work to do. The run was Zone 3. My heart rate just wanted to climb and climb and climb off the bike. Rein it in. Rein it in.

Mon; swim: 2000m | 48:00 | 2.24m/100m
The first session in a while where I've actually put the work in when it said 'effort'.

Mon; yoga: 1hr. Simply flow.
The danger of doing this prior to night shift means all I want to do when I get home is snooze. 

1572 and Night shift

At this stage due to staff shortages, I'm pretty much on night shift every three weeks. I don't mind, but if you're not prepared it can be a tough and isolating week. The first night shift I did I put on 2 kgs in a week. A week! I didn't get enough sleep, my hormones were in turmoil and I couldn't eat enough. I had a hard time shifting the weight. But after a discussion with my doc and some time to trial what does and doesn't work I have the week down pat.

Sleep.
After consulting with my doc, I opt to take sleeping tablets for the week. This means I usually get 7-8 hours sleep per day. It makes all the difference, I function at work (less mistakes for my paper work - yay!) and don't fall asleep at the wheel when driving home in the morning.

Eats.
Before I go to bed at 8:00am or thereabouts I have breakfast. I wake up between 4-5:00pm and have a light lunch or second breakfast. I have dinner at 8:30-9:00pm and all my snacks/coffee are consumed at work.  Usually 3:00am onwards I start to get hungry.

Exercise.
I try and do something each day. It doesn't always happen. I tend to take it easy, going for long walks to get some vitamin D, rather than slogging through a run I'm just not up for. Also between the two yoga studios I go to there's usually an evening class I can get to.

Breakfast: The ubiquitous green smoothie, not too many additional items because I don't need the extra calories to sleep. 100g frozen banana, 150mL full fat milk, 1 tbs natural peanut butter, large handful of spinach leaves, small celery stick.
Lunch: Cape seed bread toasted with butter
Dinner: Pesto pasta with roast tomatoes and pumpkin.
Snacks: Orange, celery, strawberries & full fat yoghurt, M&M crispys - to show that sweet things do creep in!

Lilydale to Warburton Rail Trail

5:00:00 | ~78kms | 15.6km/hr

Somehow I missed the fact that this trail was somewhere between 38-40kms ONE way...

I digress.

Last Wednesday I had the whole day to entertain myself, my one day without any plans/appointments/catch-ups. So I decided to head out to Lilydale station, the start of the rail trail. It's well signposted, but for those that need to know, the trail starts at the end of the station car park.

The trail is pretty flat and for the most part, gravel. Not really suited to road bikes. I took the (new to me) Giant Yukon MTB. I passed through forest, farmland and via the old original platform stations which were pretty cool.

There's a couple of toilet stops along the way, as well as places to fill up with water. There's also a couple of cafes on the track, but they're only open Thurs-Sun and I went along on a Wednesday. Super disappointed! I would have happily stopped for a coffee. Multiple times over.

The trail is set up quite well for road crossings, there's only a couple of places that didn't have pedestrian lights.

I didn't love the section from Yarra Junction to Warburton. Partially because I was battling at this stage and partly because you're riding parallel to the Warburton Highway, so it's not quite as peaceful as the rest of the ride.

It was a fairly big relief to reach Warburton. I'd thought about turning back earlier, but then questioned when I'd have time to tackle the ride again, so I persisted.

I was pretty underdone on nutrition. I'd eaten two trail bars in 2.5 hours of riding. Not quite enough for me. I smashed a cauliflower and broccoli pie, a vanilla slice and half a bag of mint leaves at the Warburton bakery and felt a little better.

The ride home took a whole lot of mental energy. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I was dehydrated. By no means was it a hot day, but I'd failed to drink enough. I took my hydration pack so there was no excuse. On the road bike I'm used to sipping on water every 10 mins. But I forgot to do it during this ride. I need to install an odometer, that will act as a visual cue for me.

I also started to get quite uncomfortable, 4+ hours is a long time to be on a bike that you've only ridden a handful of times! I missed the luxury of tri bars and a different hand position.

But I made it and I'd do it all over again knowing that I need to fuel and hydrate a whole lot better than I did.

Tues; run: 50:10 | 8km | 6:15m/km. I'm not quite as exhausted from work as I usually am. Took the opportunity to run, but gave myself permission to go as slow as I needed to, to get the job done. In the end not unhappy with the pace given I've not been running much.
Strength: 25m.

Thurs; personal training/strength: 1:00:00. Focus on good form for upper body/back workouts. Squeeze the scapula!

Not all sweetness and light

The past week has been a tough one.

• I failed an assessment. I accept that I did not plan well enough with my partner and deserved to fail. Thanks to some great teachers I have that process we botched cemented in my brain, for which I am thankful. But it was stressful and the doubt I had within myself was absolutely awful, I was embarrassed by my failure and was bitterly disappointed in myself. The support from my peers was fortifying and in the resit my partner and I got through easily. Relief.

• This is so hard to admit, but ahhh I'm going to type the words: I have been having frequent binge eating episodes again. Trying to bury or mask the anxiety I've had surrounding work and quite often the guilt I feel if I don't feel like running even though I "should".

Why is it hard to admit? Because I love eating healthy produce and honestly the majority of the time I enjoy getting out amongst it running, riding, swimming and the like. I've never regretted a run (ok one, that time my ITB went, but these things happen from time to time) but I definitely regret the overeating.

I mention running in the second dot point because I have two races coming up that I want to be prepared for. That involves training. I don't enter races to win, but to participate - that gentle reminder is useful. 

I want to nip the binging in the bud, it's gone on long enough. Possibly removing sugar from my diet triggered something. It started back then, where I started binging on nuts. At Easter time I added sugar back into my diet and didn't notice too much of a difference with regards to the bloating and gas I get on occasion, but it's since given me a wider range of products to binge on. I'm definitely more aware of sugar in products and I will attempt to minimise its presence in my diet, but not outright avoid it. 

My other issue is that usually by the time I get home from work I'm blindingly hungry. Hands down this is the danger time for binging. To avoid this I think I need to keep some kind of snack in the car/scooter than I can eat prior to going home. Sure it may be an extra 200 cals in my day, but it has to be better than an extra 1000 cals or whatever the binges add up to. Up until this very moment, that logic never crossed my mind. So there is value in (over)sharing. At least for me.

The crazy thing is apart from the occasional stress of assessments, I absolutely love the new career path, yes it's challenging, but it beats the boredom of my old job every single day. With fewer study commitments I have more time to spend with the Man which is better for our relationship. There's encouragement at work to remain fit and I have access to the most amazing gym, pool and spin bikes so training is never boring. I still have an awesome family, fabulous friends and supportive peers. Life really is good, not perfect by any means but really, really good. 

I am ready to walk down the path of healthy choices once again.

Sat; strength: 20m. Hand weights @ home.
Commute: 40m | 14.8km. Slow ride to the footy and back.

Thurs; strength: 20m. Mix of hand weights, body weights & machine.

Wed; strength: 20m. Mix of hand weights, body weights & machine.


Tues; agility: 48m. Fun! Lots of run drills and agility work.
Bike trainer: 40m spin class.

Mon; swim: 29m | 1400m | 2:09m/100m. Set involved 400, 500, 3x (50 easy, 50 hard), 200. No rhyme or reason, just good to be in the water.

Note to self

Photo credit

Always run with phone! Phone = camera. I opted for a beach run on Friday night after work. It wasn't raining, I was good to go. As I ran past the St Kilda sea baths a giant set of headphones, blasting music, made from Big M cartons greeted me. Awesome! Thankfully a quick search of Flickr did the job.

Fri; PE session: 30m. Strength/boxing. Reminded me of kickboxing classes. Felt good to finally go hard.

Fri; run: 42:09 | 7.44km | 5:40/km. Ran into a pretty strong headwind. So much so that running back felt like I was cheating.

Sat; strength: 20m. Focus on abs and lower body - glutes, hammies, hip.

Run: 48:22 | 8.11km | 5:58/km. Vibram run. Eh, did not take my running mojo down to the foreshore. Tired and dehydrated this morning.

Babycakes Vanilla Cupcakes

I borrowed Babycakes from the library. It couldn't have come at a better time. Last night I dined with my closest girlfriends to farewell one who's off on a fabulous working adventure for the next two years. Between them they are gluten, wheat, dairy and sugar free. It threw up a few challenges. But I was determined to succeed.

The book really is lovely in terms of it's design and photography. And I wanted to believe everything would work. Alas I read some reviews and a lot of people seemed to have had quite a few issues with the results. Given the ingredients aren't overly cheap and can be difficult to source. I did a whole lot of reading prior to measuring and this is what I came up with.

Firstly you can find the cupcake recipe here. Health food it isn't!

Notes for the cupcakes:
• I used canola oil instead of coconut oil and dark agave nectar/syrup instead of light.

• I made my own apple sauce, just by chopping apples and cooking them on the stove top until soft. I absorbed additional moisture by placing the 3/4 cup applesauce on paper towel prior to folding into batter. A lot of commercial sauces I looked at had sugar added.

• I believe you can substitute one cup of the besan (chickpea) flour for 1 cup of rice flour. I didn't, but will try it next time.

• I reduced the temp from 190C to 170C and baked for 22min. I also tried 165C for 25min. Both worked, though the lower and longer cooking time resulted in fewer cupcakes sinking in the middle.

Babycakes (Vanilla) Frosting:

Enough to cover 24 cupcakes

• 1 1/2 cups soy milk
• 3/4 cup rice or soy milk powder*
• 1 tablespoon coconut flour
• 1/4 cup agave nectar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cup liquid coconut oil • 2 tablespoon lemon juice
____
I used my kitchen aid and wouldn't do it any other way.
I added the powdered ingredients first and slowly added the wet.
However, once I added the additional 1/2 cup of coconut oil it turned into a curdled disaster, so I added
• 1 tsp xantham gum
It's an emulsifier and smoothed everything out.

The flavour was heavily soy based, so while the consistency was right, the flavour just wasn't, so I added
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder

I think I added more agave nectar to kick up the sweetness.

Next time I would:
• Use coconut or rice milk to minimise the soy flavour
• Only use 1 cup of coconut oil

The icing/frosting is quite forgiving once you get it right. For an even smoother consistency I placed the kitchen aid mixing bowl in a bowl of hot water to melt the coconut oil as it has a tendency to bead. I then beat it again until smooth.

Taste-wise:
The girls could detect a slightly different flavour, initially thinking it was ginger. But when I asked if it was 'beany' they nodded in agreement. It was commented that the cupcakes themselves were a lot less sweet, and far lighter than most gluten free treats. A thumbs up for those who do have dietary restrictions!

* I could only find soy milk powder, sourced from Sunnybrook Health Store.

The damage

The week after the marathon became an eating and drinking festival. Celebrating our achievements, a birthday, being on holidays and the warm weather. Mid-week my stomach revolted, causing me a huge amount of pain and effectively put a stop to the volume of low quality food I could intake.

Mentally it was so nice to have a break from counting calories/keeping an eye on what I was eating. I believe this to be highly important if I'm to go on and run the Melbourne marathon in October.

Physically it wasn't so fun. My stomach caused me a great deal of misery (which I will discuss with my doc when visiting next) and of course I put on weight, which was to be expected. 1.5kg, it doesn't seem like much, but when I know how hard it was to take off, it's scary to think how fast it went on!

In the end I craved well portioned healthy food, knowing how much better it made me feel. It made me realise that my every day eating need not feel deprived. I actually enjoy sitting down to a plate of veggies and the occasional sweet treat rather than sheer overindulgence.

Bike trainer: 55m
Mon; bike trainer: 36m

How not to run

I headed to Albert Park Lake for a change of scenery (it seems there were casualties from the epic wind the other night), the flatness and a soft surface. For some reason I took off at a blistering pace (well, for me) and when it came time to run my 6 intervals into the wind, well I was well and truly done.

Note to self: don't do this on race day! And hope like hell there's no wind.

Run: 36:07 | 6.13km | 5:53/km.
Bike trainer: 25 min. Hoping to build on this.