Training with Back Pain

Happy Monday!

It’s always sad to say goodbye to a lovely weekend and hello to another work-week… but here we are again. I try not to live for the weekends, but it’s hard not to when my energy dies so quickly during the week. This weekend was a battle between pain and training because I woke up on Saturday morning barely able to walk. I’m hoping it’s a phase and that I can stretch and strengthen my way out of it. Usually, if I lay down for a little while, I “re-align” and it helps a lot but even that wasn’t working. I try not to take my pain meds unless I really, really need them and I suffered through training and the weekend without them. I went to the pool yesterday which is probably why I’m surviving so far today.

Since I’d been having a rough day on Saturday, I was only going go for a walk that evening, but my sister was running and I really wanted to as well. I feel like I keep falling behind in training. I started walking and felt a lot of the tightness ease up after walking for around 10 minutes so I did a light 11:00 min/mi for 8 minutes. I ended up walking for like 30 minutes in the glowy sunset light. I finished off the evening by having a movie night with my siblings and watching National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

Sunday was spent learning more songs on the ukulele which is my new favorite hobby. I’ve learned “Make You Feel My Love” by Adele, “I Can’t Help Falling in Love (With You)”, and “Just a Friend to You” by Meghan Trainor. I’m not the best at playing, but I’m really enjoying it.

 

Hanna and I went to the pool in the mid afternoon but we were told it was going to be closed for another hour because someone puked in the pool. Ummmm. Gross. That thought permeated my mind the whole time we were swimming. I tried to forget about it. Before I started lap swimming, I floated for a while in the hopes it would relax my back some. It often helps and I think it did some.

Hanna finally reached her 1000m! I’m really proud of her for reaching her goal this far out from the triathlon. I don’t think I ever swam for more than 800m last year and even that was only a few days before the event.

My Swim Training Breakdown

• 300m at a 3:00min/100m
• 600m at 2:10min/100m with a short break after every 100m
• 100m at 2:40min/100m

When I’m working on a faster pace, and probably a system I will generally work with for the triathlon, I swim freestyle at around a 80%+ of my max effort until I’m close to being out of breath and then I’ll flip onto my back and back stroke for 25m or so until I catch my breath again.

After we finished our swim, we started playing around with flip turns. It was my first time doing them because I’ve always been scared of hitting my head. It ended up being much easier than anticipated! It would have been easier to have a nose clip but my sister is commandeering mine at the moment. I don’t really like to swim with them anyways.

 

San Jose 2016 – Women’s Gymnastics Olympic Trials

They’re going to Rio! All the training paid off and there’s less than 4 weeks to go! I have been awaiting this announcement for a YEAR! I’ve been following all the meets and anxiously awaiting last night’s decision. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy one to make as there were at least 9 gymnasts that I loved. I’m hurt for Maggie Nichols, Ragan Smith, Mykayla Skinner, and Ashton Locklear because they are all amazing athletes who deserve to go.

So I LOVE Simone Biles and Aly Raisman as well as Madison Kocian who has been one of my favorites for while. I didn’t think too much of Laurie Hernandez until Nationals a couple of weeks ago, but she is feisty, adorable, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her make waves in Rio.

Gabby Douglas has a lot to prove and I am a little disappointed to see her on the team instead of one of the other girls. I’m sure there’s good reason for it though. Hopefully she can prove that she really deserves to be at the Olympics. I doubt we’ll see an All Around performance from her, but who knows. The Olympics and the pressure can either prove to be too much or bring out the best in an athlete.

Did you hear that the next Olympics is only going to have a FOUR person team? Nope. I refuse to believe it.

What did you do this weekend? 

Are you training for any races?

Are you excited for the Olympics?!