A week of recovery

The past week of recovery from the tri has definitely been a learning experience. In the past, I have usually gaged my recovery with soreness; if I was sore, I needed to rest, and vice versa. However, this past week wasn't wasn't the same. I wasn't sore, but I was not up to par.

I experienced physical fatigue like never before. Five nights in a row, I slept like crap with less than 6 hours of sleep. On top of that, I was feeling like crap and knew something needed to change with my nutrition. Friday night I finally got my first night of solid sleep, sleeping from 11pm to 5am (when my body woke itself up), and then slept again until 9am!

I have been keeping track of my nutrition for this past week and have already learned a lot. I was skeptical going into this, because I didn't want to become obsessive over what I ate and didn't eat, but I have found this to be a real eye opener.

I kept track of how much sleep I was getting and the hours, what I ate and when I ate -how I felt afterwards, my workouts and how I felt after those, the supplements and vitamins I was taking, how much water I drank each day, and then my overall feelings and thoughts at the end of the day.

Here is a list of things I noticed when I started to keep track of everything:

• Some days I didn't drink nearly as much water as I needed - and this coincided with some fatigue.
• I have always been a "small-portions-eater" and came to realize that I function best on eating 5-6 times a day, every 2-3 hours.
• Soda does not agree with my body, leaving me feeling slugish with extra water weight. I gave up soda for a year once, and I should have never started drinking it again.
• My favorite coffee drinks need to be consumed minimally - once or twice a week at most.
• Like most people, if I wait too long to eat or am ill-prepared, I eat crappy stuff. So, I have gotten better about packing snacks and lunches, especially when I have morning swim practice - I leave the house around 530am and don't return until after 2pm.
• I have been taking my daily women's vitamin and fish oil vitamin every day for the past week. (It's been months since I have taken these.)
• Some of the days I was really good about fruit and veggies, but there were a couple days that I didn't do so well and my stomach told me so.
• There were many times I wanted to stick crap in my mouth (ie. chips, chocolate, beer, kids snacks at school), and I refrained for the most part. I am not perfect, but I know I only ate a third of what I would have eaten if I wasn't writing down everything I put in my mouth. I think that a splurge here and there is okay, in moderation.

I am going to continue keeping track of all of these things. I don't want to do this forever, but it is helping right now, and isn't too much work to do so.

My workouts last week were pretty minimal, but the ones I did have were solid. I got in 3 hours of sand volleyball, a good 2 hours of softball, two 3+ mile runs (one with sprints), a nice swim, and a group bike ride this morning. I can't say exactly what this coming week (or the week to follow) will look like exactly. I am leaving Fargo for the Twin Cities Thursday afternoon, and fly out to New York City Friday morning. I won't be back home until the following Wednesday evening. I will get in a couple swims this week and hopefully another solid bike ride before leaving town. If I am lucky, I will get in a couple runs through Central Park while we're there!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Cheers to a great week ahead of us all!