Last week I had a break from the usual workout-kids-work-kids routine. The kids were away for a few days and therefore were out of the work-life-workout balance equation. First, let me explain something to you: this has never happened to me before. Being alone in my house with no kids? The ability to work out without feeling guilty? Without rushing home to make the kids breakfast after a swim workout? This is that elusive, holy grail utopia that I had always dreamed of. It wasn’t completely intentional – I was supposed to join them at the beach but a work trip was changed dates, and in general I needed the time at work and at home to get some things done.
There were two things I realized throughout the days of kid-free supposed-bliss.
1) I missed them. Of course, that’s a given.
2) I was plenty busy without them. Of course, that’s a given.
Because seriously, it was a work week, and since I work all day and have a long commute the kid-free time was limited to mornings after workouts and evenings after work and before what would be their bedtime.
So how did the week of kid-free triathlon training and running turn out? I’ll give you the recap.
Last week’s training/life recap left off on Sunday with birthday celebrations of rock climbing and margaritas.
So on Monday, I was a wee bit tired. But I made it to Master’s Swimming for 2,000 meters in a lane by myself. Which means nobody to wait for me to finish a set, or see just how slow I was swimming. Score. Except the coach probably noticed. And there was nobody to push me faster/farther, so maybe that’s not the best thing. I was glad I went.
After work my husband and I met friends for dinner. It felt decadent after going out the day before! I’m telling you, I was barely in my house without the kids this week!
Tuesday, I decided to take advantage of not having kids jumping on me in the morning and sleep in a little bit. I figured I’d do the bike trainer + run workout after work like normal people who aren’t doing the commute-kid bedtime-dinner thing. So on my way home from work, I ran. I always see people running on trails and paths as I sit in traffic, so on this day I became one of them. I changed before heading out of DC, and then just parked, hopped out of my car and did a 3 mile run, then resumed the commute. Awesome.
I never did get in the bike trainer workout since after that run I met my husband at the Apple store to get my birthday present – a new laptop – and spent the evening setting it up.
Wednesday – morning track with the LUNA Chix was fantastic! I only had four hours of sleep but did the workout with gusto, which came to five miles total. Consider it training for race day on little sleep, right? The workout was “broken miles” that had stretches of 10K pace, intervals of “all out” 400s, and recovery laps. My pace for the all-outs were all sub-7 minute miles – whoa!!! 6:54, 6:57, and 6:58. I was really thrilled. I tried to stay consistent throughout the 10K stretches at 8:35-8:40/mile. Now to translate these times into race day pace plans.
I’m still loving the track workouts – they are helping me progress, and it’s great to have the camaraderie!
After track, I drove to the nearby gym location, showered, and headed to Richmond for work. I had five hours of driving roundtrip, and was totally wiped out when I got back. So what did I do?
Well, naturally, I went to a soccer game.
We have season tickets to the Washington Spirit pro women’s soccer team, and we love it! I don’t usually get to go since my husband takes my daughter and sometimes my son, so it was awesome to get a chance to see them in action.
So on Thursday, I didn’t get up for a morning trainer workout. If you just read about my Wednesday from 4:55am until late night, on four hours of sleep, you’ll see that I needed to not wake up early on Thursday and race around.
But I did get it done that night. Oh yeah!
I embedded the pic from Instagram so if you can’t see it, find it at this link. I was kind of annoyed at myself that I still got on the trainer at the same late night time I would have if I had put the kids to bed, but I was busy picking up the house for a gathering that weekend, doing laundry, and writing my Friday Five post. Friday, Friday, Friday. I had big plans for you, Friday. I don’t know what happened on Friday, I can’t even remember. But I think it had something to do with oversleeping in the morning, waking up just after Masters Swimming would have started. And then realizing that it was the last day without kids in the house and I had barely noticed since I had been out almost the entire week, and completely frazzled. And I needed a rest day. Saturday was the rest day on my coach’s training plan, but it was the opposite of that. I had a LUNA Chix group bike ride, and there were only a few of us Chix attending so I didn’t want to miss it, even with Iron Girl the next day. I rode sweep and had a really enjoyable ride with some awesome ladies. I was trying not to kill my legs the day before a race, but it was a pretty hilly 20 miles. 
After the ride, I drove from Arlington, Virginia to Columbia, Maryland and got my packet and racked my bike for Iron Girl. I swear I’m catching up on race recaps so it will come soon in a flurry of recaps I’m about to post. But as for the Saturday portion of it, it was awesome. I love expos and packet pickups, and seeing my favorite bike shop where I got the beauty in the pic above – MyBikeShop. They were helping out at transition for bike drop-off, and had a booth at the Expo. 
I drove home, had a few minutes to greet the kids and get us all out the door for dinner at a friend’s house. We had a fantastic time visiting with old friends and letting the kids run free in their yard and treehouse. We got home, I put the boys to bed, and ran to the grocery store. At 10pm. The night before a race. On a day when I hadn’t been off my feet all day. Smart idea? NO! But I had no choice, we were hosting a gathering at our house on Sunday after Iron Girl for my husband’s birthday. 
Then I packed up my triathlon gear and went to bed a little too late, setting my 4:20am alarm. Little did I know a kid would wake me up at 4am on race day! 
So that’s where I’ll leave you, and the next recap will pick up where this left off. I’m headed out of town on a family vacation so I’ll have some training while out of town pics!
What time do you go to sleep the night before a race?
The post Kids, What Kids? appeared first on You Signed Up For WHAT?!.