RunMyssieRun

Be the weed that grows between the cracks of the concrete. The weed grows because it does not know it isn’t supposed to be there among the strong concrete. It struggles but survives and looks for the sunshine every single day. The weed never really belonged where it was and even when others tried to pluck it out, it knows it must continue or it will die.

I see no shame any more from being a weed anymore in a world where I never really quite belonged. I find strength in it now.  

What a week!!! I’ve made a major effort to minimize my caffeine intake down to normal human being levels… and no one has been murdered yet by my hands. (Whew! That’s a good sign.)

I can walk into or go to drive thru at my local Starbucks and they have my “regular” (Venti hot caramel macchiato skinny and upside down with a straw) ready for me AND call me Angelina Jolie to make my day. Yes, I know.. they spoil me! And I love it!

“Hello Angelina Jolie! Would you like your regular today? Or your Venti caramel skinny latte with two splendas?” asks Starbucks barista Alex in the morning 🙂

So when I made the move to decaf after ten years of the same drink order… I think a memo may have gone out to all the Starbucks employees – and our local PD may be on high alert to watch out for me. I dunno… what do you think?

Can you read the label? I think they’re afraid it may the first sign of the apocalypse.

It seems that my coffee addiction is wreaking havoc on my heart rate training. In an effort to do my best to continue this crazy promise, I need to put a curb to my addiction to Joe and begin my affair with Zone 2. I find it odd that it’s difficult for me to train in this manner.  These last few years, all I’ve ever heard from people who I train with is “you can push harder”, “No pain – No gain”, “train insane or remain the same” so I’ve become used to pushing my limits and going hard – as hard as I possibly can – during my trainings.

I have an incredible new coach this season with Team in Training. I’ve known her for a while and admired her drive and accomplishments so when she agreed to coach the team this season, I was thrilled!!!

THIS IS COACH LORI

THAT’S MY COACH! LORI TIJERINA… and yes, that’s her finishing time!!!

She’s a beast and she knows what she’s doing, how to do it and how I need to adjust to do it, too. Keeping my workout routines but instead of focusing on speed and distance, she has me focusing on my heart rate zones.

Do you know what your zone are??? Here, try it out yourself.

http://www.digifit.com/heartratezones/training-zones.asp

Did you plug in your digits? Did you see where you are supposed to be at Zone 2? Ok, good. Now get that heart rate monitor and go run some intervals and try to keep it at Zone 2 and your regular run pace consistent. Or try doing a long run, say 8 miles and see how long it takes you to complete if you never go over your Zone 2 max number.

NOT SO EASY EH????

I don’t take pre-workouts. I don’t take any of that Advocare, Zeal, Plexus, IDlife, Herbalife, etc. or any other medication that messes with your heart rate and blood pressure. But I do drink an average of two pots of coffee a day. I know… I know.

So now, I’m on week three of extremely limited caffeine intake – not gonna tell you how much because I still have issues and I may go postal from admitting how bad I am and it’s none of your beeswax anyway. And there haven’t been any fatalities… yet. (Heavy emphasis on the YET) Can you feel my pain???

To date, so far I’ve gone from 135/89 in May to 128/78 in June to 120/73 this past Thursday. Baby steps in the right direction.

I’ve been consistent in my workouts and finally felt a difference yesterday in my swim. My breathing was very controlled. I get myself really worked up I guess because I see so many awesome athletes by me doing phenomenal things and I want to do them, too, forgetting that I don’t have the athletic experience and foundation that they have. These things take time and I have to constantly remind myself of that. sigh

I have also taken advantage of the network of doctors that I work around closely with. Adding Dr. Joel Solis and Dr. Joey Cadena has been reassuring to me this week as well. I should get some results from their findings later next week.

While some of my trainings have been under the radar, I’ve had some fun posting my anxiety filled musings on social media. Here’s some of them…

Oh! By the way… it’s that time again to begin looking for sponsors this season. Would you like to sponsor me and/or the Team? See that donation box? No??? Oh… ok.. I’ll just post it here for your convenience. Feel free to drop in $20 or $200 or $2000. However, if you would like recognition – and I’m all about sponsor recognition – contact me to see how we can partner up to beat cancer.

And the link is here, too: https://donate.lls.org/tnt/donate?programGroupName=TNT&fundraiserPageID=2068254&participantFirstName=Myssie&participantLastName=Cardenas-Barajas&displayName=Myssie%20Cardenas-Barajas&fundraiserPageURL=http://pages.teamintraining.org/sctx/yourway16/mcardenasb

This entry was posted on July 13, 2015 at 3:53 pm and is filed under triathlon with tags addiction, austin, blood pressure, caffeine, coffee, decaf, half ironman, heart, heart beat, heart rate, imtexas, ironman, swim bike run, Team in Training, texas, training, triathlete, triathlon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.