A Weekend of Failures

I'm not even sure where to begin with my weekend of failures.

 

1) RnR Cheering ~ I wanted to go over to Lincoln park and cheer on all my friends and other runners. However, after looking at what time I needed to be at my gymnastics meet, I didn't have time cheer and go for my ride. So naturally my 2 hour and 45 minute ride that I was suppose to do won. Cheer, fail!

 

2) Saturday Bike Ride ~ Everyone rants and raves about Beach Drive and well I have never been. I thought this would be the perfect weekend to check it out and figured taking rock creek park trails would be the best way to get there. Wrong and Wrong. M and I left around 9 o'clock to make our to car free cycling. The ride down on the mall was not bad, but as soon as we got on the trail...OMG...a suck fest began. I hate trails and usually try to avoid them at all cost, so I'm not sure why I thought this was going to be any different. After an hour of weaving around walkers and baby strollers we had only gone 7 miles. Yes, 7 miles in an hour! That's ridiculous and not even a workout. I was super flustered and pissed that I was wasting my time when I didn't have the time to waste. We made it up to around the top of Adams Morgan's and there was still no site of Beach Drive. Yeah I feel like an idiot because I actually couldn't find the road, but the ride was already a bust and I called it quits. Riding that slow and on a trail takes every once out of me and I wanted to cry. I couldn't handle taking the trail back and just road through the city streets which = more slowness. 

So after a little over 2 hours of riding (if you want to call it that) I went 14 miles. As suspected a big waste of time and now I would just have to ride again on Sunday. Fail and some more fail!!! I will chalk this up to a nice leisure ride because it was nice out and M and I didn't get some good laughs out of it.

 

3) Saturday Run ~ I was suppose to run on Sunday, but with missing my ride I really didn't want to do all three sports on Sunday. I had 80 minutes of running on my schedule and had about 110 minutes before I had to leave for coaching. As soon as I got home from my bike ride fail I changed and was out the door running. It was hot and sunny by the time I left and normally I would have never left for a longer run at 11. The first couple miles of the run was fun and I joined in running on some of the RnR marathon course around mile 16. It was nice to hear the bands and cheer on the runners. I got a chance to talk to the juggler and also helped out with a guy who was cramping badly and just sitting on the side of the road. I would have loved to continue to run the course, but felt like a fake so went my own way. This lead me to running on the mall. My legs felt heavy and I ran out of water. Luckily the RnR volunteers let me re-fill my water bottle with the big tanks of water they had along Constitution Ave. This was a real life saver and helped me finish my run. By the time I made it back to my house, I had 9.5 miles on my legs. I wouldn't say this run was exactly a failure, but it def. was not one of my better runs. I am still not used to the warmer weather and struggled to finish.

 

4) Coaching ~ I couldn't even do this right. WTF. The meet I was coaching at was north west of Baltimore (53 miles from my house). I left giving myself an hour and half to get there. Who would have known it was going to take a half hour to go 2 miles! Ugh. Needless to say I was late to the meet. The competition had already began and my poor girls had no coach. At least the rest of the day went well and my kids did great despite the fact that their coach was late :(

 

5) Sunday Swimming ~ nope not a fail :) I actually had a really good swim and could have swam all day.

 

6) Sunday Bike Ride ~ Take two on my bike ride! I was not going to waste any time trying to figure out where to ride around the city and get flustered with stop and go riding. I figured it would be worth the 30 mile drive down to Prince William Forrest park. Of course there was traffic down 95 and it took an hour to get there, but somehow this was still better than dealing with a trail to ride somewhere. Once at the park I was greeted by a really friendly guy working at the visitors center. He gave me a map and showed me a 12 mile loop that cyclists do on the roads within the park. 

The park itself was great (it was me that was not great). All the roads are very nicely paved and some parts of the roads have bike lanes. And there was zero to no traffic so it really made for a safe car free ride. 

Now onto the ride itself. I have not rode any hills this year yet. Yes, I don't know why? But most of my rides have either been on my trainer or at Haines Point because it's easy to get to. This loop was filled with hills for the first couple of miles and the last few miles. Hill number one: I couldn't even make it up the stupid thing and had to walk. I'm still figuring out my gearing on boomer and honestly just need to practice more with switching gears and figuring out what works for me riding uphill. Anyhow, I hate walking my bike up a hill and started to get angry at myself. I had to walk a total of three hills on my first loop and felt like a total and complete failure. I basically felt like all my hard work over the past 8 weeks on the trainer has been null and void. That I just wasted my time and didn't get anything out of any of the workouts. I basically wanted to throw a little hissy fit and give up. I felt defeated. 

I rode back to my car and thought about it for 5 minutes. Then I remembered I really not the type of person who gives up on something after the first try. Gymnastics has taught me that. No one gets a skill on the their first try and you have to do the same skill over and over and over again until it gets better, until it is perfect. So with that said, I clipped back in and headed out for loop two. I made it this time without walking up any hills, but my legs were shot. I stood back at my car and decided I couldn't make it another loop. I don't know why I thought this? I cut my workout short by about 20 miles. That's a lot! As I driving home, I was getting more and more pissed with myself. I never give up on stuff and I just gave up on this ride because it was hard? Actually I have no clue why I didn't do another 2 loops. If I couldn't do this, how in the world am I going to finish Mooseman or Louisville. Err... a complete failure on my part and I only have myself to blame this time. I will not let myself do this again. There is no good reason why I skipped half my workout and yeah I'm still mad about it. At any rate I will be back here to ride as I thought it was great, plus well obviously I need hill work.

 

7) Cooking ~ To make things worse, while cooking dinner I went to take the chicken out of the oven and didn't use an oven mitt. Yes, that meant I used my bare hand!!! I realized how stupid I was when my finger prints where left on the hot pan. What was I thinking? Oh yeah I most not have been thinking at all. A total blond moment that left my hand hurting.

 

 

Hope everyone had a better weekend than myself and great job to everyone who raced!