We had a fun and busy weekend! I feel very satisfied with how the weekend went, per Sofia’s description of when I have a good run. She often asks me: are you satisfied with your run? That’s exactly how I feel after a good run.
Saturday: invitation swimming competition. It was the first time Lizzy joins a swimming competition. It’s a soft version of a competition as it’s not very formal, and the best swimmers from the club didn’t join. Yet, it was the perfect experience Lizzy needed. She won 3 gold medals on the 3 competition she joined, and she was not the only swimmer. 🙂 That gave her a good boost of confidence, nor that she lacks any, and motivation to keep training hard. I was happy to see how nervous she was, how hard she pushed, how excited daddy was, and how proud Lizzy was at the end. Sofia, on the other hand, won 2 gold 1 bronze. She didn’t perform as well, and I told her so. She got mad at me for telling her. She said I should just say nothing. It made me wonder what’s the best approach? let her feel bad herself? or make sure she knows she didn’t do well.
the rest of Saturday was homework, nap for all, and usual Netflix time for the girls after dinner.
Sunday: I had an amazing long run. Girls went to swim practice. Then we had a slow morning before we went to Ikea to get new plates/bowls for me, and organization boxes for the girls. And ice cream.
Once home, girls caught up with homework and I worked in the kitchen nonstop for 2.5 hrs. I made black beans, pasta salad, air fried tofu, potato wedges, apple cake, and cut up some fruits. I felt so accomplished for meal prepping all of them.
Then Sofia and I listened to all ABRSM level 6 songs, rated them and sent the rating to Sofia’s teacher so she can start preparing for them. Sofia just passed level 5 exam. Our plan is to finish all 8 levels before high school.
We ended our day watching the documentary about Blackpink, our favorite K-pop band. We all loved it, we got to learn more about each of the members, their stories, and their unique background. I enjoy watching documentaries with the girls, either on sport or artist, the common takeaway is that one needs to work hard to achieve anything.
First weekend back to school/work was the perfect combination of outing, physical activity, preparing good food, and a good movie/documentary with the girls.
Workout report
Monday: 6 miles shake out run after 16 miles LR the previous Sunday.
Tuesday: 9 miles with strides. Felt great with this run thanks to solid night of sleep and maybe sweet potatoes before bed.
Wednesday: run workout (3 miles easy, 4 sets of 2 min hard (10k effort), 1 min easy, 1 min hard (5k effort), 1 min easy, 2 miles cool down). Didn’t sleep enough so woke up not feeling energized. While the speed part went well and felt good, it took me a while to recover after the run. 20 min upper body.
Thursday: 8 miles with 3 miles on TM due to worsening air quality. 30 min runner specific strength workout.
Friday: 30 min yoga.
Saturday: 7 miles easy. I was feeling tired by Thursday and one day of rest was perfect. I felt recovered on this run.
Sunday: 16.5 miles easy. Usually, it takes me 5-6 miles to feel warm up, but this run felt good starting from the first mile. I was smiling all the way. After learning Kipchoge’s DNF, I was super grateful that I was running for fun without pressure to perform. I recovered very well after this LR, with no time to rest and did a lot of meal prepping in the afternoon, all standing.
Our New Journey 
Nice week of workouts, and I’m impressed with all your food prep.
The Olympic marathons were fun to watch! The runners all did incredible on a difficult course (both the men and women winners set Olympic records!) It’s definitely motivating.
It’s a tough call with Sofia’s swim meet. You want to balance being encouraging, with being honest. I guess I would ask myself, what would I want someone to tell me? I would prefer honesty.
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Nice work on your long run! I was so impressed that the winner of the women’s marathon also took bronze in the 5k and 10k!!! I can’t imagine competing in all 3 events! So crazy impressive!!
It’s a tough line to walk on what to say to a child. Sometimes starting with a question could help, like “how did you feel about the races today” or something like that. She probably knew she didn’t give it her all so some of her reaction to you was maybe disappointment with herself for not doing better. But it is hard to know how to handle those situations!
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First time commentator but long time reader and youth coach (swimming and soccer coach). As a Coach we love it when our parents say to their children, “I loved watching you swim today.” Coaches, especially in the upper age groups will discuss with their swimmers when they have a race that shows that their effort in practice didn’t match the outcome of the race. Let the coaches discuss it with her.
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Thank you Becca for the suggestion, that’s super useful!
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When it comes to the competition, I would say it really depends on the child’s personality. For me, I would probably just say something like Becca says “I loved watching you today” and asking how they felt about it. When I was a child I was super sensitive to criticism and I would have already been mad at myself, so I wouldn’t want to hear anything. But as I said it depends on the kid.
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You had a great week of runs/workouts. When I learned of Kipchoge’s DNF, I just thought “what a great model, he’s listening to his body!” 🙂
I don’t have kids so I can only speak from personal experience when I was young. I usually knew when I didn’t give my all and didn’t need anyone to tell me that. I probably would have preferred to just hear an encouragement like ” today was not your day, next time will be better”.
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