So what’s in a name? Or better yet, what’s in a nickname? My first few stemmed from my actual name—my family and close friends commonly call me Care and Carebear—but it wasn’t until 8th grade basketball that I received my first true nickname: Red. (You know, because of my curly red hair.)
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Ah, the sweet glory days of 2008. Just winning a sectional championship. All in a day’s season’s work.
It stuck, and during the next four years of field-hockey, basketball, softball, and track, I was known as Red. I liked having an athletic alter ego: I could be Carrie in the classroom and Red on the court. (Except in my economics class senior year—my basketball coach was the teacher, so I was Red.) Sadly, the nickname didn’t carry over from high school to college, so I’ve been nickname-less for a while.
Until this morning.
Workout #1 – Biking
Recovery week continued with an indoor cycling workout alongside my Full Throttle Endurance teammates. But you want to hear the nickname story, right? Here it goes: Remember how I bought a new heart rate monitor last week? Before starting practice, Andrew synced it with the Suunto training system, and in addition to sections for standard information (age, height, etc.), there was an area to input for a nickname. Here’s how our exchange went down:
Andrew: “Nickname?”
Me: “Carrie is fine.”
A: “No, it’s not.”
[Pauses, then begins typing.]
You can now call me Young C—because I’m the youngest member on the team. Ha!
Oh, and the ride went great. Seeing my heart rate and zone level let me know if I should increase, maintain, or decrease effort (or gear or cadence). Now that I can see these values during workouts, I need to teach my body how to recovery quickly. For example, we did some high-cadence drills (110 RMP for one minute), followed by steady efforts (90-95RMP for three minutes), and a few of my teammates were able to drop from the yellow zone to the blue zone in three minutes. (The Suunto training system has green, blue, yellow, orange, and red zones that show riders how close they are to maximum heart rate.)
Workout #2 – Running
After biking, I quickly laced up my sneakers and hit the indoor track. This was my first true bike-run brick since the summer, so I had no idea how it would go—and I survived! During past bricks, my entire lower body would immediately feel like stressed—or maybe distressed?—jello (triathletes, you know the sensation), but today, everything held up OK. I did experience some calf cramps, but nothing too painful.
Breakfast #1
Before heading to a work fitness event, I inhaled a banana and vanilla Chobani yogurt.
Plus my second cup of coffee!
Breakfast #2
Around 9:30 a.m., I found myself in the Union Square area, so I stopped at Whole Foods for a hot-bar breakfast.
Egg whites, huevos rancheros, and turkey bacon. So random, but so good. And since I was conveniently in the heart of the Union Square Greenmarket, I picked up some apples—and a sweet treat.
Give me carbs!
This pear muffin was absolutely delicious.
Did you have a nickname growing up? How about for sports? If you could give yourself a nickname, what would it be?