Asphalt Junkies CLOSED AND GETTING OUR FIX (Page 91)

Wrapped up this great week of VBS tonight. You know things are going well when your son asks you to make sure you sign him up for next year. We had a small group, very small church that my in-laws go to. One very special moment just tonight, a little girl, about 8, not even in my class - she comes a little dirty, clothes don't match, hair not combed - she wrapped her arms around me and said she has had the best week and she will miss everyone sooo much. My eyes teared up immediately.

Sometimes it is just enough to show up, smile and say hello.

Ok - now back to training .

Tony, thanks for the posting pic tip.

Dirk, again, great pics and thanks for posting.

Dina, was to make a difference in a little girl's life!!!

Dina so glad to hear that you and your kids had a great time at VBS and that is such a great story. I am glad that to see that you could make a difference.

abergdol - 2012-07-28 4:38 PM I've met Brenda in person, and what Dirk says is perfectly true. She has a great smile, and she's also incredibly sweet. Also, I'm pretty short (5'4") but I look like a giant next to Brenda. She's mini-size

That right there is pure awesome!!!!

mambos - 2012-07-28 8:13 PM

bswcpa - 2012-07-28 7:56 PMWow, have you all filled me up with your compliments - thanks! I really enjoy doing triathlons so that's probably why I'm always happy in my race pics. Just for the record on the one that Dirk posted - he said something that made me laugh and Lisa caught me in the moment. I'm NOT always joyful when I have loads of laundry or I trip over my husbands shoes that he constantly leaves in the middle of the hallway.

This made me laugh because of a conversation I had with my wife over leaving my shoes everywhere. She was getting on me about the shoes. I politely told her I wasn't creating a mess but practicing transitions! Of course her reply was, it's been 2 days I think transition practice is over!

Both of these comments warranted reading them to Lis and Kyrie.  I had to belly laugh at both of them.  In my house I am the one who is always hollering about peoples shoes being strewn all over the place.

We don't talk much about our faith's in this group and that Ok but I applaud you Dina for taking your faith and placing in the hands of children.  We can only hope that you are sowing seeds that will reap blessings for you and the families involved.

And, since we are on the faith topic, I had an opportunity to talk to another rider today about my faith and convictions.  I won't go into details but I met this guy on the road and we just started chatting about things.  Eventually it lead to something that is important to me and I was able to articulate how important many things are to me, one of which was my faith.  He didn't come out and say he shared my views but seemed receptive to my thoughts.

Anyway Dina, I am sure you'll see many more benefits from the time you spend teaching VBS.

Now for my day.

I had an awesome day training for the most part.  I was asked to join a newer tri team a couple of weeks ago and today was my first opportunity to train with some of the guys in the group.  It is a team that is focused on training and racing HIM and IM and seeing some people hit the podium in several races a year (mostly podiums in shorter races).  The plan was to ride about 2:15 and then a 55:00 brick.  I was only able to ride 1:36 because I lost the group at a turn.  (The pacing in this group is self determined and then you meet up later at another site and regroup.)  I took a wrong turn and ended up having to call someone to let them know where I was and everything was alright.  We arranged another meet sight and I picked it back up with them, finished the ride and then ran 7.25 miles at an easy pace.

After the ride I wondered how my legs might feel after my long 14 mile run yesterday.  They felt amazingly good, to my surprise.   I spent some time talking to one of the guys about fueling for HIM's and getting other pointers about long course racing.  A good conversation to be sure.

Then after a couple of hours to recover I went out for another ride (to get more miles on my legs) and rode another 40 miles at an easy pace.  This was where I met the guy I spoke of in an earlier post.  The important thing about the second ride was that I could apply some of the fueling lessons I learned earlier in the day.  And trust me, I needed to apply them.  My legs felt pretty good but my energy level was going in the trash........insert fueling lesson here and take on fuel and finish well.

In all today produced 73 miles of riding and 7 miles of running.  AWESOME!!

Sounds like a great training day Dirk! Only a Junkie would go for a team ride then go back for more .

I showed a bit of progress in my training yesterday. I had a little over a mile ows. When I started out I noticed my shoulders and sides were sore from the hard intervals I've been swimming this week. I lost my stopwatch a few months ago and finally bought a replacement last weekend. I have to wear that watch if I want to really work hard at intervals. I tried RPE but I just don't work hard enough. Anyway, I've felt really weak in the pool this last year - like I'm just not strong enough. I think the hard intervals are a key for me to build strength and I could feel it happening yesterday.

I had a short run planned for after the swim. I really did not feel like doing this run but it turned out good. My feet, ankles, achilles all felt really good - no pain at all which is like a dream for me so I decided to pick up the pace a little. Each mile (I only ran 3) was a little faster and I finished the last one under 9:00 min/mile pace which was my fastest lap and into the wind the whole time - not fast but progress.

If you remember way back (March) I have been trying to follow the recommendations to run more frequent, short, easy paced runs with the focus being on letting my joints/ tendons take time to adapt. Well, let me tell you, it has taken a long freaking time and required a lot of patience but I feel like I am finally starting to feel some signs of progress. I'm sure new issues will come along but at least I feel like I don't have to quit running every time I have an ache or pain. This method has really worked for me to be able to continue running and I've actually experienced several aches/pains resolve themselves while I continue to run. Major revelation for me!

Now I will back off of the harder runs again until my next race and maybe try a very small increase in mileage or add another day.

Dirk nice workout yesterday so when are you going to do an Ironman? You are certainly training like you're doing one!

Dina glad to hear that you had a good workout and that you are running pain free and improving your run fitness and speed.

I finished a sprint today.  Initially I finished feeling disappointed, because I feel like there were areas where I could have/should have done better. On the swim I was overall pretty happy with my effort... until the point where I turned to head towards the beach and stopped sighting and went slightly off course.  That was minor.  I was not happy with either of my transitions, especially when I compare them to others.  Usually, I have pretty good transition times, but I just wasn't on it, I guess.  It just seemed slow.  The bike was pretty good overall as well, although towards the last mile or two, a couple of girls passed me and I feel like I should have gone with them.  The run I was feeling good on overall, but I feel like I did not put as much effort in it as I could have, thus the disappointment.  Basically, I did not finish this race feeling like I gave it my all, which leads to me feeling not so great about it.  However, after talking to my friend about the race, I do believe you need to have bad races/experiences too, so that you have something to improve upon for the future.  So, I will say that this was a good experience.  I will also say though, by the way I'm talking I feel like it sounds like I had an awful race, which is not really the case... I had average times for me, I just feel like I could have pushed harder.  In fact, I guess I could say I am happy with my run split in particular, considering I wasn't spectacularly happy about my effort.

Although this basically feels like a race report, I will be posting the "official" race report soon.

So I think I can finally call myself a triathlete, the debut race is in the books and it was a blast! The weather held out as we had a lot of rain yesterday so no rain today which made for a nice race. I finished my Oly in 3:10 and change. I was shooting for 3:15 and I probably could have come closer to 3 hours but my 1st transition was painfully slow! I am very happy with my time and there is so much room for improvement. I will hopefully get a detailed and lengthy race report up there this evening once I get the official times. I hope I represented well for the Junkies as I thought about you guys a lot out there today. I also want to thank the entire group for all your help. Without you guys sharing your knowledge and experience I don't think I would have come this far this fast. I am also grateful to everyone for your tremendous support. Man I can't wait until next weekend as I will have first sprint tri coming up! Thanks again to everyone, you guys rock!

Sometimes it take a little while for us to see the improvement we works so hard to attain.  I believe this is related the body's adaptive response to the demands we put on it.  I think everything works in conjunction with training, hard training, cross training and a very important aspect, recovery.  In the little time I have been involved in endurance athletics it has become very apparent that in the beginning gains are fast because our body's sometimes go from "nothing" to a regular training regimen and adaptions are quick when coming off the couch. 

The training gains you are experiencing have slowed because you are already in a peak physical fitness condition.  Now it becomes important to add some demanding WO's to hit more peaks.  Obviously this has to be done with intelligence so as not to demand to much and injure yourself.  You are doing quite well with this.  Running easy and at a lower volume is allowing those gains to be seen but on a smaller scale by being able to continue running with some of the problems you have had in the earlier parts of this season.  You have also shifted to some hard core swim WO's that have your body being forced to adapt yet again to the work loads.  Macca said that by shaking his WO's up he has been able to continue to thrive at an extremely high level.  In essence that is what you are doing.  Shaking things up by working "outside the box."

It's great to hear your doing well with all these gains but most importantly the running.  Congrats!

It's great that you had a good time at the race.  Your point is quite valid, as I learned from a poor race last weekend myself.  The only way yo get better at something is to fail at it several times and keep getting back up and applying lessons learned from our failures.  This is not to say your race is a failure of course, but to say you get the opportunity to take a look back and figure out what you can do differently in your next race.

I am looking forward to reading the RR when it's posted.

There, I fixed that for ya!  Congratulations!!

that is a very good time for your first race.  Deciding that an Oly would be your first race took guts.  Many people would have decided to look into a sprint because they would have been worried that they might have failed at a longer distance.  By choosing the Oly as your first race your represented the Junkies very well.  Time  and placement doesn't matter, attitude is what matters and now you have all the reason to have some swag tomorrow around the water cooler.

Get that RR up soon so we can all gloat with the new Junkie Triathlete!

Some of the race results were posted but no transitions times for my race yet. I actually finished in 2:58:05. I just about fell out of my seat when I saw that. I forgot it was a time trial swim so it took some time to get to the water before I hit the timing mat. The 3:10 time was when I crossed the finish line. Here were my actual times posted:

Swim 31:45, Bike 1:20:52 and Run 56:37

Which means I spent almost 9 minutes in transition which is terrible. I'll get the race report up.

So happy for you!!!

A cyclist friend of mine has been battling a crazy cancer for the past few years.  He's now under hospice care.  Please keep him in your thoughts and send send blessings his way.

BTW.....my friend that was in the motorcycle accident is making AMAZING progress!

I really need for my friends to quit getting sick and hurt.