Allons-y!

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inspire me (2)

Friday - April 13

Swim

29m 44s
1550.00 yards
01m 55s /100 yards

30 minutes continuous swim. Did 1,000 at a very comfortable pace, then did 500 without touching the walls (that stunk) and stopped just a hair shy of 30 minutes.

1:45
1:54
1:55
1:53
1:51
1:55
1:53
1:53
1:53
1:55
2:01 (no wall)
2:00 (no wall)
2:00 (no wall)
2:01 (no wall)
2:01 (no wall)
0:56

Can't wait until the lake is warm enough to swim in. I'm going to take my Garmin out there and map out how far it is from the first to the last buoy and do all my swims out there (weather permitting)!

Been a busy morning--after I took the kid to school I stopped by Menards and bought some license plate mounts, took the bumper off the Acura, and installed them. After that Brynn and I moved the Saturn out from behind the Acura (it won't start for some reason. Cranks but won't turn over.) Then I went back to Menards and bought a tire repair kit because the Acura had a flat tire. Got that fixed up and I'm ready to start work! ---- Oh yeah, MOTY (Mother Of The Year) canceled another visit. Well, technically she didn't cancel--she just didn't answer the door or her phone when the transportation worker got to her house this morning. She has visits every Friday at the exact same time, so it's not like she wasn't aware there was a visit or something. I'll be interested to see if she cancels tomorrow too.

inspire me (2)

Thursday - April 12

Run

1h 02m
5.62 miles
11m 02s /Mi

Long run for the week. This originally started out as a 30-minute run/walk with Brynn and quickly became a 40-minute run, then turned into my long run :) I figured I was feeling pretty good, so no reason not to "run with it", so to speak. Top 3 farthest run of the year and of all the long runs I've done this year at <160 BPM it is the fastest pace by almost a minute. All the long runs I've done at a faster pace had 8+ bpm higher average HR. I take that as a good sign! Did 4:30 run/ :30 walk (at least I tried going at those intervals, didn't always catch it in time though) and I am confident that I'll be using that methodology to get me through the run in Kansas.

inspire me (3)

Wednesday - April 11

Bike

30m
7.50 miles
15.00 Mi/hr

No clue on the distance, did 30 minutes on the trainer. Was just going to go easy and spin the legs out but it got boring after about 3 minutes so I decided to do 30 second single leg drills every 5 minutes. That way the monotony got broken up but I didn't end up alternating legs the whole workout and kill myself.

One thing I'm learning about my tri bike is how much I actually used the drop bars on my roadie, especially when coming out of aero. Weird. Another thing I noticed about my new bike tonight while I was riding in the living room with the big picture window next to me--my position on the bike is pretty good! My back is nice and flat and fast (okay it's slightly humped, but there's not much this Quasimodo can do about that). Maybe that's why I'm able to ride faster on this thing? :) ---------------------- A little frustrated the past few days. Before we went out of town this past weekend I was dipping into the 206 range, and I got back up to 212 by Sunday. I figured I'd lose it all back after a few days back in "normal" life but so far I'm 210-211 still :( Just goes to show you it's WAY easier to put it on than to take it off. Lesson learned.

inspire me (3)

Tuesday - April 10

Run

29m 32s
2.82 miles
10m 28s /Mi

I did 4 minutes run, 30 seconds walk for (almost) 30 minutes. I like it! It allowed me to keep up a higher cadence which I think is key to me being able to maintain form a little better and run a little more efficiently. Finished this workout feeling like I wanted to keep going! That doesn't happen a lot to this guy when it comes to run workouts.

Bike

1h 20m 32s
24.27 miles
18.08 Mi/hr

Wow, set a 2 minute PR on The Loop. Haven't done that since 2 weeks after IMKS in 2008. So I guess that makes me 11 weeks ahead of schedule in my training ;) Plus today's PR came AFTER a 30 minute run!! I just felt really good today. It probably didn't hurt that the wind seemed to be coming out of the Northwest so I hit my turn-around feeling way better than I expected. I was going to go down HWY 2 to Bennet and turn around at Roca Rd for a 19-ish mile ride but ended up turning right and doing The Loop which is a route I haven't taken in a while. It's got some boogers for hills and really whomps on your legs during the middle 1/3 of the route. Finished this bike feeling elated but pretty pooped. Sat in a cold water bath for about 15 minutes. It was shocking at first, but only took a couple minutes before I didn't even notice it anymore. Not like last time I did a cold bath where it took several minutes to acclimate and I never did feel comfortable.

Pretty pleased with today's workouts, all things considered. Oh and my IT band thing worked itself out throughout the day so that was good.

Great, I woke up with Jeremy's Syndrome today. In case you didn't see me talk about it several weeks ago, it's this random IT band-like pain that you wake up with. Last time it happened it went away soon after, though I can't remember if it was the same day or the next. Ah yes, here it was. =) ======================== I just witnessed a HUGE collision at the main intersection where we drive every day to go wherever it is that we go (and, consequently, the ONLY intersection that is paved that I ride my bike on every time I ride my bike from my house). This lady was going south in a Trailblazer or some such SUV and totally broad-sided this little 4-door something or another that was traveling east on the highway. If the driver of the car that was struck didn't take evasive action as soon as she did she would have been hit right on the driver's door instead of ahead of the front wheel. Her car spun around and the SUV rolled about 1.5 times. I stuck around and gave my info to the police, but not before my neighbors came up and told me I should move my car (which was on the shoulder and farther from traffic than the police cruiser next to me). I swear, those people can't go ten minutes without telling me what I should do with my car. I figured it out--they're the redneck equivalent of Dwight Schrute.

inspire me (2)

Monday - April 9

Decided to make today a rest/catch up day. I've been having a few aches and pains here and there (my left achilles was even talking to me a little bit for the first time in at least a month) so I've been a little freaked out and hoping that I'm not over-doing it with the training. I know I've been stressed the past 10 days or so which is about when the aches and pains started to set in, so I just took it easy today. Got caught up on some work stuff that was stressing me out and I feel a lot better about that, and just took some time tonight to do some mindless stuff and sit around. I got a tennis ball and rolled my left foot (oh yeah, my plantar fascia has been feeling sore. Not acute pain sore but just sore muscle sore) so I rolled that out on the tennis ball and it feels a LOT better. Then I got Brynn's foam roller out and rolled out both my calves and both of my hamstrings, since my left one has been a little achy on kind of the outside, but not so far outside as to be encroaching on the IT band area. Just working out those muscles with the rolling techniques makes me feel a lot better, even if it didn't do anything to improve my overall achyness. My real concern is my knees, because I've never really had knee pain before. I've had pain in my quadricep tendon as I started back up training (it happens every time I go a long time without training and pick it back up again) but never anything actually inside the knee, which is what I feel like is going on now. Going to try doing a shortie run on it tomorrow, around 30 minutes, at an easy pace, and see how it feels. I'm a little concerned that I'm 9 weeks out and only running up to 5.5 miles and being wiped out after those runs. I know a lot will change over the next two months, but it's hard not to stress out about it. I don't have any goals for Kansas other than to train well and execute a good race. My real sights are set on the State Games and the Mayor's Tris. That reminds me, I still need to register for those. So I guess that gives me a little bit of flexibility in my overall training volume and intensity, allowing me to back off if I need to in order to just make it to the start line healthy.

inspire me (0)

Sunday - April 8

Bike

1h 03m 20s
17.66 miles
16.73 Mi/hr

Super windy today, out of the South/Southwest. Rode down HWY 2 to Rock Island Trail, to Antelope Valley Trail down to the Billy Wolff trail and home. Nice little 1-hour (+/-) loop. It's really flat but there's a lot of good cover from the wind.

Went a little easy on the running this week because my knees have both been giving me pause over the past several days. I think the active recovery (i.e. scuttling around the water park at Great Wolf Lodge all weekend) was good for them, I didn't have any issues on my ride today and I'm feeling good now a couple hours later. Hoping this is a trend in the positive direction! Might go swim tomorrow if I have time, might make it another off day because I'm busy. I have one order due tomorrow, a final due Tuesday, three due Wed, 2 on Thurs and 2 on Fri, with another 3 on Monday. Eek!