Thursday, August 28, 2008

Past, Present, and Future

Blogging hasn't been the first thing on my priority list for a while. I have started a new job (by the way this is the dream: 3 x 10.5 hr days a week and a 4 day weekend) has changed my schedule a bit and has turned out to be good for training and completing day to day tasks, but leaves some areas behind. As a result I am going to condense a long time into a short paragraph.




Aug 2nd: 8 Lakes Leg Aches- awesome because 1.) at 17 miles into the ride we stopped at Coney Is park by my house and I got to drop off my extra clothes 2.) they feed you a bakery almost every 20 miles 3.) Riding to the start and back home got me 99 miles for the day! SWEET.
Aug 14th: got to ride the Hiawatha Trail with my dad, older and younger sisters, brother and niece. I had to pull my 7 yr old niece in a little kiddie trailer because she is a very daintily raised girl and doesn't do well with prolonged physical activity. No, there are no health issues, just lazy parents... sorry Alissa, but it's true, love 'ya ;-) Dad was up from Arizona so this was a special day.


This is me on one of the tressles pulling my niece in some pretty deep gravel.


Here we are at the end of our 15 mile, 1:35:30 ride... a stop or two along the way ...

Aug 15th and 16th: Spokane To Sandpoint Relay: awesome because 1.) I got in for free because Cherese had a girl on her team from fairchild that dropped out and needed me 2.) 17.3 miles of running and almost 30 of mountain biking and absolutely zero sleep (wait, that's not awesome) 3.) was more exhasted than after Ironman (a good feeling I suppose...) 4.) got to spend lots of time chatting with Cherese 5.) was so tired when I got home that I was deleriously talking to Michael about how it was great that we were on the same relay team when he was really home all weekend, this sort of thing actually happens frequently (CRAZY).





What's up now?

The Grand Columbian is rapidly approaching and I feel disorganized and frantic with my training. I have been getting my quality workouts in but pretty much Mon-Wed is crap, garbage, easy, short, why-even-bother stuff. Thursdays are my threshold workout days for running and Sat/Sun usually are my long days for it (in accordance with Dr. Jack Daniels' marathon training program). My swim training has taken a nose dive since I am no longer able to make it to the Master's swim workouts. The workouts are on the chalk board but if I don't have someone doing it with me I have very little drive to perform or even get to the pool. My biking is doing okay with weekly long rides and a shorter, faster workout somewhere in the week as well.

Today's workout was a Iron-distance swim in the back yard followed by a threshold run of 1 mile w/u, 4x 10-12 minutes T w/ 2 min rests, and 1 mile c/d. Good temps for today, wind made the swim fun (love the wave action!) and the run pleasant. My times were bad today for my T pace on the back side of the lake, but my effort was consistent with T paced work... not one of my best days. It's workouts like today that are great training because you know you didn't quit.


-Side Note- if anyone cares to know distances of Medical Lake: starting from our house, if you go to Turtle Island (start of trailblazer) and back twice then to Waterfront and back, that's 3800M... cool, huh?




Races still to come: Titanium Man Olympic; Great Northwest Fall Bike Tour, Newport; Labor Day family fun run 5K; FAFB half marathon; Grand Columbian; and whatever I decide to do after that :-)

See you out there!

2 comments:

M-Dot said...

Hey it's good to see you're still alive and kickn' :) Was affraid you had disappeared for awhile.. LOL

Looks like you've kept busy and sounds like the new job is good for you. Tell me about those 10hr days ick..

Keep up the good work each day is a struggle but it makes you feel better when you do it.

Michelle and Jay

Unknown said...

Man, the lake must be getting cold! The temp's here are chilly at night and I wouldn't even think of hitting the lake. Great season so far, I look forward to the GC. 10.5hrs is a long to be looking at people's teeth, but the trade-off is excellent: if gold prices soar again, you'll know who to invite over to dinner to have hard candy!!!