Thursday, March 26, 2009

my favorite running parter!

im nearing the end of my rest week. my workouts have been short and ive been able to sleep in a few days! today my workouts only totaled an hour so i put them off until after work. i had an easy run and i wanted to do part of it with my daughter. after making sure she didnt have a lot of homework to do i asked her if she wanted to go for a run. she jumped up and all she said was "i better go change!" i love it. its amazing quality time that i enjoy immensely. we do sporadic workouts together but never anything structured. recently she won entry to a 5k from a contest she entered on steve in a speedo. its coming up so we decided we better run together a bit more. on monday we meant to go for a run but we werent able to. on tuesday when she got home from school she said "we better go for a run today since we missed yesterday" it was cold and raining. we got dressed and went for a mile run and talked about how much we both like running in the rain. we finished in 8:23. today we went a bit slower and ran 1.7 miles in the blowing snow. i loved it. she doesnt like running in the snow like she does in the rain. we headed for the park to do a lap around the small lake. we stopped only for a few seconds to snap a quick photo together. along the way we talked but she talked too much and ended up getting a side stitch. we slowed down a bit but before long she was picking up the pace. i commented that she must be feeling better and all she said was "not really i just want to finish." and she took off for the last few blocks home.


me and my daughter, who i will always love so much more than i could ever possibly say.

Monday, March 23, 2009

my weekend

this weekend we packed up the family and headed out of town for our baby shower!

here are my girls looking pretty at the shower.

i had big plans for my workouts. on saturday i lifted weights. ive never lifted weights up north in sebeka where our family lives so i had to do a bit of research. i broke out my google phone and quickly found the wadena community center.



i slept in until 8!(im usually up by 5 to do my workouts) and headed to the gym. saturday was the start of my maximum strength phase which means that im supposed to do as much weight as i can for 3 reps and 3 sets. i surprised myself with how strong my legs are! the gym was awesome in the typical small town kind of way. when i walked in i had to wait around for a few minutes before the woman who worked there to come out from the back where she was checking on her baby sleeping in the office. i paid my $4 and she pointed out the locker room and the weight room and i was on my way. there was only a high school boy lifting weights but he finished right as i started. i brought my ipod to listen to as i usually do but put it back since the gym supplied their own music. i pumped iron while listening to 80's rock! sweet! i usually love to hit the hot tub after lifting weights but they didnt have one so instead i headed off to the sauna. that was it for my saturday workout.

sunday was meant to be my big day. David had decided to move my workouts around a bit so my plan was:

:45 run zone 1
3:00 bike zone 2
swim 10X100 followed by drills to total :45

thats 4.5 hours! a half hour short of my half ironman goal. it was also a weird backwards triathlon if you hadn't noticed.

well the run was painfully slow! i have a freaky high heart rate and its really hard to keep it down while running. i only ran 4.5 miles. ridiculously slow for me.

i immediately changed and headed out for my ride. (the highways in this area have really wide shoulders that are smooth and great for biking. ive ridden many centuries through the farmlands there.) the wind had really picked up during my run and i thought it would be challenging for my ride. i took off and kept an eye on my hr to make sure i didnt go above my zone 2. i also kept an eye on my speed which stayed right about 20mph. i was thinking it should be faster but the wind was pretty strong so i didnt feel too bad about that. it seemed that with every mile the wind got stronger and stronger. i was being blown all over the place and actually got blown off the road a few times. after 10 miles i had had enough. i simply didnt feel safe. i was literally leaning hard into the wind just to stay upright. i turned around and headed back. i only rode 60 minutes and 19.5 miles out of my 3 hour ride. i was really disappointed. i checked the weather report and the wind was 26 miles an hour with gusts up to 40! i called David and told him about it and ate a quick lunch before heading off for my swim.

once again i had consulted my google phone to find the nearest lap pool. ive never swam anywhere but the lakes while up there so i had no idea where to go. i found out that the closest lap pool was in Perham. 50 miles away! so off i went. i was soon at the Perham community center.



it was a nice place which apparently is also the home pool for the high school. there was a banner celebrating a local kid who recently won state in the 100m butterfly! i did my workout and sat in the hot tub before heading back. along the way i spoke to David about my rearranged workout schedule for this week since my ride was shortened.

so that was my weekend. it was great seeing family. my new workout week starts tomorrow with my 3 hour ride. depending on the weather i may be doing it inside. (im not a baby about riding in the rain but my bike is! she is too pretty.)

either way i will post my garmin data for brian. i promised to do it on this post but i messed it up! i accidentally left the gps on when i drove to the pool after my bike! the data is all funky looking.

also congratulations to my daughter anastasia for her contest on steve's blog. you can read about it on her blog tomorrow!

Friday, March 20, 2009

This morning my alarm went off at 4:45 and the first two things I noticed was I had a bad headache and my right calf hurt. After thinking how easy it would be to sleep another two hours before work I thought about my goal, told myself to quit being such a crybaby and got the hell out of bed. A short time later I headed out the door for my run. I walked a bit to warm up the calf and stretched it a little before hitting the timer to start my run. I was supposed to run for 1:15 but had to cut it a bit short to get to work on time. I wanted to do at least 10 miles at a 7:30 pace but ended my run aftter 9 miles. My time was 1:06:29. A 7:23 pace! I felt bad about shaving 8 1/2 minutes off my workout but was really happy with my run. My calf didn't bother me much and my headache never went away but I'm an ironman dammit this is how I'm supposed to feel. As you can tell from my previous post I'm almost finished with my most intensive week so far. Overall I feel awesome. I'm really looking forward to my workouts this weekend but we are heading out of town for our baby shower! Squeezing in workouts is going to be tricky but I think I've got it figured out.

Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

ive been busy!

well i havent been updating because ive been really busy but i thought id get in a quick update before i head off to bed! here is what ive been up to this week:

first off there is a new blog you should start reading! its by the cutest little triathlete in the history of the web! it my daughter's! she also has a funny story in a contest over at steves blog. she is the only kid in the bunch so stop by and cast your vote for the best (*ahem my daughters*) story!

also i got myself a sweet new toy. its a garmin forerunner 405. its awesome and im still learning how to use it effectively but the important thing is that i can upload sweet graphs of my heart rate data from my workouts everyday and send them to my coach. there is definitely no skipping workouts or slacking off without him knowing!

speaking of my coach...here is what David has me doing this week:

sunday~ i swam 2X1000 intervals with 2 minutes of rest. i was supposed to bike
afterwards but stuff came up so after consulting with my coach that got
moved to monday which means no rest day this week!

monday~ bike 2:45. i wanted to do this outside because it was so freaking nice out
but i ended up spinning on the trainer while watching movies.

tuesday~ a.m. swim :55 nothing hard just steady.
p.m. lift weights

wednesday~ a.m. run 1:15. i ended up going 10.13 miles
p.m. bike 1:00 with intervals every 5 minutes. i just finished about an
hour ago and im sleepy!

thursday~ swim as many 500yd intervals as i can in 1 hour. i get 30 seconds of rest
between them.

friday~ a.m. run 1:15 will i go farther than 10.13?
p.m. bike 1:30. an easy zone 1 ride.

saturday~ lift weights

sunday~ run/bike brick. :45 easy run then 3:00 steady state ride. im excited about
this one!

well thats my week. i also have to work 40 hours and make family time and if there is any time leftover then i get to sleep! which is what im about to do right...now!

goodnight!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

busy/lazy me

im sorry ive not been a very up to date blogger recently! i plan to put up a new post really soon! ive got new toys and have been working my ass off training! also ive got a huge announcement about a new blog coming your way!

check back soon