Another notch in the belt

Only one more notch left on this belt. I probably won't go to that one since I'm already not far from my goal race weight. What's different this time around is that I'm still not quite at last year's IM weight, yet I'm definatly skinnier. I've never been in this notch on this belt so are my legs more muscular?? I'm about 168 pounds right now, the goal is 155-160pounds. Last year I got down to 160, but then went up to 165 for race day. I feel leaner now at 168 than I felt at 160 last year so hopefully that's a good thing. Although memories get distorted, especially as I get older. The thing I can go on is notches, here's to breaking in a new belt hole!!!!

Ups and downs, Mom,"Isn't that like life?" Me,"Exactly!"

Hey all,

Well we've had a good spring so far. I hardly want to say anything about it for fear of jinxing it. Sunday looks good again so I will keep my fingers crossed, that happens to be my long ride day this week so please hope/pray with me.

The last week(7 days) or so have been a roller coaster ride. I have had some awesome epic workouts, then there have also been some workouts I'd rather forget and even some that didn't happen. Chuckie had to adjust my schedule more than once. That's why I changed the QOTD on the side, mostly for myself to read and reaffirm.

So to change things up I thought I'd just summarize the last 7 days or so of Highlights and Lowlights. lol I'll start with the Lowlights so I can end on a positive note. There will be a bunch and some may appear in both lists depending how you look at them.

Lowlights:
1. Swimming on my own. I find this really hard to do because I don't enjoy every minute of swimming. So I'm looking for a good group to swim with, somthing affordable, but with faster swimmers to challenge me. My swim needs work.
2. Going on a long ride Saturday and only bringing regular Gaterade, then waiting till the 3 hour mark to stop at a gas station buy a power bar, water bottles were empty at that point. dumb dumb dumb(in my defense I never expected to ride that far see Highlights)
3. Missing my saturday morning swim because I was just too damn tired to get out of bed. :(
4. Along with #3 having to tell Chuckie to change the schedule, no matter how much people including Chuckie tells me that this is ok and that I am not a looser for missing a workout, a tiny part of me will always feel guilty.
5. Having to ease up on my Sunday long run and cut my long swim short too(although not as short as Chuckie instructed, see Highlights).

Highlights:
1. Riding 148km in March!!!! (I've never done that before ever!!)
2. Thursday Chuckie gave me a triple run day and I friggen nailed the third on tired legs and a hilly course smashing my previous best tempo run!!! Did I mention I love running?? Fast???
3. Good outdoor ride last tuesday, 90min hard 100km total
4. Swimming more than Chuckie had given me on Sunday since this was really the missed Saturday workout. The original plan was for a main set of 38x100 with 10 secs rest, he said I could shorten it, I ended up feeling good so I did 35(the pool closed then or I woulda finished)
5. 19 hours last week, never done that this time of year.

Outdoor ride #3

I've been anxiously awaiting the outdoor riding, especially since I'm doing cda this year. We've had some nice weather lately so I have been getting outdoors. I watch the weather and try to predict the good riding days, yes even in Calgary where the forecast is seldom very accurate. Hey, we live at 3500 ft or somthing it's to be expected.

Anyways yesterday's prediction was a balmy 19 degrees and partly sunny!! So I went in to work early so I could get out early and hit the road. Chuckie also knows the importance of getting in these early springtime rides so he gave me a med. length ride. Through out the day I kept watching the temp and looking outside, yes my mind was clearly not at work. Already thinking about the ride, lol. Hmmmm the temp wasn't going up, and where is that damn'd sun?!?! Oh well it finally got into the double digits and there was no wind to be seen so it was warm enough.

I headed out to Strathmore, this is one of my favorite routes. I know every hill, well rollers as there are no huge hills if you go east from Calgary only rolling landscape. The rush hour traffic hadn't hit it's full swing yet so it wasn't too bad getting out of the city. Once I'd reached the 20min mark and outside the city limits I started today(yesterday's) hard session. 90minutes hard, my directions were to stay at 135bpm preferrably 145. So I hit 135 fairly easily and kept working it to eventually move over the 140 mark. Good stuff, it seemed like a effort that I could sustain. There wasn't too much wind and even though the sun wasn't out the temp wasn't too bad. I had tights on, but no jacket, just a long sleeve shirt and a jersey over top, with gloves too. I rode through Langdon on my way to Strathmore and got to the turn around(Strathmore) in a record time. Now to turn home and into the wind for 20 more minutes out of the 90. I actually saw 145bpm a bunch of times and kept it 140-145 most of the ride. Didn't ride all out, but it was pretty close. After the hard part I still had about an hour to ride, the legs were getting grumpy, but I just cruised with the heart rate now down near 120.

After the ride I had a 20min transition run and I'm done. Starting out the legs are always heavy, but finishing up I felt like I could have done an hour or so. Well ok the legs were pretty cooked, lol. But I love that feeling. More hard work in the tank, OUTDOOR work. :) I'm sure we'll get more snow, but every ride I can manage outdoors is extremely helpful. The ride showed me I'm already at last summer's fitness, maybe even faster so that's a good sign. My run and definately the swim are stronger too. Till next time,

DP

Outdoor riding / playing catch up

Hey all,

I had a great weekend of riding. Earlier this week I saw the weatherman(or woman) give us a good report promising sunny skies for the weekend. Chuckie gave me a ride to do on Saturday and on Sunday. Gotta ride outside while the riding is good our winter aint over!! So saturday I got my trainer tire changed put on my extra outdoor riding apparel and headed out the door. I headed out to Langdon first. There was extra gravel on the roads and a bit of water from some snow/ice run-off, but as soon as I got out of the city the roads were actually pretty nice. The temp was about 8-9 degrees and I made it to Langdon and kept going. There wasn't much wind as I could still cruise over 30 into it. Hit Strathmore, filled up the bottles with some gaterade purchased at the esso there,.... or is it petro. Oh well it doesn't matter. I had an interesting conversation with one of the gas attendants. She was outside having a breath of "fresh air" and started talking to me about maybe qualifying for the olympics? I don't know why I bothered, but I did manage to explain that one there is no olympic IM and two I'm not quite at that level. I think she caught it and wished me well saying she hopes I qualify this year!! So starting out again is always a bit tough, but the ride home was a bit quicker since I now had a bit of wind at my back. Made it home with a good average speed too, with out any hard riding.

Sunday I met Curtis and Greg near the corner of sarcee and Glenmore trail. We headed out there on the way to Bragg Creek. We should have met at Greg's, the shoulder there had lots of gravel on it so some of the time we had to ride on the yellow line. Oh well as soon as we got out of the city limits the shoulders cleared up and we could put our heads down and cruise not having to worry about gravel so much. Greg rode his aluminum silver bullet and didn't want to get into the aero position. I guess he figured we'd be cruising in easy to Bragg and back? I had other plans so I put my head down and got into a comfy yet steady IM pace. If he's gonna keep up he better get down in those aero bars!!! ha ha right Greg? Not much wind out on sunday either. On the way back Greg and I got into a nice pace line. We are pretty even right now in fitness so it worked well to trade off pulling 30 secs in front not hard but a steady push, then move over and let the other through to take over. If you guys have never pace lined on a tt bike you gotta do it!

Fast forward to yesterday I had a bit of trouble fitting in the workouts. The night before I waited till late to get my lil 30min recovery spin in and that made me not want to get up early to get one of my hard sessions done. Side note; Chuckie is pure evil some days giving me two hard sessions!! Oh well it was my fault for leaving them both for after work. It was hard, really hard. The first was the ride, indoors again cause the temp isn't quite high enough. Manged to get through it ok, not too hard aside from the last 10min @ 290W and 95Cad. That hurt a bit. But then a couple hours rest and off to the gym for an hour run 40min hard. I made it though!! and managed a pretty snappy pace too! That was late again, but I managed to get up this morning for a swim. So I'm caught up, I felt like I was slipping behind in my workouts, now all I have is a hour easy run tonight. Trust me my legs will need the easy pace and with Curtis along it should be fun! Lesson I learned this week(one that I'll probably have to relearn at times since I have so little motivation in the mornings) if there are two hard workouts, do one in the AM. Chuckie tells me it's ok now(my crazy training hours) but later he'll specify times. Ouch!! hee hee Over and out,

DP