Tuesday, May 8, 2007

The wind still sucks!

Well, at least for running or cycling purposes. Could have found many reasons to not go for a run, but I needed it to make me feel like I wasn't a slacker. I really hoped to do 6.5, honestly. Came out of our development, turned left, and faced 16-22 mph winds for about 1.5 miles. Times like that I wish I was about 5' 2" and narrow, not that there's anything wrong with that. But I'm not, so I got to battle the wind until I turned for the long gradual flat/downhill leg. I was keeping a short and fast stride cadence, and it really helped in the wind and the recovery leg, but I was just feeling spent. I cut it short, and headed toward home. Talked myself out of quitting a few times, but stopped at 4 miles, right at the entrance to our development. No excuses, just weakness. It was a crap run. Still managed a 7m 01s pace average, but my average HR was 168, and frequently reached around 172-174.

Earlier in the day I took a break from working not too hard and did a quick workout. It was sort of a mini-circuit:
5 pull ups
15 machine crunches @ 100lbs
15 back extensions @ 150lbs
all x 6 sets

Not a bad little quick core and back exercise, and definitely high rep/low weight so I don't interfere with other aspects of my training. A decent workout, and a nice break in the day.

After the run, we went to our church small group and had a great time, and then over to Scott and Robin's house. I helped Scott re-wrap his bars with new tape (complete with simply fabulous gel inserts) and flip his stem. It looks a lot better, even with the new dark pink tires, so he took it for a test spin and let me ride it around after. Huge improvement in riding posture and balance, so we are going to go do some hill repeats and destroy our legs tomorrow! :-) Hooray for tapering! LOL In reality, though, it's not a bad thing (at least per a friend/cycling coach and another friend/triathlon coach) to do a super high intensity/short duration workout at this point in the taper. Keeps the blood chemistry right without digging too deep into glycogen reserves and muscle composition.

That will just about do it until race day. I'll report how the hill repeats go, and then maybe have to resort to actual mainstream conversation for a couple of days. *EEEK!*

4 comments:

Gotta Run..... said...

Great job on Scott's bike last night. He is SO excited about the improvements!!

Please try not to kill my husband tonight and be CAREFUL out there. Both of you dare-devils on the road together is dangerous.

Wes said...

Phew! I'll take a crap run like that anyday! Yea! You better get to tapering :-)

Jason The Running Man said...

yeah...wind...not fun! Great job getting the run done though.

Mendy said...

I agree with Wes. I'd take it... at that pace.

You're right, wind was awful. I was thinking about that as you headed out.