Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Gotta love mini-Friday!

Even though I was super busy today, I was so happy it was a mini-Friday, or day before a mini-weekend. I still don't have complete plans for what we could do tomorrow, but it should be a fun day at any rate. I just hope Grace doesn't get too scared by the fireworks.

I was fortunate to have several snippets from the Monster Ballads commercial stuck in my head all day, but the recurring offender was Warrant's "Heaven". And the complete joy of this affliction is that the songs only play in 5 second increments, just like the commercial. I shake my fist angrily at that gosh darn commercial!

I apologize for that ugly outburst.

:-)

In other news, it's been a great few days for my personal performance, on the path to being the greatest athlete the world has ever known. If I can live to be 130 years old, and not age for the next 40 years, I'll nail that for sure! Bored yet? Probably. Anyway, Saturday I did another long brick. I planned for a longer ride, and absolutely a longer run, but at about 20 miles into my ride I noticed my seat post was sinking into the frame. I hadn't tightened the bolt enough after a last minute adjustment, and now my efficiency was going way down with my speed, and my knees were aching. I turned around and found a tractor repair place where I could move the post back up. That held up for a while, but the bolt holding the post was stripped out a bit, so I couldn't tighten it completely. To make a long story longer, I was beat by the time I got home, and my knees were killing me (proper bike fit is VERY important!) I was pushing so hard to get the run done, I started overheating badly. A tough workout, for sure. Here's the results:

Bike - 40.54 miles in 1:56:51 @ 20.82mph average
Run - 4.01 miles in 32:18 @ 8:03/mile

Sunday was lazy day, and Monday was a swim day. At lunch Mendy and I were able to get some good laps in, and I was again trying to focus on refining my stroke. I think this is starting to pay off, and the times are slowly improving:

1500yds in 26:00 @ 1:44/100yds
1st 500yd: 8:32 @ 1:43/100yd
2nd 500yd: 8:49 @ 1:46/100yd
3rd 500yd: 8:38 @ 1:44/100yd

Then I decided to do a baseline time trial run of my normal 2.4 mile brick run route right after work. I probably could have warmed up more, but I'm fairly happy with the results:

2.4 miles in 15:00 minutes @ 6:15/mile (128 feet of climbing)

Today was a brick, and what a brick it was. Man, I felt ON today. The bike started off kinda slow, but I kept pushing harder and harder. For some reason, I felt I had been foolin' myself about my previous attempts. Ah, f-f-f-foolin'! Yep, Def Leppard in the brain today. Oh well, the bike rocked, but the run REALLY rocked! It also started a bit difficult, but got stronger and stronger:

Bike - 14.19 miles in 39:49 @ 21.38mph average
Run - 2.4miles in 16:00 @ 6:40/mile


Thats a PR for the brick workout, and the transition was only :45 today. Nailed it all around. My neighbors think I'm nutz, though. I came around the corner with my bike as they were outside smoking on the back deck. I said hello, as did they, and ducked under my deck. Less than a minute later I'm running back out without a bike, but with running shoes on, and say hello again. Oh well, maybe I'll inspire them to quit smoking and/or get more active (hopefully "and").

I hope you all have an awesome 4th of July. Happy Birthday, America! And many moooooooore...

Stay safe, don't drink and drive, and run/bike/swim like it's your last time ever!

2 comments:

Jess said...

Geez, you were "on"! Awesome job. Have a nice holiday!

Marcy said...

"Heaven" for some reason it's barely registering. As in "Heaven isn't too far away . . .blah, blah, some other words I can't remember"

AWESOME job on the workouts! Do I really need to tell you this though? :P We will just take it as a given since it will always be nothing less :-)

I hear you on the neighbors bit. Last summer (when I always had to do my exercise after DH came home from work at 10pm) I'd go out back on the patio and jump rope. Yeah, neighbors would always peek out their windows at the crack smoker jumping around out back LOL You gotta do, what you gotta do.

Actually (in reference to your comments) I seriously think my Garmin is faulty. I've been whining to Lisa about this since last month :P I think it's WAAAYYYY off. Not that I'm actually running faster then the time it's giving me, but slower and significantly slower :-X The distances match up (it always measures correct if I go to the HS track) but I think the timer (/pace readouts) part might be off :-X :-X