Bored...but with highlights

I guess my recent blogging habits have reflected my exercise mood: I'm in a weird, unstable, and unfulfilling state of post-season training. I do have to keep reminding myself, daily, that I'm post-season, as opposed to pre-season. But I haven't done anything fulfilling in weeks, and I find my motivation for weight training is waning. Next week I'll get out and start doing some base hours (time being more important than distance) in the three disciplines, though.

On the weight training side, I've been focusing on balancing my muscle mass and strength/capability. I do this by performing single side exercises, or non-conjoined exercises (dumbbells as opposed to bar). Single-leg press is evil. Single leg ham curls are more evil, but I'm gonna have a sweet butt from it! I digress; the main importance for doing the single side/individual effort exercises, other than symetry, is to develop stabilization muscles and connective tissues, something that can be grossly neglected in repetitive motion exercise like cycling (especially with clipless pedals) or running in a known route with little need for adaptation. Trail running would not qualify, since you are constantly changing and adjusting stride with terrain.

Anyway, through the grey of the recent training, I've thoroughly enjoyed last weekend (some AWESOME wines enjoyed with great dinner at Northampton) and Halloween with Grace. Oh, excuse me: a purple Care Bear that we walked around my co-worker/friend Shane's neighborhood. This is the first year she "got" it, and knew she was getting candy. Motivation wasn't so difficult, unlike last year. The weather was much nicer, dipping into the mid 50's I think.

Today Grace and I went and had coffee (chocolate milk for her) and bagels at our local coffee shop. That was really nice, and the owner (Dana) is again going to join us at church tomorrow. She said she really had fun last week, and looks forward to it again. Oh, and by "us" I mean Grace and I; Mendy is playing Navy this weekend. Early mornings for her, and some interesting dynamics within the leadership structure. After that, we went downtown to Carolina Triathlon to see if they had any running shoes on sale in Mendy's size, but no luck. So I had a "dirty hippie" (coffee with a shot or two, thanks Ben!) and talked fitness stuff. Then, Grace and I went and rode race cars (go-karts) at Frankie's Fun Park. She had an absolute blast, and Mendy actually drove Grace on the third time on the track. Mendy's got the pics, but they clearly show both had tons of fun! Grace loves it, and was so amped to ride them, she was urging me to drive faster and faster on the way to Frankie's. Funny stuff!

Robin had her race today, but by the time things settled, we realized it was too late to call at 9:30. She ran for probably close to 12 hours, so I'm sure she was sleeping like a baby on NyQuil by then. I'm sure the race report will be interesting, entertaining, and quite eye-opening for those of us with enough sense (j/k) not to do ultra-marathons. Not sure if anyone else raced, but I hope it went well.