Quality counts!

The busy weekend has left me geared up for some more quality training!

Monday morning I hit the gym for some hard core stationary bike as I had slept in a tad too long to make the 6AM spin class. No worries though I pushed myself through a decent 60 minute interval workout and I think there was a rain cloud dropping all kinds of water by my bike. I returned at lunch time to get in my upper body workout.

Tuesday, I crawled out of bed after hitting snooze a few times to get in my treadmill workout at the gym. I did a quick 10 minute warmup and started into (8) 800's at a 6:11 pace and a 1:30 rest interval. I managed to hit the pace each one without too much difficulty which made me very happy on the day. Then I eased into a 8 minute mile pace for my cooldown to give a a total for 7 miles on the day. As a side note, I love how comfortable an 8 mile pace feels after all the fast intervals.

I returned at lunch to the gym for my lower body and ab workout (yes, the door guy made fun of me asking if it was my 2nd or 3rd time there for the day!!). My goal was to do a light lower body workout as my muscles have been somewhat tight so after a quick lower body workout, it was on to abs. Some of my favorite ab exercises include utlizing the ab/ dip /chin up station for some side leg raises, medicine ball exercises and my favorite which is the stability ball pikes peak. In this exercise you start in a push position with the tops of you feet on the ball and you use you core muscles to pull up your butt into a peak position which is similiar to a handstand feeling.

Pic 1 is the starting and Pic 2 is midway. I focus on using my core muscles and my breathing and sometimes do my peaks at varied speeds as it really makes a difference in the difficutly of the sets.

Wednesday morning I slept in purposely knowing that I was going to my first New Vision Cycling outdoor training of the session in the evening. I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way there due to construction. So I had under 10 minutes to park, change and get my bike together, water bottles filled, etc. No wonder I am not bad at transitions...lots of practice! Anyway the group was leaving and at the last minute I decided to skip checking the tires as I figured they should be fine since I last checked Sunday.

Upon leaving the parking lot I made a hard right and my rear end slid out fast. Somehow I recovered without a spill and right away I thought something was off. I pedaled a little further down the road before I stopped and looked at my rear tire to confirm what I already knew. Flat! Just great. Now I have only ever had one flat which was my first ride ever. Now I have a flat on the rear, even worse. I walked back to my car about a 1/2 mile down the road wondering if I was going to be able to figure this out on my own. I got back to the car and was definitely pondering how to do this and I started trying to do it on my own.

My little savior for the day, DH was directing the latecomers where to go and asked if I was alright. Even though I wanted to act like I knew what I was doing I asked for help as I figured I might really need it. He helped me through the process (pretty much did everything) and I cannot even begin to say how thankful I was. I watched carefully and tried to help as I need to be able to have the confidence to do this on my own. Finally, with a fixed tire, we rushed off to the staging site for hill repeats.

We were doing a pyramid of 1-2-3-4-5 minutes of hard hill climbing followed by timed recoveries and then a descending pyramid 5-4-3-2-1 minutes. I had missed the first one and two minute climbs but jumped in on the 3. I felt better this night than I had all last year doing these climbs up the long Everett Rd Hill. As I sailed down the hills with every recovery I was so happy to be back out on my bike again!!!

Thursday morning I had planned to do my scheduled tempo run at the gym but I looked out the window upon waking up and thought I would be stupid not to do it outside. I had an hour so I modified my strategy a bit for my scheduled 5 mile tempo run and ran a slightly slower tempo for 8 miles. It felt fantastic! The morning was beautiful and I sailed down the buggy lane next to all the morning commuters and arrived home in under an hour from my 8 mile run. Truly a fantastic way to start the day!