Mad Monday Update

Haven't had one of these for awhile but here is sort of the state of where I am at currently.

The Stupid Cold-  I am pretty sure it has been about 4 weeks now of dealing with the funk.  I hate it.  It is not horrible that I cannot do anything, just a general tightness in the lungs and the nasty drainage in the nose / throat which torments me constantly.  It never goes away, never gets better, just there and always annoying!

Some missed / shortened morning workouts - The primary workout time in my world is first thing in the morning.  Yet, due to stupid cold, several mornings I have slept in or overslept in the hopes of staying rested and hopefully getting rid of it someday!  (Usually these seem to be biking or swim mornings...go figure!)

All in all tho, no real complaints, except the general sickness and being ready for spring.  (Knocking on wood) the tibia has been feeling fine.  The coach specified Lydiard training has helped me to increase my run mileage without aggravation.

So the prior weekend was super fab as it was a 4 day one!
Friday morning run (6.5 miles) followed by an entire day of playing at Rays Indoor Mountain Bike Park.  Saturday was Twinsburg East Side Cycling,  2 hour indoor cycling, 1650 yards in the pool followed by 5 mile easy jog.  Then it was off to the USAT rules seminar.
Sunday was a 16.7 mile hilly long run with sis (8:30ish pace) into the wind to my house from hers after a late night out.
Monday (off for Presidents Day!)was a 11.25 mile out and back run (8:30 first 30 min, 8:00 next 30minutes, 7:39 pace last 30 minutes), then 2000 meters in the pool
Tuesday was a shortened hard interval bike workout of ~16 miles and a evening 45 minute Extreme Conditioning Class
Wednesday, slept in through morning workout and ran 8.5 miles or so at lunch throwing in some strides at the end
Thursday, ended up as an OFF day as I was totally busy
Friday, another 8 mile run which was supposed to be more like 12 but I just kept getting interrupted and ran out of time (the issue of doing these at home!)
Saturday- East Side Cycling- 2 hours, 1650 in pool, 5.5 miles ran
Sunday - 19 miles ran with SERC incl 15 with sis (8:13 avg)  All in all, feeling good and it was way to easy.  I check my workout sheet and I was supposed to stick to 8:36 at fast end so I was too fast.

In general I am really good at getting all my runs in and have been feeling fantastic there.  I have been struggling on getting in my two quality workouts outside of Saturday morning on the bike.  Also not getting in as many swims as I should be.  Just having more motivation trouble there.

I guess this week, I am starting a new training block running so I am excited about that.  Nashville Mary will be 4/30 so that gives me 2 months to start to try to really lean out for the race.  As much as I would like to do well there, it is a B race as Triple T is one 3 weeks after it and it the focus of my early season training.

This weekend I will head south to AL to visit family and so my husband can do his thing.  I am hoping we will get some nice weather and I can run in shorts and ride my bike outside for awhile.  More than anything, I want this dumb cold to go away too!

My flashy cute new Avia Bolt II's!

So two weeks ago or so, brown Santa brought me a present!

Like a kid on Xmas morning, I ripped it open to find some super sweet looking shoes from new Trakkers Sponsor, Avia!

So the first thing I did was take a picture, of course, and then toss them in my bag to try out on my morning run!

As I put them on my feet, I immediately was a fan of the heel tab to quickly pull on the shoes.  This should prove to be very helpful during triathlon transitions and they even came with cute little speed lacking with the locking lace toggle! 

Years ago I self diagnosed myself as overpronator and wore the heaviest stability shoes.  I am not sure how much my running style has changed over the last 7 years or so that I have been running but I am guessing I never needed all that stability and the more minimal, the better they seem to feel to me.  Yet, I want shoes to have enough to them that I can wear them in any distance and not worry about them not having enough support and leading to injury if I were to wear them on a longer run.

Day 1 they were put to the test.  I hopped onto the treadmill for my 2 hour aerobic run.  The shoes felt very good right out of the gate with some cushion but overall a nice lightweight feel.   As I cruised through a nice moderate 14 mile run, I had no issues whatsoever with my shoes and at the end was very pleased with the first test run.

As I wrapped up my run, I went over to the stretching machine and stretched out just checking out the look of the shoes.  I am forever a girly girl and I just love the look of these shoes.  I love the red, pink and black look….SUPER CUTE!  I even like the little pirate on the inside when I take them off.

Overall I am very satisfied with these shoes.  They must be quite cute as I have had lots of people asking me about my shoes when I have worn them, what kind they were, and where they could get them!

I have since worn them out on the roads for several runs with no issue except right now I have managed to get them a wee bit muddy on a dark early morning run.  Booo!  Guess I might have to try to rinse off the lil things!  

CTC Valentine's Indoor Triathlon

This weekend I participated in my first ever indoor triathlon at Twinsburg Fitness Center.  It seemed strange that after volunteering and being around several of these, that I had never actually participated but I decided to shake things up a bit!

Twinsburg had reached out to CTC awhile back about hosting an indoor triathlon.  This was fabulous because at times securing venues has been difficult.  Twinsburg Fitness Center really seems to go above and beyond in what they do for the community.  They put on a duathlon in the summer, a turkey trot, provide CTC space for indoor cycling and now this!  They really have been so good to us!

So that morning I show up and things quickly get busy as it was the best indoor tri turnout that CTC has hosted with 36 participants.  I was planning to go in the last wave so that I could check in any last minute arrivals and get the sports drink mixed and food out while the other volunteers got the show on the road!

Personally I was not feeling super race ready as I have been fighting a cold over the past week and worked pretty hard cycling the day before and my legs felt far from fresh.  On the running front, I have been following the Lydiard Running Principles and have not been doing any running speedwork so I was not quite sure how that would play out but coach said feel free to roll with however I felt.

So after some words from our leader for the day, I hopped in the pool to start my 20 minute swim.  I swam 41 lengths or 1025 yards which tied me for 2nd place OAF.  I should have tried to swim harder as 42 was the best.   I just took the swim at a nice medium pace.  All and all, I felt comfortable and the 20 minutes was not too bad, albeit I sure just don't swim very fast as some guys were over 60 lengths in the 25 yard pool.

We had 10 minutes to change before hopping on the spin bikes as I was just sipping on some delicious fruit punch FE EFS sports drink ready to go.  There were two awesome things about this venue vs. some of the others.  They had bikes set up with computers (so the bike would count) which they carefully calibrated that morning and they had the sound system out there (which just so happened to be playing my Ipod playlist).  With the bike start, I let my legs fly.  Resistance was pre-set and there was VERY little.  It was pretty much, let's see how fast these legs can spin which is hard for me as I think I naturally load a little more resistance and run a slightly lower cadence.  The funny thing is over 120 rpm, the computers just flash 120 and mine did the whole time.  Thank goodness I had grabbed my stinky mtn bike shoes to clip in or I bet I would have lost the pedals more than once!  While I would like to say I went 10.03 miles in 20 minutes, clearly I think 30 mph is a little generous for how fast I really went.  Either way, it was good enough for top female distance.  I was going about as fast as I could spin those pedals and I sure was a disgusting sweaty mess already!

Another 5 minute transition to switch shoes and then it was time to run on the indoor track.  We ran in the outside lane so some people said it was 8 laps to a mile (but it might have been 8.5 laps to a mile).  Regardless, with the siren, I was off.  Oh, how I loved the feel of the springy indoor track.  I was excited to run whatever pace I felt like and my first couple laps or so, I felt like I was just shot out of a cannon.  Then I realized my HR was sky high on the garmin and tried to reel in the pace a bit.  I felt like I stayed pretty well within my zone not pushing too hard and finished with 25 laps in the 20 minutes so we will call it around a 5K....not bad for no recent speedwork!  Not only that, it was the most laps for a female and I think tied with the highest male, who incidentally is my TTT teammate-to-be....so guess I may have a good comparable partner on my hands!  The best thing was it did not bother my leg at all!  I soooo enjoyed that run!

All in all, it was a fun different way to get in some harder training over the winter!  What a great 60 minutes of high quality exercise!  I think these indoor tris can be great for anyone as it is all about how much you want to put in!

Finally, these events are made possible by the many volunteers that count swim laps, run laps and help out where ever is needed.  Many thanks to all of them that came out that morning including my husband, who I twisted his arm as we were worried about being a little short!  What a fun morning and even managed to snag the 1st place OAF award!

Rocking through a Friday!

So it is Friday night and I am just sitting at home playing on the computer.  Yes, it sounds very lame!

Yet, I have my Budweiser next to me and I am compiling a fire it up playlist for our east side cycling in the morning and I am rocking in my little desk chair to my new super favorite podcasts- DJ Mux-X-Zone-, tonight being the Dance Party November 30Th, 2010 and let me tell you, it will have you dancing in your seat.  Let me tell ya, listening to these podcasts have me so highly motivated on my indoor workouts where I am running on the treadmill doing the best I can not to be raising the roof while I run!  And they are free and come right to Itunes.  (Zero affiliation but I just friggin love it and DJCity.com podcasts!)  Trust me, living in snowy frigid OH, I am spending waaaay to much time inside by myself!

But not all the time! Today I had the pleasure of running with one of my best friends, Espeed.  We used to run together a lot but she has got so darn fast and my running schedule that afforded flexibility to do the lunch runs has changed but today the stars aligned!  We almost both passed.  She had a tweaked hammie and I have been fighting a cold but after my lackluster morning workout, I decided let's go anyways!  So glad I did.

It was a nice easy run and just felt so good to take in some cold air in the sunshine as we trotted around downtown Cleveland in my new Avia Bolts!   I will do these justice in a full shoe review, but I will just it out there right now that I'M A FAN!

Peace...back to that playlist!

I'll have some handicapped bars for the toilet please!

I am feeling all kinds of sore at the moment!

After a great week last week, I have continued to try to build on that momentum.  But in the spirit of being honest, I still want to cry most mornings when my alarm goes off and I just wish I could spend more time in bed instead of getting up to workout!

Sundays 10K swim gave way to Monday's long run (weekend makeup) of 15 miles on the treadmill.  Snow foiled my best laid out plans for Tuesday's workout  which ended up just being a slow 4 mi recovery run.  Wednesday's bike workout from Coach G about killed me so my subsequent swim was a lackluster 1000 yard effort!  I tried to redeem myself with my prescribed out and back run when I got home from work only to lose my motivation and hop off the treadmill after 5.5 miles.  I awoke early Thursday to put in another 9 mile aerobic run.

Then came the real kicker, the Fit Extreme Conditioning Class on Thursday night.  I had met the owner of Fit Cleveland, Kevin, back in November at one of the Cleveland Triathlon Club meetings and he was looking to get more involved with the tri community.  Never one to pass on the notion of a hard workout, I headed over to check out the class.  The studio is in Ohio City and is small in size but very trendy and has a nice warm feel.  Loved the design!

So, as the class newbie, I got to check out a variety of new things in the circuits we went through including TRX, lots of balance / stability drills, a good amount of pushups and lunges and more!  Fun thing about the class it that every week is something different.  This was right up my alley and I look forward to checking it out again!

Oh but my body is all kinds of sore today.  My hammies are super tight.  Then to add insult I had another very difficult bike on tap for this morning.  Eeeks....I did not make it all the way through the planned torture sets!  Thankfully everything is a good sore and nothing too terrible!  Got a busy weekend of workouts planned too....I am thinking an easy day should be around the corner!

Off to Rays MTB for another fun Friday night!

Trakkers Info

On the Trakkers front, here are some exciting developments that may benefit you!  

All3Sports.com is back as an official team sponsor!  Not only are they supporting us, but they are extending discounts for our friends, family and YOU!  So next time you find yourself in need of Tri equipment go to www.all3sports.com and enter this code: GOTRAKKERS for 15% off your entire purchase.   Follow them on Twitter@All3Sportscom.

Rev3 is also in on the friends and family discount action. You can get $10 off your Rev3 registration using this code: TRAKKERS14.  You'll be prompted to enter as you register on Active.com. To keep up on all things Rev3 please follow on Twitter @Rev3Tri.

SBR Sports is also back on as a sponsor and tody only you get 40% OFF all TRISWIM, TRISLIDE & FOGGLE Products for the next 24 hours! Go to www.sbrsportsinc.com or www.triswimbeauty.com and enter this code at checkout: FEB0140 Free Shipping every day if you spend $50 & up!  Lord knows I need to stock up on this stuff with my pasty dry winter skin!

Also just announced, REV3 Coaching!  Did you know that @rev3tri offers free training plans? They also offer advanced plans as well created by Joanna Zeiger and Carole Sharpless!  More info can be found here!  http://www.rev3tri.com/!/coaching/plans.htm