Beautiful day

We couldn't have asked for better weather today here in the Upstate for both of us to complete our bricks. Right now, my little weather icon in my tray says 57 degrees, and it's 8:05pm. Luvin' it!

Grace's bike ride went well last night. :-) She had a blast, did 2 loops of the path we have behind our home. It was 1 loop more than the last time.



Lunch today was a quick jet home from work to work on my core. I have been doing this video by Ana for a while, although not as consistent as I'd like. I'm going to do Pilates and strength training twice a week. I think it will be easy to fit into the schedule because it's only 30 min and I can do that in the AM before going to work.

After work, I had a brick scheduled and was actually looking forward to it all day. I rode the trainer, then headed outdoors. My cateye (bicycle computer) is jacked up. It wasn't user error on Sunday when it stopped working. David is gonna look at it, but I'm sure it's just decided to stop working. So, I'll need to get a new one. Because of that, I dont know my exact pace. The miles, and time weren't working but pace was. Of course, I was all over the place with it. I don't think I pushed as hard on the trainer as I should have considering the run went well. After I finished, I came upstairs, changed shorts, grabbed Garmie and headed out. I've been doing a few runs (including the 10K I did a few wks back) without the ipod and it was quite nice. I think from now on, I'll do my short runs with no ipod. The hill out of our neighborhood didn't phase my legs as much as it has. I felt awesome on the run, came in the door smiling. I feel somewhat ready for Saturday!

Bike (trainer) 40:00 ~9.71 miles
Run 2.4 miles 23:33 (9:50)

9:59
9:57
9:06 (.4 mi)

Tomorrow is a short, hopefully intense swim of about 550yds and strength training. Thursday will be a easy run, 4 miles and about 20 min of stretching. Friday will be a rest day, finally. After 7 days of working out, I'll embrace it.

Afte the tri this weekend, we have exactly 3 wks to prepare for the Charleston Bridge 10K. So, the running will increase for the both of us with hill work. The bridge is 4% incline for about a mile and challenging, but I look forward to it.

Off to relax (more) and read ya'lls blogs!

Drained

Weird to say this, but I'm glad it's Monday. I actually look forward to Monday's after my reserve weekends. I'm tired, exhausted, my brain hurts from taking a 2-hr advancement exam, and now I smell of chlorine while I slouch in my cubie. I'm drained, my mind is drained, and my legs hurt a little, too. I'm looking forward to getting things back to normal this week at work and at home, then comes another trip Friday afternoon to Beaufort, SC.

Thanks everyone for the well wishes for Grace. It seems as soon as she got her medicine, she started to feel better and hasn't complained about her ears since. She's on it for 10 days, and is taking it like a champ. Must be delicioso.

As much as I seem to complain about Drill weekends, it's really not that bad. I'm in a leadership role and it can be a little babysitting, but my department seems really squared away and self-sufficient. And, I'm busy the entire time I'm there, so it goes by pretty fast. I've got some responsibility thrown back into my lap over the weekend for the next few months. A job I gladly resigned from 6 months ago that I held for over 4 yrs. I think having that title for that long was holding me back from advancement, so I had to move on. Anyway, it's going to be a busy month for me to get ready to facilitate the Fitness test for the entire center next month. It's a mountain of paperwork, and tracking spreadsheets, etc. So, all in all - I enjoy what I do, Love the Navy, and am proud to serve my Country. It's just draining to work 5 days, drill 2 days, then back to work for 5 days, and this week, Sat is a triathlon.

Saturday was a planned bike ride with a friend from work. But, the 22 mph wind threw that out the window. I couldn't just not do anything, and the pool closed at 4. So, I opted for 35 min of strength training (including 3 planks :-) ) and 30 min of Pilates. It's all in the log.

My friend and I rode the Donaldson Center loop yesterday, and David even made it back in time from Atlanta to join us. His ride was leisurely, occasionally sticking his bum in the air to show us his spandex. We did the loop twice, and my bike computer decided not to work for the first 1-2 miles, then I screwed it up when we got back by hitting it again, before our run. So, I don't have an accurate time/exact distance. But, we estimated. Afterwards, friend and I ran 1 mile.

Bike (really reals roads) 14.6 miles ~1 hr
Run 1 mile (10:04)

Today I swam at lunch and it wasn't great. I had time issues again, but with my watch. During a lap somewhere near the end of the swim I must have hit stop, somehow. A great triathlete, swimmer, and Y lifeguard, Pam, gave me pointers on my stroke. Apparently, I was bringing my right arm all the way back but was cutting my left stroke short, bringing my arm out of the water in the middle, instead of following the stroke through. Who knew? So, after she told me to try it that way - It felt awesome. I could feel a difference, felt stronger during the entire stroke, and felt more level to the water. Amazing! I welcome her swimming tips. I think I sped up some too, but not sure. I will swim 1 more time before the tri this Sat, probably in my tri get-up.

500 yds - 13:06
250 yds - ~5:24

So, 5 more days before Big Parris Island Triathlon. It is a filled triathlon, capped at 500 participants and the first one of the season for the SC tri series. More importantly, (Yes, I'm biased), it's the 1st tri for team TYB Racing . There are quite of few doing the event so it should be fun! A few local friends doing the tri are Chris, and Eric, great guys! I'm a bit nervous, but feel more prepared than I was last Aug at Greenville tri. I don't think I'm totally prepared for this, but am expecting and WILL absolutely push myself beyond my comfort zone.

Tonight, Grace gets to get on her bike and ride. She's excited about it and of course, I'll take pictures.

Congrats to bloggers: Lisa, Tayrn and Karen for having an awesome Half-Marathon event that turned out very positive for all! Jess and Michelle had fantastic 4 mile races that ended with PR's and speedy times!!! You all are winners!

Case of the mondays

Today, I wasn't ME at all. I'm grumpy, and just don't want it to be Monday. To top it all off, I sat in a class all day and 4 more this week to go. So, not much "real" work getting done, especially since I'm not at my cube. I'm in one of the other buildings. I get crabby like this once a month... NO, That's not the reason. It happens the week before reserve drill weekend. I guess, going into the week having class all week, and knowing I don't have a weekend at all, just bums me out. Plus I'm not really happy with my weight/fitness level so that's depressing. Same ole' song and dance. Maybe David will forgive me for snapping at him. :-(

Yesterday was a scheduled ride of at least 15 miles. David thought it would be a good idea for us to all ride together. So, we packed up the bikes, and Grace's trailor and headed to Furman Univiersity. It's a great campus with about 3 miles around the lake with the route we took. But, I gotta tell ya, it was packed. Everyone was out walking, running or taking the dogs on the trail, and we struggled a lot to get around people that were taking up the entire width of it. I'm glad it was such a nice day to enojoy it, but it was more of a hassle than anything else. So, after we hit 6 miles, we decided to ride the "mall" + uphill through a parking lot, OVER and OVER until we got to 15 miles. The mall is just a stretch of road that has traffic circles on each side. It's about a mile around the entire thing. So, you can see where this is going... Talk about repetition. Due to the many stops for traffic, and yeilding every half mile, it ended up being way slower than I had hoped. Even with David towing Grace in the trailor (about 45ish lbs), he still kicked my tail on that uphill. When we hit the mileage and got off the bikes, David threw my running shoes out and told me to go for a short run. I really wasn't mentally prepared for that, so as first I was like "NO". But, I caved and did about 1.5 total.

Bike (really reals) 15.09 miles (1:10:04)
Run 1.5 miles (15:18)

Today after class, I went for a quick run in my new shoes. I had originally planned to do some hill work, but I knew within the first 1/2 mile, I didn't need that. My legs were very tight from the last couple of days. My left leg was just in pure pain and I had a crappy pain in the right foot. So, I decided to do my looped run with just 1 loop instead of 2, which would give me a very short run. I need to rest my legs from running tomorrow, fo sho.

Run 2.19 (21:13)

I'll leave you all with a few more cute pictures of Grace from the weekend. We can't believe how fast she has grown into a little girl.

Happy Leap year

TGIF

I'm so glad the weekend is here. At lunch, David and I scurried downtown for me to pick up my race packet, and like Karen and Eric were mentioning the other day, you know you're in the running community when you run into people you know either at the running store or, in our case - packet pickup. So, we spent several minutes talking to our near future Realtor, and David's teammate on the Tri team - he was volunteering. We also ran into Fleet Feet owners, whom are awesome people, and decided to stop in their store tomorrow. I just may pick up some trail running shoes. :-) I'm sure that made Robin smile a little. Afterwards, we stopped by Salad Creations for a nice OVERSIZED salad. Yum-O.

I'm getting super excited for my first 10K in a very long time. Apparently, only 1/3 of the people registered for the race tomorrow are participating in the 10K and the rest are 5K'ers. Our friends we went to MB weekend with will be there, plus G-Man. He will be finished with the 10K before most people are finished with the 5K, I'm sure. A co-worker is doing it, and I overheard him tell someone today "what training", I did 2 runs. He DOES want to go get Ice Cream afterwards. Hmmmmm.... I'm glad he did 2, rather than 0. right? Plus a couple from our Church group will be there too.

I hear we're having nice weather, and of course, what's a race in G'ville without hills, so plenty of those to go around. Anyway, I'm going to have fun with this tomorrow. Considering how hard all runs have been lately, I'm hoping for the best feeling in my legs to get me through. I don't expect any outrageous pace for my current condition of running fitness, but it sure would be nice to surprise myself. :-)

Yesterday after work, I got in another brick. It wasn't too bad, and in fact the trainer ride was a little easier than it was on Monday. I went up a little in time/mileage, then I tacked on a 2 mile run. What sucks about our runs, is we have to exit our neighborhood and it's all uphill, and those first few minutes after riding, running up that hill is exhausting. But, I got er' done. It was very cold, a little windy and I under dressed for the short distance.

Bike (trainer) 9.01 miles - 35:40
Run 2 miles - 19:39

Golf day is postponed. I'm glad too as I didn't want to throw my back out too much (cause I can't play worth a crap) right before I do a 10K. So, it's replaced with just a work meeting (outside the work place). Nice....

We're having a relaxed evening tonight. Today is my rest day. My workout *plan* is tomorrow's race, then at least a 15 mile bike ride Sunday. I had a brick planned until coach David informed me last night after I returned, I shouldn't be doing too many bricks, that my body isn't used to it. Instead I need to get comfortable doing the bike ride. Okay... if you say so. He does know more about this multisport thang than I do.

Ta-Ta - Have a wonderful weekend, Ya'll!!! and for those of you racing, don't forget to enjoy it!