Matt's Weekend

Saturday: 6AM Hills Run with Todd. 22 degrees out. I take a bunch of optional layers of clothing so that I can try to figure out what it is I need to wear. It would seem that I over dress and end up sweating even in cold weather. Today was no different. First Lap with a warmer jacket on. 2nd lap I switch to my thin running jacket and switch from my hat to headband/ear warmer. I stayed with that and I was still too warm.
Maybe after the 1st lap I should have gone without a jacket. It’s just that in the wind, I feel that the UnderArmor isn’t going to be enough. Also I don’t mind being warm when I run, it’s post run that’s a problem. I always have to make sure I have something dry to change into, otherwise the evaporation from the tech clothes turns me into an ice cube in a big hurry.
At the moment I’m thinking I need to suck it up and start the run colder than I prefer to be and then add layers if I don’t warm up after a couple of laps.

The workout: The first 3 loops are the gradual uphill. We push hard to the top but we have a tendency to coast the downhill. So on the 3rd lap I make sure we push to the finish. Then we have our 4 repeats of the steep incline. The first one went well, Our time was within a couple seconds of our average. So on the 2nd one, I decide I’m going to go out hard at the beginning and see if I can’t get a few seconds off that average time. Well when I hit the steepest part of the hill, my feet turned into lead. No power left. I was very surprised to see that I was only about 5 seconds slower than the first, it felt like it took forever. So the 3rd I go back to pacing the run. No luck, I was done, I died at the incline. Now I’m off by about 8 seconds. I repeat that for the 4th interval. Todd on the other hand powered through all 4 of them on our typical average.
During the run we were discussing the fact that we need to make some changes to the course and our workout. We’ve gotta give the legs some variation. So we will modify our workout when we do this loop in the future. Todd also suggested we go find a monster hill which will basically crush our spirits. Figuring that if we run something tough like that every so often, when we get back to our “normal” hills they won’t seem so difficult.
I spoke with Maija about our need for variation in this workout. She agreed and suggested a course. I need to get a map from her, I’m not sure how far off it is. We do these runs so early on Saturday because Todd needs to get back home to the kids. So travel time is a factor.

In the afternoon, Genine and I meet up with Maija, Paul and Esther at the pool. Diving Competition is going on so there are limited lanes. So we don’t get to swim as a group which takes some of the fun out of it. My left shoulder was bummin’ anyhow, I could swim about 200 before it would start to ache. It may have been a good thing that I kept it somewhat easy. Other than the left shoulder, everything else felt better as a result of the swim, it’s a good way to stretch out. My swim ended when my foot started to cramp up, at which point I flipped over to my back and sculled my way back to the top of the lane. Maija was laughing, she didn’t know what it was that I was doing. She said I looked like an otter. Any mention of otter always brings this YouTube clip to mind.


Sunday Slacker: Genine got up and went to a spin class. I eventually woke up and made some breakfast. Craig called and we talked for quite a long time. It was good to catch up with him. Then Genine got home with the fixins for some French Toast. So I made a 2nd breakfast with real maple syrup, real butter, cinnamon bread…..mmmmm. Well now I’m seriously carb loaded, so I had better do something. Genine wants to go running to prepare for the 5K on Thursday. I should probably do an easy run, so out the door we go. We jog about ¾ of a mile and we stop to stretch out. I ask her if she’s interested in doing my loop rather than hers. This would have her run about 4 miles total with a bit of a hill in there. She agrees, so off we go. I figure I’m going to push her a bit so she gets a feel for what this 5K on Thursday will be like. Early on we get to a long gradual downhill, I think this is good because it helps get her into the feeling of moving faster. Then when we double back on it, it’s just a matter of trying to hold onto that pace. She’s running hard and is determined to stay with me. I ask her how she’s doing and she says her legs feel like lead. I assure her that her pace is much faster than she normally would run and she keeps going. We finish the 4 mile run and I feel like I should now turn around and run it fast, but decide that probably isn’t the best thing to do. So I walk with Genine as a cool down and go download the run from the watch. It would appear that Genine ran 5K in about 26:30. I tell her this and she tells me that under 30 minutes is still her goal time for Thursday.

I ran across a forum topic that was asking for motivational quotes or methods to stay inspired through the off season. I found it interesting to see how differently people are motivated.
Since I was already adding gadgets to the blog, I figured I should grab a bunch of the quotes that I liked and create a random quote gadget. I haven’t found one that lets you provide the specific list yet. (I didn’t look very hard). So for the moment I picked the one that I liked the best and posted it. Feel free to send me quotes that you like. Once I find the code to create my gadget, it will be on the list.