Phew! Busy Weekend!

Friday night was spent getting Genine ready for a 4:15 AM departure for the Jersey Shore Triathlon. For me that meant: Cleaning out the car, bike maintenance, Tweaking the shifting on her bike, Cleaning wheels and breaks and chain. Lube the chain. Check her bike bag to make sure everything is there. Load it onto the car. Go fill the car with gas. Program the GPS with the address of the race site. Pickup some dinner for us as it’s now too late to cook for ourselves. Genine of course had plenty to do getting her transition bag together.
I got my abs workout in, ate some dinner and it was time to zzzz.

Saturday 4AM: Genine wakes me up as she’s preparing to leave. I see them off. I go back to bed. Wake up. Put on Running clothes with race belt and number and I’m ready for the 10K in the city. Preparing for a run race is much easier than triathlon.

We both end up back home around 11:30AM. Now I’ve got to get the jetta in for a wheel alignment. Drop that off, grab some lunch, pick up parts from Napa to work on the fuel injectors of the Golf, go home, Genine falls asleep on the couch while I take care of the yard. Go pick up the Jetta. They tell me the alignment is fixed left front was off a bit, but they also tell me the wheels are beat. Okay, everyone has told me this, now that the alignment is on I can buy tires without ruining them on a bad alignment. (tires are crazy expensive aren’t they?)
I was hoping to swim or bike today but there just isn’t time. I do an extra long abs workout instead.

Sunday: 8:30AM Open Water Swim practice. We just found out about this group on Thursday or Friday. We had no idea what the lake was like, how big the group was or how experienced. I just know that it takes me awhile to adjust to swimming in a wetsuit so I figured it would be good practice for next week’s race at Columbia. It turned out really well. I’m guessing there were 20-25 people swimming? Our first swim was out to a bouy 350-400 m out then back. This was the warmup, I was having issues with my goggles. The right side kept leaking in a bunch of water. I must have stopped 4 times trying to deal with that. I really hope that doesn’t happen race day.
Next they setup the course similar to the Jerseyman swim course, which most of the people were going to race next weekend. So this would be a .6 mile swim (about 900-1000m). This was to be race pace. I didn’t get a look at how fast anybody was during the warmup, so I just went up front and pushed the pace. There was one person ahead of me. I pushed harder trying to catch him so I could practice drafting. When I next looked up… he was even further away. He had a tendency to pull left which is the same problem I have. It was nice to have him ahead of me as an additional sighting point. I didn’t have my watch but I came out of the water second. (not that that matters). Turns out this other guy is preparing for the Jerseyman next weekend and he’s only doing the swim for a relay team.
We had time to swim one more time if we wanted to. So I swam hard to the first buoy and then did this funky backstroke trick she taught her students to make a 90 degree turn at the buoy. I look up and I don’t see the 2nd buoy. I assumed we had run out of time so I swam back to shore. Once I got there. I look out and the buoys are still out there. The 2nd buoy wasn’t 90 degrees from the first one. It was more like a 45. I just didn’t take the time to look around. So I decided I’d swim back out again. They picked up the first buoy just before I got there. So I looked to see where Genine was. She was past the 2nd buoy and heading for shore. I needed to cool down, so I flipped onto my back and did backstroke back to shore on a line that should put me close to her. Well it did. We ran into each other. LOL. Couldn’t do that again if we tried.
I left with a bunch of things I need to focus on for the race next week. Now this next statement will make me seem like I’m some kind of awesome swimmer. I’m going to say it anyhow. I was having a tough time getting a feel for my catch because I couldn’t feel the water on my arms through the wetsuit. It’s just different is all and I’ll have to focus on how it feel with the wetsuit is all…. Or I could choose to swim with my sleeveless. Next open water swim practice, I’m going to take both wetsuit tops just to compare.
So glad this swim practice happened, my results next week will be better for it I’m sure.

Next stop, monster brunch at Gronsky’s in/near High Bridge. It was a 90 minute brunch stop but it was worth it.

Go home, change to Bike gear and we had around 90 minutes to ride. So we got about 22 miles in. I made sure to have my computer set to cadence and my HR watch turned sideways so that I could read it easily. I varied my effort and my cadence to see how the cadence/effort/HR varied. I think I found my zone. I’ll try very hard to stay in that zone next weekend. I have a tendency to push too hard on the bike and I lose power towards the end of the ride. I’ve got to convince myself that pacing the bike is a better plan.
The really good news about today’s bike is that I got off the bike and my back and right hip were feeling good. Typically anything over 60 minutes I start to have problems. Too many variable to know what is making the difference. Very low bike mileage this month? All the Planks/Abs work? Chiro and Massage? Doesn’t matter, I’m just glad it’s not hurting.

Go back home, Genine heads off to get a massage. I wash the wetsuits, then clean and lube my bike. Sadly my bike bag has been lost or stolen. I can use Genine’s at Columbia but I need to buy a bunch of stuff before Mooseman. I’m next in line for the massage so I clean up and drive over.
This is a different person than the last time for me. The first time I had a very ART like massage. This person still had an ART like approach but it was considered a Deep Tissue massage. I left feeling like I preferred the first person better but I think that perhaps it’s just different.

Back to the house, now it’s time to work on the Golf. I’m going to run some injector cleaner through the system by disconnecting the fuel filter and running some Diesel Purge straight into the system. 30-45 minutes later it is done. I’m not certain that it was done correctly but I definitely didn’t damage anything in the process. Also the attempt only cost me about $15. I can’t say for sure whether it’s made much of a difference. More on that as we drive it more. If I try it again it will only cost $7.

I’m starving. Again it’s too late to cook for ourselves. Back to a diner for salads and some time to relax.

Get back to the house around 9:30ish. I haven’t done abs yet. Ugh! I only did half of what I normally do. Good enough.

I take my 2nd Claritin of the day. Yeah I’m doubling up. I think something that hates me is blooming. I’ve used the neti pot 5-6 times today. So far so good but I can tell that if I forget to keep on top of this, my sinuses will be a mess in a hurry.

There you have it. More that you wanted to know I’m sure. I just figured this would prepare you for my race report next week. ;-)