Monday, November 15, 2010

A very social weekend.

Week 2 of the training plan and I completed everything again. There were a couple of mistakes in there tho’. The first one was because it was such a nice weekend here in NJ I decided I’d bike outdoors with Genine on Sunday. (She worked Saturday). Well when I went to move the workout from Saturday to Sunday on the schedule, it informed me that I couldn’t move it to the same day as my long run. Well that was the last day of the week so I had nowhere to go with it. So a double “long day” Sunday was going to happen. Long is fairly short right now so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. The bummer about all this is that because we were so busy this weekend, our ride became a trainer ride Sunday night anyhow.


The other mistake is that when I run with Todd I can’t run slowly enough to have my HR in the zone I’m supposed to be in. I think this is because Todd would be walking for this to happen. Cold start to the morning tho’, 32 degrees out there, we had the canal path to ourselves. I think many people figured it was worth waiting for the 35 degree warmup that was going to happen. Because of the low traffic on the path, there were a ton more birds around which I always enjoy. At the end of the run as we were standing in the lot talking, I look up over the river and here is a bald eagle flying up the river! I’ve never seen an eagle in NJ. Then 15 seconds later a second one flies by. Amazing!


It was a busy social calendar this weekend. Friday night we tried to rally a bunch of the triathletes together to go to dinner at the Mexican place. We ended up with 5 of us but next time around I’m guessing we will have a few more show up.


Saturday Night was a reunion with Genine’s Bloomingdale’s employees past and present. This was a trip to “The Melting Pot” right in Somerville. I’m guessing there were 25-30 people there. It was really nice to see these people. It’s been a year or more since we’ve last seen most of these people.


Sunday afternoon our friend Amy was going to run the Giralda Farms 5K-10K. I knew I wasn’t going to race but we figured we’d go up and meet up with everyone for lunch afterwards. We also decided to take the camera along because you never know who will be at the race. It was kind of funny. Typically I can stand and take pictures for an hour without even thinking about it. Not the case Sunday, my arms were tired enough that I asked Genine to take over about half way through. I know the camera is heavy but am I that out of shape? Or is it the fatigue of the weight training? Anyhow, it worked out really well, she spotted her friend Bridgett running and got a bunch of pictures of her. I’m still working on editing the set they will be posted soon. Although pictures of people I know, I typically no longer post publicly. I will have pictures of a ton of other racers tho’. We took about 1200 shots. It was a really beautiful day and it was a big race. After the race we went to a diner with Amy and Steve. Nowhere near as satisfying as Gronsky’s but it was nice to catch up with both of them.


After that it was time to mow the lawn one last time in 2010. (It had better be the last time). My yard and shrubs are a mess. I know that I don’t spend as much time as I used to before all the SBRing, but being on vacation during that heat wave really just killed a bunch of stuff. We are hopeful that our Dogwood will come back to life in the spring but I’m not holding my breath.


Alright, back to the training schedule. I’m still enjoying the fact I have a schedule. It keeps me from getting home and just doing whatever happens to be the most fun or convenient. It’s also making me kick at the pool. I’m terrible at kicking. I think I’m so bad at it that I could injure myself in the attempt. Well because the sets have been so reasonable I’ve been doing all the kick sets. I’ve been trying different things with my kick because I’m obviously not doing something right. I was pleased that making a change made a huge difference in my time. Now I’m just slow instead of embarrassingly slow. I’ve also become better at doing descending sets.


Doing all this swimming on my own is fine for now but I know that starting in January, I should really get some feedback on a regular basis. I need to start planning for that now as the one coach is very busy and to get on his calendar during swim season is tough.


Final note, my right ankle is very tolerant to all the workouts I’ve been doing. My left hip and hamstring are still an issue. I guess that whole side must have adapted over those 8-10 weeks of my limping around with a bad right foot. I do think it’s improving, just nowhere near as quickly as I’d like.

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