Back to Routine-Or, at Least Tri-ing to Be

So, the attack of the cold/allergy demon had me pretty wasted all weekend. I ran 6.5 miles last Thursday with Amy, but was totally down for the count on Friday and Saturday. I was scheduled to run with Amy on Saturday morning for two hours, but I bailed with the rain and the fact that I truly felt like hell. I knew I was feeling bad when I didn't even feel guilty about not working out. I truly wanted and needed sleep (and Kleenex).

SUNDAY TRICK

I felt about 60% on Sunday, so during the break of day (at 11am), I decided to head out for 1hr 30min on the bike. I rode from my house up to the Shoal Creek Pace LAB loop that I use for my run training. I did 3x 3.5 mile loops. First lap was hard, but not crazy (11:19), 2nd lap was pushing it (10:48--19.2 mph) and the 3rd lap was a cool down. Total ride was about 25 miles or so by the time I made it back home.

I followed that up with a 6.5 mile run starting from the house and heading to the trail. By this point is was 12:30pm and freaking hot and humid. I'm so not used to running at this time of day and it was only compounded by the fact that my head and chest were still very congested. The entire run was labor intensive and I wasn't pushing the pace at all. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to see that I was naturally speeding up with every mile. By Mile 5, my overall pace was an 8:32. I started out around 9:00 pace and naturally sped up as I went along. The last mile from the Rock back to my house, however, drove the nail in the coffin. I hit the perverbial "heat shield" and ended up walking a few times back to the house. I was pretty spent.

Shawn worked all day so we ended up meeting at the gym (I know, I know) on Sunday night around 7:30pm for 30 minutes or so in the water. I did some 50m repeats, avg between :56-:59 per. Not bad for my lame self, but was not feeling comfy in the water at all.

MONDAY, June 18th
Felt a little more normal today and am trying to train myself to turn Mondays into my long swim days at Barton Springs. It doesn't tend to be as crowded on Monday morning as other days. I ended up doing 1 mile and each 200 m length was between 4:11 and 4:30-something. Therefore, all repeats would've been under 9 minutes a lap. Again, it's a little better than last time overall, but it didn't feel very smooth. Still on a constant struggle to feel comfy in the water. So freaking elusive...

I followed the mile swim up with 30 minutes of aqua-jogging. Boring, but a great break on the knees. I did several "fartleks" in the water with 1 min fast/1 min recovery sessions. Looked ridiculous, I know.

Well, the big news of the last couple of weeks was the news that Adam from "Jack and Adams" was going to be leaving soon and would no longer be teaching core. He promised us that this would be his last week and the workouts would be freaking epic. Harder than we could imagine. I was nervous all day, but there was no way I wasn't going. We're all sickos because the crowd was one of the biggest ever. But guess what? No Adam!! Our new coach Josh was there with his workout ready to go that was much different than Adam's class. More interval style and faster exercise turnover. No 5 minutes of straight plank followed by hundreds of leg lifts...It went something like this although I'm sure I'm missing some stuff or it's not in the right order.

1/2mile warm up jog
4.5 min of plank that included regular and side planks
1/2 mile jog
toe jumps and mountain climbers
75 pushups that included wide, regular and narrow
1/2 mile jog
ab work including vertical and horizontal scissor kicks
we also did 2min of crunches and did elbow to knee crunches
1/2 mile

Overall, it was a great workout and very manageable. It was so different than Adam's class because each exercise was actually doable from start to finish. While I'll definitely miss the old "corture," I'm anxious to try the new variety. Apparently, there will be a different coach on Wednesdays. It's still the type of workout I would never do on my own. For that reason alone, I plan to keep it as a regular part of my training regime.

Hope to finalize new bike plans in the next week!!

I also have a Sprint Triathlon this Sunday so I'm sure I'll focus sooner or later! It's the first ever Pflugerville Lake Triathlon and I'm one of only 350 that are doing it before it sold out. God, I hope I'm not in 350th place!!

I also signed Shawn and myself up for the July 15th Couples Triathlon and the September Austin Olympic Triathlon. I'm also looking at 2-3 smaller tris coming up in the next couple of months. I'm not sure why, but I've been bitten by the Sprint Tri bug and every race sounds appealing!!

God help us now that we don't have a wedding to plan or a house to decorate.