just some bad luck

Today will be day #2 of no workouts. Ouch!

Basically yesterday was literally a wash with the weather and I was so bummed not to get outside that I couldnt muster up the strength to ride for an hour on the trainer.

Same thing this AM....rain and more rain and there was NO WAY I was gonna get onto a dreadmill for 30 mins. No way!

Then @ lunch we get to the pool only to find it closed for 3 hours. MAN!!!!!

Tomorrow is gonna be an awesome ride considering I have been resting for 2 straight days.

JP Morgan Challange....aka "dodging a minefield run"

I did a company run tonight in Central Park in the JP Morgan Corporate Challenge, which is a 3.5 mile run around the top portion of Central Park.

I wanted to race it cuz Wednesdays are my speed days now. So I got in a good 2 mile warmup, showed up the start line with 15 mins to spare, only to find 10,000 people in front of me. YIKES!

So racing this race went completely out of the window. I figure it would be slow, but at least consistent? WRONG! There were people evenly scattered across the road walking, making us runners run like we were running through a minefield. I figured after a mile of this it would open up. NOPE! Mile 2....still people walking.

I mean, there were people walking 10 abreast. It was utter mayhem!

It took me 10 mins to walk to the start line, 10 mins to run the first mile, and 9 mins to run miles 2 and 3. I wasn't until the final half mile that there were large clear sections to go all out.

I finished with a 32:44, or a 9:21 pace.

Whatever, I still got in 5.5 miles for the night.

And as a milestone, I actually drove INTO Manhattan for the first time. It actually wasn't all that bad.

new 100 and 200 yard PR!

and I did it @ the same time. I was doing a 6 x 200 descending set and on my 3rd 200, which was a more or less all out effort, I had a perfect swim and put up a time of 3:10, or a 1:35/100 pace. So not only did I break my old 100 yard PR by half a second, but I did it twice in a row to also set a new 200 yard PR.

I remember a few weeks ago I couldn't get below 3:35 or 3:30 for a 200 yarder. I broke that by 20 seconds! WOAH! During that set I also put up a 3:15 and 3:14.

I felt a LOT better, obviously, than my last swim where I was toast after 1500 yards. I got in 2000 yards this time, but was also cooked by the end of it. Maybe Friday I will be ready to rock again?

a freaking awesome midday ride

Got out @ lunch today and did a totally awesome 17 miles in 1 hour flat. My legs felt GREAT. I also used my road bike for the first since I think the Century ride last month. My road bike is SO much lighter than the TT bike. No wonder I can climb so much better on the road bike....im not dragging around an extra 5 lbs.

I love how when you are at the very end of the ride and it finishes up a pretty good sized hill, when your legs are usually dead, that I can stand up and attack to finish off the hill. I tried hard to stay seated on the longer climbs. I just wanna sprint up those suckers! Its so much easier!

Route

recovery run and toasted arms

Did 3 point whatever this morning to run the legs out loose. They were a bit sore from this past weekend.

But in the pool @ lunch, my arms were COOKED! They hurt from the beginning to the end. I only got in 1500 yards and boy was I happy to get out of that pool. Even going super easy @ the end was a chore. Can't wait for this soreness to settle in and see if this pays off.

Stamford Olympic course preview

Rode the technical and hilly parts of Stamford Olympic bike course 2X this morning. I have been up the hilly parts before, just not all put together. Its really not that much uphill, just a couple ups. I think Westchester has more vertical climb. The downhill though feels a lot more down than what it took to get up there. My legs felt really good. There is one hill, Erskine Road, that has the steepest hill. I was able to power up that on my TT bike like I would on my road bike, so my climbing is improving even better on the TT bike.

One thing that I have noticed is that I climb a lot better and easier while standing. I think this is not such a good thing....I need to really sit my butt down for some climbing now and use the standing for more explosiveness towards the top of the climbs. I know of a few climbs in Harriman that will fix that!

I ended up with ~35 miles in 2:17:00.....so I wasn't trucking it except when I attacked on the hills and tried to go fast down them. This was a good sorta longer distance ride to ease back into the longer biking thing again.

9380 yards

Woah, just looked at my weekly total of swim yardage: 9380. That is more yards in one week than the entire month of last November, twice as much as last December, more than half of February and March, and half of April.

Of course I swam 5 times last week, including an 880 race that was part of a triathlon.

I did:
880 (race)
2450 (supposed to be a recovery swim, oops!)
2000 (first 1650 test)
3000 (first ever 3000 yard swim)
1050 (OWS)

No wonder my swim paces have dropped.

So you mean to tell me that if I swim more, my speed in the water will increase? Wow! A breakthrough! I must tell everyone! ;)