T Minus 3 Months...and Change

What does the T stand for? Takeoff? Time? In my case it stands for Totally Not Ready. Now that I'm no longer in real estate and moving mode, it's time to get back on the training program. No more excuses. No more telling myself when the alarm goes off at 5am that I'll just do it later.

It's amazing what the body remembers. I can't tell you what I've been doing for workouts for the past few months - a little swimming here, a bit less of biking there, and a lot of running. But I end up surprising myself often. Last Thursday, after poisoning myself on Monday, I attempted a 14 mile run. After a 2 mile warm-up, I started my intervals. I couldn't get into Z3 let alone Z4. So much for intervals. Since my Garmin is on the fritz again and I really didn't know a good 14 mile loop from memory, I decided to run for 2 hours instead. In Z2 because that was all I could do. Surprisingly I kept a very steady pace and was slightly faster on the way back. I mapped it out later and (accounting for various mapping errors), was somewhere between 13 and 13.5. That was a shocker!

I headed out this weekend for my longest brick to date: 51/11.5. Since I had skipped half of my workouts during the week, I made it up to myself by doing Old Stage - first ascent of the season. I keep waiting for the day where I get to the top and think "Hmm, that really wasn't so bad". Don't worry. I'm not there yet. But it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be. It didn't hurt quite so much. It might actually not be so bad one day...The first hour of the Z3 went really well (and fast for this turtle). The last little bit ended up being uphill and into the wind.

ASIDE because I just have to get it out: Damn this wind!!! When will it end??? END ASIDE

But it was better than the previous weekend where I had a headwind or severe crosswind about 90% of the ride. Seriously, every time I turned, so did the wind. But overall, the ride went well. I had done the same loop the prior weekend (minus Old Stage) but it took a bit longer. Go me! I made it home and changed for the run. This was only the second run from my new house and the only route I've found so far is to my brother's house via the trails. 3 miles to his backyard, but uphill the entire way. In case it is not obvious, it does not make for a very good long brick, when you're first 3 miles are uphill (it does make for a great finish though). My legs were aching from Thursday. I was also dealing with some residual knee pain that I've started getting when it's really cold. It's like it shocks my knee joints and it takes them a day or two to recover. The uphill didn't help. So I ended up not really doing my Z3 stuff, but at that point, it was more of a mental workout that I knew I had to do to feel one step closer to being ready. I did get several miles at the Z2/Z3 threshold at a 9 min pace. I was happy with that. I stopped at Adam's on the way back to refill on water. It ended up being about a 15-20 minute break, but when you have 3 miles that are all downhill, it's not like I was going to get a whole lot out of them.

I finished up the weekend with a short ride and long swim yesterday. Neither were spectacular, but they did what they were supposed to in terms of logging the miles.

I was advised to keep these short and sweet so that I can potentially blog daily. So far I've failed. But I'm trying to keep it in mind. I'm just not sure that my mind works that way.