Weekly Workout Totals 2/11/2007-2/17/2007 and Chuck Norris Helped Me Out Today

Have you seen the new Chuck Norris commercial for Mountain Dew? Go here and click on the link for Chuck. This is like combining two of my favorite things--Chuck Norris and Mountain Dew (well really Code Red, but I'll let that one slide).

So I'm at the Y today. I watched some sort of ski racing, where 2 guys would downhill together in a 1 on 1 race, then some pretty extreme snowboarding. At some point, the Chuck Norris commercial came on, and I had to even move my headphones to the TV set to listen to it. I like many of the Mountain Dew commercials--they are just so catchy and chock full of action. 1 hour into my 1:40 run (after a 1-hour swim) I needed to go to the bathroom. On my way there, I decide to ask two of the trainers there (one of whom I'm friends with) if they've seen this commercial. No they haven't, but one guy (the one I don't know well) and I exchange "Chuck Norris-isms" and have some good laughs.

I head to the ladies' room and I am just getting out of the stall when in rushes this woman who I notice has 2 bloody hands. I asked her what happened, and she said something about a basketball hitting her, and I could see she was bleeding profusely, and I just happened to have a sweat towel in my hand (I had picked up a fresh one to use once I got back on the gerbil wheel) and I told her to give me the hand that was hit. Here she was trying to wash off blood that wasn't going to stop coming. I compressed the towel around her hand and held it in the air and told her to try and relax that we would go get some help. On the way out, I told her that she wasn't to do anything but keep her focus and stay with me. I opened doors and knew what to do. I marched her back into the cardio room and told the people at the desk that she needs medical attention. I knew she needed constant compression on the hand (her pinkie finger, actually) to stanch the bleeding, and I thought she would probably need stitches. She was really frazzled, but we got her in a chair with her arm raised, someone called her husband, and once I knew things were under control, I returned to the treadmill for my last :40.

So if I hadn't seen the Chuck Norris commercial, I wouldn't have stopped by the trainer desk on my way to the bathroom and wasted about 3 minutes, and then I wouldn't have run into this woman who was bleeding like a faucet, and gosh, she might have passed out on the floor of the bathroom or hit her head on her way down or something! So hats off to Chuck Norris--he really does control everything.

This week in training was interesting trying to recover from last weekend's festival, and I continued to put in a lot of hours at work which caused me to sleep less, and you know what happens with that combination--my bike workouts were for shit, but I still swam and ran well, including another track workout on Wednesday (it seems I am running on a track a lot lately!), and today's suffer fest running after a swim, preceded by yesterday's, OF COURSE, fucking monstrous bike workout with a brick run afterwards.

Yes, there were days this week, actually every day, when I thought how the hell am I going to work out, but I know that I would feel worse if I didn't in terms of stress control, so I did everything I was supposed to. My workload eases up this week, thankfully, since I have another race in a week! And yes, I stalked the woman who beat me 2 weeks ago. My nemesis is in a wave after me this time, but that doesn't matter, I have to go harder than 2 weeks ago! Turns out we were pretty equally matched on the bike and the run, but she's clearly a better swimmer, and I might not be able to top that unless I really give it hell on the bike (since you are scored by total distance covered). On the plus side, in years past when I've done these races, I didn't hit my stride until the 3rd or 4th one, but I'm already doing better on the first time out, so maybe I can beat her. If not, well then, I just suck donkey balls. I did stalk my nemesis totally--turns out she's a "sprint" racer is all. Sure, I feel good knowing that I can haul ass in a short race, too, given that I train for the long shit, but I still want to be fast and place whenever I race. That's just me. Give me something to be competitive about, and I'm all over it.

Speaking of which, on Friday, we had a meeting at work in the late morning and there was a management shakeup. I think it's for the good for me, though, as I know someone who works for my soon-to-be manager, and the new guy is an ex-Marine, just like my fabulous, hottie coach, and I get along well with people like that, because I'm a no-small-talk, let's get it done sort of person (gee, could you tell from reading this blog?). But of course, when you switch managers you need to prove yourself all over again, and again, I think I'm in a good spot being the mastermind behind the current project I'm working on so that's cool.

Oh and we got a good dumping of snow here in Chicagoland this week, so I got in extra strength sessions shoveling snow. It's all good.

All I need to do now is get back on my sleep. I feel poised for some good--no, GREAT--bike workouts this week, and intend to hit the next indoor triathlon with all pistons firing.

As an FYI, if you went looking for a post that disappeared, well, sorry about that. I posted some pictures of myself that one person found offensive (I am not sure why--it's not like I'm disgusting, or if I am, someone PLEASE TELL ME), and then I thought about it and thought hmmmm...maybe I shouldn't leave those up for the world to see. But trust me, they are GOOD pictures, and I am not ashamed in the least, but then again I don't need pervs downloading pics of me to do whatever they like to do. Oh well, I am not doing this to become (in)famous!

Here are the happy totals for the week that was:


Weekly Totals 02/12/2007-02/18/2007
Swim: 7300 yards (4.14 miles) in 2.62 hours; 18% of weekly workout time; approx. 917 calories burned
Bike: Approx. 84.88 miles in 4.85 hours; 33% of weekly workout time; approx. 2321 calories burned
Run: Approx. 25.3 miles in 4 hours; 27% of weekly workout time; approx. 1820 calories burned
Strength: 3.37 hours; 23% of weekly workout time; approx. 843 calories burned
All Sports: Approx. 114.32 miles in 14.84 hours; approx. 5901 calories burned
Sleep: 7.93 hours avg./night
Stretching: 2.63 hours. Massage: 1.5 hours