Weekly Workout Totals 01/05-2009-01/11/2009 and Miscellaneous Stuff

As you can see, one of my dirty whore Barbies is enjoying herself while a Kachina doll watches...

I had a great training week. I'd call it a breakthrough week because I had everything fired up--harder and longer swim workouts, harder bike workouts, harder run workouts, and harder strength workouts. Add in a bunch of time moving snow around and a 1-hour (OK I was slow and spastic) cross country ski, and I don't think there is any muscle in my body that wasn't used! I got a great massage from the master, Mike, and was diligent about working on the muscles in my back (erector spinae, quadratus lumborum and iliopsoas) that are still a bit truculent. I had lunch with my friend, Marty, on Friday, and made dinner plans with another friend for next week.

Yesterday was one of those best days ever, which is interesting since it's the middle of winter! It started out well. I cleared the last of the snow from my driveway, took a little walk and took some pics (see previous post) of the snow. It was a beautiful, clear morning, and it was so quiet, as everyone was sleeping in and the roads were still snowy. I had planned on a 1:40 run followed by a :30 swim, but when I got back in the house, I felt a little dizzy or at least that I needed to lay down for awhile. In retrospect, I think my body was telling me that I wasn't fully recovered from Saturday's 3:00 workout plus who knows how much snow shoveling! I'm constantly learning what different bodily sensations mean, and the way this one felt was that I was a bit sinus-y and like my muscles were all out of fuel, despite the care I took on Saturday to refuel (or so I thought). Well, I am learning to listen to my body, so I started drinking Gatorade and got back in bed. I didn't fall back asleep, but it sure felt good to lay down. Also, I felt hot, so I took my temperature just for fun, and it was up--my normal temperature is about 96, and I was at 98.8! So that's almost a little fever to me. But after about an hour or so in bed, I got up, and suddenly I felt pretty much OK.

I suited up to run and headed to the Y. I got on a treadmill, and some guy who's been eyeballing me (he mostly just lifts, I think) asked me how much I was going to run today--9 or 10 miles? It was funny because that's about what I had planned, but I still wasn't sure I could execute on it or not, so I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and said I wasn't sure whether I'd make it that far, but I was going to start on it. He then proceeded to ask me whether I run marathons, and I just told him I do Ironman. I guess there's a part of me that doesn't want to be labeled as just a runner (especially since I don't consider myself one!), because I don't think I look like one. Anyway, I wasn't in the mood to chat, so I fired up the machine, and as achey and sluggish as I had felt just an hour earlier, it felt great to run! I was pleased, but cautiously optimistic, thinking that whatever I got done would be fine.

It was one of those days where I would have been OK with taking a full rest day, but then since I was on the treadmill, I began going over various scenarios--since I knew I might ski later, I could run less, or I could do the last 15 minutes on the elliptical. A 1:30 run would have been plenty. But as I got into it, I felt really good and did 1:30 on the treadmill and then headed to the indoor track.

I decided to just run a mile and see how long it took. My pink Timex watch had finally died (I knew the battery was going because the LED display was fading in and out), and so I had to wait for the second hand of a wall clock to come up on 12 so I could time myself. I wasn't trying to push it or anything, but isn't it funny sometimes how if you don't actually have a watch on you run faster? Seriously, I didn't think I was running faster than maybe 8:45, but it turned out I was running at my 5K pace! I was like what the fuck where did that come from? I ended up running 11 miles. And I was pretty happy to go for a recovery swim.

The pool was stinking hot, but it still felt good, and I knocked out a leisurely 1500 yards followed by about 5 minutes in the sauna (I would have stayed in there longer except there was a woman in there who seemed to be gay for me by the way she was looking at my naked body), then headed home.

I ate a Lean Cuisine and drank a bottle of Endurox R4, and knew I needed a lay down, after sorting through the Sunday newspaper for the sections that I read (I toss Sports, Business, Classifieds and all the ads) so I could take it into bed with me. Side note: I love my bed, and I had just changed the sheets in the morning, so how nice to finish up working out, showering and sauna and come home to that!

I had a message from a friend to meet for skiing at 6PM, so I figured I should try and get my nap on! After about 5 minutes in bed, I figured a beer would be tasty and probably knock me out, so I went and got one, got back into bed, read a little of a book, drank the beer, turned off the light, and I was out cold. I woke up an hour later feeling pretty awesome except for the right side of my back was a little stiff. I got up and had a snack and began drinking more Gatorade, since I was going to be doing another workout, got some laundry done and got things ready to fix dinner once we were back from skiing.

Skiing was great, except that I suck, while my friend is awesome at it. I need to learn to skate ski, as that's the kind of skis I got. I was a little stiff, ginger, wary of the whole thing since in a way I was a little afraid of doing something else to my back. But I managed, even though I sucked. It was beautiful out in the dark and so quiet, and I was mostly just happy to be doing something in the snow! There was one decent downhill, and I thought I had it, but then in a flash I did a huge face plant, and laughed my ass off while getting up. It's fun to fall in the snow when you won't hurt yourself.

I'm not sure of the distance of the course we were on, but it was at least a few miles. This place has lessons, so I think I'm going to do that next weekend and let that replace my run.

After skiing, we cracked open some wine, showered up and I fixed a simple but tasty dinner--Porterhouse steaks, pasta with the red pepper, bacon and Gorgonzola sauce I'd made on New Year's Day, and steamed asparagus. And a good bottle of Zinfandel. I had looked forward to that meal since I was finished running!

After all that, I slept like a baby and this morning I am just doing a :30 swim and think maybe I'll run outside in the snow later on. This week's training is going to be killer, here let me show you:

We are supposed to get more snow (blizzard warning tonight!) today through Wednesday, which is fine by me except it's going to be really super cold, too. But I'll get a little extra strength training done moving the snow.

Hope everyone had a great week and is starting out another good one! I did not include the skiing or the excessive snow removal in the numbers below--it was a solid training week anyway!

Weekly Workout Totals	01/05/2009-01/11/2009 This week's totals are sponsored by snow!!! There is no shortage of it here!
Swim:	8400 yards (4.77 miles) in 2.88 hours; 22% of weekly workout time; approx. 1009 calories burned Canadian: 7680.96 meters
Bike:	Approx. 78.82 miles in 4.33 hours; 32% of weekly workout time; approx. 2384 calories burned; Total TSS=276 Canadian: 126.85 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 23.41 miles in 3.72 hours; 28% of weekly workout time; approx. 1691 calories burned Canadian: 37.67 kilometers
Strength:	2.45 hours; 18% of weekly workout time; approx. 613 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 107 miles in 13.38 hours; approx. 5697 calories burned Canadian: 1 kilometers
Sleep:	7.04 hours avg./night
Stretching:	3.22 hours. Massage: 1 hours