Hanging in There

Yesterday went quite well. I called the Y, and the pool was back online, towels back online, so no extra driving. I got there a little late for me, though, because I started doing things around the house right away and got caught up in little chores. No worries, though!

I did my core stuff first--21 chinups on the assisted station (with very little weight offloaded and all were from a dead henag) with many people watching me--I guess I'm pretty cut (yeah I occasionally look in the mirror or glass while doing this), then headed downstairs and did 60 pushups and 120 crunches, including dead bugs and hanging leg raises. While I was down on the mat, a spin class finished up, and a guy I know, AJ, stopped by to chat. We talked about the weekend weather (isn't that all triathletes talk about on a Friday?), how things were going, and then he left and I finished up and grabbed my jump rope and did 7 minutes worth of that. I'm starting to actually like jumping rope--I guess it reminds me of being a kid, plus you can just see (in a fully-mirrored room) how it affects your core and even arms. Also I can see what's going on in my left leg (which is lacking the ACL in the knee) to see if I am able to really pick my foot up off the floor.

I was surprised that my quads didn't feel too bad, although I was glad that the swim workout was mostly pulling. The pool temp wasn't ideal, but it wasn't bad, either, and I just went back and forth, back and forth, and while my arms protested a bit, it forced me to really focus on my hand entry. 3300 yards later, I had a few minutes to spend in the sauna to stretch before heading home to work.

I got pretty lucky in that the world wasn't blowing up at work, and it was such an increbibly lovely day that I was even able to sneak outside and do a little bit of yard cleanup. Sometimes I limit myself by time, because left to my own devices, I'd be in my flower beds for hours at a time, just gazing at things and smiling. But yesterday I held myself to filling up one of the yard bags, which had about 18" of head room. Of course I kept compacting things to make more room, and I got a lot done in maybe 15 minutes. That short break made me really look forward to running.

Since the world wasn't going to come to an end at work, I decided I would drive to Waterfall Glen. My legs were telling me I had better run on a softer surface than asphalt and concrete. When I got there, there were many cars, and no doubt many people playing hookey to take advantage of the nice weather. I am always amazed that even though I think I train at odd times of the day that I always see a lot of other people doing the same thing!

The plan was to run 1:20, but then I changed it to 9 miles, to see if I could get in 9 in that amount of time. As soon as I started running, my quads let me know I had been beating them into submission, but at least I was on soft surface. Oh my, all the water in there! We had a lot of snow this winter, and we've had a lot of rain this year already, and the ground is so saturated that water is pooled everywhere. Even though I was listening to music, I could hear frogs at every turn of the trail in whatever little pothole they had found! I saw one white-tailed deer, who had its flag down trying to be camo, a hawk's nest, many ducks and tons of birds. It was perfect temps (near 70) to run in there, and I even felt almost hot! I saw many naked runners (guys running without shirts), lots of mountain bikers, many walkers, and everyone had smiles on their faces! This is one of the reasons I like running there so much. It is one of the happiest places I know! Nobody goes there to be in a fowl mood, even though as my run pressed on, I was really feeling it.

My pace seemed good enough to make 9 miles in the 1:20, even though I walked a few hills. I know that if I hadn't run so much the day before or so hard that I could have run faster. Even though I was tired, though, I felt strong. And depleted! I slammed a Coke right before I ran and some Gatorade so I could carry hardly any liquid, but my body was telling me I am going to need to do better on pre-run calories.

I finished 9 in 1:21 for a pace of 9:02, so that was fine for an easy run. That made 27.5 miles in 3 days! When I got back home, I thought I was going to crash, and I did lay down for a few minutes (wearing compression tights), but around 4:30 I motivated and finished up my strength training of mostly legs, which was interesting. OK so it was only 15 minutes, but I really wondered if I should have skipped it.

I ate a huge pile of sushi for dinner, and slept the whole night through, even waking up not really hungry!

My legs are sore, but I really don't feel bad at all--more like I'm just training a lot! I am going to wait for it to warm up so I can ride wearing very little, and drive LGL out to Fermilab and go 4 hours or so, whatever I feel like. There is not supposed to be much wind (forecast calls for "light and variable"), so it will just be me, the bike and the sun. I'm going to try and run :45 off the bike, but we'll see how the legs feel at that point. I have a feeling there's a stop at McDonald's in my future after this, and if I have any energy at all left, I'll noodle around in my yard while it's still nice out.

Happy Saturday!