one workout at at time

With Clearwater only a couple weeks away this past week was kind of the last big week. I had 3 days of masters swim, a tempo bike ride, and a speed run during the week. Then came the weekend with the direct instructions to just focus on the workout at hand and not anything else.

Saturday I went for a 3 hour bike ride with the Herd and they put up with me having to do two 30 min intervals at half ironman race pace. Actually I think Duane (who is almost 70) got a kick out of it. He cheered me on the whole time from my back wheel and defiantly kept me honest so it was a lot of fun. We did a great route from Bellevue down to the Cedar River trail then up and over Tiger mountain and back to Bellevue. It was the first time I have been on the route and I really liked it - not a lot of cars and just enough hills. We started early so it was kind of chilly to start but with in 30 min or so I was warm enough to shed the wind breaker and ride in vest and arm warmers. Since it was so cold I did not drink or eat as much as I should have and when I got of my bike and had to go for an hour run I felt it. I did a quick transition of shedding almost all the layers I was wearing to go for a race pace run for 60 min. The first mile was ok then slowly I started to over heat and felt really tired. By mile 3 I was completely over heating and on the verge of bonking. So I ran back to my car changes into a tank top and grabbed a salt and sport legs and another gel. By mile 4 I felt much better and the rest of my run felt pretty good. Even with a mile or two of feeling bad I was able to average my goal pace of just over 8 min miles. It was not the perfect run but I feel really good about how it all ended up.
Once I got home I took a ice bath with 2 bags of ice which was really good - my toes got cold but it really helped my legs. After a hot shower and a recovery drink I laid down with my feet up the rest of the day only to get up to eat something. I still am surprised I got up around 7:30p and went out to celebrate my friend Kim's birthday - but I was wearing compression tights at least.

Sunday morning Kyle and I joined the Pauole Sport team for a group run from one of the team members house on the East lake Sammamish trail. It was great because there was a variety of lengths and paces people were running. I needed to do a easy 2 hour run while Kyle only wanted to go 8 miles or so. Everyone started together so the first mile or two were a little faster than I needed to go but it helped me warm up since it was almost 35 °F. Once I was warm and shed my long sleeve shirt I settled into my own pace. I stayed a little behind the main group of people running longer on the way out. I turned around at 60 min and very slowly started to pick up the pace just a little bit. Then the last 30 min I started to pick up the pace more and I felt great. I stuck with it and and kept pushing the pace all the way until I was finished. Afterwards i stretched and cooled down and then headed in for a latte and hanging out with the team for a bit. Kyle had been done for a while but was completely content with his latte and fruit. I should have taken another ice bath but it had been a chilly run and by the time we got home I just could not do it. Instead a hot shower and a short nap.

I knew I should have taken that ice bath when I woke up this morning and was so sore and stiff. I took Kyle to the airport and then dragged myself to masters swim and hoped for an easy swim. At least 2 of my lane mates have a similar schedule of doing long hard workouts on the weekend so it is not to bad. There were a lot of fast people so for some reason some of the fast people who came late used our lane to warm up and thus push the pace of the lane then moved into their normal lane. Kainoa gave me a couple pointers to work on so I was trying to focus on my form while not getting swum over. After 45 min I was tired and just plain done so I moved to the hot tub and talked with Kainoa a bit before heading off to get ready for work. Now it is still mid-morning and I'm ready for nap.