building phase

The last two weeks have been tough. I did not feel fully recovered from last weekend until my rest day on Thursday. But at the same time I am very happy with where I am at in my training. I'm feeling good about my first couple run races coming up. I'm a little less inspired by my "big" races choices and rather uninspired for Boise 70.3 or Lake Steven's 70.3.. So I have been going back and forth and have not registered for either with the possibility of figuring out other races that would be more interesting. It feels a little weird to know my B and C races but not my A races.. That being said I still keep training and am enjoying training as much as ever. (If you know a cool half iron race let me know).

Friday night Kyle met me for a run from my office down the water front. It was sunny in the morning so I grabbed running short vs tights but when we got started around 5p it was super chilly. I wanted to push myself and my leg speed and I asked Kyle to pace me and even though it was a bit slow for him he was sweet enough to go along with it. We warmed up the first 15 min with sub 9 mi/m pace then Kyle started picking it up. I did not look at my garmin and just focused on staying on his elbow no matter what and just trusted him. By teh half way mark I was over heating and had to take of my jacket even though it was probably under 40 degrees out. While Kyle stayed all bundled up. On the way back I had to fight my legs and my mind from feeling tired and just stayed right on his elbow. The last half mile I pushed myself just a little it more and picked up the pace as much as I could. It was great I just trusted Kyle and ran just over 7 miles at either sub or right at 8 mi/m pace :)

On Saturday morning the weather did not really cooperate - it was snowing. Kyle and I are not big fans of indoor riding over an hour so we stalled and dragged our feet getting the bike trainers till around noon we saw that the weather had cleared up and the roads were only wet. We bundled up and grabbed our road bikes to do a quick lap around Lake Sammamish before the weather turned again.
As usual Kyle led and I drafted but teh roads were wet and messy and Kyle only had a short "beaver tail" style fender. Which is just enough to keep him clean and dry. In contrast I was being covered in dirt and muddy road grit. By teh end of the ride I had to even take off my glasses because I couldn't really see anymore... When we were finished it was funny to see the difference between how clean and dry Kyle was.

It was snowing and actually sticking as I went to bed on Saturday night and this morning we woke up an hour early thanks to "spring" forward to make it to a team run from Madison Park. It was tuff especially for Kyle who is not a morning person at all. We made it on time and the roads were almost dry and the sun was shinny. We got started around 8a and broke into natural groups by pace. Kyle and a couple Kyle ran easily off the front and I hung with a group of a couple Girls including my Coach Kainoa. I felt surprisingly good and just stayed with them for the entire run to Seward park and back. I do most of my training alone or chasing Kyle so it was fun running with a group that was closure to my pace - it made the 2 hours cruise by. I actually only needed to run 1:50 but was glad I stayed with them the entire way - I was surprised how well I did considering it was my longest run in a while. In the end we got about 14.4 miles in 2 hours :)

And with that it is time to get ready for another week of juggling training, work and recovery...

snow... again

It is the middle of April and since Friday snow has been in the forecast... it is so messed up this is Seattle. Rain yes - snow no - only in the mountains not in town and not in April.

Friday night I swam a strong 2700 yrds - it was a crazy workout based on 300s with a mix of intervals. I felt pretty good and even on the last hard sets I stayed strong and kept my pace up. When I left of course it was snowing... there was about an quarter of an inch on the grass by the time I got home. Luckily nothing was sticking to the roads.

Saturday I had a 12 mile run as my last longer run before Vancouver Half Marathon in 2 weeks. Lucky for me Steph and Kyle (who are both doing Vancouver) also wanted to go long. After confirming in the morning that there was not to much snow we headed out to the Carnation to run on the Snoqualmie Valley Trail. The temperature on the drive out was 37°F - but it was not really raining or anything. My goal was 12 miles at 8:30 pace or less but once I got started I remembered that the entire way out was a gradual uphill. The first mile or two I paced off of Kyle and never really let him get to far in front of me so it was really strange when my garmin said my first mile was over a 9 min pace - Kyle never runs that slow.. and the second mile was even slower. I just kind of assumed that my swim the night before and that I was running on trail was effecting my times and did not really stress to much about it just kept pushing. I heard Kyles garmin at mile 1 and mine did not go off for quite a while later.
I ate a gel at mile 2 and my stomach was really unhappy - I just tried to breath deep and get past the upset feeling. Which worked till I needed to eat again at mile 4ish and 7 when I had to do it all over again - but I know well enough I need to eat or I crash so I forced it down. I drank cytomax between eating which helped settle my stomach but it was never really happy.
I kept my effort level in between moderate and hard but my garmin said my pace was still rather slow. I never really let it get to me though even though the miles seemed to last forever at times.
I saw Kyle and he was surprised to see me so soon and cheered me on saying great job sort of stuff. My garmin said I was only at mile 5 so I thought he had 2 miles on me but that is not unusual. I ran out till about what i thought was 5.75ish miles - I was tired of running uphill and wanted to start back - I figured I could run a bit past where we started and still get my milage. Now last year we ran the same trail a couple of times and turned around after one of the bridges but I could not rember how far we were running - I went way past that bridge... I don't know if you can tell in the picture but it was snowing.. When I turned around I realized I actually have never been so far out on the trail. Steph waited for me at the bridge not wanting me to be out there all alone. It was so wonderful to be running downhill my legs were so happy - finally I had a sub 8 min mile. I wanted to be able to get back to an average of an 8:30 min pace so I picked it up a bit and took advantage of the downhill as much as I could.
I had planned on eating again at mile 10 but my stomach did not feel good at all so I just kept drinking cytomax and gave up on gel for the last couple of miles. I knew I was going to be over the planned time of 1:42 so the last 2 miles I really tried too pick it up and just be done with it. When I got to where we started my garmin said I was only at 11.5 so I ran out and back and then down a side road to get that last .5 mile.
Now after I got home and talked to Kyle and how surprised he was that I was so close to him at the turn around and then that I finished so much later than him.. He said he turned around at the bridge at 6 miles... the bridge that I ran way past.. So I'm not sure what happened to my garmin but I mapped it out on Gmaps Pedometer which said I ran 13.5 miles not 12.. So instead of my run being slow - I actually ran a PR of 13.5 miles in 1:50:00 (8:12 average pace) in the cold, on trail - go figure.

Sunday the weather was much the same - snow and rain in the morning - so we slept in and ate breakfast then went over to greenlake area for Kyle to get some bike part, and we went to Speedy Reedy to get a few small things... including a new addition to our household. No it is not for me (I wish) it is Kyle's he got a P2C frameset so that he could build it up as a TT bike so that his R3 could go back to being a road bike since he wants to do some road races. That brings our road bike family up to 7 (5 for Kyle and 2 for me). lol He loves his bikes. The hard part for him is that he is actually stripping the R3 of all the components and putting them on the P2C till he can get SRAM Red components for the R3 (I told him he has to wait till next month).
Anyway the weather dried out a bit and while he went to an acupuncture appointment I got on my bike and went for a ride around Lake Sammamish. My legs felt sore and heavy but it felt so good to be outside on my bike. I kept my speed around 18 mph and did not push to hard or go to easy. Most important I worked on getting more comfortable with my bar end shifters and being down in my aero bars. I actually got really hot and had to take both my hat and eventually my gloves off - other cyclists were looking at me like I was nuts. We had planned that Kyle would meet me when he was done and we would ride the lake again but it was getting colder and he did not care so we rode back out a while, got some coffee and then headed home. Which includes a hill no matter which way you go. It was good that I was already warmed up because just to stay near Kyle my legs were screaming. The climb was hard but I know that it always is and every time I do it - it will get easier (I learned that last year). Of course it started raining the last mile or two back to the house. So even with the crazy weather I managed to get a 2:15 hour ride in - which is way more fun than sitting on the trainer.

With that I'm very happy that tomorrow is a rest day - no work out except fallowing Coach Colleen online in the Boston Marathon :)

Snow in March

the opposite of heat training

I felt like it was November again.. Tonight Col and I met up to run and IT WAS SNOWING! and pouring rain at the same time. It was very very wet and cold. I was happy I brought my rain jacket with me - just in case this morning - otherwise I would have been even more wet. My hands, legs and feet were cold with in minutes and never really warmed up. The worse was the first couple of miles the wind was blowing the snow into my face and I had flash backs of coaching ski racing - standing on a mountain freezing. The savings grace was we did intervals so at least I got to warm up a tiny bit each time we picked up the pace - though it made me not want to slow down between pick ups. I am so glad tomorrow is my rest day and hopefully by Friday this crazy weather will be over.
That said I'm looking forward to the idea of getting up into the mountains to ski some fresh snow this weekend ;)