Up Up Up

I think I can call it a successful first weekend on my Ironman plan. I did a 52.5 mile bike ride on Saturday morning under partly sunny, hazy skies. Since I didn't really know how fast I could go I didn't want to pick a ride that had a set amount of miles. Instead I chose to ride the road that goes from here to Auburn. It apparently is a big climb to get there, though when riding it it's kind of hard to tell until my legs were so cooked about 4 miles out of Auburn that I decided it was time to turn around. Once I did that I was like oh look, I've been going up a hill. So coming back to home was fun. The road itself was a decent place to ride. Most of the time there was a wide enough shoulder to not be right next to the cars and the road was pretty smooth. Aside for around town and the town right north of here, it was pretty rural and not too high traffic (for California anyways). And then after the ride I did my first brick run of the year. My legs found themselves faster than I thought, so that was good. Today I did my "long" run. It was dry for the first 40 minutes or so, and then it started to rain. By the end is was almost pouring. Fun... not so much. Then I did a swim for easy recovery. Even though it's hard to get myself to the pool to swim nowadays, especially when it's raining, once I get in the water I'm okay. And I decided the best thing to do when it's raining is swim, since I certainly am not going to bike in it, and only run if necessary.

PLUS I have had a recent swimming breakthrough. I took a couple lessons, and somehow, I am swimming a 1:30 at the same amount of energy expenditure as I was barely making a 1:35 a month ago. Previous to these lessons I had swam one 1:30 100. Now I have swam a few. It's kind of exciting.

President's Day

I have to thank our first presidents since I got today off. It was much needed... otherwise I would not have been able to do everything Saturday and Sunday. Saturday I did my 2.5 hour trainer ride and then a 2300 yard swim, and went to Sacramento to watch the Tour. Late afternoon I drove to Napa (about 1 hour from Sac) to meet my father who had a conference there. The weather was just beginning its dreadfulness, though it looked rather menacing all afternoon. We went to this restaurant that shares it's name with the version of Linux I use, Ubuntu. It was an all vegetarian restaurant, very interesting. Oddly enough I had heard about it since it is also a yoga studio, but it hadn't connected that it was in Napa until the concierge mentioned it.

After dropping my dad off at the airport on Sunday, I went to Berkeley. It was a wet wet wet day. Got to visit the EECS building there and my friend and I also went to the Ranch 99 Market in Richmond. So exciting! I stocked up on some asian veggies (not that I can stock up that much since fresh vegetables go bad) and also got some yummy asian-style bread from the bakery. Then I proceeded to consume said loaf of bread in the past-not-even 24 hours.

The last big news is that I have my first week on my training plan for Lake Placid. I only slightly deviated from plan today by doing an easy ride on the trainer while watching the Tour of California on tv. I didn't even go swimming! I felt tired today so decided it really should be a recovery day, as the run was just an easy one. Now I just have to hope that I am able to get in all the rest of the workouts for the rest of the week... though oddly enough the planned training time this week is only 9 hours, compared to my usually 15 hours. AND I also need to stop eating so much junk food! It's getting out of hand again.

Tour of California

Lance's road bikeA time trialistCute rider on the Specialized teamJelly Belly neon colored uniforms
Lance and Levi warming up in the Team Astana tentTeam Astana's cool looking bikes (I will always be partial to Trek)Motorcycle escorts and team cars lined up waiting for their riders

So I made it to Sacramento on Saturday afternoon to see the prologue of the Tour. I have to say, it was a pretty awesome experience and made me more excited about cycling. I got to watch everything except the riders finish. I checked out the team buses and saw the riders warming up, stood near the start to see the riders line up, stood at the earlier part of the course and then towards the middle around the turn-around. It was all very exciting. I'll definitely be watching the tv coverage to see who wins.

Busy Bee!

So busy! Working, training, eating junk, sleeping, baking brownies to suck up to manager... leaves not much time for anything else. And once again, not even a break for the first two days of the long (hurray!) weekend.

Saturday - bike 2.5 hours (probably on trainer since it's WET here), maybe short swim, go to downtown Sacramento to watch prologue of Tour of California, go to Napa to have dinner/visit with dad

Sunday - run 90 minutes (hopefully, but it's supposed to be really wet and windy) in Napa, drive dad to airport, go to Berkeley to get brunch with friend, maybe go to Santa Rosa to watch finish of Stage 1 of Tour if the weather is not so foul

Monday - run errands and start real coached training!

I survived the time trials this week. 1000 yards swam in 17 minutes and average 177 bpm for run and 147 bpm for bike. Once I figured out the heart rate monitor it's actually kind of entertaining.

Will report back with photos of something.

HAHAHA

http://www.news10.net/video/default.aspx?aid=69906&storyid=54485

1:50:24 was official time for the Davis Stampede half-marathon. That means a 8:26 minute mile. Finished 214 out of 682 (top 3rd) and 9 out of 31 in age group (also top 3rd). Considering I really had no long distance training (like 4 10+ mile runs since December) I was surprised. I used to be happy when I finished in the top half of the group. But then again today my legs felt kind of trashed. Running Davis was similiar to running in Illinois. Mostly flat, with the exception of the overpass over the highway, and wind. The latter miles had a headwind, or offside headwind, making it tougher than the first miles.

This week I have to do a 1000 yard time trial and a 10 minute warmup-20 minute all-out bike and run monitoring my heart rate for my new coach. Which means I have to figure out how my heart rate monitor(s) work. That, actually, is probably the hardest part.

Eeeee!

My new baby! Got fitted today at Davis Wheelworks. They are awesome. The Thursday before I started work I spent 6 hours there trying out different bikes and I was there for 4 hours today getting fitted on the bike and trying it out. This was after I ran a half marathon... clock said 1:51:11ish but I think it took me 30 seconds to cross the starting line. I was secretly aiming for under 1:50 even though I am very undertrained, so almost, but not quite. Still waiting for official results though.

The End

I finally received my car yesterday at 8am. Three days late. It came with some remnants of the northeast/midwest - grime and snow dirt so thick that even after I took it to the car wash, it still came out filthy. But it was a nice touch of home I guess. Despite the beautiful weather here for the past 5 or 6 days, I would rather have stayed in New York for an extra month. I think I always get mentally messed up when winter is short or nonexistent. But I guess I better get used to it.

So since I basically got everything squared away (except the dining table which first I had to get some friends to carry it up to my third-floor apartment and now I can't figure out how to get the legs in properly) I decided to enjoy myself this weekend, aka swim, bike, run as I pleased. Yesterday I ran 5.3 miles home from the car rental place after I returned my car and explored some of the bike paths and where they don't actually lead to. Then I biked for 37.6 miles around the lake bike path. It was slow because I had to bike from/to my apartment to the path which involved lots of stop lights and also of course I just didn't know where I was going. I had to stop a lot and backtrack and even ask a guy where/how the path connected. My legs were hurting after that. Today I swam 5000 yards in the late morning and then biked 35.8 miles around the same above path. But faster this time since my legs were beginning to remember what it's like to bike outside and I knew where I was going. I am proud of myself - over 70 miles in the first weekend outside since early November! And this is despite the fact that I banged my head hard against the side of the pool this morning when I was kicking on my side and not paying attention to the end of the pool. Head still sort of hurts now...

January ended up with over 70,000 yards swam and an unknown amount run and biked. And cross-country skiied too. That means though for December and January combined, I swam over 150,000 yards!

Tomorrow is my first day of full-time work, or maybe, the first day of the rest of my life. Trying to decide whether to start it off with a run or a swim.