resting

we took the weekend off. we were not really wanting to, but we have been spending every hour getting the RV ready for the trip to canada. only a few days to the event. we are heading up to be volunteers and check in for next year. we are the people that are going to hand out medals in the last 4 hours, so if one of you guys reads this in the next year, hopefully we were smiling at your at the end! so... one year to go! we hope to ride the bike course while out there.

midweek

decided last minute to do a longer run. so we went to the towpath and ran 12 miles. we both had a good day, which happens about 40% of the time. usually one of us is a bit stronger. but last night it was pretty even. also picked up our pace a bit. or at least left it at the same level. running out is slightly uphill, you add about 15 feet of elevation per mile, but there are no hills. not sure if its in your head or not, but running home is for sure a lot easier. we were strong the whole way and came home for 9 hours of sleep after doing the leg chill and drinking a protein shake. carried some water and drank that half way out and back, at the far end point we got a banana and strawberry smoothie which was pretty darn good. also first run with the new shoes. not supper good, but they felt pretty comfy so i guess they are keepers.

lap it up

well, increased the long swim from 3 to 5 laps today. still working on breathing, turns out if you have your mouth open you can get a more relaxed swim out of it.

also spent some time on keeping my arms in front of me. tricky that. its ok if you look at them, but as soon as you breath or look down... you are windmilling again.

also did a quick time check, one lap took about 80 seconds. so... at that pace without stopping i would finish the 4kilometers in about 1:57 so thats 3 minutes faster than i need to be! eeek.

rest day

its monday and we just got back from running poto again.

this time we staged food and water on the trail. and had a much better run. it was still a bit tricky at the end. but the big difference was i had energy if not leg strength. we think its about 15miles on hilly trails. sunday we rode a quick 30miles... pretty good pace about 17mph.

should be a good week, plan on swimming tomorrow, hoping to do a bit more relaxing in the water and get in maybe a longer run. i felt pretty close last time to getting over the hump on the breathing thing. a few more times and maybe i can get to where its arm tired not out of breath that stops me. that should get me some real distance. but... slow and steady.

really good weekend.

went swimming this morning. after watching the video last night i had about 45 different things i could work on. started with the underskate. really makes you think about having both hands in front of you when you swim. having that balance is great - keeps you from doing bobs as you head down the lane. sadly i cant do it yet. i still do the windmill thing. thats the reason for the drills, to slowly get you to have both arms forward on the swim.

in other news i swam 3 laps of the 25 pool, so thats a small benchmark. longest swim in 5 years!!! wooohooo!. 150 yards. leaving me 77 laps short of the race distance. well, if i add one each time i should be there in a year.

wednesday

went on an 8 mile run tonight. the run went great... finally feel that i am recovered from the long runs the other weeks. still was a bit hard at first, but realized that we were going out too fast to start. after about 3 miles we backed off the pace and the last 5 were really good.

in other interesting news i found that i should not eat a gu before the run. i tried it last weekend and i think it helped me to bike better as i got some strength back after the hard run. today i ate one before starting. about mile 4-5 i started burping it up and my stomach felt like acid. this lasted about 2 hours after the run was over too. nasty. so i will probably save gu for the bike or just go with something else. we talked about what to eat over a 14 hour day. need about 200 cals per hour and you cant really miss too many hours or you are in trouble. soup and lasagna we have had good luck with in previous years.

also we both think we need new shoes. the ones we have on now are a few years old. eeek. might get some this weekend, also the shorts i run in now are much better than the old cotton ones. lighter. but they are too short and wad up in a ball under my uhhh... well. they wad up. so the longer ones i had the other week were much better, might get some more of those too.

off to bed, going swimming in the morning. watched the new video - lots of good stuff in that.

laps

went to the pool this tuesday morning. i am trying to relax a bit more while swimming. i can get across the pool in a hurry but cant do it very long. reminds me of the guys sprinting out to start a 10 mile run. i did about 10-15 laps of 50 meters each. so about 1/2 to 3/4 kilometer. not much! but each day i am going to try to extend what i swim. mostly stood around and thought about stuff. like where my arms entered the water. how my legs dangled. i ended up trying one of those leg sponges - totally lifted my legs and sent my head into the water - which is really good - i am going to use that more often to get the right angle in the water.

i should probably set some swimming distance goals. maybe one for amount swam in an hour and another for continuious swimming distance. the per hour would keep me working hard and the continuous would be a more accurate measure of how far i can get. nothing to important untill maybe january or february i am guessing. if i can just get the comfy thing figured i can probably take a few months extending my distance. just need to learn to swim first!

monday morning

last wednesday i still felt pretty gassed from the weekend run. we went biking and put in probably our fastest 40 miles in a few years. felt great until about 100 yards from the house. was a great ride. rode out to a small town called paris here in ohio.

sunday we went for an 8 mile run and i was still hurting i think from the previous week, but managed to stick it out. still need to find some recovery somewhere. this time we prestaged water and gatoraid about every 2-3 miles and we ended up drinking a ton of it. it was 94 degrees out and later went up to 99 on the bikes which we rode for 24 easy miles.

i am now completely convinced that the bike and run are two completely different muscles. should be obvious i know, but after the 8 mile run i was pretty dead. i ate a gu and a cliffbar and we hoped on the bikes and gads i was strong. felt great. i did feel that i ran out of energy about 2 hours into the ride so i am guessing the 350ish cals i got from the semi-food lasted 2 hours. going to do some research on that. also it seemed to take about 20-30 minutes to kick in.

this week we hope to actually ramp up the activities so monday is a rehydrate day. the tentative plan right now is tuesday sprint, wed medium length and sunday 15 on the trails. eek! :-)

bonkity

well, went for a 15 mile run yesterday. i didn't feel up for it, but resa wanted to get in a longer run. about 3 miles in i thought about cutting it short. we met some friends on the trail and one of them drank some of my gaterade and then i really felt like cutting it short. but we plowed on. at about mile 6.5 i thought i should have turned around but we went to 7.5 and i had to walk the last 4 miles in a dizzy desparate mannor. i think i ran out of fuel and was having a bit of a rough morning on top of it. so i am going to do some looking into what to bring to eat - probably going to be gu or something similar. otherwise it was a great day :-)

havnt done a 15 mile run in about 5 years, i vaguely remember having more to eat/drink those times too. so a bit of a lesson.