Two races this weekend, and I'm beyond pumped! Today's the last day of my taper week, and I'm going crazy with pent up energy! But today is a day off. The important thing to do today isn't to go out and tune up my run, or even spin on the bike. Today my workout is on the couch, with my feet up, and my mind focused. For the past week, I've been going over the details in my head of what I think I can do. I got my race plan from Mary yesterday, and after a little email back and fourth trying to nail down some smaller points for Sunday, I'm really happy with where I stand.
Tomorrow morning's the du. 3/20/3. I can't contain myself over this one. It's my first multisport race of the year. The "official" start to my season. As much as I love the ironman training, I can't describe how good it feels to just take the brakes off. I have an idea of where I want to come in. I know what it's going to take to get there. First 5k strong, but managed. Build on the bike (Appa's ready to fly!). That last 5k? Balls to the freakin wall. I'm looking for a negative split here. The course is flat. There's like 20ft of elevation gain. I want to freakin fly, and I'm going to. I haven't put in a 5k since Jan. 1. Since then though, I've run Johnny's (5 miles at my Jan1st pace), and Spring forward (9 miles at my Jan 1st pace). Yeah, both of those longer races I held the same pace as my (so far) 5k PR. I want to tear this up! I want that last 5 to be blazing fast (for me), and it will be. In Mary's words, I'll be running it like I'm not running a half on Sunday.
Sunday is a whole different beast. Mary and I both have the same goal for me. Even without my telling her, we had the same goal. We know I can do it, the only question lies if I can the day after the du. The question there really lies in my recovery. I'll be spending a bunch of time Saturday with my feet up. I'll be making the call race morning. Do I want to go for it, or do I feel like I can just put in a strong effort. At this point either way is going to be a pretty good PR for me. Honestly, my mind's already made up, and I think you can guess what I want to do. I won't let that overcome how I'm feeling Sunday morning though. There's bigger things at stake this summer than some little half-marathon PR. There's an Ironman on my horizon, and everyday brings it a little closer. My goals for that can't afford to lose days/weeks to flaming out in an early season half.
I'm ready to go! I can't wait for the gun(s)! I'm pumped to head out for the first time in my Train-this kit. I want to represent! I want to show people how awesome my coach is, my team is. By doing awesome myself!
86 days.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Taper Week
So it's taper/recovery week. I feel pretty good about finishing up my first build block. Although I had some issues with my last two long rides, so I'm not super happy about that. Two weeks ago I was thwarted by the weather, and then a polo tournament and didn't end up getting the whole allotted time in. Then came this weekend. After my great long run Saturday, I was excited for my Easter morning long ride. I had planned two laps around canandaigua lake. I was hoping I could get it all in in the 5:30 that I was scheduled to ride. I started off around 8am, and the weather was nice, things were a bit damp, but it was at least fairly warm. I made my way from my parent's house down to east lake road, so I could hit the climb over bare hill, and up out of vine valley, before heading down to naples, and back up the west side of the lake. I made it to just before the climb up bare hill and it started to rain. It wasn't too bad though. I was warm, and determined to press on no matter what! I felt great on those first two climbs, and felt like I tore down to naples pretty quickly. I pressed up the big climb out of naples (I'm going to be seeing this route a lot considering the profile of the placid course) and was still feeling really good. I made my way up west lake road, and over a couple smaller climbs there, and made it back to my parents' house to refill on nutrition and head out again. I hit the ~54 mile halfway point at 2:50ish. A little behind schedule. In light of this, I thought it would be a good idea to take the route to naples skirting the climbs, but still about the same distance, to free up some extra minutes. I made it a few miles from my parent's house, and head a terrible noise. Thwop, thwop thwop thwop. Hmmmmm, oh look my tire's flat. Crap. I get it changed out with the replacement tube in, and find that the stem is too short, I can get the pump over it, but it wont seal, so I can't inflate it enough. Crap. I hitched a ride back to my parent's house feeling pretty defeated. What's the silver lining you ask? It stopped raining. Three hours of chilly wetness, and it decides to give up when I have to call it quits. Damn mother nature, she's a jerk. I got home and texted Mary, to ask her if I should add some time to my t-run to compensate. She's awesome, easter morning, and she still got back to me! She said no, just do what I was scheduled for, so Amanda accompanied me on a 30 minute run.
In other news, we officially booked Dinosaur BBQ for our wedding food! I'm pretty pumped about it! Amanda called last night, and the lady was super nice. So we officially can feed our guests! Since she finished up with classes, she's been doing a lot of wedding planning work too. With the food taken care of, we finally have all the big stuff covered. All that's left are the smaller detail stuff. She's found tons of really cool little favor and decoration stuff to make just to put the finishing touches on. She's amazing, she keeps finding bike themed stuff for me that fits into the whole vintagy barn/picnic aesthetic that she has going so far.
With not a whole lot left to cover, I'm starting to think about coming up with an itinerary for the honeymoon. We're doing 2 days in Toronto, 3 days in Amsterdam, and 5 days in Paris. Amanda really wanted to go to Amsterdam, she mostly just wants to visit the Van Gogh museum there; so I have to come up with some other things to do there. Then on to Paris! I've been wanting to get back there for the past like 8 years! I'm really excited about it. I just finished reading a book called The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz. He's a pastry chef that's been living there for the past 6 years. It was a really funny look into Parisian culture through the eyes of someone trying to fit into it. I definitely recommend it. Plus there's some pretty cool recipes at the end up each chapter, and a list of all his favorite chocolate, and pastry shops n the back. We will definitely be visiting some of these in our time there!
89 days to IMLP!
95 days to the wedding!
In other news, we officially booked Dinosaur BBQ for our wedding food! I'm pretty pumped about it! Amanda called last night, and the lady was super nice. So we officially can feed our guests! Since she finished up with classes, she's been doing a lot of wedding planning work too. With the food taken care of, we finally have all the big stuff covered. All that's left are the smaller detail stuff. She's found tons of really cool little favor and decoration stuff to make just to put the finishing touches on. She's amazing, she keeps finding bike themed stuff for me that fits into the whole vintagy barn/picnic aesthetic that she has going so far.
With not a whole lot left to cover, I'm starting to think about coming up with an itinerary for the honeymoon. We're doing 2 days in Toronto, 3 days in Amsterdam, and 5 days in Paris. Amanda really wanted to go to Amsterdam, she mostly just wants to visit the Van Gogh museum there; so I have to come up with some other things to do there. Then on to Paris! I've been wanting to get back there for the past like 8 years! I'm really excited about it. I just finished reading a book called The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz. He's a pastry chef that's been living there for the past 6 years. It was a really funny look into Parisian culture through the eyes of someone trying to fit into it. I definitely recommend it. Plus there's some pretty cool recipes at the end up each chapter, and a list of all his favorite chocolate, and pastry shops n the back. We will definitely be visiting some of these in our time there!
89 days to IMLP!
95 days to the wedding!
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Long Run Success!
Just popping in for a quick update. I've been a little negligent about it lately. Just finished up my 2hr long run. It was great! The weather was great (who knew Rochester still had a sun?), and I felt great. I ended up at exactly 15 miles after two hours. A funny thing happened. I passed 13.1 in 1:44 averaging zone 2. For a little background, in a week it will be one year since I ran my first half. I crossed the line for that in 1:49, and was pretty certain that I was going to die. Today I cruised through feeling awesome. Everything just felt like it clicked today. I was feeling the zone 2 effort pretty well. I ran mostly by feel. Mary's been pushing that lately, and it's working. Every time I've gone out, and not obsessively checked my watch, my HR has been more consistent, and my paces have just fallen in where they need to be.
Next weekend is my first multisport race of the year! I'm beyond pumped! I want to just get out there and rip it up! So if you're not doing anything come check out the river challenge du! It's part of the flower city challenge weekend, and it's a great event. If you volunteered, that would be even better! Just make sure that you cheer extra loud for me. I'll be following up the du with the half marathon on sunday, then probably sleeping the rest of that afternoon. After, of course cheering on Amanda as she rocks her second half, and then probably feasting on waffles at Jay's Diner. Sounds like it's going to be a great weekend to me, so come on out!
That's all I have for now.
92 days to go!
Next weekend is my first multisport race of the year! I'm beyond pumped! I want to just get out there and rip it up! So if you're not doing anything come check out the river challenge du! It's part of the flower city challenge weekend, and it's a great event. If you volunteered, that would be even better! Just make sure that you cheer extra loud for me. I'll be following up the du with the half marathon on sunday, then probably sleeping the rest of that afternoon. After, of course cheering on Amanda as she rocks her second half, and then probably feasting on waffles at Jay's Diner. Sounds like it's going to be a great weekend to me, so come on out!
That's all I have for now.
92 days to go!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Spring Forward and Bike Fit
Well, it's been another busy week. But I need to cover my quick race report from Spring Forward last weekend, and talk about my awesome bike fit down in Geneva!
I was the only team member going into spring forward rested. I just came off of a recovery week, and everyone else was in their blocks. I got there about 45 minutes early, grabbed my timing chip, had Amanda pin my number, and started getting ready to go. I was excited! With 30min to the start I went out for a short warm-up, just to get my legs moving, and loosened up. I didn't make it far before I ran into Mary and Kim on their mountain bikes. They were talking to Don while he did his hardcore car warm up. After chatting for a bit I put in mile or so easy, then headed back to Amanda to get ready for the start. We headed over towards the start line and joined up with the rest of the Train-this group. We all got to hear about Alexa's issues, and her awesome gel pocket in her shorts. The race plan from Mary was pretty similar to the Johnny's plan. Take out the first half at a good effort pace, but she wanted us to hit the 4.5 mile mark ready to pick it up for the second half. I'm pretty sure not many of us were really able to do this. I started off well. Alexa and I had to do some offroading, because we started further back than we should have. Just a quick note here, if you're running a race please don't line up in the front and proceed to walk. In the future, I will be lining up much closer to the front. It didn't take too long to find some space, and I spotted Tim up ahead. I decided that I didn't want to spend all day chasing him, like I did at Johnny's, so I decided to get up with him. We ran pretty much together for a while in the first 5k. He was having some trouble with the hills, and I ended up pulling away. I was happy with my ability to pretty consistently pick off people ahead of me on the climbs. I have some trouble picking it up on the downhill though. It was enough to not really get caught though.
I saw Mary and Kim at about halfway. They gave me a big cheer, and it put some extra kick in my step. I was feeling great. I picked it up for a while, like the race plan called for. But, the back half of that course has hills. It's definitely hillier than the first half. I knew at that point that I probably wasn't going to negative split. So I just decided to push it as hard as I could, and at least maintain the pace I set the first half. At this point the field was spread enough that I wasn't consistently picking people up as I was before, but I felt like I was closing distance on them. I came to the 10k mark, and I was starting to feel the race in my legs a bit, but I knew the biggest climbs were behind me, I just had to keep pushing. Mary and Kim came by again on their bikes about as I came to the lat water station. There was a girl a little way up, and she yelled something about not getting chicked. I didn't actually hear her, but I saw her point, and the look on her face was all it took to get me to kick it up a notch. Scary! I came up on a small group as we neared the park, and we really started racing. Again, I gained ground on the climbs, but gave up a little on the descents. Luckily there's a decent climb from the last turn towards the finish, and I had enough kick to hold my spot on the last little downhill to the finish. I crossed in 1:02:45, which put me at about the same pace I held for Johnny's over almost twice the distance. I was really happy. Especially considering where I was last year with my running. I'm really getting to the point where I'm enjoying it. I'm sick of giving up places on the run, I can't watit to see how the season shapes up!
Monday I had a crazy day! I did my tutoring hours in the morning, went to class 12-1, then basically ran to my car, and changed while driving to make my bike fit appointment appointment in Geneva at 2. RIT -> Geneva transit time: 50 minutes, pretty darn good! The bike fit was amazing. Chad was great. Geneva definitely gained a customer for life there. He went through my flexibility and such, and apparently for a guy I had good flexibility, and no other issues to consider for the fitting. My seat got moved forward, and up. My cockpit was too low too. He tried to just add spacers to pick up the armrests, but didn't have long enough machine screws to run all the way through 25mm of spacers, and my basebar. So we ended up fitting a new stem. Same length, more angle, pulled my front end up and back a little. He also tweaked my cleats a little bit. The end result was amazing. I feel like I could live in the aero position now. I'm more comfortable, and just as aero, and excited to see how it feels on the road.
I'm finishing up with my powerlab teaching (a two day lab marathon for people who can't fit the regular weekly schedule), and have a two hour run on tap for later today. Tomorrow I have a 4ish hour ride that I'm going to do with Mary, and some others. It should be fun! That'll be the longest I've been out on the road in a long long time. It's supposed to be like mid 60s! It'll pretty much be amazing. Period. Well that's all I have for now.
106 days to go! (this means I should check in next Friday for the 100 day celebration!)
I was the only team member going into spring forward rested. I just came off of a recovery week, and everyone else was in their blocks. I got there about 45 minutes early, grabbed my timing chip, had Amanda pin my number, and started getting ready to go. I was excited! With 30min to the start I went out for a short warm-up, just to get my legs moving, and loosened up. I didn't make it far before I ran into Mary and Kim on their mountain bikes. They were talking to Don while he did his hardcore car warm up. After chatting for a bit I put in mile or so easy, then headed back to Amanda to get ready for the start. We headed over towards the start line and joined up with the rest of the Train-this group. We all got to hear about Alexa's issues, and her awesome gel pocket in her shorts. The race plan from Mary was pretty similar to the Johnny's plan. Take out the first half at a good effort pace, but she wanted us to hit the 4.5 mile mark ready to pick it up for the second half. I'm pretty sure not many of us were really able to do this. I started off well. Alexa and I had to do some offroading, because we started further back than we should have. Just a quick note here, if you're running a race please don't line up in the front and proceed to walk. In the future, I will be lining up much closer to the front. It didn't take too long to find some space, and I spotted Tim up ahead. I decided that I didn't want to spend all day chasing him, like I did at Johnny's, so I decided to get up with him. We ran pretty much together for a while in the first 5k. He was having some trouble with the hills, and I ended up pulling away. I was happy with my ability to pretty consistently pick off people ahead of me on the climbs. I have some trouble picking it up on the downhill though. It was enough to not really get caught though.
I saw Mary and Kim at about halfway. They gave me a big cheer, and it put some extra kick in my step. I was feeling great. I picked it up for a while, like the race plan called for. But, the back half of that course has hills. It's definitely hillier than the first half. I knew at that point that I probably wasn't going to negative split. So I just decided to push it as hard as I could, and at least maintain the pace I set the first half. At this point the field was spread enough that I wasn't consistently picking people up as I was before, but I felt like I was closing distance on them. I came to the 10k mark, and I was starting to feel the race in my legs a bit, but I knew the biggest climbs were behind me, I just had to keep pushing. Mary and Kim came by again on their bikes about as I came to the lat water station. There was a girl a little way up, and she yelled something about not getting chicked. I didn't actually hear her, but I saw her point, and the look on her face was all it took to get me to kick it up a notch. Scary! I came up on a small group as we neared the park, and we really started racing. Again, I gained ground on the climbs, but gave up a little on the descents. Luckily there's a decent climb from the last turn towards the finish, and I had enough kick to hold my spot on the last little downhill to the finish. I crossed in 1:02:45, which put me at about the same pace I held for Johnny's over almost twice the distance. I was really happy. Especially considering where I was last year with my running. I'm really getting to the point where I'm enjoying it. I'm sick of giving up places on the run, I can't watit to see how the season shapes up!
Monday I had a crazy day! I did my tutoring hours in the morning, went to class 12-1, then basically ran to my car, and changed while driving to make my bike fit appointment appointment in Geneva at 2. RIT -> Geneva transit time: 50 minutes, pretty darn good! The bike fit was amazing. Chad was great. Geneva definitely gained a customer for life there. He went through my flexibility and such, and apparently for a guy I had good flexibility, and no other issues to consider for the fitting. My seat got moved forward, and up. My cockpit was too low too. He tried to just add spacers to pick up the armrests, but didn't have long enough machine screws to run all the way through 25mm of spacers, and my basebar. So we ended up fitting a new stem. Same length, more angle, pulled my front end up and back a little. He also tweaked my cleats a little bit. The end result was amazing. I feel like I could live in the aero position now. I'm more comfortable, and just as aero, and excited to see how it feels on the road.
I'm finishing up with my powerlab teaching (a two day lab marathon for people who can't fit the regular weekly schedule), and have a two hour run on tap for later today. Tomorrow I have a 4ish hour ride that I'm going to do with Mary, and some others. It should be fun! That'll be the longest I've been out on the road in a long long time. It's supposed to be like mid 60s! It'll pretty much be amazing. Period. Well that's all I have for now.
106 days to go! (this means I should check in next Friday for the 100 day celebration!)
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