She ran so fast, and she ran so far!

Here's to the end of recovery week, and the beginning of strength block number 2! I had the luxury of my recovery week lining up with my break week from school, so it was a true recovery week! I went in to the lab a couple times to get some research done, but mostly stayed home and relaxed. Watched Phineas and Ferb on netflix, a lot.

I had a swim test yesterday. I was happy with my results. I didn't get to be one of the billion members of my team who lowered their T-Time though. Not that I particularly want my T-Time lowered. I know that sounds bad, but I feel like my current T-Time is a good fit. I think moving it down the next notch would leave me having to puke at the end of longer sets like 5x200s. I'm pretty close to that next level though. I just need to lower my average for those 2x400s a few seconds, so maybe in a month or two I'll be there, who knows. I also always seem to have trouble pacing those 400s. I take the first 100 out too fast, and I know that impacts my finish. If I could just slow that one down a few seconds, I think I would see my overall time drop. Maybe it's just mental though. Yesterday I felt amazing taking out the first 100 of the test. I felt smooth, strong, and was really feeling the water (something that had been lacking lately). I also didn't wear the drag suit (which I don't for my swim tests, just every other time). Anyways, I felt amazing, then I made the mistake of looking at the pace clock as I came into the 100yd turn. I love RIT's digital pace clocks on the sides of the pool, but sometimes I think I'd be better off not knowing. I went into the test with a plan. I'd hold one pace, that I know I can maintain for the first 300, then let loose on that last one. Didn't happen. I went into that turn and saw I was running 7 seconds faster than that pace. Seven seconds may not seem all that significant, but it's like 11% faster than planned. That got in my head, well, I let it get in my head. And I'm sure that made that last 400 hurt a lot more than it would have otherwise. Anyways, I'm happy with the results, but I know I can do better.

 The true highlight of my recovery week cam Thursday, when I got a massage! Thank you Amanda! She bought me one for valentines day, and I decided I wanted to wait for my next recovery week to use it. It was definitely worth it. I've always thought of massage as more of a luxury relaxation type thing. But I really see it's value from a body maintenance perspective now. Apparently swim/bike/running for like 16 hours a week takes its toll on your musculature. The massage really helped smooth things out. Since the summer, I've had this nagging pain in my shoulder, that is fine when I swim, but keeps me from catching and throwing all the well in water polo. Thursday night at polo after the massage, pain free. Completely. Yay! Now I just need to slowly work back to shooting for real.

Today was another great part of the week! I mentored for No Boundaries this morning from GVP, and I convinced Amanda to come along so that she could go for a short run after. She loved helping out with the program. After, she wanted to check out the course for Johnny's next weekend. I was thinking that it would be a nice easy run around 10min/miles or so. Nope. She killed it. Took it out pretty slow from GVP through U or R, but she kept creeping up the pace. By the time we got to Ford Street we were running 8:40s, and then we went down past Corn Hill and turned around, 8:30s. Back over Ford St, and along back towards U of R. I look at my watch 7:56. WHAT? Where did this girl learn to run? I know she's been at the gym like crazy lately, but I had not idea she could do that! She ran the last two miles right at 8s. So much for an easy run for me, I was definitely in zone 2 for the last two miles. I'm excited to see how she does next weekend, and at the half marathon a the end of next month. Her goal is under two hours, I think she's going to nail it. She was pretty excited about her performance today, and the title of this post is a little song she made up about it. Next weekend you should ask her to sing it for you.

That covers pretty much everything I have to talk about. Other notables are I'm super pumped for Placid Training camp, and our new team water bottles and visors that are coming soon!

141 Days!

I'm alive!

I'm back!

It's been a while since I posted last. Life has been kind of crazy lately. I ended up missing a couple workouts this week due to said craziness. Basically, towards the end of last week, my thesis adviser let me know that he wouldn't be around next quarter, and that I should schedule my second oral exam (a progress report for when you're about 75ish% done with your thesis) for the end of the break week, or possible week 1 of spring. I thought, cool, there's some more data that I wanted to have before presenting, so that would give me plenty of time to get and go over this data to figure out what it was telling me. Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon, when my adviser emails me to say "We should schedule your second oral exam, I will be available Thursday afternoon." Wait, what? Two days? Can I do this in two days? Answer: HELLS YEAH! Basically all day Wednesday getting all of the data that I needed for the presentation, then Thursday night/morning making the presentation. Then I realized I was supposed to do the design meeting 3:30-5 at lululemon Thursday afternoon. I had been looking forward to this, it seemed like it was going to be fun. My oral exam was scheduled for 2pm. It should be about 45-50 minutes of presenting, then maybe half an hour of my thesis committee discussing whether I passed or not. I should be able to easily make it by 4, so I emailed the lululemon girl to let her know that I would probably be late. I thought I could do both. That hope/illusion passed when I finally finished my presentation at 3:45, and my committee still needs to talk. Damn. Oh well. I passed! On two days worth of prep, I'm pretty impressed with that. I had to miss a couple workouts, but as much as I hate to say it, sometimes Ironman has to take the back seat. That covers the non-tri portion of my life lately, lets move to the training.

My long rides are getting easier. Another unexpected development, is the relative absence of saddle soreness after said rides. Even so, a trip to Geneva to get fit is definitely on my to-do list, as I'm not super comfortable in the aero-position. My endurance zone is also held in a bigger gear than before too! I like seeing changes to mark my progression. Where I'm really seeing the most is on the run. This is evidenced by my long run performance yesterday. I ended up going 12.6 miles over the 1:40 I was scheduled for. I did it over a pretty hilly course outside of Canandaigua, where my parents live. It turned out to be quite the adventure. At mile 3, I was chased and bit by a dog. Then, I really didn't want to run by the dog again, so I attempted to bypass it. I got to the end of my bypass, where I would head back to my main route, and a guy who lives by my parents, and is notoriously a crazy drunk (gotta love the country folk!) has his dogs out, and they see me and go crazy. I think I'll go the other way. My route ended up becoming a giant loop. But I ended up back at my parents' house right on time! I was pretty happy about that, and the sub 8 pace I managed! As for the dog bite, I guess the owners couldn't find its vaccination records, so animal services is monitoring the dog for 10 days to make sure it's fine. I'm pretty sure I don't have rabies, but if I start foaming at the mouth, we'll all know why. Even with the dig bite, I couldn't be anything but happy with my run performance. I'm historically not a strong runner, and my 13.1 PR is 1:49. I almost ran that in 1:40 over a much hillier course. I'm pretty excited about that. Mary definitely has me doing something right. Days like that make me super excited for this summer. I'm excited to see exactly what I can do!

146 days to go!

Rough Patch

Well I think I'm past due for another update. The last a little more than a week has been pretty rough. It started last Monday. I was looking forward to a glorious (and much deserved) recovery week. I was scheduled for an easy zone 1 ride, and I was planning on doing it after I brought Amanda home from her ballet class. The day went fine, but by the time I got home, I felt like crap. I figured if there was a night to miss the ride and get to bed early, that was it. I felt guilty, but I could live with it. Cue 2am when I wake up freezing cold, and feeling awful. Try to go back to sleep, can't. Crap. I'm sick. Seriously sick. I've always had an issue with my sinuses clogging up at a moment's notice, and just generally being phlegmmy but rarely am I really really sick. Especially since I started the whole tri thing. I decided to head out and bundle up on the couch so I didn't disturb Amanda. I took my temperature. Fever. Crap! And thus began a week with the flu. I spent the next two days alternating between the couch and bed under piles of blankets, shivering. Me fever broke Wednesday night, and I continued the switching couch to bed routine, but this time because every 20 minutes I woke up drenched in sweat. Fun. I finally was feeling more human Thursday. Extremely sleep deprived, but no longer shivering constantly. I thought about the workouts I missed, sure it was recovery week, but they're still important, right? I thought it was time to get back on the bike. I just had a 40 minute recovery ride. I lasted 10 minutes. I seriously thought I was going to die. I thought HTFU Greg, what the crap? Sack up, or pack up. I collapsed on the couch, mad at myself, and my body, for not being able to do even the most trivial of workouts. I finally emailed Mary. She gave me two days off. I felt a little better, but not much.

Fast forward to Sunday. I was scheduled for an hour zone 2 run to finish out my recovery week. I took Amanda to U of R, and ran laps around campus. I finally felt okay. It was a little rough, but I finished strong. I was finally back into it. This week was a little rough trying to get everything back. I felt especially bad in the pool on Tuesday. Along with trying to catch back up with school and research. Almost two weeks later, I finally feel like I'm back on top of things. I completely owned the ironman swim set yesterday. I'm actually looking forward to getting on my bike tonight. I have 3 hours on the bike tomorrow. Along with a shorter recovery run (I'm mentoring no boundaries tomorrow, so I might count that as my recovery run).  All in all, I'm excited for this block. Excluding my recovery week, my last couple have been solid, and I'm planning on continuing that. Three weeks of strength building, I'm ready.

I finally got my lodging all worked out for IMLP as well. I'll be crashing with  my friend Corey who is doing the race, and rented a house. Huge savings! Yes!

163 Days.

Uniform Day!

It's been kind of a long week. I'm happy to have gotten to sleep in this morning. Alexa had me wanting to watch Lord of the Rings yesterday, so I watched Fellowship of the ring, then last night I was still wanting more! So, since I for some reason don't have my Two Towers DVD here, I went right on to Return of the king. But, since I didn't start it until after 8 last night, I was up to about 11 watching the first HALF. Finishing it is definitely on the agenda today. I would be watching it right now, but Amanda's still asleep. Lazy girl.

Following up from my last post, the water polo tournament went alright last weekend. I felt like I played okay, not as well as I could have, but some of that might be due to never actually having full-on real practices anymore. The night's that we're at U of R aren't great for the senior men, even though it's nice supporting their team. As for last weekends games, I'm a bit disappointed. We should have been able to stick with Kitchener-Waterloo better, maybe not win, but at least it should have been closer. I was frustrated, so I went for my 80 minute run after that game. After having ridden my bike for 2:30 in the morning, and then played two games. My legs were tired. That combined with the frigid cold last weekend, and the slushy road shoulders in Webster (come on Webster, runners need the road clear too!) I didn't perform very well for the run. I had trouble keeping my feet going well enough to keep my HR up where it probably should have been. After finishing the run, I changed up for our game against Laval. My frustrations for the last game were left our on the road, I was calmed down, and ready to give that last game what I had left. I ended up playing pretty well that game. Again, we were outworked by a better in-shape, and better practiced team. They had some great players, our team has some good players. I played well this game. I had lost a bit of the pep from my legs, but I shot well, and my defense was good. I consider that game a personal success. It was funny, after all of the hours I had in that day, I was still getting up and down the pool just fine (Thanks Mary!). That was where I definitely saw my fitness gains over the past few months. Finally Sunday morning, we had a weird kind of combined game with U of R, and the Niagara Falls team. Ostensibly the teams were pretty even. Although, I somehow ended up on the team where the better players just wanted to sit pretty much the entire time. I don't know if they figured it was just an exhibition, and didn't care or what; but every time I get in the water, I want to win, and I play to win. I don't understand why you would show up and pay the tournament entry fee if you just wanted to sit on the bench. Stay at home on your couch, it's much more comfortable, and you don't have to wear a speedo.

Anyways, on to tri related business. I'm starting to really get excited. My run pace is creeping up, my legs are getting stronger on the bike. And I'm getting more an more comfortable (if not appreciably faster) in the pool. The big news though is that I've registered for about half of my season now. At least, most of the races that are more important to me. It started earlier in the week, with me registering for the Flower City Challenge Duathlon, and Half-Marathon. I did these races last year back-to-back, and it was a blast. I'm pumped for the duathlon specifically. I did well last year, and this year, my endurance run pace is now faster than my best 5k paces were last year (When I started with Mary running was by FAR my weakest leg). I should see some good gains on the bike too. I'm also registered for the Keuka Lake Tri, which will be a new event for me (lets face it, I've only really done three tris so far, so right now, they're pretty much all new events for me). I'm excited for this one as well, plus it's close to my parent's house, so I don't have to get up early to travel to it! I'm figuring there will probably be a good number of people I know there racing, which is exciting. I also registered for tupper lake, where I'm planning on crushing my half-IM time from Musselman last year. And I'm all registered for IM 70.3 Pocono Mountains. It's one of their new 70.3 races, I wanted to experience another IM branded race (other than IMLP) but I didn't want to do Syracuse, because it conflicts with Finger Lakes Tri, which was my first race, and I love. So I decided I'd brave the October waters of Pennsylania. I had enough swim practices in the winter in high school where the pool heater was broken that I'm not all that worried about half an hour swimming a bit chilly.

I still need to register for Finger Lakes, and I'd like to register for the F1 tri in Dunkirk in August, but for now, I have to wait until I have some more money. I got the biggest ones in, so I'm happy for now. It's exciting seeing your season come together!

175 days to IMLP.

Testing Day Recap!

Sunday was a blast! It was nice suffering on the bike with everyone else, it made it a lot easier to push myself. I took it out pretty fast at the beginning, and my legs started to feel the hurt after a few minutes. I'm super competitive though, and had to keep it up. I just kept thinking to myself "you want to be an Ironman, if you can't take the hurt for half an hour, you're screwed." I was pretty pleased with the results. I know that the trainer doesn't correspond to real life, but it's nice when you see good numbers up there. I was pretty surprised at my power, I honestly didn't think that I would put up numbers anywhere near that. I'm fairly new to cycling, and although I know I have good legs (partly from water polo) I still don't really have confidence in my cycling ability.

I think one of us from the first group should thank Mary for the scheduling. It was so nice getting into the pool after sweating in the "pain cave." I was surprised with how well the swim videos came out with the Train-This Coach Cam (Trademarked, Copyrighted, and patent pending, I think). I figured it would be harder for her to keep everything in frame with the camera on the other end of the broom, in the water, with no feedback of what she's getting. Color me impressed. I'm anxious to get the analysis back, although I think I know some of what she will say. My right elbow definitely needs to come up, and I've always had trouble keeping my head down. We'll see what else Mary has to say. I'm just glad she didn't fall in!

The best/most interesting part of the day was lunch at the vegan cafe. I wasn't too adventurous, I just got corn chowder and and a spinach salad. It was good, especially the chowder. I loved meeting everybody. I sat next to Stephanie, David, and the Debs. They're some of the nicest people I've met! I can't wait for more team activities, it was great.

This weekend I have a water polo tournament. I'm pretty excited, I think there's only going to be one real game, against Kitchener-Waterloo. I'm planning on getting up early Saturday to get in my ride, then heading over to Webster to help set up the pool. Then I'll get my run in somewhere between games. If any Train-Thisers are curious about what water polo's all about you're more then welcome to come check out some games! Let me know, and I can tell you when the Rochester team's playing. That's all I have for now.

186 days to IMLP.
192 until the wedding!

Testing weekend!

I don't have too much to say, other than I rocked my 2 hours on the bike today. My legs are currently a bit wobbly, but I'm glad to know that they can handle the time pretty well. I was expecting the last 30 minutes of tempo to be tougher, but I think I did pretty well. Now I'm recovering a little bit before heading down to Canandaigua for 80 minutes of running.

Birthday party for my aunt this evening in Bloomfield, and belated Christmas party tomorrow afternoon with Amanda's family round out the weekend, but I am by far most excited about the Train-this testing extravaganza tomorrow morning in Syracuse. So far I only know Alexa, and Mary, and met Don once at the pool,  so I'm excited to meet more teammates! I'm also anxious to see my swim analysis, I know that since high school my stroke mechanics have gotten much better, but I don't really have any idea of what I need to work on. If I had to guess though, it's going to be my right arm, and Mary might have something to say about my weird arrhythmic kick. We'll see tomorrow! It's time to pack up the bike now! I'll check back in afer the testing to relay how it goes.

Today is 190 days out.

Who has two thumbs, and forgot they made a blog? THIS GUY!

So this morning I did the Ironman swim set. Everyone who's done this so far has complained about it, but like I texted Mary after I finished, I have to go and be "that guy". I liked this set a lot. Surprisingly a lot. I only had 50 minutes, instead of the hour I was assigned, but I made it through the 2500 straight swim, rocking 1:15s per 100 for everything but my warm up 500. The kick is what people seem to like the least, I didn't mind. I don't like to kick with fins, because my feet cramp like crazy, so I went without. I just puttered along steady descending each 200. I don't remember exactly my splits at this point, but the first was like 2:30ish (for 100), and I shaved about 5 seconds each 200 after that.I think that it helped that I ran into my buddy Mike at the pool. He played water polo at U of R for a while, and now does tris, and is a wicked good swimmer. It helps having someone to work to keep up with, although he lost me after about 2000.

So for the rest of the day I have lab from 12-6 (hopefully I will finish this early), an hour run, then two hours of water polo practice at Webster tonight. Finally getting home and crashing at like 9:30.


I have things to really look forward to the next two weekends too! I have testing in Syracuse this Sunday, and a water polo tournament in Webster the 22nd and 23rd. These will be fun! I'm looking forward to meeting all of my train-this teammates Sunday, hopefully I can keep up with them on the bike. I'm really excited for the polo tournament the next weekend. I'm in much better shape than I have been for years, and I feel like I'm going to rip it up!

I'll end with the last thing I'm excited about. I made up a race schedule for this season. I'm really excited about it, and I'm excited that Mary thought it was awesome. now I just need to find the funds to register for these races. Here's the list:

04-30-11  River Challenge Duathlon
05-01-11  Flower City Half Marathon
05-28-11  Fly By Night Duathlon
06-05-11  Keuka Lake Tri
06-25-11  Tupper Lake Tinman (Alexa, if you read this I stole this idea from you, closer = cheaper!)
07-16-11  mini-Mussel Sprint
07-24-11  IMLP!
08-27-11  Tri Dunkirk F1 (this is a hopeful, not positive on whether I can or not yet)
09-18-11  Finger Lakes Tri (I thought about doing the syracuse 70.3, but FLT is where it all started for me)
10-02-11  IM 70.3 Poconos
11-05-11  Mendon Trail Runs 50k


That's the plan, I'm hoping I can do it all!

I'm going to try to update a little more often than once a month.