Monday 033009 3 miles, 7 miles

• AM - easy, in the snow, wake up run.  3 miles.  25 minutes.  Achilles continues to slowly make its way back.  I am feeling the "love" of not running for eight days though ... 
• PM - treadmill.  7 miles 50 minutes.  Started loosening up a bit so I played with the pace up to 6:18 (started at 8 mph).  I have definitely lost a touch of the go from some of my mill workouts last month, but no sweat. 

Friday 041108

I packed the bike in the car but then a front in blew in so it was off to the Rec Center for the afternoon.  I decided I wanted to swim first, but when I got to the center, I saw the pool was going to close at 3PM for a HS swim meet.   It was 2:35.  I knew this meant they'd start fishing folks out of the pond at 2:50.  Oh well ... 10 minutes and 500m later I got the "look" and jumped out.

I am taking about a minute per 50 meter lap (2 lengths).  Each length is about 24 strokes for me (both arm count).  I usually only look to the left for each breath, and I take a breath with each stroke.  I watched the swim meet kids and they were taking about the same number of strokes, but were moving a lot faster (of course).  I could use a lot of work to get more efficient here ... but mentally, I'd need to wrap my head around that ... to force it to be a habit.

Onto the stationary bike ... easy spinning (90RPM +) for an hour.  18 for the supposed distance.  I followed this up with about 10 minutes of jump rope, interspersed with some weight machine work.

I realize for a lot of folks they'd not even post this training.  I am doing it to keep track ... and to a certain extent, to keep motivated ... of my cross training.

I jogged one lap on the indoor track.  Same lower ab issues.  :(

Wednesday 040908

Various tidbits ...

• I heard a great interview last night on the bike ride home.  Check it out.
• JV had a great run up Sanitas yesterday.  He is stoked and ought to be.
• Bill Buckner, who has been abused for years because people forgot baseball is just a game, got the honor of throwing out the first pitch at the home opener in Fenway yesterday.  Remember folks, these things are just games. 
• TG has a great post today  ... on going under the knife.  Good luck my brother of an other mother.  Your humor in light of this is nothing short of awesome and inspirational.

TWK - the news you got today just outright sucks.  But I am happy that you are in a position where you can choose to look at it positively

I am getting a bit concerned about my my groin, lower abdominal region.  The general pain has subsided from being a loud concern, but it has not gotten any better than that for a couple of days.  It is this sort of nagging thing. I have a PT appointment for it next week, but I don't really have high expectations of that.  This concerns me because ... well, maybe I find that this is a bigger issue and it just ain't healed up in 2 weeks.   What then?  (refer to comment above about it being a game I guess?).  I have been wondering if I could get by on some sort of alternative training that mixes cross training, hard running up hill efforts a couple days a week, and dropping extra miles.  I was thinking of joining Lucho for his MAF run this Friday, but I am going to have to pass. 

I have noticed that I am letting my work slip more into my life lately.  I need to correct that.  I start taking energy that I put into running and transfer it to work.  Now, in the short term this is not that big of a deal, but over a longer term, it actually makes me more ineffective at work.  As jacked as this sounds, I get to a point where I focus or put in energy in to the of a detriment.  I actually do better when I don't put some much into my job.  Kind of sad, but it is true.  I think the best analogy I have heard is to that of a baseball batter.  When a batter is in a slump, they start trying harder to hit the ball, and they become totally ineffective in hitting the ball.  It is better if they just relax and let the hitting come to them.  There is probably something about this with training as well, but I have not quite figured out what that sweet spot is for me in that arena.

Headed over to the local rec center for the typical mental abuse as of late.  70 minutes of biking on the stationary bike.  Again, I don't really know what it means, if anything, but the distance was north of 21 this time.  Phil told me these distances don't correlate to anything in the real world, and that the resistance has nothing to do with the distance ... it is just the revs that do.  I did do 15 x 1 minute on, 1 minute off in the middle of this, and then followed it with a 5 minute sustained session to get in 20 minutes of harder work.   I kept the easy spinning at 95 or better and then did the harder stuff at 115 to 130.  All in all, a good sweat.  After the bike I did some triceps work and some pull ups (nothing significant with the weights though today)

I then hit the pool for an other 15 minutes of swimming for ... I don't know, maybe 800 yards?  I am such a moron in the pool.  I wandered into a lane and started swimming.  This other guy who was in the lane asked me if I wanted to share the lane ... after we had been swimming at opposite ends of it for nearly 3 or 4 minutes.  I felt like an idiot, as there was obviously some protocol of courtesy that I had missed.  This swimming was NOT easy.  While I got in fifteen minutes of it, I am sad to report it was not continuous.    I also found that regardless if I was trying to swim fast or slow, my stroke count per length were nearly the same.  I think that tells me that when I try to swim faster, I actually get more inefficient.

AS dorky as it sounds, I do some degree of people watching when I am at the rec center.  I find myself looking at the person on the StairMaster and wondering what they are training for, or why are they doing that.  Why is that guy swimming in a pool for an hour?  Why is that woman sitting in the dry sauna with sweats on?   It ain't "normal" behavior to do these things.  It usually requires some degree of hope, fear or love to motivate and drive us to do such insane things.   I want to know their stories, and what their motivations ... but of course I don't ask.  Yet.

I then did 15 minutes in the dry sauna to clear my head a bit.  I don't feel deeply worked from these cross training sessions, but I am aware I am accomplishing something.  I feel a good buzz like I had been playing ... but not like I have really done anything deep from a training perspective.  I am definitely missing running.  When I came out of the rec center, post picking up KZ from jump rope, it had rained ... the air tasted great, birds were singing ... I wish I could be buzzing with the wind in my ears out there.