An End to the work week

Today is my Friday this week, thanks to furlough- or not. I would much rather still be on a 9/80 schedule, these days I get to work 72 hrs of an 80 hr bi-week. Yes I get every other Friday off, and yes it is great that I am still employed. My only bitch is that my running funds are getting very low. Lets all hope for more reasons than this the economy will pick up sooner than later. So tomorrow I will hit the gym in the am for a spin class and then make my way to MD Anderson to visit a friend. Tonight's workout includes a 5 mile run on the treadmill (cause who really wants to run in 98 degree weather) and a make up swim class from when I went to Costa. I am thinking about drinking a few beers after this workout.

Wednesday night w/o 30 mins upper body strength training and 30 mins swim.

KILLER Track Workout

Track work out was a killer but I made it through.

Lactate reps, 10x400
Lactate repeats. Warm up 1.5. Then 10 x 400m fast (recover 30-45 seconds). Now I am just guessing when I say this but I am am about 100% sure of this. It was 94 degrees at 6:45 when my warm up started. And about 93 at 7:45 when the work out was finished. Warm up was about 10:15 pace. 2:06 2:05 2:01 1:56 1:58 1:57 1:58 2:08 1:58and finally 1:58. Finished at 9:01 overall pace including w/u. Not bad for me in this heat. 1 x 400 WALKING c/d. I guess I was somewhat consistent except for 8 but either I slowed down or I was going to puke and with feeling kind of shitty anyway I did not want to puke my guts too. By the time I walked my 400 I was feeling much better. I am still waiting for October to get get here where some of our track workouts will be 75. Living in Texas is great but it so "effen" HOT and HUMID here.

Apologies to Coach Bill and Coach K, I will defiantly be more careful what I post on my blog. In my defence the work I was talking about making up Friday is a strength and cross training w/o not a RUN workout.

Also on this day I broke the news to my runner partner that I will be adjusting my "long" run schedule. Starting real soon I will be running long on Saturday's. Also with this change I hope to be adding bike rides on Sunday so that I can A.) Learn to ride my bike and B.)Get ready for my FIRST sprint Tri in October. I am only testing the waters but everyone tells me that I will fall in love. Oh and I have finally come to terms with this race will be in Sugarland and not in Clear Lake. Thanks to Shellie and Gena who did not want me to show up in the wrong city on race day.

Earlier in the day my boss informed me he was leaving the company, which makes me nervous. The oilfield as every other industry is hurting in the times, but my boss has done a wonderful job of holding our group together. He will be hard to replace and will be missed dearly by all of us. Good Luck LU. Hopefully our VP will bring us somebody as great as him.

Well that was my Tuesday, it was great, crazy and hard all in one.

Hope to see you on the roads!

1st day of training crash and burn

I woke up yesterday feeling a bit under the weather, hoping that by the end of the day I would get in my workout. NOPE did not happen, after work I still felt like dog poo so I opted to take some meds and the night off. This morning I feeling better so I am hoping this lasts through the day and I can get through my LT repeats track workout tonight. Since I took the day off yesterday I plan to get in my Monday workout on the regular scheduled day off which will be Friday.

Scheduled w/o today: Planned distance: 4.0 miles
Lactate repeats. Warm up 1.5 = 2 miles + 2-3 strides. Then 10 x 400m fast (recover 30-45 seconds). With c/d.

Hope to see you on the roads!

Here we go....

So today is my first official day of marathon training. The cross training days will be fewer and the run days will multiply. Just so happens that Monday is a cross training day and strength day. The workout plan is 30 mins of strength training and 60 min cycle class. I am ready for my mojo to kick in, I was hoping for it this Sunday on my long run and everything about that run was CRAP. But today is a new day and what happened yesterday is gone. Did not count anyway right!

Hope to see you on the roads!

My swim

For some reason the first 10 mins I get in the water, I freak out or something. I end up fighting the water, forgetting to breath and end up with a very elevated heart rate. As soon as I calm down I am fine. Any words of advice as to how to get over this?

Swim 30 mins drills, freestyle and back stroke. Also tried a few flips (now that was really funny).

Marathon Training Begins

This week we are wrapping up a session of Strive, it has been a great 12 weeks. The new session begins on July 27th and I am really looking forward to getting started on my marathon training. The last 12 weeks I have been spending my Tuesday nights at the track with the "tri" group. This is an amazing group of men and women that have amazing abilities in multi-sport. They range in all ages and have helped me realize that no matter age/gender or athletic ability that I can do anything I put my mind to. On Sundays I usually spend my mornings on long runs with old and new friends from WF and TWRC. These individuals like Team Strive all have so many accomplishments and have all inspired me to be the best that I can be. So thank you to all the new/old friends I have met in the running community over the past 2-1/2 yrs, you all have helped me become the "athlete" I am today.

So starting this weekend the mileage on Sundays will go up & I will be adding more days of running. So bring on the marathon training season.

Monday- spin class 60 mins
Tuesday- 1 mile warm up; 6 x 100's (hard effort) with 300 moderate recovery

Hope to see you on the roads

Photos from Costa

I did not run during my vacation, but I tried to remain active between eating and alcohol consumption.

Hiking at Rincon de la Vieja. We hiked on a beautiful trail, very much like "Sunmart trails". This was very much an up/down hike that includes waterfalls, boiling mud pits and hot springs.

Me and Logan getting geard up for the Jungle canopy tour, we propelled 11 zip lines, the longest zipline was 400m. I don't even want to know how high we were off the ground. We even saw some white faced monkeys in tress.

Yummy food and drinks in Costa Rica.

Paddle boats are not "that" fun in the ocean when the tide is going out. My legs were killing me after 25 mins.

Fun with family and beautiful coast line. One of the best vacations I have ever been!

Back from Vaca!

I am back from vacation but defiantly not back in the swing of things. As you all know it is difficult getting back to everyday normal life after a vacation. I am happy with the fact that I only had a 2 day work week to come back to, making things much easier. My training of coarse suffered a bit while in Costa but some fun exercising did exist. Now that I am back stateside I will ease back into the norm. We arrived late on Tuesday due to storms in Houston causing me to miss my track workout. Wednesday I managed to peel myself out of bed for a cycling class at the gym, in the evening I went to swim class and got in about 300 yds.

I will try to get photos of my Costa trip uploaded to share with you. This photo was taken outside the airport in Liberia. My brother, mom, ME, sis-in law and her little sister. More about the Costa Adventures to come this weekend.