Monday, November 30, 2009

Turkey Day and Torture Device







Long time, no post.

No particular reason; not feeling particularly inspired (or uninspired). Just not posting. You know how that goes.

Thanksgiving has come and gone in a BLINK. Hubby and I hosted this year. Served turkey and stuffing to 17 friends and family in total.

Warren's son spend the holiday with his mom, but we had the great honor of having his daughter, her fiancee and one of their friends join us for dinner. That really was very nice.

Our good golf friends, Paul and Deb, also joined us for dinner. They don't have other family here in Minneapolis, so we invited them to join the madness at our house. It was great to have them with us.

The other really cool part of the day is that Daughter and Fiancee both ran their very first 5K Thanksgiving morning! They joined Hubby, my great running pals Mary, Marcia, Gary and Marty and their families, me and 12,000 other runners at the TurkeyDay 5K held in downtown Minneapolis.


It was a blast and everyone did well. I'm very proud of them all for getting out there and getting hooked by the running bug.



Hubby and I had the rest of the weekend off. Slept late; ate leftovers; visited friends; slept some more. It was perfect.


Today, back to work and back to base training in earnest.

I took my base test with Coach Dan at SCS Multisport. I have some minor corrections to work on with my swim; a ton of work to do to increase power and endurance on the bike; and a few things to work on with my run, not the least of which is SPEED.

I decided to have him start sending me workouts now (which is just a polite way of saying I'll pay him to torture me). I've been enjoying my workouts waaaay too much lately, which just means I have not been working out with any amount of real effort.

He started me out today with 2050 yards in the pool, working on some drills and some builds; then I spent 40 minutes on my torture device, er I mean bike trainer.




YEEEECCCCCH.

Now I know that I'll have to become friends with my bike trainer, as I'll be sitting in the saddle a lot over the winter.

It is amazing how much tougher it is to ride the trainer than it is to ride outside.

But ride I will, whenever Coach Dan tells me to.

Looks like the long journey to Ironman Wisconsin has officially begun!

Friday, November 13, 2009

Exciting times for blogger friends

Several of my blogging friends have completed some big events recently:

Dori ran NY Marathon. She has YET to post her race report, but we did talk to each other shortly after she finished the race. Dori and I have been friends for many years. She is the one who got me in to blogging in the first place. . I am anxiously awaiting her blog update.

Waddler, now known as IRON WADDLER, completed the Beach2Battleship iron distance event last weekend. She wrote a really great race report about her experience which was interesting, inspiring and encouraging. (I like reading reports where people talk about the good stuff and the hard stuff. This definitely helps my mental prep for what I may expect during IM WI 2010).

TriSharkie did B2B too and had a very interesting 'heartfelt' experience...

Nancy Toby did the 1/2 Iron at B2B. She also wrote a great race and travel report.

Slimdown 220 did Ironman Florida. Another great job.

Beth wrote about her experience as an Iron/Spectator now IronWife. Her husband also did Ironman Florida. I'm looking forward to reading her husband's guest blog entry soon.

Sunshine posted some great pics and stories about her experience at the OBX Marathon.

Nat went through her pre-training tests with the coach we'll both be using. I won't tell you what she said in emails to me...I'll wait for her to update everyone via her blog.

My non-blogging friend Mary took her son to New York City to help celebrate their birthdays. No official running events involved, but running that city with a teenage boy? She deserves a medal for sure!

Me? I traveled this week to San Francisco where I walked a lot (but did not run, swim or bike). I've been successful at avoiding chocolate covered peanuts for over a week now. Both of my updates are exciting, but not nearly as exciting as those of my rockin' blogger friends.

CONGRATS to ALL!

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Monster Birthdays



Yesterday morning, birthday girls Nat and Mary, Marcia, Gary, me, Brenda, Heather and Jill all ran in one of the Monster events. Nat did the 1/2 marathon; the rest of us did the 10-miler.

The morning was plenty "crisp" (a Minnesota-way to say "cold") and windy, but the events were very fun.

Although none of us had the same sort of fantastic finish as our friend Steve, we were all happy to have finished and happier to go out to eat after the race.

I ran pretty well for where I am with my running. After struggling to "fall in love" with it again, I really am enjoying being out there and am feeling like I'm getting stronger.

I ran from mile 1.5 to 6 with Heather, Brenda and Jill, who were running each mile to the mile marker and then taking a 1 minute walk break. This pushed my pattern of LSD 6/1 a bit, which was good for me.

At mile 6 I dropped back a bit and took a couple extra walk breaks, but still finished in under 2 hours (barely), which was my goal.



After the race, we all went out for a quick breakfast. Hubby, Marcia's hubby Marty and Mary's love, Tom joined us.

I brought some cupcakes for dessert to help celebrate birthdays. (The real reason is that I love cake and will look for any and every excuse to eat it.... -- no really, it is because I love my friends and wanted them to feel special and so I could eat cake.... No, really....)






Re: Ironman stuff:

No swimming for the week. I was under the weather for a few days and didn't make it in to the pool. Nat and I will start going to a Masters swim group in a couple weeks, so that will help keep me get in to a pattern.

I finally set up my bike trainer and spent a whopping full HOUR on it last week. That was much tougher than I thought. Plan is to be on it three times in the coming week.

I am sure there will be a week/day/moment when these words will come back to haunt me, but I sort of wish I was really in training already. I'm getting antzy and lazy. (Anxious to start and feeling like taking a nap, all at the same time.)

That every happen to you?