Weekly Review

I am sitting at the computer half asleep and half energized about my bike ride today. I had to venture off without Chris today due to our weekend scheduling conflicts. I took the day off from work. Today's ride was 3 1/2 hours and like an idiot, I went straight for the hills around our area. I haven't done much outdoor riding for the past few weeks. I figured it was time to make myself work hard. I did just that.. doing our Brea loop ride with various hill repeats thrown in to make me suffer even more. Self inflicted suffering... what was I thinking?

I covered 47 miles and didn't quite get in 3 1/2 hours. It was more like 3:10. It was slow going up these rather steep hills. I kept telling myself this was a good thing. But, in the end, my legs were shot. Could the day before have something to do with that? Thursday, we ran 11 miles. Of course, it was supposed to be the slow long run for the week. But somehow we managed to push the pace to 9:14 per mile. OK, stop mocking us, I know that's a pedestrian pace for some of you but plenty fast enough for us.

Maybe the workout on Wednesday could have also contributed to my fatique today. Wednesday, we did our 2800 yards in the pool which for me is like a root canal without novacaine. If that weren't enough, we followed the swim immediately with a 5 mile hill run. It took us 43 minutes and we knocked this all out before 6:30 AM.

Tuesday was a bit more civilized with only a 25 minute run followed by a 1 hour spin class. We push ourselves hard in the class though. In fact, we take the bikes in the very back of the class so the instructor won't be able to see that we aren't doing one routine she is barking out. I bet spin instructors really hate people like us. Oh well....

Monday, the start of the week was the easiest of them all. Only 1 hour in the pool covering 3200 yards. The only hard part about this workout was the call time. My alarm clock went off at 3:45 AM and I begin to drink clorinated pool water at 4:30 am. There are lots of open lanes in the pool if anyone out there would like to join us.

So, in the end, this weekend will end the last week of another 'build' phase of our training. What that means exactly is anyone's guess but it sure makes me sound smart using the term. Thankfully, next week is our recovery week and we will have 3 days off. You gotta love recovery weeks.

Some things to look for this coming week: Monday, we will be doing our first VO2 Max test conducted by Pepper Erlinger and her fine company. Chris and I had this done six months ago but we wanted to re-evaluate our base line before too far into the training. Tuesday, we will be dunked into a tub for our body fat evaluation. Again, not new for us, but something we wanted to benchmark early into the training cycle. Chris would be actually writing his own blog today but I understand he has retreated to some fitness spa for the weekend trying to rid himself of those final fat pockets. We will be filming both of these sessions so stay tuned for what might NOT be a pleasant site. You might want to restrict young children from viewing these videos.

Lastly, I'd like to report about our first class encounter with Ms. Kato's amazing 7th and 8th graders from Villa Fundamental Intermediate School. They have 'Adopted' us as their athletes for the semester. We have some really great plans for our visits to the classroom. This time, we played a short Ironman video to show them what it is we do. In addition, we introduced ourselves, gave them a course outline for the semester and all our fun activities planned, shared with them our IMLP goals and some of the steps needed along the way to ensure we are successful.

After that, we introduced the SMART goal setting concept. Our purpose was to have each student develop one health or fitness goal they would like to accomplish by the end of the semester. Next time we meet, we will help them finalize their goal, identify their personal obstacles that might get in their way, and give them individual action steps needed to get them to their desired result. Each time we come back, we will review with them our progress on our IMLP goal and do the same with theirs. At the end of the semester in June, we will celebrate their successes with a huge class party. We are so excited that Ms. Kato and the principal, Mrs. Miller, gave us this opportunity to interact with these outstanding students. What better way to share our love of triathlon with young students and to hopefully, touch their lives in a positive way. We can't wait to share our next visit results with you.

I've had it... my eyes are closing and it is only 4 PM. Take care and thank you for following our journey and for supporting our cause.