On Friday morning at 7AM the countdown timer ticked off less than 100 days until Ironman Lake Placid. Hard to believe it is just over 3 months to go. The hard training is about to begin and the races are beginning. Next week I will be running the St. Lukes Lehigh Valley Half Marathon with my wife as she does her first half-marathon. The week after will be the first triathlon of the season with the NJ Devilman Half-Lite tri in Cedarville, NJ. Should be a good race to get me feet wet for the season. The distance falls somewhere between a Olympic distance and a half-iron distance event(800m swim, 40mi bike, and a 8.8 mile run). A bit odd, but should be a good practice for pacing and nutrition for the Rev3 Quassy Half in June.
Another recovery week is down the tubes. I am really starting to dislike recovery weeks very much these days. I know they are critical, but ugh…I always feel crappy. Monday was fine with a easy swim, but Tuesday I started feeling a bit off. I had a 1:15 bike on Tuesday night and I just felt pretty blah. Of course the winds were blowing again which always makes things fun. I can’t remember the last time I rode my bike and there were calm winds. Fortunately they were from the west and I could ride them tailwind home.
I did manage to get in some more strength training and functional work in again. Two weeks in a row! Imagine that? I think I was motivated by how sore I was from the previous week and the best way to remedy that is to “bite the dog that bit ya.” I lowered the weights a bit until I get back in the swing again, but feels good and I can feel a difference in my training.
Speaking of dogs, on Wednesday I had to take our dog Yuki, to the groomer in Macungie. I managed to squeeze in a 40 minute run looping around the Willow Lane School. The run was tortuous. Not because of the terrain, but more due to my legs feeling like concrete. It was also pretty warm out and I don’t think I am quite adjusted to that yet.
One item of interest was this little sign posted at the front of the elementary school were I had parked. Apparently it is ok to poison the kids with nasty chemicals during school hours but not at other times. WTF?! Seriously? Why the hell do you have to spray toxic chemicals around kids to begin with? Is this necessary? Why don’t yet let the kids out for 15 minutes a day and have them pull some weeds instead? So not only do they poison these kids with their nutritionally deficient lunches, but they also get them with hazardous chemicals. I am sure the FDA has approved these as safe since the FDA is mostly comprised of people that used to work for the chemical company that made them. Ok that is my rant on that for now. Good thing I don’t have kids!
Thursday was a rest day. Well, not totally. I have been really getting in the quality time with the Wifey these days since she has been training for the Half-Marathon and we are able to coordinate some runs together. I also went to a “Yin” yoga class with her on Thursday night which was actually pretty cool. Yin yoga is pretty easy and consists of long, slow stretching poses. It was a great addition for a recovery day and helped work out a few kinks. I would definitely consider doing that again, although the time would be a stretch when I typically have a bike ride that night.
On Friday was my typical long, slow swim. I ended up getting a massage afterwards which was great. Got to take full advantage of these recovery weeks right? I think that put me well on the road to recovering that’s for sure. Afterwards I headed over to Wegman’s for some lunch. They still don’t have the Pub open, but they had the self-serve bar going. They sure have a ton of vegetarian options there. It is almost like half the options. I loaded up a container full of veggies and was on my way home. The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some much needed bike maintenance. Tightening things up, lubing my chain(ha!), and swapping out some new tubes I just got. Bike should be in tip-top condition now.
Saturday was windy(imagine that?) to say the least. I mean there must have been gusts around 20-30MPH. Not only that the 70-degree temps of Friday had dropped to 50-60 now…Lovely. Again I decided to avoid the Westerly wind by circumnavigating the hilliest part of the area heading west towards Kutztown. I was grinding them out. I think I hit every major climb in the area with this ride. One climb was a Category 4 and the other a Category 3. I figured it would be worth it when I caught that nice tailwind home, but unfortunately that wasn’t that easy. The wind was so strong that if it wasn’t directly at your back it was blowing you sideways too. Needless to say my legs were totally wrecked by the time I got home. I hope I won’t pay for that later!
Sunday was more quality time with the Wife. I only had a 1:05 run to do since the half-marathon was next week and Denise was doing 7miles. Nice day out and a little cool, which was good for running. We headed down to the Lehigh Parkway and did one loop with a little extension on it to get another mile in. Seemed to be a a few others getting their last runs in before the event too. There were also still quite a few fisherman down there too which I can always tell by the occasional plumes of smoke that hit me in the face as I run by. You cannot escape it even in the great outdoors.
Looking forward to some events coming. Gets a little boring reporting on my training week after week. Fortunately it has been pretty uneventful, which is probably a good thing for now.
