Slacker & moving on

I can't believe it's been 2 weeks since my last post. Life has really been busy lately! At work, we are about a month and a half away from going live with our new financial system. It's been involving lots of meetings & testing. When that's not going on, it's mad catch-up time for the rest of my work. It makes the work day go by quick which is nice, but I'm in shock that Memorial weekend is a week away already!

After the failed attempt at house hunting, I finally decided that my best option was to rent an apartment until I knew for sure where I wanted to live. After a few weeks of researching online and going to look a few places, I finally decided on a complex that would be the best fit. I move in next weekend. I figured it would be a good time since we get the extra day off for Memorial weekend.

Date night was last night and it also happened to be the night of Emily's (FB's niece) school's music performance. She's in Kindergarten. Her school is K-4th grade and the the performance was split in two sections: the K & 1st graders performed first. Then the 2-4th graders sang. It was so cute to see all the kids up on stage. FB's whole family made it, including his Grandparents. We all went to out to dinner afterwards. It was a fun night, but I'm feeling slightly sleep deprived today.

Like my posting, my running & workouts have been slacking too. I've been too tired to get up for the early workouts and have had one thing or another in the evening to keep me from those too. I've managed to get a race in every weekend for the last 4 weeks though. No races planned this weekend (yet!) but I'm hoping to get some good workouts in. I signed up for a triathlon class that starts next Thursday and I'm supposed to get some preliminary workouts/testing in. This is what we've been asked to do:
Swim: Warm up, then a 100' and 500' baseline test. Take a 1:00 recovery between sets. If you can't do 500', then do the longest you can go and record it. Bike: Do a 20 minute warm up, then find a route that you can do a "race" effort for 20 minutes. I want you to gather your average and max heart rates for this r...ace effort. These will be used to establish your training zones. Run: 10-15 minute warm up. Then a 20 minute "race" effort. Same as the bike. Record your average and max HR. record the distances for both tests. I'll give you more instruction on the weekend. As discussed in previous clinics, you need to plan at a minimum to do 2 workouts/week of each discipline. I'll also give optional workouts if your time permits. Good luck. We're looking forward to seeing everyone next week.

So it sounds like I've got a busy weekend ahead of me: swimming, biking, running, & packing!

Dooby Du

The Dooby Du duathlon is the first duathlon of the season around the Metro Detroit area. It's an hour drive away from me in Berkey, OH. The race directors refer to it as a formula 1 race. I'm not really sure what that means. Most duathlons are run-bike-run. This one has two extra legs in it so its a 2 mile run - 6.5 mile bike - 2 mile run - 6.5 mile bike - 2 mile run. Each of the runs & the two bikes are the same course, so that might be why they call it formula 1 style. It's really good for working on transitions which I need all the practice that I can get. It's one of my favorite races because it's a smaller race with less than 100 competitors and it has some of the most friendly volunteers. The race goes by so quick since it's shorter distances and your legs are screaming from going from one discipline to the other. After the race they sever up lunch...hot dogs (they even had veggie dogs for us vegetarians!), chips, cookies, & pop. Not necessarily the most nutritious post race food, but it sure does taste good. This was my third year doing it and my second fastest time. I finished in 1:44:18. One of the downfalls of the race is that they don't do chip timing so you have no idea what your split times are unless you keep track of them yourself. It would have been helpful this year to compare since I just switched to using cycling shoes and clip-in pedals. I hope to be back again to that race next year.

Up next on my calendar is the Country Music 1/2 Marathon. I'm driving down to Nashville on Thursday and I can't wait!

In the meantime, I was up early yesterday for the 5:30 am cycling class at the gym. I took last night off so I could have dinner with my parents and skype with my nephew. This morning was a 45 minute swim. I'm hoping for a short run at lunch or after work.

Lists: Gym Bag

I like lists. Sometimes if I don't like my handwriting, I have to start all over again. Anyway, part of what helps to get me to the gym in the morning is having my gym bag packed the night before and my workout clothes put out.

Here are the staples of what I keep in my gym bag ( it sometime changes based on what type of workout I might be doing):

-Shoes

-hairties

-ipod

-flip flops

-shower kit - shampoo, conditioner, face wash

-lotion

-deodorant

-chapstick

-tampons

-notebook

-pen

-extra socks

What's in your gym bag?

WORKIN IT OUT

It's been a good workout week so far:
M: 5:30 am cycle class, 4 mile run in the evening
T: 5:15 am FIT class
W: 5:30 am cycle class, 3 mile run in the evening
Today: Meeting up with some friends for a run.

Love weeks like this! Although, I feel a bit sleep deprived!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

It's a fun day in the Detroit area - St. Patty's Day! The fun actually started last Sunday with annual St. Patrick's Parade. Big Red & I headed downtown at 10am last Sunday and ran the Corktown Race that starts the festivities of the day off. It used to be a 4 mile run, but was switched to a 5K this year. It had been a while since I ran that distance. According to athlinks, I only ran 2 5K's last year. The last was in May. It was fun to do the shorter race, but I'd forgotten how hard & exhausting they can be. I ran it in 24:40, I minute forty slower than my PR.

After the race we did a quick change in the car and then headed off the Gaelic League for some fun. We ran into so many people that we knew! When I got home, I checked my e-mail and was SO excited to see that my soldier had responded to my first e-mail! She said that she's pretty busy but will write when she can. It made my day!

I've been on a roll with my morning work outs. Today was the third day in a row that I saw 4:30 am. I'm pretty exhausted, but am feeling good about the work outs. Today was the hardest day to get up. I knew that there is a chance that I won't get a run in tonight so I wanted to make sure that I got some sort of work out in. I opted for the cycling class, it was a good class today.

FB is working all day today. I think he had to go in at 6am and won't get home until sometime after midnight. I'll head over to see him tonight after work, and hopefully after a short run.

Lack of Training

I think it was last February when I actually had signed up for the Disney Goofy Challenge. For those of you who don't know what that is, it consists of running the Disney half marathon on Saturday, followed by running the Disney Full marathon on Sunday. You get a medal and shirt for each of the two races, plus an additional medal & shirt for doing the two together. I love a challenge and when two of my friends signed up to do it, I just couldn't resist. Out of curiosity I googled "39.3 training" and found this site: http://www.runvie.com/Articles/Disney%20Goofy%20Training%202010.pdf. According to the schedule, I should have ran 11 miles last night. Instead I made myself some dinner and spent the evening on the couch snuggling with Brady and watching the Vampire Diaries. After having just ran 2 marathons, I'm finding it hard to muster up the motivation to start getting more long runs in again. However, I know that if I can get them in, I will be much happier at mile 20 of the marathon.