3 Fine Days

Okay, time to rehash the past few days of workouts...

We'll start with Monday night.  We had a group practice tonight; we meet at Bethesda Terrace in Central Park.  From there  the group, about 10 that night, did a warm up run of about a mile around and met Ramon at the bottom of Cat Hill.  Ramon explained we would be doing some strengthening exercises with fast runs up Cat Hill.  The first round of strength exercises were squats.  We did what seemed like about 100 of them at varying levels of a squat and got a good burn in my butt and upper quads.  After this first round we headed up hill utilizing a pretty fast past.  My guess is Cat Hill is about 400 yards in length with a pretty steady uphill grade.  Run hard up and recover back down to Ramon.  The next round of strengthening was a variety of lunges, this time working the quads and hips.  This was followed by two trips up and back on Cat Hill.  Upon our return we moved to a variety of leg lifts which were not pleasant at all.  I had no idea there were so many variations of a leg lift.  From there 3 trips up and down Cat Hill.  After the 3rd trip back we worked our core doing planks and side planks.  A great workout and I was expecting severe soreness the next morning.

Tuesday was another double dip day.  I hopped out of bed at 5:45 feeling like the triathlon version of Ernie Banks.  Surprisingly I wasn't to sore from Monday night's workout.  I rode a hour and headed off to work.    After work I was in the pool and swam 1600 yards.  Definitely not my best swim, I felt like my form was off and I really struggled through it.  Oh and my secret is out, the pool was pretty crowded, for most of my swim there were 4 people in my lane.  At this point the soreness from Monday night had really kicked in.  I've been stretching every day, but I was really hurting last night.  Just before I got into bed I lubed up my quads and butt muscles with some natural version of Ben Gay and hopped into bed.  It took about 45 seconds for me to realize that some of the lube had made it's way to my privates.  I felt like Ogre from Revenge of the Nerds.  I jumped out of bed, made my way to the kitchen to find some relief with some wet paper towels.  

On to today.  My workout schedule said today was a "weakness workout".  My weakness is definitely running. so tonight I was going to run.  I set out up the West Side path unsure of how far I would go.  I did notice very early how easy it felt to run at a normal pace and not up hill.  I ended up logging 6 miles in about 54 minutes.  I felt good.  Got home and had some of my newest addiction, coconut water.  It's billed at nature's Gatorade.  A good dose of electrolytes and Potassium as well.  Only 60 calories for 11 oz.  I stretched and finished the post workout routine with a bucket, some cold water and a tray of ice cubes.  I put the water and cubes in the bucket and stick my feet in there.  Maybe it's mental, but I feel like the ice bath helps me recover.  That pretty much sums up the last few days, we've had a taste of Spring, especially today, hopefully it will hang around.  Also, check out my teams website at www.tri2b.org, so you can see all my teammates.