A 4 Day Recap

Let's start with this past Saturday.  Saturday was our first team Brick.  A Brick in this case being a bike followed by a run.  My morning started at about 5:15 with breakfast.  A peanut butter granola bar, an orange, some coconut water and a little bit of coca cola for some caffeine.  We were meeting in the park at 7 and I wasn't sure how long it would take me to ride up there.  It's about 5 miles to the park from my place so I left about 6:20, making it up there with plenty of time to spare.  The team assembled for some instruction from Ramon.  The ironman part of the team had a 25 to 30 mile bike followed by  a 6 mile run.  The ride was supposed to be an easy one.  I set off on my way with Bernie, we did our 6 mile loops at a pretty easy pace.  We logged our miles, changed out of our bike gear, had some nutrition, laced up our sneaks and headed out for our run.  Part of the definition of Brick is how your legs feel after riding and then trying to run.  I shoot off the heaviness of the ride and had a pretty good run.  We assembled again as a team, chatted a bit, it was interesting to hear all the marathoners on my team that hadn't ridden then run before, describe how slow they felt.  That gave me some satisfaction since most of them dust me on the team runs.  Ramon appeared again and completed a pretty comprehensive overview of a bike.  He explained all the components, did a tire change demo and worked on his trainer to show form and body position.  It was a good first Brick and only made better by the great preview of spring that was happening in NYC.  

Sunday morning seemed earlier than it should, but the day light savings time made the morning come sooner than I wanted.  I was joining a few of my teammates for an endurance run in NJ with Ramon.  All of my teammates that were out that morning were training for marathons and doing there long runs.  I had expectations of trying to run 20 miles but Ramon quickly squashed that goal telling me I didn't need to go that far and I was risking injury if I did.  I took his advice and only did a 15 miler.  The run was an out and back format on a great trail near the Rutger's campus.  Most of the run had a canal on one side and a stream on the other.  It was nice, no ipod, no traffic, just me with my thoughts, moving water and some birds chirping.  The first 10 miles were pretty good, I felt great and was moving at a good pace for me.  The last 5 I basically bonked.  I didn't have enough calories that morning and fell apart. I slowed down considerable, but made it back.  I'm writing it off as a learning experience.  Ramon gave me a nutrition lesson when he returned; specifically about the number of calories burned yesterday compounded by my run this morning and really needing to ingest a fair amount of energy to power these workouts.  

Monday night was another group workout.  Lucky for me after my weekends workouts, I only had a recovery workout which was a nice and easy run.  After the run we did some great stretches as a group and worked our core.  I'm happy to say my core is getting stronger and that will pay off on race day.  

This morning I had intentions of getting up and riding my trainer before work, but that was quickly dashed when i stumbled out of bed with a really sore ankle/foot.  Instead of riding, I opted for an ice bath for my foot.  I loaded up on Advil and opted for my compression socks to wear to work.  This evening I went to the pool for a non impact workout.  It was an endurance swim and i logged a couple thousand yards.  I worked a variety of speeds and distances and felt pretty good.  There were a couple of negatives to tonight's swim.  The pool was really crowded, there were four of us circling swimming in my lane.  That was compounded by two of the guys being not the best swimmers.  Not only were they not great swimmers, but they did that froggy kind kick out to the side, which left me dodging them when we passed as we swam.  One more thing, one of the guys smelled.  Not only did he smell, he stunk!  I could smell this guy as he swam past me.  Keep in mind this is in a super chlorinated public pool.  I ran into him again in the locker room, he appeared to be post shower and he still smelled.  This kid was like Pigpen, there was just a cloud around him.  I don't think he was homeless, he had a blackberry, but he didn't seem to have clean clothes or soap.  

I think this weekend's workouts were a good indication of what's to come.  I'm happy to say I've dropped about 10 lbs since I've started training, and weekends like this, I'm sure the next 10 will come off pretty quick.