still Adjusting

I'm moved in to my new place, but not totally settled. I don't have internet access in my apt yet, so I'm left type this on my blackberry. Isn't technology great.
I feel like Rev Run typing on my b berry, maybe I should go get in the bath tub.
I missed a lot of swim practice being in the hotel, so I went back to the pool last night to see how much I've lost lucky for me, it wasn't to bad. I swam 2000 yards, didn't run our of gas and felt good at the end. I was expecting some soreness today, but really only felt it in my neck.
Last weekend I was in Memphis for a wedding. Weekends away always present special challenges bc I don't have a bike, nor is swimming a good option. After touching down in Memphis, we headed out for BBQ and beers. Neither diappointed. Great BBQ at Central BBQ, then Beale St for beers. Beale st reminds me of a mini Bourbon st or even downtown Mobile Al. Lots of people out walking around and drinking. We went to a bar that has real live goats in the back and they drink beer. Not anything like this in NYC. I heard lots of jokes about this, the funniest being, I've been to bars with lots of pigs and dogs, but never goats. This turned into a little beer tour of Memphis. My night ended at about 4 a.m., this put me at about 23 hours of being awake. Not the best way to get a good workout in on Saturday. Saturday Erin and I headed to a park to do a run. We only ran 5 to 6 miles and I balttled all the way. It was a preview of the summer, the humidity was pretty bad. The park was pretty cool though. There was more wildlife here, this time buffalo. Also there happened to be an xterra triathlon going on. It looked pretty awesome, I may to do one of these some day. The xterra series are off road triathlons. This was a 1 mile lake swim, them a mountain bike ride through the hills of this park, then a trail run. The bike was the coolest, seeing these guys bomb down this hill covered in mud looked like a great way to spend a saturday. Sunday didn't leave me with any time to workout due to travel, so I started the week ready to get back to it.
I've had a few good runs and bikes in addition to last nights swim. This weekend ill be back at it and out in some warm weather. Saturday will be a long bike ride out in Jersey with my teammates. It should be a good time. Sunday will be a long run. I'm ready for the weekend.

consistently inconsistent

i got a few of you with my April Fools Joke, the best being my mother who was ready to get on a plane to come take care of me. She's greatest, and I definitely got the best reaction from her. I was laughing uncontrollably and she didn't appreciate it.

My training has been a little inconsistent for the past 10 days b/c of my move. I moved my stuff into my new apartment on the 31st, but was not able to move myself in, yet. The building I moved into didn't receive it's Certificate of Occupancy from the city, so myself and 27 other suckers haven't been able to move in. The company that owns the building also owns a nice hotel in midtown, so i have been living there for the past 10 days. It could be worse, they could own a Best Western by Laguardia, but i'm ready to move in. Hopefully this coming week, it will happen. Living in a hotel room has made me feel like i'm on tour or something, I'm thinking of myself at the 4th Jonas Brother these days.

This living situation has left me without my regular routine. I'm a guy that loves routine, i try to create routine in everything that I do. I like the consistency of it. That being said, one positive thing about the hotel is it's about 4 blocks from Central Park, so I have been able to get out there before work to run and cycle. My swimming is probably suffering the most, but I can get that back quickly. There is a pool at the hotel, but dodging all the rugrats that are here on spring break, has made it less than appealing. It's also only about 15 yards long, which give me about 5 strokes before I hit the wall at the other end.

One other positive thing, i purchased a brand new triathlon bike. I'm officially one of those guys, i struggled with being "that guy" on one of "those bikes", but i decided to go for it. I'm happy I did. My new rig is faster and puts me in a more aggressive position. Once my body gets used to it, it will be great and hopefully will help in the long run. She needs a name, so send me your suggestions.

a temporary end to a dream

it's official, i'm out for Ironman Louisville. I have been seeing a doctor on the sneak to deal with some ankle pain that i have been suffering though. the toll of the long workouts i have been enduring has wrecked my ankle. My ankle problems are rooted in too many bad sprains playing hoops growing up. The pounding that my ankle was taking cause some real problems. My doc was doing everything he could to fix me up to train and race, but today he told me it was a no go for this year. he' suggesting some surgery to tighten everything up and then rehab, then we'll dicuss Ironman. I'm not happy, but I also don't want to be total broken at a young age. So I'll hang it up for now, concentrate on riding and see how it all goes. the end, for now.

7 Day Recap

it's been a week since i posted, i guess i've been busy.  Actually, i know i've been busy.  Work has been busy, i'm moving this week and training is taking more and more time.  

Last Monday was a speed workout followed by some core.  Most of my teammates were still out of town or recovering from their marathon's.  Ramon was also away coaching, so it left a small group of us to run some fast paced hills on Monday.  We ran Cat Hill in Central Park, running at 85% of max up the hill and recovering down.  I completed 7 of these loops and then we did our core work.  Planks and crunches and more planks and crunches.  

The rest of the week was early morning rides, swims and runs.  Nothing monumental, but good work.

This weekend was a long ride and long run.  Yesterday I was primed for a long ride in Jersey with a bunch of my team members.  We had great intentions but they squashed when i woke up to a rainy morning and 8 messages from my teammates letting me know they were out.  I took my time, got ready and headed out to ride anyway.   The rain stopped, leaving thing pretty wet, but also kept the crowds down.  I headed to the Park.  I rode some six mile loops, lower loops and ran into a lot of my friends.  A lot of people doing Bricks and running, it always makes time go by quickly when I see people i know out there.  Part way through the ride, my bike was starting to fail me.  I was having some issues with the gears on my bike.  I was left with utilizing only about 3 gears so i finished my ride, riding lower loops.  I made it home, covered in city dirt.  I logged about 2.5 hours of saddle time, felt good, but my back and neck were sore.  

This morning I made a great discovery, my bike was covered in city dirt from yesterday's ride, I was able to use a hose from my building to do some clean up work on my bike.  It makes cleaning up a lot easier than trying to fit my bike in the shower and keeps all the dirt out of my apartment.  What a great discovery, except i'm moving on tuesday.  oh well.  After the cleaning session, i headed out for a run.  My schedule showed a long, easy paced run.  I went out and ran for about 90 minutes.  It was nice, slow pace, good temperature, really foggy and all in all an enjoyable run.  Lots more characters on the path this morning, a guy riding a bike smoking a cigar, and some B level celebrity from italy or something.  I only knew this b/c i saw the paparazzi and had to ask them what they were doing.  i also ran past the one major tourist attraction that I've never been to, the Intrepid.  It's pretty cool to run past a aircraft carrier, see it's size and see the planes parked on the deck.  I need to go check it out sometime.  I would say i ran about 20 miles this week, cycled i'd guess about 80 miles and swam a mile and a half.  A solid week.  If you aren't aware, check out this link, it's the history of the Ironman.    

Endurance

This weekend was all about endurance.  Yesterday morning I woke up early with intentions to go for a long ride outdoors.  I woke to see the temps in the low 30's and that quickly sapped my motivation to head out doors.  The prescribed workout was a 3 hour ride to get some saddle time.  There is a fair amount of acclimation that my body will need to have in order for me to  good ride for the race.  A great race bike time will be around 6 hours for me, and sitting on that seat for six hours will require my crotch area getting used to the bike seat.  This workout wasn't supposed to be about mileage, but more about this acclimation.  Because of the temps, i opted for the trainer and logged about 2.5 hours on it.  That is an eternity to be riding on a trainer.  I did watch a great show about ants on the discovery channel.  Ants are pretty amazing, destructive killers.  My interest in visiting jungles around the world has greatly decreased after seeing ants that will kill you via suffocation.  That's not how i want to go out.  I got my weekly dose of 30 Rock and a few episodes of Jeopardy.  I wanted to get this done early because the NCAA tourney games started up around 1 and I was looking forward to watching.  

Today was another endurance workout, this one a long run.  I headed out on my usual path up the West side Highway.  I was supposed to run 90 to 120 minutes.  I was determined not to bonk on this run and was prepared with a few gu's to keep me going.  I ran about 11 miles in about 95 minutes.  I felt really good, especially on my return trip.  I utilized my nutrition and hit a few water fountains to keep me going.  Such a simple addition made my run and post run so much more enjoyable.  This caloric consumption isn't a new theory for me, but for some reason i think i can do these long runs without ingesting any calories.  In my last post I talked about all the crazies on the path and encountered a few more this morning.  In no particular order, these were the highlights of what i saw on my run:

what seemed like hundreds of European tourists on rented bikes

a guy riding a bike in an army helmet

a women on roller skates

a kid rolling down the hill behind the trump building in the 60's on the west side

what had to be another euro tourist, this women walking on the path in pink open toed high heels.  She looked what I imagine a eastern European hooker would look like.  As a matter of fact, she was my favorite of the morning.  She was turning heads all over the place, it was fantastic.  

a broken down cab

3 bikes painted white in honor of cyclist that we killed while riding on the path

countless runner and cyclists

two fathers playing catch with their sons, this one brought back memories of playing catch with my dad in the back yard.  

It was a great morning run, I felt great, the sun was shining and it was a great temp to run.  Plus, when i got home, there were more college hoops games on.   

Swim, Bike, Bike, Run and Bike

Those were my last 5 workouts.  Monday night we had our first "team swim".  We were up at Riverbank with the masses.  There were about 10 of my teammates there and another 100 people jammed into about 4 lanes.  Ramon was there and not coaching, wink wink.  He wasn't supposed to be coaching, as it is against their rules.  He really wasn't coaching per se, we'll call it giving pointers.  Having all those people in such few lanes didn't really allow for any consistent swimming, but I did my best, got some drills in and as the crowd lessened, it got a little better.  The funniest part of the night, or at least now looking back at it, was where i parked.  I was in this lot that was really shady.  the ticket they gave me appeared to be the only one they actually had.  I'm fairly certain, if i go back again, they will give me the same ticket.  this was a cash only business, but some of the cheapest parking in the city.  10 bucks for 2 hours, you can't beat it, my car was safe and sound when i got back, so what was i worried about???

Tuesday morning I woke up early and got an endurance ride in before work.  I was a little sleepy so i'm not sure i rode very hard.  I made up it for after work that night.  It was a nice day in the big city, so I joined a few of my teammates in Central Park after work.  We rode northern loops, which for those of you that aren't familiar, they include the biggest up and down hills in Central park.  We did four loops, standing for a couple and seated for a couple.  We then did a complete loop and and lower loop.  At that point it was starting to get dark so I headed home.  I got two solid hours of riding in that night, so I was pleased.  

Last night, the weather was very pleasant agin.  After work I headed out for a 6 mile run.  I wanted that negative split and ran some pick ups during my run.  I went covering the first 3 miles in 27 minutes and back in 25.  I got the negative split and felt really good coming back.  With the warm weather, it brings out all types on the West Side Highway Path.  I saw rollerbladers, all kinds of bikers, runners and even a guy on an electric skateboard.  NYC is full of people that must not have received much attention as children.  I say this b/c the cast of characters out "exercising" never ceases to amaze me.  The guy on the electric skateboard really took the cake.  I'm not so sure I think adult men should be on a human powered skateboard, but an electric one is not acceptable.  This guy, who was about 6'6 in shoes, was about 6'10 on this skateboard.  He had the biggest sh-t eating grin i've ever seen.  At this point i was really pushing it and his smile basically made  me want to punch him.  Lucky for him, his skateboard was motorized, so i couldn't catch him.  Between this guy and all the stupid rollerbladers, I had all the competitive/anger juices flowing and getting me moving down the path.

This evening was another trainer ride and another prescribed endurance ride.  In case you haven't heard, the NCAA basketball tourney is one, so I rode and watched some hoops.  This workout included utilizing all the gears on my bike and varying my effort in burst of output.  I felt good and rode for about an hour.  As the weather turns warm and I inch closer to race day, i'll be spending more and more time cycling.  With about half or more of the total race time spent cycling, i'll be logging many hours riding before 8/30.     

Weekend Wrap Up

It's been a while since I have posted, the past week was rather busy and i wasn't feeling in the mood to write.  I'll start with the 2ND half of last week.  I was experiencing a fair amount of pain in my left foot and ankle.  I'm sure this was from all the running i had done the week before.  I think between last Thursday and last Monday night, i logged about 30 miles in those 4 days.  My body wasn't ready for that.  Due to my ankle pain, i stuck to the bike at the end of last week and logged some solid workouts on my trainer.  I can tell I'm getting into better shape, I'm not breathing as hard and I'm sweating more.  

Saturday most of the team competed in an 8K race in Central Park.  8K is just short of 5 miles, just and FYI.  I misunderstood the meeting point and had a mile "warm up" to get to the start line.  It was a little faster and a little more hilly than i would have like to warm up to.  I met a few of my teammates that had my number/chip.  As I was putting the chip on my shoe, the race started.  I made my way to the back of the pack, and got in line.  Lucky for me, there are many participants in these NYRR races, so I had a chance to collect myself and get ready to run before i crossed the start line.  the only problem with running from back of the pack is, although I'm not very fast, i am faster than most of the people in the back of the pack.  I spent the first mile weaving my way through the pack to find some open space.  I will never pass that many people in a race ever again.  I ran pretty consistent splits for the 3 middle miles and finished the last just short of a mile in 8:30.  I'm still trying to figure out what my race pace is, especially at this distance.  I was happy with the finish especially because i was rushed at the start of the race.  After the race, i caught up with some of my teammates, chatted a bit and then headed out to finish my run.  From the park i was going to run home.  My guess is it was another 6 to 7 miles back to my place.  Once again, the lack of calories ingested, got the best of me, as I was starting to feel it by the time i got home.  I got cleaned up and met my family for my nephew, Will, the wildebeest, Bystrom's 4Th birthday.  We had a great lunch and it was great to have the family together.  

This morning was another bike ride and i opted for my trainer.  I got a good hour plus ride in and got caught up with some 30 Rock episodes.  Tracy Morgan is one of the funniest men on the planet.  Tomorrow night will be our first team swim, I'm anxious to hear what Ramon has for instruction.