Friday night was a pretty quick swim of 1600 meters and more Olympics than one person should ever watch...but I guess if you amortize it out over 4 years then it isn't so bad, at least that is what I will keep telling myself ;)
It was up early on Saturday to knock out our ride to Poolesville with Joe. This was the first long ride I would be doing on my Tri Bike and given where I feel Kirsten and I's fitness is right now, I knew it would be a piece of cake. This workout however was reminiscient of the ones my old coach gave me last year that left me feeling destroyed the next day so much so that I couldn't run a lick and ended up taking Sunday's off most of the time and missing long runs because of it. Well this year I decided that if I was going to follow the workout I would do so under my own conditions based on how I felt and wouldn't care if I missed a set or two or even just ended up riding.
The workouts prescribe certain sets like 2x30' @ 80-85% which means two sets of 30 minutes of 80-85% efforts. Doesn't seem like much but they add up to the miles and stress in your legs. The main point I wanted to take away from this first focused ride of the year was to get a lot of miles in that sweet spot of 80-85% and just sit there for long periods of time. This was to serve a number of purposes but mainly to get me into the mind set of triathlon and sit at that given effort for long periods of time mimicking the sustained and constant efforts I we'll be doing at IMAZ.
Needless to say I stuck to the workout the entire time pretty much, but on a rolling course it is a little hard to moderate your effort with all the downhills. We went out to Poolesville and it seemed like we got there super quick in about 2 hours time going up West Willard. With all the hills and mountains this past year the route didn't seem as bad as it used to be and I was feeling pretty good the entire time. It helped that the temps were low the entire ride in the 70's mostly so I only went through maybe 4 bottles in almost 4 hours.
We got back home and I was spent...we didn't swim and I ended up taking a 2 hour nap! Kirsten and I went out on our first "date" in a long time and had dinner and went to a movie in Georgetown. It was awesome to be able to go out and still have fun during Ironman training!
Sunday was more of the same only this time we did go swim.
Jumping ahead since we haven't posted in a while, things have been quite hectic for both Kirsten and I the past week. Kirsten has been slammed with a proposal at her work that is due today and ended up working late last night to get it done. I have once again been getting questions one at a time from a contract and become increasingly irritated at the fact that they keep doing so. It would be like me telling a story on this blog, but only giving you a sentence at a time over a period of three weeks...pretty annoying huh!?
Anyway, Kirsten is getting ready to depart for Sudan for work...I am not entirely thrilled and have a hard time sharing in her enthusiasm about it, but of course am supportive of her ;) So she will be gone for two weeks with extremely limited communication and definitely no phone service. I guess I will have to keep myself busy to take my mind off of her not being there by re caulking the shower finally...6 months later... ;) Hey, I want to do a quality job so I have to take my time right?
Anyway, with all the planning and chaos we still managed to get in some working out. Monday was a great and tiring 2800 yard swim. Tuesday was a good interval session on the bike and Wednesday was the coup de gras, the dreaded 2 hour run...
Well the two hour run started off on a bad note, I threw a hissy fit at 5:25 in the morning because I was so tired I didn't want to do the run and was babbling about how Ironman sucks and I didn't want to do IMAZ etc. Kirsten was an angel and negotiated 15 more minutes of sleep with me, which was all I needed. Although we got going a lot later than we both wanted to, I was glad she gave me time to get my head in the right place for the run. We started off at a pretty good pace and the effort felt harder (as it always does first thing in the morning) than our watches were showing. We covered the same route we did a couple weeks ago only diverging onto Roosevelt Island to make a pit stop at the bathrooms on the island. Since we left so late and Kirsten had a lot of work to do, she proposed running around the island a couple times and then heading back the same way to get the exact time we needed in while she would run straight to work rather than home. So we ended up running around the island (which incidentally I had never been on!). It was a nice little loop with some natural areas and some dirt paths and a nice change from the urban long run we usually do. There was also not a soul there so it was pretty peaceful.
We started heading back and parted ways at the Lincoln Memorial on the way back. Up until that point we were clicking off 7:45 minute miles with a few stints above that and were feeling really good, the nice weather helped as well since the temps were only 68. After we parted ways I decided to try to stick to the prescribed workout and do some higher heart rate running on the way back. I pushed the pace to try to get my Heart rate up and it wasn't too tough. When it was all said and done it was 2 hours of running for 15.3 miles, 7:50 minute miles, with an average Heart Rate of 138. To compare to our last long run a couple weeks ago of 1:50, we did 13.2 miles, 8:20mm, with an average HR of 136!!!! How is that for an improvement!?
That night we went to go watch our friend and wedding photographer Kip perform a walking tour for the Ford's Theatre about the assassination of President Lincoln. It was extremely fun, informative, and just generally interesting. The tour was even featured in The Washington Post! The most interesting aspect of it was that the assassination was a conspiracy and not just an sole act by John Wilkes Booth. They tried to kill the Vice President as well but the guy who was supposed to do it chickened out and the resulting arrests and inquiry into the plot resulted in the first ever federal execution of a woman in US History. Also it was pretty interesting that at that time none of the presidents had a security detail and no politician was above reproach in every day life. You could even meet with the President at your desire (they only had sentries posted at the entry but you could say you were there to see the president and they would let you in!) Anyway, here are some picture of Kip in full character:
Sunset during the tour
Kip must be famous if he is on a poster in front of the theatre!
Kip, in full character...I mean Detective McDevitt!Anyway, the past two mornings were tiring and I slept in both mornings. I haven't swam since Monday but I ended up getting back so late last night that I couldn't get to Hains Point in time to get a good swim in so decided to bike instead since the sunset would last longer than the lifeguards blowing their whistles incessantly to let you know that the pool was closed...besides I needed to spin out the legs as they are still pretty sore from Wednesday's long run.
Since Kirsten isn't leaving for Sudan this weekend, we decided to do the Shorefire century tomorrow as a race simulation to get us in the proper mindset of triathlon rather that bike riding (which I adamantly prefer). Should be a good time no matter what but a long drive and day overall. More on that after the weekend is over...and hopefully after these one at a time questions everyday for three weeks straight from the government as well!
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