Sub-Par

I have been spending some free time working on some revisions of a few product reviews that I should have ready this week. I have been working to get them finalized with pictures and the whole 9 yards. The first two that I will be releasing are for the Garmin 305 and Profile Design AquaCell Hydration system.

Last week was below sub-par for my workouts. Since Heather, my wife, and I had Monday off and spent the day at Valley Fair with my brother and his girlfriend I did not workout Monday and used it as a recovery day although I was not terribly sore. In hindsight I should have spun around on the bike a little to loosen things up. We spent the day at Valley Fair and when they headed back to Iowa, Heather and I went from the southwest suburbs to the northeast side of the Twin Cities to return her wetsuit she rented. While up there we decided to purchase a wetsuit for her, a Zoot Zenith. She rented the full sleeve the first time and had to use a sleeveless for this race. She ended up buying one with sleeves, a smart decision for her. We both also picked up a pair of Zoot racing shoes. I will probably review them at some point as well.

Tuesday I went for a bike ride after installing my Speedplay Zero pedals. First time riding with my clipless pedals. Similar to the comment I made about people naming lakes Clear Lake that are not clear… why do they call them clipless pedals when they actually do clip in? Regardless, it went well until I got home and came up my driveway, towards the garage door, and started to brake… almost to a stop…CRAP! I forgot to unclip and cant twist out quick enough. The bike starts leaning left and I feel myself reach a point of no return, over I go, reaching my hand out to brace the fall thinking this will be something like falling on a snowboard, which I did multiple times last winter as I learned. Luckily I came away scratch free, only a slightly bruised ego and a small scuff on the bottom of one of the shoes, no damage to the bike.

I decided to put my Zoots to use on Wednesday on a quick 4 mile run in the morning since I had kickball that night. I wanted to push this run a bit harder than my normal runs and it felt good, until about a mile away from home when I could feel the backs of the shoes rubbing my ankles, but I pushed through and managed.

If I were to show you the picture below, it is only natural most people would think that it came from my little bike incident, oh no, it came from kickball.

This was the second seasons our team from work played this year, after having a great first season and then getting beat first round of the playoffs, we came back for revenge the second season. We only lost one game in the regular season, won our playoff games and made it to the final night of games on Wednesday. We won our first game, putting us in the championship game. Who were our opponents? The team we lost to during the regular season. This did not resonate well with me because that was also the game I sprained my ankle. The game was low scoring, but we ended up losing, I blame myself for some of their runs due to an error or 2 I had. The below picture is from one such instance. I botched a throw to second base for a force out, and then as the ball was thrown in I grabbed it and tried to run down the guy going from third to home. As I got ready to throw, he hit the brakes trying to dodge the ball, so I stop to line up before the throw, release, and then tumble over.

I walk away with a bloody knee, palm, and a huge scrape on my lower back/butt region. I keep playing, but we ended up getting beat 4-2. I am not a part of the team next seasons, but this is by choice. I need to focus on training for the marathon.

I did not register for the Square Lake Sprint Tri and after a couple days of website issues, it comes back up, and the race is full. This was supposed to be our last race for the season, so now we have to try and find something else. We wanted it to be the last race since it was a ½ mile swim, 18 mile bike, and 5 mile run. A good distance for Heather to prep for the Twin Cities 10 Mile race she is running.

Needless to say my training was bad last week, so I got in 6 miles on Sunday, a bit better, but man it was hot enough to make me suffer a bit and my heart rate climbed through the whole thing. Again I cannot wait until the marathon is done so I can start HR training for a few months and get used to running in lower zones. I will have to push this week as much as possible and maybe even into next week before I taper for St Paul. I hope to do very well at this course. Since it is the same distance as my first tri in New Brighton, I hope to show some good improvement. I will put my goals up in my next blog.

On a side note from everything, I got signed up on beginnertriathlete.com and plan on using some of the training plans over the winter to build, hopefully starting next year off on a strong foot. After getting off the scale this morning, I realize I was doing so well watching what I ate a couple weeks ago and started to notice it, this week I slipped and it shows, back to 179 this morning ugh! Time to be healthy again. Looking forward to this weekend, and hopefully getting out on a lake on a boat this time, although I may take my wetsuit and do an OWS for the heck of it. We are going to a pyrotechnics show Friday night, have Friday off! We are also helping with a garage sale and plan on taking our bikes with. Heather’s stepbrother Russ will be there so hopefully he brings his wakeboard and I can give it another go this year after learning to snowboard I think I will be much more brave, just need to keep it in reason so I do not injure myself.

Edit: This was posted after the weekend I spoke of, next post should include the weekend stories.