Overall, this week has been a rest week.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing anything – I’d go crazy just sitting around.  Instead, I’ve been doing light workouts at a low intensity.

This afternoon, was my hardest workout of the week, a mini duathlon.  A co-worker tipped me off to an alumni 5k after Catholic Central’s, my alma mater, first cross country meet of the season.  This is the first year that they were going to have a 5k for alumni, parents, and friends in hopes of making it an annual event. 

The team races at Riverside Park which is exactly 7 miles (according to the Garmin) from our house.  Unfortunately, there is no good way to get there without biking through some heavily trafficked* areas.  Nevertheless, I headed out on my bike at 4:30 for a 5:30 start time.  As I started to ride, the rain started to fall.  I got pretty wet on the way to the park before the rain let up.

When I got to the park, I ran in a woman I swim with at the pool.  Her son is on the XC team.  I had no idea he went to Catholic Central, let alone ran XC.  Small world.  After chatting with her, I looked for the XC coach.  At that time, he was unsure if they were even going to do the event because the turnout was so low.  In the end, they decided to go forward with the race despite only having 5 participants.

We all toed the line; two marathon runners, myself, and two younger guys fresh out of highschool.  The two young guys took off like a shot followed by one of the marathoners leaving me in 4th place.  I had completely forgotten how different it is running on grass, especially wet, muddy grass, than it is on pavement.  It felt like I was barely moving.

After the first mile, one of the young guys started to drop back and I moved up to 3rd place where I would end up finishing.  I ended up with a 20:42 time and was completely drained.  I can’t say that I am anxious to do more XC runs though.  I’ll stick to the solid surfaces.

After the run, I hopped back on my bike and road the 7 miles back home to complete my bike-run-bike duathlon.

I’m thinking of doing a longish run (10-12 miles) tomorrow or Saturday, but I am going to completely play it by ear on how I feel.

*I have a general disdain for words that require a “k” added when making them past tense.  Just thought I’d share.

Well, recovery week has come to an end.  I can’t believe that this was a recovery week and I still logged 10:45 in training: 106 miles biking, 23 miles running, 6,000 yards in the pool.  I’m actually looking forward to another hard week though.  I have two more tough weeks and then a week long taper before Steelhead.

Thursday

I had one of my best brick workouts ever.  I had a 1:15 bike followed by 30 minute run on the schedule.  Feeling uninspired, I stuck to just doing laps around Reeds Lake for the bike portion.  5 laps later, I finished with 23 miles at about a 19mph pace.  That is about as fast as I can average around the lake because of “The Hill” on each lap.  In case you couldn’t tell just by looking at my splits, I pointed out each split that included “The Hill”.  It really kills the average speed in the long run, but builds some good leg muscle.

After the bike ride, I quickly transitioned into running shorts and shoes.  As I headed out on the run, I was shocked to realize I had almost no brick feeling.  My legs felt great and weren’t heavy at all. I ended up averaging 7:37 over the nearly 4 mile run. 

Friday

Swam at lunch, ran 7.5 miles in the afternoon followed by 2 miles with Jennie.  Other than that I cleaned the house and did yard work.  Nothing exciting there, so I won’t bore you with the details.

Saturday

Saturday was a lazy Saturday in its truest form.  I did do a long slow bike ride in the morning, but after that, I spent the rest of the day napping, watching the Tour de France, and watching Tigers baseball.  I did manage to pry myself off the couch long enough to go to Target with Jennie though.  They had some of their C9 clothes on sale and Jennie needed some extra running clothes now that running business is turning into a daily bad habit for her.

She did find some actual running clothes, but she couldn’t pass up the shirt above.  In case you can’t read it, it says, “1 Glazed Donut = 6 miles”  and the donut is saying, “I’m sweating sprinkles.”  Too perfect.

Sunday

Again, another lazy day. I wrapped up my recovery week with a 6 mile run and then spent the rest of the day on wood working projects.  I made some more progress on the bar.  Only sanding, painting, and finishing touches to go now I think.  I also made a new shelf/monitor stand for my office. 

Here is one of the shelves with the stemware racks.  The stemware racks took some figuring on what would work best.  This design was actually the third design I tried and I think it will work best.  I haven’t assembled it yet because I want to get everything painted first.  The shelf itself is inspired by a Pottery Barn shelf that Jennie likes.  In fact, I had previously built a set for in the kitchen, so building the shelves was a piece of cake.  To compare, I built two 4 foot shelves.  The materials cost, at most, $30 for both shelves.  The authentic Pottery Barn shelves cost $85 each! I’ll take that savings any day.

Here I am cutting each of the stemware racks.  Jennie said that I looked really focused on what I was doing.  Apparently my please-don’t-let-me-screw-this-up-and-end-up-slicing-off-a-finger look makes me appear focused.

No, I was not drinking while operating power tools.  I was simply using the martini glass to calculate the spacing needed for the stemware racks.  I promise!

The new monitor stand.  I ‘m going to hold off adding trim and painting it until I am sure it is going to work.  If, after a couple weeks of use, I can’t think of any ways to improve it, I’ll finish it up.

And to top that off, I made one project.  This one was inspired by one my dad made last year and was easy to throw together with some scrap wood.  It is basically a lap desk for my laptop.  This way, when my laptop heats up, it keeps my legs (and boys) nice and cool.  It should also improve airflow for the laptop and circulate air better.

I made two of them.  One for me and one for Jennie.  I ran out of trim for Jennie’s though, so I’ll finish hers up next weekend.

Finally, here is one of the best race pictures I have ever had.  And it wasn’t even a race I was in!  This is from a couple weeks ago when I biked over to the Johan Tri-fest to watch a co-worker who was racing.  As I passed by the photographers, I said that I wasn’t a racer, but the woman said that I deserved to have my picture taken too. 

This weekend was awesome!  We got lots done, had some good workouts and most importantly had a lot of fun.

Saturday

I got up early on Saturday and biked downtown to meet my dad.  We headed up to the White Pine Trail and out to Sand Lake.  I had never actually made it all the way to Sand Lake (the end of the paved trail).  Last time, I turned around at the 28 mile mark so that I would end up with a 56 mile ride.  Little did I know that Sand Lake was only about 3 or 4 miles beyond that.

The trail was super busy with lots of people enjoying the great weather and holiday weekend.  At times this slowed us down a bit, but this was supposed to be an easy ride for me any way.  I had 2 hour 45 minutes scheduled as my last long ride before my taper began.  We ended doing 60 miles total in 3:46:44 (whoops!) – not super fast, but easy on the legs.

After the bike ride, Jennie and I had lunch and got some work done around the house.  After that, we took the rest of the day to lay around and relax.  I borrowed “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” from the library per Krista’s recommendation.  So far, it is a great book.  It was originally written in Swedish and translated to English, so there are couple of nuisances to work around (like converting Kronors to dollars), but I still recommend it so far.  It is going to help keep me busy during my taper and (hopefully) keep me from going insane.

Sunday

Sunday started off with a trip to Menards to get supplies for our yard work.  The main purchase was a couple of new fence sections to repair the fence in our backyard.  Whether or not we actually own the fence is still up for debate, but it has become quite evident that our neighbors have no desire to maintain it.  Since it is behind their garage and they never see it, they could care less as to how it looks.  As we have to look at it every time we are in the yard, we decided to just bite the bullet and fix it.

The Neon held up great for transporting the fence sections from the store.
Not as convenient as a pickup truck or a trailer, but I’d like to see a pickup truck get
35 miles to the gallon.

 
The “before” picture.  As you can see, plenty of missing pickets and rotted wood.  The
fence nearly came down just by pulling on it.  The section to the right we had previously
replaced when took down some trees.

  
The “after” picture.  Much better!  It should weather in a year or so
and fit right in with the existing sections.

While I had my tools out, I built a small trellis for our cucumbers to grow up.

Assembling the A-Frame trellis for our cucumbers (ala Lifehacker)

Monday

The storms held off until today.  We woke up to the sound of rain falling and light thunder in the distance.  There is something very relaxing about sleeping in the rain.  As the rain started to let up, we got up and I got ready for my bike ride.  Once the rain stopped and the sun came out, it really got humid.  Other than that, the ride was pleasant enough.  After the ride, I went on a quick run with Jennie before we had lunch.

We had hoped to take the kayaks out right after lunch and got them loaded on the car.  However, as we pulled out of the driveway, we heard thunder in the distance.  A quick check of the radar showed another storm rolling in.  So, it was back to reading and relaxing.

Thankfully, the rain eventually cleared and we headed out for a quick loop around Reeds Lake.  After kayaking, we had a great dinner at the Derby Station in Gaslight Village before heading home for some more relaxing.

What a great weekend.  I hope yours was just as fun filled!

(This post sponsored by my Mom and brother because of their Christmas gifts of $$ towards a bike fit)

I had my long overdue bike fit this afternoon.  Immediately following a nice swim, I hopped on the bike and headed to Grand Rapids Bike Co.  After getting out of the pool, I learned how difficult it is to put on bike shorts when wet.  Not pleasant.

I got to Grand Rapids Bike Co. a little early, which gave me some time to drool over the merchandise.  The Craig Alexander Orbea bike was very tempting, but I didn’t have an extra $10K just laying around.  Maybe next time.

Bryan spent an hour working with me, and we made some drastic changes.  I went from a 100% “Comfort” configuration to between a “Sport” and “Racing” configuration.  This included raising my seat 2.5” and dropping the handle bars almost 3”.  Previously, my handlebars were 1” above my saddle.  Now, they are almost 3” below the saddle.

This did a couple of things.  By raising the seat, I have an improved pedal stroke, which should optimize output power.  As you can see in the picture on the right, I now have the “ideal” 150 degree angle at the bottom of my stroke.  Also, by lowering the handlebars, I am put in a more forward aero position.

 
You can see the results of the fit.  Before on the left, after on the right.

On top of the fit, I bought new aero bars.  My old aero bars were the Century by Profile Design.  They worked well for me and were the right price when I bought them two years ago.  However, with the more aggressive bike fit, the Century’s limited adjustments would have left me way too stretched out.  So, I upgraded to the Airstryke.  These have two main benefits over the Century.  The first is lots more adjustments, both forward and back, as well as more options for where the pads are.  The second is that the pads are spring loaded and flip up when not in use.  This allows more access to handlebars for changing positions.  However, the downside to the spring loaded pads is that they are a bit noisier because they rattle when going over rough patches of the road.  It was annoying at first, but I am already getting used to it.

I took the bike out for a quick spin tonight to test it out.  It is AWESOME!  I was cruising in gears that I didn’t even know existed.  I stayed in the big ring nearly the entire time without tiring.  I did an hour ride; 4 loops around Reeds Lake.  Not only did I feel like I had more cruising power, but climbs were much easier.  I managed to stay in the saddle on all 4 climbs of the Hall street hill.  In the past, after two loops, I have to stand to make it to the top.  While not totally scientific, here is a comparison of my ride tonight with a similar one from a week ago.

A week ago.  4+ loops around Reeds Lake, 20.99 miles in 1:09:58 for a 18.0 mph pace.

After my ride today.  4 loops around Reeds Lake, 19.39 miles in 59:38 for a 19.5 mph pace.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that it was 90*F today?  I was sweating buckets by the end of the ride.

With spring in full swing, I had my fair share of wildlife accompanying me on my bike ride today.  And these were just the ones I could snap pictures of.

This guy was off to the side of the path.  When I stopped to take a picture he walked right in front of me,
not bothered at all by my presence.  He had little nubs where his antlers were growing in.

Mom, dad and goslings zipped past me on the Grand River.  Mom and Dad didn’t seem very happy with me snapping a picture and quickly hustled the little guys along.