I just want to say how happy I am that the weather has warmed up enough to bike outside.  I do not miss the trainer at all.  So far, I have done 3 outside rides and loved each one of them.  And to make things even better, the 10-day forecast has temperatures in the 40’s with Monday topping out at 50.  I see lots of biking in the near future!

Old Man Winter, I would formally like to give you a swift kick in the ass and a hearty “Goodbye”.

I had a bit of an interesting experience on the trainer today.  I had to remount my bike in the trainer after my ride outside last Thursday.  I tightened the resistance screw on the trainer and hopped on.  As soon as I started pedaling, I knew that I tightened the screw more than usual.  I figured that this would do me some good because I was going to have to push harder than normal.

After a couple minutes though, I noticed a funky smell.  And no, it wasn’t me.  I stopped and found that my rear tire was really hot.  I realized that I was literally burning rubber.  Whoops!

I loosened up the resistance a bit to where it normally is and finished up my ride.

I did 70 minutes with 9×1min at Z5 with 2 min active recovery between intervals.  It was a great workout and I really felt like I was pushing it hard on my intervals.

Now, it is time to continue watching The Office and hopefully doing a bit of stretching and core workout.

I had a pretty good weekend to wrap up January. 

I started the weekend with my weekly Friday long run.  It was a light-ish week this week with a long run of 14 miles.  After 20 last week, 14 miles seemed like a dream.  If you remember my post about the 20 miler, I felt great for the first 14 miles and it went downhill from there.  So, I figured that 14 would be a breeze.  The funny thing is that this time, I felt great for the first 8 miles and it hurt for the final 6 miles.  I guess it is always the last 6 that are the hardest even if it isn’t a marathon.  I ended up finishing better than I thought I would in 1:57:59 for an 8:25 pace.

I took all of Saturday off to rest.  While I may not have run, biked, or swam, it was hardly a rest day.  There was no kicking up the feet and sitting on the couch.  Jennie and I spent the day cleaning the house from top to bottom.  At the end of the day we ended up with a sparkling clean house and a pile of stuff to take to Goodwill.  It was a very satisfying feeling.

Today, I got back to action and actually did a mini triathlon throughout the day.  I started this morning with an hour on the trainer.  I did some one leg drills (my new evil friend) at the end of the ride for good measure.  After lunch, I headed up to the pool and did 1800 yards in the pool with 8×100yds as the core set.  I actually hit 1:28 for my first 100 – first time under 1:30!  Unfortunately, I didn’t get under 1:30 again.  The rest were in the 1:34 – 1:36 range.

Later in the day, after getting a few more things done around that house, I headed out on my run.  It was pretty windy, but other than that the weather was a bit warmer than it has been.  I finished the run really strong with the last two miles coming in at 7:34 and 7:37.

In case you weren’t keeping track, that is an hour bike ride (19.6 miles), 1800 yard swim (1 mile), and 6 mile run for a total 26.6 miles in 2:28:57.  Too bad my T1 and T2 times were horrible otherwise it would have made for a good “race” .

Here are my totals for January:

Running was obviously the focus for January (and will continue to the focus until my April marathon). I’d like to get a few more bike rides in February than I did this month, but it is so hard to get motivated to ride on the trainer.  I’d actually even settle for the same number of rides, but for longer rides.

On the work front, things are settling down a bit.  I have put out most of the fires that January brought and things are starting to get cleaned up.  I will be spending the next couple weeks training a new hire, so I’ll have to reschedule my some of workouts because my schedule won’t be as flexible.  Nevertheless, I think I should have more time for training.

No, seriously, I can’t see you.  Put on a damn light.  I can’t believe how many people were out tonight without any lights.  I headed out on my bike ride at about 4:00, bringing along my front and back lights because I knew the sun would be setting shortly.  Sure enough, I ended up finishing my ride in the dark around 5:30.  In the final half hour, it was pretty close to pitch black.  I bet I saw at least 20 people without any lighting what so ever.  Come on! At least carry a flash light.  Oh.  And by the way, that tiny patch of reflective material on most running shoes is not enough to make yourself visible.  Are you trying to get run over?!?!?

Ok.  I am done ranting.

If you are looking for some stuff brighten up your night runs I love my Brooks Nightlife Hat that is reflective and has a blinking red light in the back.  I usually will couple that with Petzl Tikka Plus Headlamp so that I can see where I am going and so that cars can see me coming.

And finally, I have been playing around with Flickr’s ability to add notes to pictures and have spiced up the My Equipment page of my blog.  Check it out!

After overindulging on turkey (and subsequently passing out in front of the fire), I decided that I should go for a bike ride on Friday.  As luck would have it, Friday turned out to be one of the coldest days of the season.  Our unseasonably warm weather appears to be behind us.  I knew that the weather was going to be a bit colder and had packed my cold weather gear.

Passed out in front of the fire… too much turkey!

I started my ride headed west into the wind.  My goal was to ride the Orchard Trail, which started about 9 miles away from the in-law’s house.  This was the most difficult part of the ride.  Not only was it directly into a frigid headwind, but it was entirely on surface streets, most of which were not suitable for bike traffic.  Some of them were busy two lane roads with 50 mph speed limits (closer to 60 mph actual speeds though) with absolutely no paved shoulder.  The frustrating thing was that there was plenty of room where there could be a paved shoulder, but instead it was just gravel.

To give you a sense of the wind, the first 9 miles was into a direct headwind and the last nine was a direct tailwind.

By the time I actually got to the trail, my feet were absolutely freezing.  I pushed forward and after 2 miles on the trail, I passed a bike shop.  I decided to stop and see what they had in the way of shoe covers.  I ended up buying a pair of Specialized Neoprene Shoe Covers.  As soon as I put them on, there was a noticeable difference.  They were a lifesaver.  Had I not bought them, I probably would have turned around there rather than adding on a few more miles.  The only downside was that I didn’t have them at the start of the ride so my feet were already cold when I put them on.  They kept my feet from getting any colder and even warmed them up a bit.  I’ll have to give them a try start to finish next week to see how well they work at keeping my feet warm to begin with.

The return trip of this ride was glorious.  I knew that I would have a tailwind nearly the entire way and it would be mainly downhill.  Knowing this was one of my motivations to keep heading out further on the first leg of the ride.  The longer I suffered on the hard part, the more I would get to enjoy on the easy part.

I flew back to the house on the return, making the wind all worth it.  In the end, it was a 35.8 mile ride in 2:05:39 (17.1 mph).  My splits were 1:10:00 for the first half and 55:38 for the second; 4 mph faster on the way home.  All in all, I think it was a good way to burn off all of the excess eating.