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.

It has been well over a week since my last post, and there is no other way to describe my absence except for blog laziness.  On top of working and training, life has been keeping me busy.  I’ve had plenty of good ideas for blog topics, just no time.  Most of my ideas come to me while I am biking, running or in the pool – none of which are good times to multi-task.

So, here is what you have been missing out on.  (Please excuse the bouncing from topic to topic.)

I started out with an insane peak week of training with 163 miles of training in 13 hours, 12 minutes that included 7800 yards in the pool, 133 miles on the bike and 26 miles on the run.

Jennie was sick for most of the week, which put a damper on things.  She managed to hold off the cold long enough to host the wedding shower she had been planning for weeks, but by the time shower ended, the sickness got the best of her.  She ended up be confined to the couch for 3 days.  I know 3 days on the couch may sound like a good time, but I don’t think she really enjoyed it.  Thankfully, after some rest, she is back to 100%.

My contribution to the wedding shower was building this cupcake
stand inspired by a larger version I found online.

While Jennie was off showering (wedding showering that is), I had the weekend to myself.  On top of getting in a 60 mile bike ride, I got a ton of work done around the house.  I followed that up by indulging in a delicious meat, potatoes and beer dinner.

Note: That is one of the two steaks I ate.  Vegetarian I am not.

My 60 mile bike ride was interrupted by a high school regatta at Riverside Park.  My curiosity was piqued when I saw a pontoon plane land on the river.  Upon checking it out, I found dozens of schools lining the river.  It was quite the spectacle.  I sort of wish my high school had a crew team – it looked like a lot of fun.

Later in the week, I tackled some nice hills on the bike.  I started off with a decent hilly ride on Monday, and then on Wednesday in an effort to torture challenge myself, I did the same hills plus some more hills.

Also, on the cycling front, I finally scheduled a bike fit at Grand Rapids Bicycle Co.  This has been on my to do list for way too long.  I know it is getting awfully close to my first race of the season and this may not be the best time to make changes, but I really want to get this done.  The impetus to getting my butt in gear happened on a bike ride when a car pulled up to me at a stop light and asked if I had ever had a bike fit done.  When I said “No”, he went on to give me a few pointers on how to improve my position on the bike and recommended a specific bike fitter.  We’ll see how the bike fit goes, but it could turn out to be the best 30 second stop light conversation I have had.

Today, I had a time trial scheduled for the pool. I ended up finishing the 1.2 miles (2150 yards) in roughly 37:30.  However, it was far from an accurate time trial because we were interrupted by a fire drill halfway through.  While the midway rest stop was nice at the time, it really screwed up my rhythm and I couldn’t quite find a groove when I got back in the pool.  The time was nevertheless encouraging.  My only comparison is my swim split at Steelhead last year (39:25), so I should improve upon that.  And maybe if I follow Krista’s swim “secret”, I can shave off even more time!

On top of training, I have been busy with projects around the house.  Now that the weather has been consistently nice, the responsibilities of home ownership have been calling.

I worked on refinishing both the back deck and front porch.  The back deck was more work and involved flipping the deck boards, washing, and staining.

This is what we started with.  Overly weathered boards that we had tried to stain a couple years ago, but the stain never took and was chipping off.

Once I had pried up and flipped the boards, I had some help nailing them all back down

Looking much improved already with the boards flipped, and washed.

 
The final product, stained and ready for a summer of activities.

Stay tuned! I’m going to do my best to keep on top of my posts so that they aren’t always as long.

This morning, I headed over to NBC Universal Sports web page to watch the Boston Marathon.  I was very unhappy that they wanted $5 to watch it.  Seriously??  Isn’t everything on the Internet supposed to be free?  So, instead, I headed over to Justin.tv where I could watch it for free.  The quality wasn’t great, but it was good enough to know what was going on.  I watched until just after 11:00 when I headed up to the pool.  By the time I was done with my swim workout, the winners had already finished.  I was disappointed that the US’s Ryan Hall or Meb Keflezighi couldn’t come out on top, but they had great 4 and 5 finishes.  Robert Cheruiyot of Kenya (of course) blew the field away with a scorching course record of 2:05:52!!

I had setup text alerts to follow a bunch of my blogger buddies, but for some reason I never got any alerts.  So, I look forward to reading everyone’s race reports as they come in.

My first workout was a lactate interval session in the pool.  Lactate intervals, or threshold intervals, are intervals done at as close to your maximum intensity without blowing up.  Lactate intervals help to improve performance by delaying fatigue and exhaustion in endurance events.  My workout was:

300 yard warm up
8 x 25 drills
7 x 100 yard moderate intensity with 5 second rest
6 x 100 yard lactate intervals with 1 minute rest
8 x 25 yard kick drills
300 yard cool down

I did the 7 moderate 100’s at a 1:40 – 1:45 pace.  I figured that based on the moderate intervals, I would shoot for 1:35 on the lactate intervals.  My first lactate interval came in at 1:29!! Holy cow! I decided to go with it.  I ended up finishing the next five intervals in 1:26, 1:24, 1:25, 1:25, and 1:26.  This way by far my fastest set of intervals ever.  The last two intervals really took all I had in me and they kicked my butt.  It really made me feel good afterward too.

Later in the afternoon, I did a high intensity workout on the bike.  I did a total of 28.3 miles in 1:32:35 (18.3 mph).  I pushed it hard for two of the laps around Reeds lake averaging 20+ mph.  Other than the couple of hard laps I backed off and took it fairly easy. 

Now, it is time to sit and relax.  I’m hoping to watch some Tigers baseball tonight, but it doesn’t start until 10:00 PM (damn, west coast games), so I may not even make it till the first pitch.

Again, I find myself playing catch up.  It is crunch time at work and I have found myself working until later in the evening to try and meet my deadlines.  Thankfully, I am on my taper, so my workout schedule was a bit lighter than it has been.

A couple of my days involved dogs, so the phrase “dog days of summer” popped into my head.  The nerd in me wondered what the origin of the phrase is, so I Googled it to find, “The name comes from the ancient belief that Sirius, also called the Dog Star, was somehow responsible for the hot weather.” (Source: Wikipedia)  So next time you are sweating your balls off in the middle of the summer, you can blame Sirius.  Consider that your random factoid of the day.  Anyways, my days this week just involved dogs, they were by no means hot enough to be the dog days of summer.

Monday

I moved my 7 mile run from Sunday to Monday to give my sore hamstring some extra time to rest.  It paid off.  I did 7 miles in roughly 53:00.  My Garmin went a little haywire for the first couple miles and showed me running all over the place.  I also did 2,250 yard swim at the pool.  No dogs involved today.

Tuesday

Tuesday’s schedule called for a 1:20 bike ride with 5×3 min Z5 intervals with 3 min active recovery. I stuck to my route around Reeds Lake because it is fairly easy to avoid traffic and be able to do long intervals without hitting much traffic.  This was my hardest ride of the season and in the end I was dog tired (figurative dog today rather than literal).  The wind coupled with the hard intervals, kicked my butt.  I also did a 20 minute strength workout when I needed a break from sitting at my desk.

Wednesday

I did a swim at noon with the core intervals being 4×200.  I got faster each interval with times of 3:15, 3:12, 3:09, and 3:07.  My swim times are still dropping like crazy.  200’s used to take me at least 3:25 less than 6 months ago.  I am crediting the strength workouts for this.

In the afternoon, I did a 4 mile run.  It had been a busy/stressful afternoon of work, so I was itching to get out.  My first mile was 7:23.  I shouldn’t be going this fast, so I told myself to slow down.  Mile 2 was 7:13.  What the heck.  I tried to slow myself down for mile 3 and went 7:14.  This obviously wasn’t working, so I went with it and finished the run in 29:28 with a 7:33 mile.  I guess as long as I was listening to my body and not hurting, it was okay to run harder than I was supposed to.

To get on topic of the blog title, I had a minor incident with a dog on my run.  I was running down the sidewalk and a man walking his dog was walking towards me.  He shortened the leash on the dog, but as I approached, he seemed to let the leash out again.  The dog seemed friendly; it wasn’t pulling on the leash or anything.  But as I passed him, the dog leapt up at me.  Reflexively, I swung my arm and caught the dog on the side of the head.  In hindsight, it was more of a playful leap than an attack leap, but it still startled me.  The guy then proceeded to yell at me for hitting his dog.  Seriously?  I didn’t hurt the dog and I felt bad for hitting it, but if he had control of his dog, it never would have happened.

Thursday

On Thursday afternoon, our house guest arrived; the in-laws dog, Bagel, is staying with us for a couple days.  She is a good dog although she has a tendency to get gassy when she is nervous or excited and she seemed to be nervous after she was dropped off if you catch my drift.

Immediately upon arriving, Bagel found the bone that she had left here during her last visit before making herself comfortable on her sleeping bag.

After the dog was settled in, I headed out on my long bike ride.  I decided to head out to Rockford on the White Pine Trail.  I had a head wind the entire first half of the ride which made it miserably cold.  I wished I had worn my neoprene shoe covers, but I didn’t think it was going to be that cold.

 
The Rockford Dam in the Rogue River.  There were a ton of people finishing in the river downstream.

After a quick stop in Rockford to stretch and warm up, I headed back home.  Now that the wind was at my back, I was flying.  The second half of the ride was almost 10 minutes faster than the first half.

I also managed to stay in the aero position the entire time I was on the White Pine Trail, over half of the ride.  I had to stay up on the hoods while on the surface streets though because there was too much traffic.

The ride ended up being 35 miles in 1:56:41 for a 17.8 mph average.

Friday

I decided to get up early and get my run out of the way.  This was a bad idea for two reasons.  First, it was only about 14 hours since I finished my long bike ride, so my legs were still tired.  Second, it cooled off a ton during the night and was only 20F when I left so I had to dig out my hat and gloves.

I ended up doing a 4 out and 4 back course and then stopped home to get Bagel for the final 2 miles.  She seemed to happy to go on the run, but she got tired quickly.  It worked out well though because after the run, she curled up in the sunbeam and passed out.

Here she is. Passed out and using my swim towel as a pillow.  The life of a dog is so tough. 

Only 2 weeks until the marathon!

All this beautiful weather has distracted me from my blog and I now I have to play some catch up on what I have been up to.  Enjoy!

Saturday

Technically a rest day from running.  However, Scott Rigsby (the first double amputee to finish Kona) was going to be doing a group run starting at the nearby library.  I thought this would be a cool experience to meet him and he his amazing story.  I jogged up to the library only to find that his running legs were broken.  He is in the process of testing a new prototype of prosthetics and one of the springs broke.  So, unfortunately, there was no run.  I did get to chat with him for a bit though.

After that, it was off to the in-laws for my mom-in-law’s and grandma-in-law’s birthdays.

Sunday

After a visit with the grandma-in-law, we celebrated birthday with the mom-in-law at the Pancake Factory.

 
Mom and Dad-In-Law and my teenage bro-in-law who is apparently too cool for pictures now – haha

After breakfast, I took a bit of a nap before heading out on a 6 mile run.  There aren’t a lot of great places to run because the roads are very busy with no sidewalks.  I ended up just weaving around the neighborhood streets until I racked up the mileage.

Monday

It is a recovery week so I had the day off from running.  I did do 2200 yards in the pool though.  The workout included 5 x 100 yard intervals, 7 x 75 yard intervals and 6 x 25 yard sprints plus the standard warm up, cool down, and drills.

Tuesday

It was a beautiful day and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a bike ride.  I had a hills workout on the schedule, so I decided to just do laps around Reeds Lake.  Each lap is just over 4 miles and I did 6 laps.  Each lap has 3 pretty good inclines.  My goal for the ride was to stay aero as much as possible.  On the two smaller hills, I managed to stay aero during the climb.  On the larger climb, however, I had to get up the hoods to push it to the top.  I ended up doing 28 miles in just under an hour and half averaging 18.8 mph.  I felt like I could have done a few more laps, but it was getting close to dinner so I decided to head home.

Wednesday

Which brings us to today, St. Patrick’s Day.  I got plenty of exercise in today so I could indulge on a few Guinness tonight.  I started with 2000 yards in the pool at lunch followed by lunch at Yesterdog.  After that, I got back to work.  I had to go into the office to pick up some mail, so I decided to bike in.  Round trip it was just over 12 miles.  After I got home, I had to take care of a bit more work before heading out on my run.  My legs were still a bit in bike mode so it was actually like a mini brick run.  I got my 5 mile run in before the missus got home.

Rather than going out and fighting the crowds, we grilled out for dinner.  I enjoyed a Killian’s with dinner while Jennie got in the Irish spirit by dying her Smirnoff Ice green with some food coloring.

After dinner, Jennie and I took a walk up to Jersey Junction for our first ice cream of the year.  In the spirit of the holiday we both got mint chip ice cream.

And now it is time to get some more work done now that the sun is down.