Today had a crappy start.  Quite literally.  Our toilet sprung a leak and needed attention.  Thankfully it wasn’t a big leak and was fixed by replacing the wax seal.  Whoever replaced the seal in the first place did a shoddy job at best.  Despite being a relatively easy job, I still managed to make quite a mess of the bathroom.  Anyways, the trip to Lowes, repair, and subsequent cleanup took most of the morning. 

As much of a pain as the repair was, it was just what I needed to bust me out of my funk.  My last two days of workouts were lackluster at best and today was looking to be that way too.  However, the frustration and work of the toilet repair got me in the mood to workout.  Nothing like a good swim and run to de-stress.

Saturday is my last day of major workouts before I begin my taper, so I wanted to finish strong before the mandatory rest.  I had initially planned on an open water swim this morning, but the weather was iffy (rain and possible storms) and I didn’t want to drive over there only to not be able to swim.  So, I hit up the pool at the normal lunch hour.  I did an easy continuous 2100 yards.  I finished in just under 38 minutes.  I think hope I’ll be a bit faster in the open water with a wetsuit at Steelhead.  Last year’s time was 39:25 and I think I can top that.

After the swim, I got to work on the bar area.  I am finally to the point where I can start assembling everything.  I ordered the laminate for the countertop while I was at Lowes, so I’ll finish that up next week when it comes in.  Other than that, the only “problem” I only had was that I only had room for one of the two shelves.  When I designed the shelves, I didn’t factor in the space needed for hanging the wine glasses.  Oh well, I already have a plan for the second shelf elsewhere.

After getting as much done with the bar as possible, I headed out on my run.  The run went surprisingly well.  Despite the insane heat and humidity I still managed to do 6 miles in just over 46 minutes.  I was pretty drained by the end and chugged a bunch of water afterwards.  After a short break, I ran 2 miles with Jennie as her coach and water bottle carrier.

Overall, I’m glad to have gotten in two solid workouts today.  I have a short bike ride and run (in a non-brick format) scheduled for tomorrow.  Hopefully the heat breaks a bit and I can have one last day of good workouts before Taper Time.

Good luck to everyone doing (Kristin),  or volunteering at (Jon, Caratunk Girl) IM Lake Placid!

Got your attention?  Good.  Ok, I really didn’t swim naked today.  But I did do my first open water swim sans wetsuit which felt like swimming naked.  I also had the opportunity to meet up with a blog buddy for the swim and subsequent bike ride.

Rob and I met at 8th Street Park this afternoon with plans to do an open water swim and bike ride to Millennium Park.  Rob is training for his first triathlon.  He is doing a mini tri for beginners as a warm up in the next week and will follow that up with his first big triathlon in August at the Millennium Triathlon.

When I got to the park, I was surprised that the guard shack was actually manned and that they were collecting an entry fee.  When I first visited the park, I knew that there was a $3 entry fee but there was never anyone there to collect it.  Thankfully, I actually had cash on me which is a rarity in today’s world of debit/credit cards.

I checked the water temperature and decided against using the wet suit because it was so warm. I don’t know the actual temperature but I would guess it was around 80*F. 

Rob and I grabbed our goggles and headed down to the beach.  It was very crowded in the shallow water with kids playing, but the lake itself was fairly empty.  As we approached the water, Rob commented that, “I never thought I would be one of those guys who shows up at the beach in a speedo.”  Haha.  I couldn’t agree more.  Thankfully we were both wearing tri shorts and not subjecting the beachgoers to an actual speedo (or if you prefer, banana hammock, sausage smuggler, or man-kini).

We headed out doing a diagonal of the lake which is about 1/3 mile.  We hit the turn around point in 10:15.  I was actually surprised at how well the swim went without a wetsuit. There were some cold patches in the middle of the lake but they were actually a welcome refreshment from the warm water. After the turn around, we picked up the pace a bit and did the second half in 9:45.

Overall, the swim went very well.  When I got home, I checked the water temperature for my tri this weekend.  It is currently 82*F and there aren’t any cool days in the near future, so it looks like I will have my first wetsuit-free race.  I’m glad I got some practice in ahead of time.

After we dried off, we headed out on the bike ride.  We jumped on the Kent Trail which is about a mile from the park.  This took us around to Millennium Park where I was able to show Rob part of the course that he would be competing on.

Having someone to ride with really helped to push the pace.  There were a few sections that were pretty windy which lowered our average, but on the straights, we were consistently hammering out 21 mph and 22 mph.

Overall, the swim and bike ride combo was a great workout.  In fact, it is the first time I have done swim/bike brick rather than bike/run brick.

Off to bed now.  I have a 4 hour bike ride scheduled for tomorrow and the forecast has temperatures reaching 90+ by noon, so I have to get out early.

Today, I embarked on my first ever practice open water swim.  Obviously, I have swam in open water during races, but I have never actually practiced in open water.  Part of the problem has been lack of a good venue.  However, my co-worker David, found a great park near Jenison with the perfect lake for a training session.

The park is 8th Avenue Park in Georgetown Township is located about 20 minutes away.  The lake is closed to boats with the exception of canoes and kayaks.  It is small enough to not be intimidating but large enough to get a good workout in. 

We met at the lake at 8:00 AM and there were a few other swimmers getting started and a few others already finishing up.  One woman was just getting started and was wearing a “Eat My Bubbles” swim cap.  There were also a few people launching their kayaks.  The water was very warm, probably low 70’s, but we still opted for wetsuits.  I don’t think I could swim without one, it is like my safety blanket.

Per David’s recommendation, we started with a loop of the perimeter.  David took off like a shot.  I’d like to say that I was letting him go first to lead the way, but that wasn’t the case.  He’s a great swimmer and was flying through the water.  There were good landmarks in the distance to aid in sighting making it easy to figure out where we were headed.  After the first lap, we decided to add on an out and back diagonally across the lake.  My rough estimate of the course put it at 1.4 miles which seemed about right for our time – about 45 minutes not including breaks.  I’ll definitely be going back in the future.  Jennie may even come with sometime and kayak alongside me.

After the swim, it was off to Lowe’s for more building materials.  The bar area is coming together nicely.  Today’s project was building the countertop out of particle board, building the drawer, and cabinet door.  I still have to build the shelves and laminate the countertop and then it is time for painting and final assembly.  That will wait till next Friday probably.

Finally, I met a blog follower today.  Rob took me up on my offer for the Speedo Endurance Jammer that was too small that I mentioned yesterday.  He lives in the area and stopped by to pick it up.  He is training for his first triathlon this August.  I hope the suit works for you Rob and keep up the training!  I hope to see you at plenty of future races!

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.