Stuff and things

First off I just have to say wow...I hit 50 followers and that is just amazing to me! I wanted to take this opportunity tell everyone who takes time to read all or some of what I write thanks! I really appreciate all the input that I get from all of you. I've also come to make some new friends here in Denver and hope to meet many others as time goes by. It's funny how close you can feel to people that you don't even know! So again THANKS! to all of you for spending some of your precious time with me!

Quite awhile ago Adena at she said I need a goal posted the contents of her refrigerator and asked us to do the same. Today on someones blog..I saw a pic their refrigerator and remembered I was suppose to post one. These two pics did not look a thing like mine. Doesn't everyone have theirs packed to the gills? This is about 3 days after a trip to the store, so with 2 teenage boys that means much of it has already been consumed. As you can see we like condiments...we have a ton of hot sauce and many salad dressings. The bottom drawer is stuffed with cheese mostly, sticks, slices, shredded, crumbles and blocks. The vegetable bin is also stuffed. I freeze a lot of stuff...as you know I like to cook and many of the soups I make are freezable and make great lunches...who needs frozen dinners, although you will find some them in there too. This reminds me too that I need to cook that turkey! So what's in your fridge? And since we are posting fridge pics..here's the outside...with my new sticker thanks to Jim at 50 after 40 this great sticker which has taken up temporary residence (or maybe not so temporary it's still in question) with a few others I had already hanging around. I've also been meaning to post the great cling I got from Aimee at I Tri To Be Me It's also subject to be moved as it's really hard to see through my tinted windows. Thanks to both of you great bloggers!

And last but not least John at Lord of the Chainrings mentioned in his race report (if you haven't read it go do it!) that he had a pit-babe and I was thinking that I'm going to have to find me one of those....or would that be a pit bull?

Thoughts that are all over the place…

This is what my dash showed this evening when I drove into my drive. Any plans that I had for the evening went out the window as there was NO WAY I was going to pass up this opportunity to get out for a quick ride before the dark set in. It was GLORIOUS! 45 FANTASTIC minutes on my bike, not in my garage! Oh yea....

I’ve chosen a training plan. I decided on one of the BT ones. I find it quite handy to be able to load it into your calendar and use it for tracking all of your workouts. I’ve been using BT since the beginning of the year. And while there are some things I don’t like quite as much as Running Ahead where I tracked everything before, it does a much better job being able to track all 3 sports. And I probably haven’t played around in it is much since I have no old data. Now my question is this. How do you combine plans and/or train for other events along the way. My 70.3 plan is starting in the next week or so. Not much of a difference from the maintenance plan I’ve been following. What I did for the ½ mary training, was just develop a plan on Smart Coach and substitute that for the running in the maintenance program. This has worked pretty well I think. Now I’m wondering about how to put together the training for the metric century in May and the century in June. I found a “training” program for a century which really just shows how many miles you should get in for a week including how many mile your long ride should be each week. I’m thinking that I will just incorporate into my plan. I’m a little worried how this will all fall together but I think it will work well as long as I don’t burn myself out to early in the season. However since I LOVE being on my bike I don’t really think this will be a problem. And since the Oly isn’t until July and the 70.3 isn’t until August I think I will still have plenty of time to make sure I’m getting my running and swimming miles in. Wow much rambling there..I’ve not idea as usual if that made any sense.

I know why many people don’t like running…it seems that almost without fail that the first mile, mile and half always just sucks..so you need to be able to stick that out and then your golden. Or maybe that’s just me but it seems almost always I spend the first mile of any run thinking there is no way I’m going to be able to do __Insert any number here___ miles. But soon I’m just moving along and feeling good. I’m sure it’s all about just getting warmed up.

Heart rate training…how many of you use it? Or do you use it but only as a point of reference?

I confess that I’m somewhat addicted to blogs. I read several different types, but most are similar, food, training, diet, and some photography. Sometimes if I’m bored I find myself going through the random blogs from the dashboard. It’s like this little glimpse into other peoples worlds. So I’m wondering what are your favorite blogs either tri related or anything else that I might be missing. Please help feed my addiction by posting one or more of your fav's. :)

What's on my mind today...

I picked up a pair of new shoes and I can’t wait to give them a try. Another new pair of Saucony’s some version of the same shoe I’ve been wearing. But I have to say these shoes seem to work for me all the time so I’m hoping these will be no different. Now I’m trying to decide if I should try without the inserts, the ones I have been through 2 pair of shoes, or get new ones. And if I’m going to get some new ones should I try some of the ones I’ve seen posted on different blogs to help with the Morton’s Neroma I have self diagnosed myself with or stick with what's been working. Is there always something to worry about?

So now that I’ve got the shoes, a new saddle is for sure next. I don’t know why all the sudden mine has started to really give me problems. I don’t know if it was the loss of weight or has something to do with the height. It was already bothering me before the bike fit so I know that’s not it. Speaking of bike fit, I’m noticing a real difference in how my knees feel since the fit. I can’t wait to actually get out on the road and see how it goes. So any suggestions on saddles or what to do with this one that might help? It does seem worse with some shorts as opposed to others, especially the pair I have that is a little big, maybe it’s just a case of needing some Body Glide?

I really need to try on my wetsuit from last year, it was a little large last year and I'm thinking with the loss of 30 pounds it might be really large this year.....more money... :) I guess I better get on that.

I need to pic a training plan for the 1/2 Ironman. I've been using a winter maintenance from Beginner Triathlete and really like it. I think I will probably go with one of their 20 week plans just need to decide which. Do any of you have a plan that they would really recommend?

Don't ever buy any more Sea Salt pita chips...you have no control.

Randomness Returns

So this week, what's going on? Workouts are going pretty good, still having a problem getting to the pool. I don't know why I can't make myself go swim. I made it my goal to swim twice this week, tomorrows Wednesday and I've not been yet. It's my plan to go tomorrow morning.


Have you seen this? I just think it is the coolest. I think I found it from a link on DC Rainmaker's blog

Source

The weather continues to be crazy here. It was almost 40 degrees when I went out to run this morning a little before 5...in Colorado...In January...Crazy...

Something else I found interesting, this might be common knowledge, but I never thought about lacing my shoes different to help with different problems.

Colorado bloggers I would love to do some kind of meet up. Maybe combined with exercise or maybe just coffee. Kathleen and I had such a great time talking about the upcoming season and I think it would be great fun to meet everyone and chat. I don't have to many people in my everyday life that have any interest in what I'm doing so I love having the chance to talk about it with others who love it. Any interest?

Random Ramblings

Reply - Ok so maybe I'm missing something...is it possible to respond to the comments on your posts? I know I could post a comment but who the heck has time to go back and check comments for replies to every blog you post on? Often I want to reply to someone and just don't know how. Seems to me there should be some way to do this. And I've received emails that are a reply to post I've left I'm just not sure if I need to "turn on" something or it's not possible with Blogger.

Training - not much of it going on as I've been fighting off the cold still and things have been a little crazy. However that will change. I've signed up on BT and will be using one of the Winter Maintenance plans to give me some direction. I was going to start Monday the 1st but I was feeling like do-do so decided to put it off until next Monday. Doing this plan also solves the problem of what to do with my bike workouts since it gives detailed workouts. Although I still would like to give a Spinerval DVD a try one of these days.

Photos - Speaking of BT on one of the forums they have a photo contest every week and last week I happened to pop in there and the theme was patterns. I cropped the last bridge picture from below and entered it and actually won. Not that you win anything. :) It's not a big contest just a few pics and few people voting but I thought it was pretty cool. I'm really not a photographer (although my son does some really great stuff, especially using Photoshop!) I just get lucky sometimes with my photos.

5k - It's not looking good for 5k Turkey trot if I don't start doing some running. I ran this weekend a couple of short runs but not since then.

Bike trails - One of the questions that I wanted to respond to was Aimee's question about the bike path I road on. It does connect with all the bike paths in Denver including the Platte. I have ridden from my house in Arvada to Golden, to Cherry Creek Reservoir and I've been wanting to go down to Chatfield but so far have only made it as far as Belleview. I've also been out as far as the I-70 and 270 interchange. It really is amazing how you can get around. I've got much more exploring to do.

Weather - The weather this weekend, especially Saturday is suppose to be beautiful! I want to ride my bike, but unfortunatly I will be stuck inside all day! My son is doing the Annual Westernaires Horsecapades Show and I'll be volunteering as a ticket taker/usher for several of the shows. If your in Denver and don't have anything to do Saturday or Sunday check it out. It's a pretty decent show if you like horsey stuff.

Random Rambling

1. Amazed at how good I felt after the 1/2. I really didn't have any soreness to speak of. I always feel like that must mean I didn't push it hard enough. Took a couple days off but did a short easy run on Wednesday and it felt pretty good.

2. I've actually used my bike trainer (that I acquired in the spring from a great guy on BT that offered it free to the first person who contacted him. ) two times this week. I've not wanted to run in the cold dark morning, but getting on the trainer in the garage, where it's cool but not cold, and reading as ride my bike is kind of nice. I do need some ideas on workouts though. I need to work on finding some intervals or something. Ideas?

3. One of my goals for the year was to do a 5k in under 35 minutes this year. I've not done a 5k that was not at the end of tri this year. So I've printed out a short training plan for a 5k based on my 1/2 marathon time. It says that I should be able to do one in 33 minutes. Now I need
to follow through with the plan and pick one, possibly a turkey trot on Thanksgiving.

4. Swimming....nope...

5. Pictures are up for the R'N'R 1/2. A couple of them actually turned out pretty good and I think I will be buying at least the 1st two here. I always feel like I need to have them. In my former life, :) ok still, I'm a scrapbooker, I just don't seem to have as much time for it. I keep saying I'm going to put together an album with all my bib's medals and pics. Some day...maybe I should get back to work on my boys albums first. Do you buy race pics?

Random rambling

Volunteering - Sunday I volunteered at the Tri for your Cause sprint tri. It was about 50 degrees and raining lightly. Yea a perfect day for a tri...NOT! I felt so sorry for those athletes and can not even imagine what it was like out there on the bike course. In addition to the weather I heard that they had some kind of issue in the last week and had to change the bike course. To say the least the change was not ideal. The course called for them to go straight out a road do a small circle around a few streets and come back to the road they went out on, at this point they had to not only cross an intersection (officer directing traffic) but they had to cross over the bike traffic heading out. Because it was a pool swim taking about 35 minutes to get everyone started they were very spread out which was both good and bad. This was without a doubt one of the scariest things I've ever seen. I was sure there was going to be an accident. Luckily everyone made it safely. It was quite interesting to see the riders pass. I was amazed to see one guy in just his tri shorts and a female in her swim suit with tri shorts on. Most looked pretty good and were doing fine but there were a few at the end that looked like they were ready to cry, I would assume from the cold, although it seemed to me that it was also a fairly hilly course, not steep but continually rolling, not much flat ground. Kudos to all that did this event!

Weight- Something seems to have kicked in the last few weeks and after holding pretty steady for the last 5 weeks I finally managed to start a downward trend again and get rid of 5 more pounds bringing me to a total of 25 lost in the last 5 1/2 months. Good riddance!

1/2 Marathon - My body seems to be feeling pretty darn good and I think I'm ready for the 1/2 mary this weekend. I've got no issues and although I've been a little short on mileage the last few weeks I feel pretty confidant about the race going well. The forecast right now looks like perfect running weather.

Swimming- Yea, I probably forgot how. I've not been since the last tri...yea the end of August...

Biking- better then swimming, but not much.

Plans- I'm trying to get an idea of what I want to do next year. I'm feeling the tug to do a 70.3 but the idea of it is quite frightening to me. I was sure that I would never want to do that distance, that an oly was as much as I would want. Why is it we have the need to find out just what our bodies will do? I've heard that the jump from Oly to 70.3 is much harder then the jump from sprint to oly, what have your experiences been?

Funny I should talk about such lofty goals after saying I've done nothing but run for the last month and a half.