I signed up for the Patriots International Triathlon on September 7 on Sunday night and just started swimming yesterday. Preparation for a 1500m open water swim will be short but hopefully with my only goal being to simply survive the swim I can get to that point in the month and a half that I have.
Patriots International (Williamsburg, VA)
1500m open water swim in James River
40km bike
10k run on Colonial Parkway (yuck, that's going to suck)
Anyone have a TT/Tri bike I could use? Ha, right.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
More work
Tomorrow is the last official work day for the AmeriCorps here (if you've completed your required 1700 hours at that point), but I'll be here for another 2-3 weeks finishing my allotment. Bullshit.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Lots of work left
So I have ~120 hours left to complete in my AmeriCorps service term, which is a lot. That's a good 3 weeks of work right there, not taking any time off and that will mean that I'll be here about a week or two longer than any other of the AmeriCorps. I'm not a slacker, I just made the mistake of not keeping very close track of my hours for the first 4-5 months of work, thereby screwing myself out of a good deal of time. So that kind of sucks, as I'll only get 2-3 weeks off as opposed to a whole month.
I probably won't be racing again until late August at the Greekfest 5k just because I can't justify taking Saturdays off anymore. So that will mean that I'll more than likely miss James K Polk and Blue Points - at least one of which I would have done as a death workout (stay with the leaders as long as possible).
I probably won't be racing again until late August at the Greekfest 5k just because I can't justify taking Saturdays off anymore. So that will mean that I'll more than likely miss James K Polk and Blue Points - at least one of which I would have done as a death workout (stay with the leaders as long as possible).
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Wall-e was so awesome
Watched Wall-e tonight and became scared for the human race. If we end up the way humans are portrayed in the movie it will be a very scary thing. Great movie though, really great.
Going to end up being close to 60 miles again this week, although this time around I'm definitely feeling the effects of the increased mileage. Went for an 8 mile run today and felt the worst I have in recent memory. I'm pushing myself beyond what I'm really capable of right now, and it showed today. Hopefully scaling it back down to a slow and easy 45 or so miles next week will help me out a bit. If I manage to scale it back, of course.
Going to end up being close to 60 miles again this week, although this time around I'm definitely feeling the effects of the increased mileage. Went for an 8 mile run today and felt the worst I have in recent memory. I'm pushing myself beyond what I'm really capable of right now, and it showed today. Hopefully scaling it back down to a slow and easy 45 or so miles next week will help me out a bit. If I manage to scale it back, of course.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Big week
So I almost got 60 miles this past week, but not quite. Oh well, it'll come eventually. I had two tempo runs and two long runs this week, with 25 miles coming in on Saturday and Sunday combined. Felt pretty excellent considering the volume and intensity from this week.
I actually looked online for swim classes/technique videos and the like, which is a step in the direction of triathlons. Just a small step, but it means I'm thinking about it...if only superficially.
Only a month of work left, then it's vacay for a bit. Where should I visit??
I actually looked online for swim classes/technique videos and the like, which is a step in the direction of triathlons. Just a small step, but it means I'm thinking about it...if only superficially.
Only a month of work left, then it's vacay for a bit. Where should I visit??
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Healthy?
My foot has been feeling progressively better, culminating in a pain-free (other than the fact that I got sore and tired) 14 mile run today, giving me 47 for the week. I tried to start back in easy and I sort of accomplished that by going 3, 5.7, 8.6, 9, 7 (with 5k race), then 14 to steadily rack up time on my feet.
We only have another month in our service commitment, which is pretty crazy considering how quickly it seems to have passed. In some ways I'm quite happy to be staying here another year but I also feel as though I may be missing out on other things.
I really need to make myself study and take the GRE's just to get that out of the way so I can apply to schools in the fall and maybe make some more concrete decisions about what my next step is going to be once AmeriCorps is really over. I'm sure my goals will change repeatedly over the course of the next 13 months but it's nice to at least have semi-plans.
Here's my log entry from the race on Saturday evening:
I decided to do this race about 2 hours before the start time. I went in with pretty low/0 expectations for several reasons. My resting HR was about 4-5 beats above normal (it was at 45/46 this morning), I had 0 running for 10 days and I was coming off a foot injury.
Despite all that, I felt pretty good when the race started. I was surprised by the number of people that initially were in the front group, especially considering it began with a significant hill.
I kind of held back for a while, not really knowing how I would feel at such a high intensity. But I got into a rhythm, my foot felt fine, so I decided to try and go with it this race. Stan and I traded places back and forth for virtually the entire race until at just before mile 3 I surged pretty hard. When I came into view of the clock it ticked over to 17:40 and I just completely lost all motivation to finish hard in the last 100-150 meters. I don't know why, I've never quit on myself like that before in anything. I felt bad about it because at least 2 people passed me while I was jogging to the line (including Stan) like a big wimp. That will never happen again, I should not have slowed up like that.
Oh well...I felt pretty good and my official time of 17:50 is by no means slow on a hilly-ish course. I know I can push myself harder than this though...just need to find a way of doing it.
Splits:
1 - 5:39
2 - 11:32, 5:53!!!
3 - 17:15, 5:43
3.1 - 17:55, :39.5
Wow Mile 2, you killed my time...congratulations
I got a sweet bowl for winning my age group too.
We only have another month in our service commitment, which is pretty crazy considering how quickly it seems to have passed. In some ways I'm quite happy to be staying here another year but I also feel as though I may be missing out on other things.
I really need to make myself study and take the GRE's just to get that out of the way so I can apply to schools in the fall and maybe make some more concrete decisions about what my next step is going to be once AmeriCorps is really over. I'm sure my goals will change repeatedly over the course of the next 13 months but it's nice to at least have semi-plans.
Here's my log entry from the race on Saturday evening:
I decided to do this race about 2 hours before the start time. I went in with pretty low/0 expectations for several reasons. My resting HR was about 4-5 beats above normal (it was at 45/46 this morning), I had 0 running for 10 days and I was coming off a foot injury.
Despite all that, I felt pretty good when the race started. I was surprised by the number of people that initially were in the front group, especially considering it began with a significant hill.
I kind of held back for a while, not really knowing how I would feel at such a high intensity. But I got into a rhythm, my foot felt fine, so I decided to try and go with it this race. Stan and I traded places back and forth for virtually the entire race until at just before mile 3 I surged pretty hard. When I came into view of the clock it ticked over to 17:40 and I just completely lost all motivation to finish hard in the last 100-150 meters. I don't know why, I've never quit on myself like that before in anything. I felt bad about it because at least 2 people passed me while I was jogging to the line (including Stan) like a big wimp. That will never happen again, I should not have slowed up like that.
Oh well...I felt pretty good and my official time of 17:50 is by no means slow on a hilly-ish course. I know I can push myself harder than this though...just need to find a way of doing it.
Splits:
1 - 5:39
2 - 11:32, 5:53!!!
3 - 17:15, 5:43
3.1 - 17:55, :39.5
Wow Mile 2, you killed my time...congratulations
I got a sweet bowl for winning my age group too.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Reflection Retreat
So today the AmeriCorps got back from a 3 day weekend at the beach in Oak Island, NC. The intent of this required 'retreat' is to train AmeriCorps on 'reflection' and 'life after AmeriCorps.' If it sounds a little ridiculous, it kind of is; if the hope is to introduce AmeriCorps members to thinking about issues related to poverty and housing then I feel like it's a little late for that. Poverty housing and its issues have been in our faces for the past 9+ months so I think I both know about them and am perfectly capable of forming my own opinions on them.
But whatever, we got a free 3 day beach weekend out of it.
The beach was on the eastern coast of NC and having spent more than 99% of my beach time on the sands of Gulf Shores, AL I was pretty weirded out the whole time. Both the beach itself and the beach house 'community' is very different from down by our house. It actually made me really miss home for the first time this year. I was at the beach, but it wasn't really 'the beach' so I wanted to me at my family's house as opposed to this unfamiliar weirdness.
I was also worried about my foot all weekend/this past week so that has kind of sucked. I took my first test run on it today and it felt ok but I kept imagining pains and that freaked me out a bit. I don't want to be scared to run on a healthy foot; then I'm just a wuss. But we'll see after a couple more days whether I can get back up to mileage.
It sucks because I was just starting to bump up over 50 regularly, which was a big mental hurdle for me. I'm also going to start doubling a day or two a week once I'm sure that the foot is fully back. I have no idea when my next race will be; it depends entirely on the health of my foot.
But whatever, we got a free 3 day beach weekend out of it.
The beach was on the eastern coast of NC and having spent more than 99% of my beach time on the sands of Gulf Shores, AL I was pretty weirded out the whole time. Both the beach itself and the beach house 'community' is very different from down by our house. It actually made me really miss home for the first time this year. I was at the beach, but it wasn't really 'the beach' so I wanted to me at my family's house as opposed to this unfamiliar weirdness.
I was also worried about my foot all weekend/this past week so that has kind of sucked. I took my first test run on it today and it felt ok but I kept imagining pains and that freaked me out a bit. I don't want to be scared to run on a healthy foot; then I'm just a wuss. But we'll see after a couple more days whether I can get back up to mileage.
It sucks because I was just starting to bump up over 50 regularly, which was a big mental hurdle for me. I'm also going to start doubling a day or two a week once I'm sure that the foot is fully back. I have no idea when my next race will be; it depends entirely on the health of my foot.
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