It's Been A While

Hey blog friends! It's been a few weeks since my last post.  I had a crazy busy week after labor day and then spent most of last week on a trip for work.  I'm slowly catching up on my blog reading and I'm going to try to get back to posting on a regular basis.

This weekend was very rainy which required some changes to my training plan.  I'm one week out from my half Ironman and in the midst of taper down for the race.  I wanted to get a good bike ride in this weekend but the rain got in the way of that.  I instead got my bike on by using the indoor trainer for 2 hours.  I'm so lucky to have won a CycleOps Jet Fluid Pro Trainer from Steve in a Speedo a few months ago.  That trainer makes all the difference in being able to do longer trainer rides. 

I found a movie on the Lifetime Movie Network that was interesting enough but didn't require much thought to follow along.  I took it easy for the majority of the ride but used the commercial breaks to go into a harder gear for seated climbs.  Just before the hour mark on the bike my lawn care guy showed up out of the blue.  I missed the guys the last time they were at the house but mainly he was stopping by to see how fast the grass was growing now that the temps are cooling off.  I was planning a stop at the hour so it was perfect timing.

While I was off the bike, I took the time to fill up a glass with some water since I was thirsty and then I headed back to the bike.  I had stocked a bar stool next to the bike with the TV remote, my cell phone, drinks, and snacks.  I got a little bored and texted a friend of mine who is also doing the same half ironman next week.  I asked her how long she did her trainer ride and had a nice text chat for a few minutes.  She mentioned that she was doing a brick and provided me with the motivation to do a brick too.  I've been slacking in the bricks this training cycle and it was good to get a reminder on how important they are.

I finished up with 2 hours on the bike and then headed out for a short run.  I purposely left my Garmin at home and just ran by feel.  I wasn't planning for the run so I had to throw on a more supportive sports bra on top of my comfy tank with a non-supportive shelf bra.  My run route had some fun hills but luckily I got more downhill than uphill.  I also managed to beat the rain for most of the run but wouldn't you know it really started to come down right when I got to my street and had the 1/3 mile hill from h*ll to finish.  I won't lie I just can't manage this hill so I considered it a cooldown and walked it in!

Sunday was back to the indoor pool for the Sunday Swim Crew! I love my swim crew and today was another fun workout.  I modified the workout slightly so that it wasn't quite as long and was more taper like.  Our main set was supposed to be 6 x 375 which went  like this 100, 25, 100, 25, 100, 25.  Sets 1 and 4 were stroke on the 25s, 2 and 5 were kick, and 3 and 6 were pull.  I did the first 3 sets complete and then switched to 275's for the final 3 with 200 free and 75 stroke, kick, pull.  We finished this off with 2 x 50 sprints.  My goal was to hit 52 sec on the 50's and I surprised myself by hitting right around 40 sec.  Not bad!!! We finished off the workout by hanging out in the hot tub for a few minutes.