How do you really feel about the trainer?

Below is a little exchange that popped up on Facebook this weekend. 

I've been riding indoors since early October and as you can see from my response I don't mind the trainer at all.  My buddy Jeff is another story...he's a cyclist and very good at it.  He rides a ton of miles and is part of our local cycling club that is known for being hardcore.  Let's just say they don't even wait for each other let alone a newbie joining their group rides! Jeff hates the trainer and will ride through all kinds of weather instead of indoors. 

So this morning I had to continue the fun when I saw that he tweeted about a flight delay.  You see my morning plans included a trainer workout! I did feel bad that he was stuck at the airport with a flight delay though.

I don't know why the trainer gets such a bad rap.  How can you not have fun on the trainer when you've got Vin Diesel and Paul Walker keeping you company!!! That's right, today my trainer entertainment was the movie Fast Five. 

I have found that a good action movie is the perfect company for a trainer workout...you don't have to worry about the dialogue in case you miss something and the fast pace usually keeps me spinning at a faster rate too.  Today I rode for an hour and did my favorite 10 minute intervals.  I ride within each 10 minute interval in a ladder of increasing difficulty for 4, 3, 2, 1 minutes at each rung and then start over again at the easy level.  It's fun and is an easy to follow interval. 

So tell me, how do you really feel about the trainer? I'm all for it and use it to catch up on movies and stuff.  I've even had a trainer workout at a friend's house after she got too pregnant for outdoor rides. 

Sunday Funday - Just Keep Swimming

 I love the various holidays because the gym offers free guest days and that saves me $8 to swim with my friends! This week I've swam 4 of the past 5 days and gotten to swim free for 3 of those days.  I love free guest days and I love having awesome swim friends who push me with tough workouts in the pool.  Here's what the last 3 days looked like:

Black Friday Swim - I met up with Kyla after some early morning shopping at 9AM.  The kids swim team was also swimming so Kyla and I had to swim in the open swim area since all the lanes were taken.  We decided on a set of 15 x 100 broken out as 5 x 3 descending on the 2:00 interval.  The sets were freestyle for sets 1, 3, and 5 and IM order strokes for sets 2 and 4.  We did another mini set after that and ended up with a good workout. 

Saturday Swim - Brent joined Kyla and I on Saturday morning and started us off with a 1000 yd warmup that had 400 swim, 300 drills, 200 kick, and 100 pull.  The workout itself was a 200 then 2 x 100.  I did 150's instead of the full 200 and then focused on doing the 100's fast since we did then a little faster than my normal interval.  We did the set as 200, 2 x 100, 200, 2 x 100, 200 for a main set of 1000.  We tacked on some fun 50 sprints on the end with 25 sprint, 25 recover in IM order doing each stroke twice.  It was a good workout and we all enjoyed hot tub time afterwards!

Sunday Funday - Today the Big Fish showed up for our weekly Sunday Funday swim. We had 6 of us in the pool including Brent, Carie, Lori, Jeff, and Scott.  Normally our Sunday Funday is Brent, Kyla, Carie, and I so it was fun to have the others join us.  Unfortunately for me, some of these guys are really fast swimmers so I knew that I would have to modify the workout in order to keep up.  Our warmup included sculling drills and that wore out my arms pretty early on:(  The main set was supposed to be 10 x 150 with odds pull and evens swim building the 2nd 75 faster.  The fast kids were doing these on a 2:30 interval...my normal 150 interval is 3:00.  I modified to do the sets as 125 pull then 100 swim builds.  This allowed me to stay on the 2:30 interval with the group.  We did some more sprint/recover 50's at the end to finish up the workout. 

Whew, 3 days of swimming in a row equals one tired girl but I loved every minute of swimming with my friends.  They are always encouraging and I know I'm getting a tough workout each time. 

For the first week, most of my HBBC points came from my swimming workouts.  I'm hoping to get more runs in this week and hopefully 1-2 swims for the week.  I know I can't swim as much as I did the last few days but the pool is such a great form of active recovery for running. 

Swimming Ladders

The weather today has been dreary all day and the forecast called for rain to start around 6PM.  Typically I go to speed work on the track on Monday's at 6PM but with cold, dark, and rain I wasn't feeling that motivated to run.  My friend Kyla called just before 5 and invited me to go swimming instead. 

We met up at the pool and grabbed the middle lane of the pool.  There are only 3 lanes open on Mon/Wed nights because the swim team takes up 4 lanes for practice.  We were there for the younger junior high age practice and knew that we had until 6:30 when their practice would end and the locker room would fill up with crazy kids!

Tonight we went with a different warmup set of 500 broken out by 100 as swim, kick, swim, pull, swim.  It's fun to change things up every so often and keep your workout interesting!

Next up was the main set and Kyla had picked out a ladder.  The initial ladder that she suggested was 25, 50, 75, 100, 200, 200, 100, 75, 50, 25.  I asked for a switch and so we subtracted one of the 200's and added two 150's.  It added a 100 to the overall distance but we were both okay with that. The order of the ladder rungs varied but included some variety to keep things exciting. 

We finished up the main set and added on another 500 to round out the workout.  I did about 200 of kick and then 200 pull. The last 100 of cool down is always great and I took it easy peasy.  We made it out of the pool with about 7 minutes to spare before the kids came in.  It is just hilarious to hear the stuff that they talk about before and after practice. 

As we walked out of the gym, the rain had started and I was glad I had chosen to trade the run for a swim! Let's hope the rain clears up for tomorrow so I can get a run in...gotta burn some calories in anticipation of Thanksgiving!

My run with Rinny!

On Monday I noticed a posting on Twitter that Mirinda Carfrae was hosting a Twitter Party with Sheex this week.  I was super excited because I love a good Twitter Party! They are fun and fast moving and usually you can learn something interesting. 

Unfortunately, I realized around 4PM this afternoon that the Twitter party would coincide with my group run.  I have shared that I am working on recommitting to my running so I didn't want to skip out on my run.  So I got out my phone and tried a few jogs down the hallway in my house and decided yep, I can run and be on twitter at the same time.  Why not do both and Run with Rinny!

So I sent a Tweet about my predicament and then headed out to meet the group for the run.  It was awesome because the Sheex team and Rinny both responded to my original tweet! Kind of awesome and the party hadn't even started yet.  

I got the Square for the run and I had to switch from my new KnuckleLights to my trusty old headlamp so that I had my hands free to hold my phone.  I explained to one of my friends that I was going to do a Twitter party during the run and he thought that was a little funny.  I tweeted a picture of the group heading out but it was taken in motion and you really can only see the blur of reflective clothing.  For the most part, I held my phone and every so often would refresh TweetDeck and read the most recent tweets.  I took a few walk breaks so that I could write in some questions to Rinny. 

Oh yeah, it was so much fun to see her responses to my questions! Especially her response about hills since I was heading up my last hill when it came.  I guess since Rinny says I need to embrace the hills I should probably restart doing hill repeats each week! Gotta listen to the superstar pro, right?

Here are a few other tidbits from the party:
Time off: Two weeks off and then 2 one week breaks during the season which equals to four breaks per year.

Cross training activities: one on one bball with @tointri, snow shoeing, but mostly couch sitting

Basketball competitiveness: I kick his ass in ashoot out, but he is very competitive in oneonone, I am better, but he is so much bigger

Favorite Run Workout: I love fartlek runs and also my test sets on the treadmill 15 to 20 x 3mins is a good one

Her bet with TO for Kona: If I outran him then he would have to have "rinny's bitch' written on the back of his shoes, and vica versa

Best Advice: Be kind to your body and it will be good to you.

Here's a little more info about Sheex which is a company that produces luxury performance sheet sets.  I was a random prize winner during the Twitter party so I'll get a pillowcase to try out and it might even be autographed by Rinny herself.  If it's autographed I'll have to decide whether I really want to use it I guess.  Either way, I am thinking about trying these sheets out because they sound awesome!

Temperature and sleep quality are closely related. The human body experiences a slight drop in body temperature right before falling to sleep. Traditional sheets trap heat and can disrupt sleep. Sheex performance fabric breathes better, allowing your body to do its job naturally.

Thanks so much to Sheex and Mirinda Carfrae for spending time with all of us tonight on Twitter!

Squirrel and Sunday Fun-day!

Yesterday I spent quite a bit of time on the computer watching Ironman Florida.  It was awesome to watch Bree Wee hold the women's lead finishing up the bike and heading out on the run.  Bree is an inspiring pro who is always pushing herself and having fun while doing it.  One of the things that impressed me so much during the coverage was watching how Bree handled getting passed on the run.  She smiled at her competitors, shook hands, and cheered them on as they passed her.  Now she didn't get passed by that many ladies because she finished 6th but how amazing to be gracious and encouraging as you are suffering and seeing your race slip into less than ideal conditions.  It was also fun to track Laura from Frayed Laces tackle the course.  She was 7th age grouper coming off the bike course...wow!!!

I took a little break from watching IronmanLive for some crafting time with my friend Maja.  She is going to miss Kyla's baby shower next weekend and wanted to help with the decorations.  I'll share what we did after the shower but I am loving having the decorations up since they are bright and cheery.  After finishing up we headed to Subway for a quick bite and then she brought me back home.  As we were driving to my house, we talked about the town where I live and how some areas are so unpopulated that it can be scary.  It's true there are areas of this town with just one house on a street surrounded by woods and little light since there aren't a ton of streetlights.  Even though it can be dark at night here it, is a gorgeous area in the hills with lots of trees and tons of natural beauty.  I'm really lucky too because my house is in a neighborhood and I have neighbors with personality including my running friend Matt who already has his Christmas tree up. 

So I got home from the trip with Maja and decided to watch the final hours of Ironman Florida.  It is so inspiring to watch the party and amazing amount of love and energy that spectators pour out for the finishers especially in the final hour.  What's interesting about triathlon is that the champions come back to be there for the final finishers...how awesome is that! A lot of the crowd had run the race too.  Anyway, I'm happily watching when all of sudden a ton of loud noises seem to be coming from my roof.  It sounded like a pack of gigantic squirrels were running across the roof nonstop.  I waited 15 seconds and then got up to explore the noise and walked near my kitchen window which is between two cabinets.  As I got closer, the cabinet door seemed to be shaking.  All I thought of was how did a squirrel get in my cabinet and how was I going to handle that?  I cautiously opened the door and thankfully discovered no squirrel.  The noises stopped and I returned to the computer and got on the Twitter and Facebook and discovered that I had just felt my first .........
E A R T H Q U A K E. 

In case you are a new follower, I should clarify that I live in Arkansas so an earthquake isn't an everyday occurrence! There was a large 5.6 earthquake outside of Oklahoma City and we managed to feel it here.  Thank heavens for Twitter to let me know because I didn't have a clue what the noises were and was just a little scared that my house was under attack given the talk Maja and I had about my town.  Kind of a funny coincidence! Thankfully none of the baby shower decorations were harmed in the earthquake!

Now onto the training...Sunday Fun-Day!!!! Sunday afternoon is our fun-day celebration at the pool.  And by celebration I mean workout! Today we had a big group since all of Team Tininenko was there...my friend Brent and his two beautiful high school daughters Lauren and Alexa.  In addition, we had Carie and Maja and Kyla who is 8 months pregnant and still kicking my butt in the pool! Carie is our unofficial coach...she has a stockpile of workouts from when she lived in Omaha and swam in their Masters program.  Each week she surprises us with the workout and sometimes we'll make modifications or combine workouts. 

Today's fun was:
Warmup
3 x 100 with the first 25 stroke in IM order.
2 x 100 backstroke (75 drill of 25 on 8 kick, 6 kick, 4 kick, then swim last 25.)
4 x 50 kick descend

Main set
4 x 100 pull on the 1:45
6 x 75 on the 1:30 descend (we did mini Hannah 150s fly, back, breast x 2)
4 x 50 on the 1:05 stroke
500 as small group rotating 50 hard (circle swim with a few sec between, 1st person does a hard 50 then stands at end of lane to get in back of line as the 2nd person does a hard 50, so on.)

Cool down
100 easy
Hot Tub time!

The workout went by pretty quickly and was fun.  We split up into two groups for the final 500...Team Tininenko versus the rest of us! I had missed the last two Sundays with my vacation and then being sick so it was great to get back in the pool and have a fun and tough workout with friends. 

Twitter Fun and Trainer Karaoke

Wednesday night I participated in the #FitStudio twitter party.  This is a twitter party that takes place every Wednesday and is sponsored by Sears I think.  This week it was hosted by David Grotto and he asked participants to email a picture of their fridge.

Sadly I didn't win for the healthiest fridge but on a positive note I didn't get a call out for having a shamefully unhealthy fridge either! For a single girl, my fridge looks awfully full and yet I still stare at it and feel like I have nothing to eat! Some of my favorites that I always try to have on hand are bottled water and yes there is chocolate milk hiding on the top shelf.  My friend Kyla always has Lemonade at her house so I made some to have as another drink choice.  I have some leftovers that I doubt I'll eat...anyone else do that too?  In the crisper bin I've got some apples, kiwis, and grapes as well as a salad kit and mix veggie snack pack.  On the freezer side, my shelves are separated as breakfast on top, then dinner type stuff, and the bottom two sections are mostly all frozen veggies.  I don't drink coffee but have a stock pile of coffee packs for when my parents come to visit. 

Today I never got up the gumption to go out for a run.  It was a chillier day and windy and I just didn't want to break out my cold weather gear yet.  Instead I decided to go for a bike ride on my indoor trainer.  I love my Cycle Ops Jet Fluid Pro trainer! I watched some Burn Notice for the first 20 minutes and then decided to turn on the iPod.  Pretty soon it was Trainer Karaoke night at my house! I just couldn't help from singing along to the music. 

I did just over an hour on the trainer and could have kept going.  I had to take a quick break at one point to move my iPod dock closer to me since I was having trouble getting the remote to work from where I originally had it.  What a difference it made and then I was able to change songs much more easily.  I couldn't believe how many songs I had to skip over...either they were too slow or just not fun enough to sing along with.  It took about 38 songs before I hit one by Flogging Molly too.  I love Flogging Molly and Irish rock! Random side note:  There is a commercial out right now with a song by The Pogues and I love it every time it comes on!

After an hour on the bike, the perfect song came on to end my workout.  Don't judge me for having the Glee cast version but it was Journey's Don't Stop Believing! I've been having a down few weeks and singing along to this song reminded me that everything we go through makes us stronger and whatever you do...don't stop believing!