Artificial sunshine

Yeah so the rains came down today in portland oregon. Luckily, the rain didnt wash away my motivation to get out and train, like it had the past two days.

Around 1p, I got my things together and drove to the downtown 24hr fitness. The nice thing about the gym is that I can dress as if its a warm spring day, shorts and a sleeveless jersey and pound out the sweat on the treadmill while watching all shapes of people sweating along with me.

40 mins on the t'mill, then 10 mins on the bike, then another fast 5 mins on the t'mill and my workout was over.

I bought a sun tanning package, hoping that maybe my lack of motivation in training was related to the grey days and the lack of vitamin D in my system. 6 mins later I had a mega dose sunshine and went home.

Fun to run

Thats what Im telling myself.

Ran today, 25 mins, including some hills, wore the HR monitor and GPS. Took it easy, wasnt supposed to be hard.

New TT frame should arrive soon. Still need to sell the Soloist.

DZ

too bad DZ is out, hes a bad mother#$#$@

Training

So, got over some minor illness. I really wasnt that sick, but thats because I took rest and recovered soon. Its frustrating to have to take rest days when mentally I want to train, but by the end of last week I didnt want to train. I felt tired and un-motivated.

Saturday was a sunny day, and I felt renewed hope and I went for a run. And i felt great. Sunday did a tough treadmill run. Monday off and tonite just got back from a tough run around my neighborhood.

12 mi bike TT this weekend, if I got a bike to ride

2 weeks from now a 5 mile run race. Im looking forward to this.

Brake levers

I want these, internal cable routing!

A new Frame

So yeah, I bought a new frame today. Made a deal with a guy online for his Cervelo P2k. A pretty fast triathlon/TT bike. The Soloist was good, but road riding isnt my focus, TT's, Du's and one Tri is my focus, So i decided i needed a tt focused bike as well.

Ill be selling the Soloist shortly. Moving all the parts off of it and onto the new white P2k. Im excited, this bike should rock pretty hard.

The frame is the same size, and i've looked at the geometry, so it should match me pretty well.

Wow

Progress. Joined a local running team today, Team Red Lizard. And also did a track workout. The track is 1 mile or so from my apt, so I ran down there, then did like 800 warm up jog on track, then 800 of strides. Then the meat----7x600 with 300 recovery.

My times are above in the photo (circled in red).

1st: 2:17
2nd: 2:26
3rd: 2:27
4th: 2:45
5th: 2:43
6th: 2:34
7th: 2:38

7.8 miles and 72 mins of running. Not bad huh?

If you see in the pic, maybe it was a fluke or something but for one split second, I was running at 3:56 pace!! what? Crazy. Even crazier is that its only Feb 5th and I did a track workout. Im sore and tired.

I got a 5k this weekend. The goal? Go faster than my first 5k last year---22:33. That race was the Zoo Zoom on april 13th, im months ahead of last year.

Status update

The STATUS, in no order:

So yeah, began training again. Joined 24 hr fitness, cause portland winters suck. Did a 6 mile "long" run today and then took a nap. wow! took it out of me.

Been working on the bike technology and equipment choice over the last month. Will have a pretty sick ride when all is said and done. Going to test it out at a time trial at the end of this month.

5k race next weekend. we'll see how that goes. there's very little speedwork under my legs at this time. Although I was on the treadmill last week doing speedwork, got the treadmill up to its max speed "8.6" and then it just broke. There was a midget running next to me (seriously), and the guy said, "dude you fucked it up."

So yeah, getting back into the mode is nice.

Oh yeah and first paddle since Eppies, occurred last week, then I did another. Im surprised I actually didnt lose that much technique. FWIW. Found a local kayak team that I'll start training with when I get some more boat fitness in me. Got the races planned out too.

Thats the word. The build up has started, the train is rolling, and will be for the next 6 months, one week at a time though.

Yeah so its the new year woo

Yeah so the 2007 is here. Im in a new state, with a new job, on a new bike. There are a lot of new things right now.

The "new"s is that the Soloist pretty much built up now to the way I want it. Im still dialing in the position and getting more and more comfortable. But its getting close.

I got my PowerTap working, which is a whole other story, but thats cool.

Im looking at bike components and choosing what i'll be using this year.

More later...

Day 3 Complete

Yeah, so Day 3 is done. What I'm thinking is that days 7-14 are going to be the toughest. Then my body will begin to adapt and recover from the first 10 days worth of workouts and begin to make changes. Those changes will allow me to run faster and at a lower heart rate. In order to stress my body, I will need to up the ante on the workouts by adding more hills, more speed etc.

Another thing I was thinking, 3 miles a day isnt that big of a deal. 21 miles a week? 80 miles a month? Ive done marathons before, where I did 50 miles in one week, but one of the aspects that makes this a challenge is that I'm giving myself no recovery days, and I havent done much running in the last few months.

The goal is that, at the end of this month, I will be at a place where my base is decent, and I can comfortably add long runs into the week (6-10 miles) as well as speed work (10x800's)

Today, it was windy and grey, and I went a new route that led me down and along the Willamette river. There was some hillage, which the picture above shows in green.