I hate when I do a workout in the morning and the weather is crappy then as soon as I finish and plant myself on the couch with a weeks worth of caffeine and carbs the weather turns to perfect. Just thought I'd share that, seems to happen to me alot.
this weekend consisted of alot of running, and absolutely zero cycling, so far. Friday was a fairly steady 8 mile run. Saturday I had every intention of getting my long run out of the way and riding long today (sunday). My legs weren't feelin it saturday so I made it 5 miles and headed to work. Today was a 15 mile run that I paced terribly, pushed too hard too early, but all-in-all went well except now I have a painfully tight hamstring. My only ride since wednesday is gonna be about 20-25 minutes to try and loosen up the legs later this afternoon. The plan is to get back on track starting tomorrow.
And here's where I try and sell you on a product I like: FLUID! A couple weeks ago I got a new sponsorship with Fluid recovery, and the stuff works. There're only two flavors right now, "berry treasure" being the better of the two. Nothing but good things to say about it so go give it a try.

Knees and nutrition part II

The update from the knee doc is medial tearing where the patella tendon attaches to the tibia, which is good news! Or... could be worse. So I celebrated by running 14 miles, or to be more specific I ran 12.5, cratered horribly, then did the suffering-shuffle the last 1.5. I'm blaming that one on me for not eating breakfast before the run. So now I just have to do some maintainence and use an anti-inflammatory cream (NSAIC?) for a few weeks. Saturday was too miserable to ride, I started and decided I just didn't want to suffer that early on in training, say what you want about how much of a cold-weather wimp I am, as long as I get to be warm while you do so. Congratulations to everyone who raced this weekend, especially Darragh who ran a 2:40.
More later.

Knees and nutrition

This week seems to be starting out well so far. I like to keep Saturdays the end of my week and Sundays the beginning, keeps me sane. Yesterday was only a 40 mile ride, but it was absurdly windy and I was dumb and did the ride solo... Nooooobody to draft. I did come up on people every now and then and grabbed their wheel for a couple seconds of relief though. Today I started the 10 mile run with the intention of quitting after 2 miles, based on my previous runs in the past week due to alot of pain from a slightly torn patella tendon. The run went well though and the pain was ignorable(word?). I was going to get another 5 in since I missed the long run last week when I was sick, Coach Logan advised against it and said to stick to the schedule. The plan is to get a couple hours in at work then an easy hour or two on the bike then call it a day. If anyone's up for a couple steady-paced 7-mile runs this week I could use the motivation!
As for my new nutritional break-through, my sister made me cookies made out of coconut, banana, oatmeal, and chocolate chips, with no oil, butter, dairy, or flour. Along with a cup of coffee and a couple glasses of water/nuun, it is the best thing in the world before any workout.

Brought to you by nyquil

I have the flu, and from what it sounds like so do most people in central Texas right now. The weekend went well with a 57(?) mile ride followed by a solid workday saturday. Shawn Ullman gets yet another shout out for getting all of us in the VIP room at Aces lounge for the ACDC cover band show, which from what I remember was great. I got up at 7 on sunday to run... and wasn't feeling it, so I slept until 10. Still feeling sluggish I gave up the idea of running and tried to ride. An hour in I realized I wasn't hung over, I was sick. I went home to lay down and couldn't get up for a couple hours. I had a 100 degree fever and barely made it to the end of the Super Bowl (great game!). So monday/today I've been achey, energyless, nauseous, and chilly. On top of that I've been trying to finish my paper over "Federal Food Regulation and Safety" while alternating between dayquil, nyquil, and alka-seltzer. I hate school work, cold medicine doesn't make it much easier.

FYF

The annual Frost Yer Fanny duathlon was this morning and I was pretty impressed with not only the ATC turnout, but results too. In the short course race Grant took first OA in a seemingly tough crowd and MDR took 2nd in the womens race. In the sprint race I won the OA, Adam took second, and Ryan chased him down in a close 3rd. The one and only Shawn Ullman made an appearance and crushed the field securing his 8th place finish about 30 seconds behind Jeff Rogers. With a solid 3 weeks of ZERO training Don still had an admirable but still unknown bike split, and was running when I saw him.
Now I'm sitting on the couch doing laundry suffering through a sinus infection I got while standing around waiting for awards. Congratulations to everyone who raced FYF and 3M today, hope everyone has a good week.

A day of firsts

Today was pretty crazy... The presidential inauguration of our first black president, the first day of classes for the semester, and I swam for the first time in a pretty long time. I froze my ass off and am not doing that again until it warms up.
Besides the swim I've been feeling pretty good in workouts. My focus for the season is going to be the run, motivated after struggling through '08. Local celebrity Brandon Marsh is helping me out with some structure up to Lonestar half in April. It's nice having that 1-on-1 coaching that's focused on my capabilities and goals instead of the textbook mass-printouts that I've been working off of. I've been using those as a loose structure and do the fine tuning myself, so it's great having more specific workouts from someone who truly knows their stuff. My long run now is up to around 11 miles which I did sunday, and it hurt. It was a combination of feeling like I was running on sand, struggling to not drag my feet, and staying motivated to not bail out early, but I made it and it's alot more than I could do a month or so ago. It only gets better from here...

'09 season starter

2009 training has officially started for me today, mostly just mentally though. I'm training for Ironman Coeur D'Alene with T3 and today was the inaugural workout. It was just a short run workout up and down a hill a few times but it's what I needed to get my head into it.
It was also reassuring because my knee pain is manageable after the run today. I spent all winter worried that I wouldn't heal as fast as I did and have to start training late. So all's good.
School starts back up soon too, which I'm less excited about. Still haven't heard back after sending in transcripts/apps/etc. but I'm planning on going back to being a full-time student instead of continuing to drag it out.
That's all I've got now, happy new year!