It's done

Monday night I officially joined the Greenville Spinners Bike Club for the year. It's one of those things I said I was going to do in January. I'm getting these associates in place across the board now. The Spinners have regular group rides, and I'm really excited about getting in on some of those. I know some people (including former clients and employers) that are Spinners members, and I will run into them some I'm sure. But this is a really good thing that I've been looking forward to for a long time.

I also applied for a USAT number and have not heard back yet. If you don't get a number, there's a $10 fee per race for a one-day membership. In 2009, I'm finally running enough races to save money by getting a number. So that's really cool. But it also means I can't finish registering for my races on the schedule without the number, and I'm getting impatient.

The capper: last night Wifey signed us up for the Greenville Track Club with a family membership. That's going to be a lot of fun for both of us. Group runs, track runs, the GTC sponsors a handful of races including the Spinx Run Fest every October.

I'm hoping these will become social outlets for us as well as training motivators. It's going to be a lot of fun to get out and meet new people with common interests. They are both really large groups with several hundred members already, so we should be able to blend in and just do our thing.

I still have to find a pool, though. There's not very many indoor pools here. The YMCA won't give me a pool only membership, and the non-pool parts suck bad enough to make me not want to pay for a full membership to the Y, and a full membership to my gym. Greenville County Rec Dept has an indoor pool at one of the parks nearby, but it's only open from 9 am to 11 am Monday thru Friday. How strange is that? I can't figure out the strategy on that one. A season pass is $85 for Jan 1 - April 31 so the price is right, but the hours are so strange! I can't figure out what to do there.

The Garmin Training Center software is pretty cool! I did get it installed, and get my lap data off of the Forerunner from my 20 mile run on Saturday. here's the details (I have no idea why blogger is making you scroll down that far):

Lap	Miles	Time	Pace	Notes
1	1.79	21:37	12:06	I was looking at stuff
2	1.61	18:25	11:24	Settling into a pace
3	1.60	17:32	10:58
4	1.22	12:19	10:07	Kanye kicked in
5	1.7	19:04	11:14
6	1.3	13:49	10:40	Decided to stop running the hill
7	1.3	14:42	11:21
8	1.26	14:28	11:31
9	1.3	15:47	12:11	Starting to feel it
10	1.32	16:04	12:11
11	1.3	18:56	14:32	The slow point - i walked most of this lap
12	1.31	16:01	12:11
13	1.32	16:41	12:40	Feeling better
14	1.31	19:56	12:14	Crying out loud most of this one
15	0.11	1:20	12:42	circle the parking lot to get over 20
Total	20.03	3:56:37	11:48	Wow, that just happened!

That's an average 11:48 pace. That pace over marathon distance would render a 5:09 marathon, so I'm going to try not to cry during Myrtle Beach I guess. So I do need to pick it up a little bit to keep it under 5 hours. But this lap pace also had built in walk breaks up to twice every lap. I would walk through the parking lot at the end of every lap, and sometimes stop at the car to refuel. Also, I would walk up the one hill on the longer laps, and coming down the other side of that hill isn't exactly a fast thing. So I still feel pretty good about Myrtle Beach in LESS THAN 5 WEEKS!

I still really liked the path around the Furman lake, so I think I'll head back there for the 22 miler in 2 weeks, and maybe even the 12 miler this saturday. I've got to hit the gym more often though. The only workouts since the 20 mile run have been yoga. Literally, I took the trash cans to the street monday night, and that's the only time I have been outside of the house since saturday. The good news is that we now have our first client for the dental forms software up and functioning on their own, and they love the software I wrote. But I think this chair is sucking my soul out through the backrest. Here's to better training!