Under the weather at the worst time

I know it's my own dumbass fault for not getting a flu shot this year. Next year I will get one. But it seems like every year when I get the shot, I get sick and the years when I don't get the shot I don't get sick at all. Kelley and the kids all got the shot.

I got a cold.

At least it wasn't the flu. I did actually go to the doctor after a few days for a flu test that came back negative. But I will own totally turning into a man-baby when I get sick. it's not pretty. This one has lasted a week, so far. I can work from home, and if I don't actually have the mental capacity to complete my job then I can take some time off without an issue. But this time I was able to just stay home at the new built-in desk for a week and that was it. Tomorrow I head back into the office.

It started as a head cold, then dropped into chest congestion which broke into productive coughing. The kids are tracked out right now, they don't go back to school until tomorrow. So with one quarter left in the school year, they got to laugh at me a lot. It was really disgusting. We've had a lot of family time over this track out. I didn't expect getting sick to add to that.

The timing sucks. Of course there is no running while I'm out sick, or swimming. My first marathon in a year and a half is only 2 weeks away. Next sunday is Easter, then the following is the Trap Pond 50k. I'm going to step down to the marathon distance instead of the 50k if I can, but I really want to get this state (Delaware) done. There were only three 20 mile runs in my training plan and I had to build back up to marathon shape anyway. Training has been frustrating at best. 2 weeks ago I missed a 20 to drop the kids off at my parents house for track out. This weekend being sick I missed another 20. Anytime I stay outside for longer than about 5 minutes my lungs catch on fire. That's not ideal.

So from here - I was able to work outside most of the afternoon today without issue. Tomorrow I'm back in the office. Going to try and hit plenty of after-work running, maybe stretch the normal taper 12 mile long run into a 15 or something. The single 20 miler that I was able to complete felt amazing and was a blast. But that's not usually enough for a clean, comfortable marathon.

On Running Form and Illness

A few weekends ago I was running on the treadmill because the weather was questionable when all of a sudden the Olympic Trials for the marathon came on. I don't always feel slow when I run on a treadmill, but when I do it's because I'm watching the fastest Americans  out there go crush it. Fortunately some of my favorites got into the top 3 spots so it's going to be a good time in Rio this summer!

Watching those people run was a lesson in proper form and it got my brain turning over a bit.

The first thing I did was match cadence with Meb. Sure, he was running 5 minute miles and I was clocking 9 minute miles. But we were footstriking at the same rate.

Running form, as I understand it now (reserved to change in the future), is to be tall with a natural forward lean. Use your abs to keep your hips level on all 3 planes (side to side, front to back, and center rotation), and at ground contact your shin should not be at more than a 90* angle to the ground (watch out for overstriding). This can occur with either a forefoot, midfoot, or heel strike, that's not as important as we originally thought. Overstriding is based on the angle of the shin, you always want to land on a bent knee to absorb the impact (force, motion) and return that energy back (force, opposite motion). The hips act as a fulcrum, and that is actually the key to the entire process!

Close enough except for the footstrike stuff (source)

So what makes Meb that much faster than me? How can we both keep the same 180 footstrikes per minute and not run the same speed?

There are a few ways to answer that question. The most obvious being the genetic and blood oxygen content capabilities to sustain Meb's speed over 26.2 miles. That's impressive by itself. There is also lots of math involved here, though.

Distance per stride: Each step involves pushing off from the ground (force) using the quads and calf muscles. The hips then act as a pivot point to bring the leg back into a forward position for the next ground contact. Shorter stride lengths mean a faster turnover because that leg doesn't have to travel as far to get into forward position.

Strength: The hamstrings and glutes are used to bring the leg forward. If one hip drops when that foot hits the ground (lateral flexion) then the force transferred to the ground at impact gets lost instead of being transferred back to the body during pushoff. Having one shoe scrape the calf when the leg comes forward, or having uneven arm movements (don't let your hands cross the center line of the torso!) can indicate hip problems. Bringing one hip forward (centerline rotation) can also throw off impact.

Conditioning: Think of the hips like a bowl. Dorsal flexion is letting the bowl tip forward to spill out some of the milk. A lot of the time, trying to run with a forward lean creates a problem where we bend at the waist, and the hip bowl spills forward as a result. Running tall keeps the bowl level; this takes core strength. Your current conditioning will limit how long you can hold this proper form.

When I need to run fast like Meb, I can push off of the ground harder. This will increase my stride length. My calves will fail first since I have ankle & knee inflammation issues, then my quads, hamstrings, and abs will fatigue. Before bringing my leg forward again for the next stride, keep the foot as far off of the ground as possible. This will maximize the distance that the hip (and glutes) have to bring that leg forward to start the next stride. But if I practice this technique often enough, I may be able to finish a 1 mile race in a relatively fast time, maybe around 6 minutes. Add in some conditioning, and I may be able to race a 5k in a respectable time (like my 21:54 PR).

And to think, it all starts with cadence. To calculate my cadence, I look at the clock when I can start counting my right foot strikes. After 30 right foot strikes, I look at the clock again. Ideally it will be exactly 20 seconds later. The math: 20 seconds * 3 is one minute, 30 right strikes * 3 is 90. It's a safe assumption that I also had 90 foot strikes with the left leg in the same time frame, so that adds up to the 180 footstrikes per minute goal cadence.

My theory is that you can run the goal cadence at any given speed for a limited amount of time. For a long race like an ultramarathon, just use less strength and a shorter stride length and you can slow down to a 9 minute speed. Then work on the conditioning to be able to hold that speed or go slower for a given distance, like 31 or even 100 miles. With enough base miles on your legs, aerobically you should be fine. I've done a lot of 20 mile runs this training cycle at a 180 cadence, 9 min/mile pace, and kept my heart rate under 150.

The rest of the story

So this was happening the day before Valentines. I cut this particular 20 miler down to only 15 because I felt some tightness in my chest and was starting to cough pretty good during the run. Kelley had been sick with an acute upper respiratory infection that turned out not to be cute at all. That evening, she was finally feeling better so the kids and I prepared her a lovely Italian Mixed Grill dinner with lots of veggies and different meats. It was a meal fit for a princess and she was feeling the love from us all, for sure.

I ended up drinking an entire bottle of wine with dinner since she didn't end up wanting any. The side effect from this is that I may have convinced the children that babies come from Tequila (hey, am I wrong?) so that's fun.

Turns out, I did end up having the flu. That meant I was drunk and sick saturday night, then hungover and sick sunday morning. Tough to tell which was worse. By Monday, I felt better but was still coughing too loudly to be around other people, so I worked from home all week and only got outside once. Wednesday night I had to run pick up some children's Advil since both of the kids picked up the flu and missed half of the week of school. Literally, I didn't even go out to the mailbox or put on something besides pajamas from Saturday night until friday morning, save for the one sweatpants trip to the drug store.

Eventually we did all come back to life. I went back to the office, the kids went back to school, and we're all ready to see the end of February. Hey, that's now! Alright.

SC Visit

It's always fun to head back to Greenville for a weekend to visit with the family when you have a weekend free.  Friday after work we went down to SC.  We didn't get to see as many people as I'd hoped, but it was still a lot of fun.  Mom made some really cute dresses for the girls out of some scrap material she had laying around.

What an adorable princess!

How cute is that!  Bigun got an all white dress that she refused to put on.  little stinker.

Speaking of little stinkers, After last sunday's poo drama I fully expected a repeat this sunday.  It wasn't quite as bad, thank goodness she did it while we were at Grandma's house and not on the highway somewhere.  And it didn't take any begging pleading or phone calls this time, but still made quite a mess and caused quite a stir.

That young'un ain't right, as we say here in the deep south.

Saturday night my brother Morgan and his girlfriend came over, as did one of my grandmothers who wanted to see the girls.  We had a fun dinner hanging out with them.

Sunday was a bit of an adventure.  We are hosting Bigun's Indian Princess meeting here at our house tuesday night, so we had to start making the invitations in the morning.  we didn't get very far.  I wanted to leave between 1:30 and 2 pm to head back to Raleigh, and it ended up being closer to 2:30.  Not too bad.  The best part of sunday, by far, was this:

Getting to meet Lisa!  She was in Charlotte for work and her flight happened to come in early enough on Sunday that she was there while we were driving through Charlotte on our way back home, so we got to stop and visit for about an hour or so.  We've been blog friends for years but since she lives in MN I never thought we would get to meet in person.  Turns out, she's just as incredible in real life as she appears on her blog.  Exactly the same!

Of course after leaving Charlotte, the kids started getting sick.  We think Bigun has an ear infection, and that must have kicked in some motion sickness or something.  Maybe it's viral, who knows.  but I think we did get to spot a clear difference between the two kids.  We were circling a parking lot after picking up some dinner when Evil Genius tries furiously to open the car door and get out while the car is still moving so she doesn't puke in the car.  Of course the doors were locked and she still had her seat belt on so she couldn't go anywhere.  We stopped and got her out, and she spit out some mucus but didn't puke.   All prep, no puke.  Then about an hour later we stopped to get some more tissues at a drug store, and while we were waiting in the parking lot  Bigun puked all over the back seat.  We were stopped, she was unbuckled and the door was unlocked and it would have been perfectly safe for her to puke outside the car.  But no, that wouldn't be challenging enough.  So she covers the back seat with kid vomit.  Bigun's all puke no prep, and EG's all prep and no puke.  If we were in Texas I'd make a joke about cattle and a hat.

But I can promise you that cleaning up that much puke after we got home was no joke, and it was all daddy.  And it was disgusting.  We finally made it home about 8:30 (really?  6 hours to make a 4 hour drive?) and they went straight into the shower, then to bed.  It took almost an hour for me to get the car cleaned up after that.  So nasty.  I really felt bad for Bigun having to ride the last 90 minutes of the drive with all of that bile around her and under her car seat.  It couldn't have smelled good.  We cleaned up as best we could onsite and rushed home without stopping again.

What was missing from this weekend?  We had tons of family and friends, and lots of puke.  Running.  There was no running of any kind.  We've got races the next three weekends in a row with a local 5k next sunday, then the Myrtle Beach Marathon on the 18th, then another small 5k the weekend after that.  I think we're going to organize a meetup in myrtle beach, so let me know if you want to get in on that and I'll be sure to send you the facebook invite.  And now more cute kid pics from this weekend when they weren't feeling sick....

August ends with a whimper

It's been no secret that I hate August. I totally get Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) during the hottest month of the year here in the deep south. Satan can have his climate back. I just hold my breath, stay inside as much as possible, and pray for the month to be over quickly.

This year August did not disappoint. We had a wonderful time going to Tybee Island with the rest of my family, I completed my second century ride, and set a nice PR in the olympic distance triathlon on a wonderful weekend out of the heat in the NC mountains. Then a hurricane blew through very close to us, but Raleigh came out ok. My training was intense early in the month, held pretty strong through the hurricane, but then died out completely at the end.

Yep, I went to the doctor today and I do indeed have strep throat. Monday Kelley had some funk, and was down for most of the day. She hit the listerine hard, and after 24 hours felt ok. Monday night my throat got a bit scratchy, and tuesday and wednesday I was completely down. Started feeling better yesterday (Wednesday), then got really worse again so I needed to go see the doc. A quick swab later and it's confirmed as strep throat. So I go on the anti-biotics and wait for them to clear this crap out of me before I can train again. That means for the 28 days I could train in the longest month of the year:

Swim: 18,700 meters in 7 swims including one oly
Bike: 340 miles, 13 rides, one century ride, one oly
Run: 103.7 miles, 14 runs, one oly
Strength: 4 sessions
Yoga: 2 sessions

It sounds funny to mention it now, but 340 miles on the bike is actually a little light for an Ironman build phase. That number should be over 400, really closer to 500. Last month I biked 483 miles. I really love the swim and run numbers - that is Ironman strong.

September holds the promise of the Labor Day weekend! Yippee! I love labor day bike rides for some reason. It's just a great time to get out there and roll. The next weekend I'm taking friday off so we can go to the outer banks and I can hit my only half iron this year. That's going to be a blast. The course and race is still on after the hurricane, but I can't get anyone to answer the phone at the hotel we're supposed to stay at, so it might not exist anymore. Could throw a small monkey wrench into the plans.

And hopefully I'll be able to swallow real food again before then. I'm sick of eating nothing but soup.

Thanksgiving under control

Well it finally happened. I hung on to some weight loss over the weekend! And it was Thanksgiving weekend, the best time ever to blow a diet plan out of the water.

Last week: 196 lbs, 24.5% body fat
This morning: 192.4 lbs, 23.8% body fat, 3.6 lbs gone!
6 week Totals: 16.2 lbs gone, and 4.8% body fat gone!

So Thursday I hit the 192.4 lb mark at 7 am before thanksgiving dinner. I thought it was nice to see a number that low while it lasted. Friday morning was 192.6, saturday and sunday I was out of town, and today back settled at 192.4. It is still nice to see a number that low.

We did Thanksgiving at Kelley's aunt's house this year about an hour south of Raleigh in Fayetteville. It was fantastic, but I have no pictures. They have Shetland Ponies and chickens running around, and bunches of dogs. We had about 18 people there and had a blast hanging out. One fun thing about southern thanksgiving dinners is that we rarely, if ever, drink alcohol. I did stay with a single vegetarian plate (well, I did have one piece of turkey) and unsweet tea. A few desserts, hey why not. It was fantastic. and I did not put on the maternity jeans that I love on thanksgiving.

I got a cold, so there wasn't very much in the way of workouts last week. I had an amazing run on Monday. Half a mile warmup, then 5 miles at 7.5 mph (an 8:00 pace) exactly. No signs of slowing down. That was amazing. The last time I tried to do that, my legs felt like they were going to fall off after about 2 miles. This time everything was going strong.

Tuesday a sinus thing kicked in. Dang fall allergies. I went to visit my parents in SC for the weekend, and got in a good 6.3 mile run around the lake at Furman University while I was down there. I'm still cursing the fall allergies, but it feels good to be running again.

On Wednesday, the Biggest Loser aired a "Where are they Now" special show. They did air the 5k that we ran in Myrtle Beach as a part of the special! In the segment where they talk about the 5k, it starts with a few group shots of the starting line. One of those shots is an arial view, and you can clearly see Kelley in the crowd. I'm right next to her, but some dude with a big head is standing in front of me so only my shoulder is visible. But if you know exactly where to pause it and what to look for you could totally see us in the crowd.

So it's been a fantastic holiday and I still put up a great loss. Nothing wrong with that. This week is going to be fun! Enjoy it.

Dropped the Duece

I must admit that one of the benefits of working from home was that you rarely ended up in an office. This prevents a lot of bacterial contact from other people in an office. So I came down with a sinus thing and ended up flat on my ass friday instead of going to work. This turned out to be a 48 hour bug, so it started around 4 pm thursday and stuck with me until around 4 pm saturday.

Saturday at 7 am was supposed to be The Big Deuce 2 mile open water swim race. I did not end up being able to attend. I did go get the packet/t-shirt. And since I was feeling better on sunday I ended up heading to the gym and put my 2 miles in the pool. That's 144 laps in a 25 meter pool if you are counting at home. I timed it out in 1 hour 17 minutes. That would have put me finishing 100th out of 108 people. I'm just glad I covered the distance. It's an ironman prep thing to build my swim capacity to a 2 mile status. So I got my miles in the pool instead of the lake, big whup.

In other news, Bigun got into the school we wanted after all! I'm very excited. It's a year round school, so it started July 9th with a huge waiting list. By last week a spot opened up and she got in! So she's officially in the Wake county school system now, in 5 year old kindergarten. Here's a picture of her first day at school:

Being in a year round school she goes for 9 weeks and gets 3 weeks off instead of a traditional 12 week summer break. That means she'll have most of september, december, march and june off. We're all really looking forward to trying this new schedule out. I prefer to take vacations in the fall/winter/spring, so I think it will be fantastic.

And now I have to tell an Evil Genius True Story. We're working on potty training her, and it's going pretty good I think. Until Sunday. She did put a nice dookey in the potty, and that's great. But she did not wipe or flush. Instead, she came and sat down on my foot. Because daddy makes the best toilet paper? wtf? She just stood up and there was shit on my foot. Then I found some more on the floor of the bathroom. Wow, the hits just keep on coming. That child is special.

I also got a tattoo yesterday! It's my first, and such an odd thing for a 35 year old to do. Couple of pics:

I got the word "Balance" on my chest. The irony is not lost of putting the word balance on one side of my body instead of in the middle, thereby throwing me out of balance. But I can totally understand why tat's are addictive. I knew that I couldn't swim for a few weeks after getting one, and with that 2 mile swim behind me I knew I could take a few weeks out of the pool. I'm pretty sure I will end up getting more in time, including the m-dot on my right leg after finishing ironman florida next year.

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I've been debating tattoos for several months now. What to get, and where, it's just an urge that wouldn't go away. This one is meaningful because I wanted something small enough to where I couldn't abandon when they were halfway through if it hurt too much. It didn't hurt that bad, so I'm planning the next (larger) one.

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Balance is a goal for me. I've preached for years on here about the benefits of balanced training. We also have to watch for work/family balance, family vs personal time, balancing your friends with your commitments, even beer vs..... well ok you really can only drink beer and be ok (as opposed to wine or liquor - Coffee, water, and sports drinks are still staples).

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But the fact remains that everything you do and every choice you make has a balanced offset sometimes called an opportunity cost. The opportunity cost of taking the wife and kids to dinner could be having beers after work with your cube-mates. Finding that balance can be tricky. Taking time to train takes time away from your (and my) kids, and that can be a tough balance. Going out to lunch with a group from the office often enough might mean you won't have the cash for a race entry fee (a cost cost?). So balance has been on the brain a lot for a long time. I'm hoping this ink will be a reminder to keep everything balanced.

Up next is a metric century bike ride august 7th. It's a local charity ride, and I'm using it mostly as a training race to get a time established for the half ironman in september. Should be a hot blast, I'm really looking forward to it!

Run out the cold

So tuesday I was flat on the couch, and wednesday i felt better but still ended up working from home. Thursday I went back into the office but was still struggling with this stupid thing a bit. Then friday I went to the office, and it started snowing right after lunch.

Now when SC gets a little bit of snow the people there freak out pretty bad. I had no expectations of what Raleigh would do with some of the white stuff. We got flurries for about 30 minutes, then later on after dark there was some freezing rain. nothing actually stuck to the ground here. Farther west (greensboro, charlotte) they did get quite an accumulation. And in the mountains, Boone got 18", and Asheville got about a foot. but we got nothing, really.

Still, the schools closed down at 1pm, I left the office early just to avoid having the highway turn into a parking lot; I still worked from home the rest of the afternoon. Some businesses closed, the whole place just started shutting down. This was a problem, but not as much of a problem as I was expecting.

See, thursday night I went to charlotte and back to meet kelley. Concord Mills, actually. She came back to Raleigh with me because Saturday was her birthday and we had plans made for friday night. Those plans ended up being cancelled. But we still went out for a nice dinner and did some shopping, etc. Still, saturday we were supposed to do christmas with my mom's side of the family in Greenville. With our plans being cancelled we can go back to Greenville saturday night? well, not with the snow west of us. Greensboro was shut down.

So saturday morning we could make it back down, right? 143 wrecks reported on I-85 around greensboro. If we go south then west to avoid that crap, it turns the 4 hour drive into 6 hours. then we miss christmas anyway. waiting to get around those conditions was also going to add the time, so we were just screwed. Then kelley's mom said it was ok to keep the kids for another night, so I ended up getting my wife all to myself for her entire birthday weekend! We finished the christmas shopping and just got to spend a lot of quality time together. You just don't get to do that very much after you have kids. It was fantastic!

She made it back to Greenville today and the girls were pissed that I wasn't with her. The holidays are here people!! Wednesday I'm heading home for christmas. you can count on that.

I'm still fighting with the snots. moving quite a lot of mass through the sinusoidal cavities. I feel ok, but not as much energy as I had last weekend. I have been downing massive amounts of POM Wonderful, and it's working very well. Still, I needed to get a run in today just to see how it felt. I did 3.5 miles slow. i mean slow with walking. but it felt sooooooooo goooooooddddd just to be out there again. and I've been eating everything in sight since the cold started going away. What's that "feed a cold, starve a fever" thing all about? I keep stuffing my face I'm going to be too heavy for the first of the year.

December is gone people! Brace yourself for 2010. I hope to get to post again this week, but in case I don't I hope you all have a great Christmas! be well.

boooooooooo

dang germ factories are at it again. Kelley and the girls came to Raleigh on saturday. Wes was also in Raleigh this weekend, so of course the girls got here about 15 minutes before wes calls wanting to hang out. hey, i could have gotten you sick too big guy. count your blessings.

It was so nice not to have to drive back to greenville on friday and come back to raleigh on sunday. on top of that, the girls are still here!! going back to g'town tomorrow. but i got a few more days with them.

my company christmas party was saturday; that's why the girls are in town. Kelley looked absolutly stunning. i had no pants, so i had to wear jeans. and we are just slack enough not to have taken any pictures. we also did not win any door prizes or anything interesting like that. i did however get fairly drunk.

about 8 pm we get a call from Mickey that Evil Genius is vomiting. so all day sunday she had to be curled up in daddy's lap. is there a safer place for a little girl who's under the weather than curled up with a blanket in daddy's lap?

also i had to blow off coffee with wes sunday morning, we took EG to an urgent care place. sorry bro, next time.

so i did my tri power workout monday before work, worked the full day, even got in some speedwork in the pool monday over lunch. afternoon throat started feeling sore, and by 9 pm i was under the table. fever, sinuses, restlessness, full body ache. you name it. so i only slept for a couple of hours last night. called in sick to the office today and spent the whole day curled up on the couch. the kids don't know what "daddy hurts" means, so they were jumping on me and throwing things at me most of the day. ah, it's good to have them in town. kelley was a dream. she got me pomegranate juice and soup and drugs. i usually don't get sick more than once a year, so i hope this is my only winter ick.

i hope you have enjoyed the drogging (drunk blogging) so far; cold meds are yea.

and if that wasn't random enough

friday i got to go swimming with bill. Bill is one of the owners of the company i work for. he had a swimming scholarship to UAB back in teh day, and did Ironman CdA 5 years ago. kelley really enjoyed talking with him at the holiday party. that dude is still fast. he did teach me how to do flip turns, so that was really cool. still, he did a mile in teh same time it took me to do 1000 m. and he fucked up my training log, apparently i've been swimming in a 25yd pool and recording the distances in meters. gaaaa!!! piss on it. gotta find a translator i guess.

Saturday Kyle and I went out for a road ride. he's the main instigator on the company's tu/th mountain bike lunchtime rides, so i didn't feel too bad when he out-climbed me on teh hills. it was supposed tobe a 60 mile ride, but the 38 degree weather cut us down to only 20 miles. fucking cold! geez that was nasty. i'm still trying to talk him into buying a road bike.

I had an addition suggested to the Holiday Gift Guide by a few people. Anyone used the Garmin ForeRunner 310 XT yet? it seems dreamy. a few months ago (too hopped up on cold meds to find the post) i mentioned taking the forerunner 205 into the pool and was quickly told that was a bad idea. this 310 is waterproof for swimming (depth of 50 m), will track your transition times and bike/run splits. oh yea baby. that's the stuff dreams are made of.

kelley called about the new bike i want, but the bike shop told her it was already sold. damn!! I was ready to call them. 58 cm red/white cannondale Synapse 5-c please. load 'er up. guess i will have to keep looking. i need to find a Specialized dealer in Raleigh.

I was finally able to buy the bike because I got a car. finally. it's the exact same car that i had before the wreck. apr 5 2008 i drove 4.5 hours from a friends wedding, made it 2 blocks from my house when a redneck t-boned by car and it was totalled. gone. haven't had a car since. it was a 1997 toyota avalon xl, silver, tan leather interior, 123k miles, sunroof.

monday kelley bought me a 1997 toyota avalon xls, silver, tan leather interior, 123k miles, sunroof. The only difference is the xls model is a little bigger (and more expensive), and it has the gold lettering on the back and the old car had the silver lettering. i preferred the silver. but we paid cash and have enough left over for a bike.

is it wrong that i'm more excited about the bike than i am the car? is it wrong to spend more on a bike than a car? ok i can't do that. but i'm glad that the stupid car thing is done so i can get on with a new bike purchse. where's my pom juice? i think the cold meds are about to put me down. goodnight.fgds hfdfds dsatrd5

What's next

It started last wednesday, 9 days ago. One of the joys of living in the south is dealing with the pollen. Yes, it's nice that everything sub-tropical grows here. Having a vacant wooded lot next door gives some nice privacy. But for the last 9 mornings I have woken up with a huge headache. Sinuses so stuffed up that my teeth hurt. My head feels like a bowling ball perched on a golf tee. Once we got back in town, I had to take out my contact lenses - both eyes are still bloodshot. I can't do anything. I'm ready for this pollen to GO AWAY.

I can't even work out. The TOA tri was the only exercise that I've gotten since this crap started. I took musinex and advil before the race to keep everything cleared, and it worked. but once the musinex wore off, everything came roaring back with more of a vengance. I haven't even been doing yoga or the tri power workouts, just bending over makes the bowling ball fall off. 10 minutes in the garden knocks me out for the rest of the day.

I think the end is in sight, though. This is all tree pollen, and the trees are looking pretty clear now. This mornings headache wasn't as severe as the last few days. I might even be able to put my eyes back in tomorrow. This forced downtime has let me reflect on a few things and heal up from a few things.

American health care is a screwed up system. I'm supposed to have a bone scan on tuesday, and when the hospital called to preregister me..... fuggit about it. It's going to cost me an arm, I've got to take a day off of work (bad timing) and with 9 days no running my leg doesn't hurt anymore. So I'm cancelling that thing. If we had universal health care it might be a different story.

I'm skipping a half marathon that I had planned for saturday. It was an earth day half that runs through one of Greenville's suburbs and is very close to home. But it was really a training race that I had not even registered for yet, and after the tri last weekend and this stupid pollen thing I just don't feel like pulling a half out of thin air. My goal is to hit the treadmill (no pollen in the gym) for my planned 16 mile long run. If my head doesn't feel like a bowling ball.

Now is the prime time for planting down here. I've got to put the veg garden in the ground. Sure, some of the warm weather plants aren't availble yet (okra, pumpkins, cantaloupe, etc) but the tomatoes and beans and peppers and squash are ready and I've got about 70 plants ready to go in the ground. So it seems like a good weekend to garden (pollen death notwithstanding).

Next weekend May 2nd is the Mud Run. Michael's coming into town for it, and we can't wait. It's only 4 miles, with obstacles, and it should be a ton of fun. Kelley's been looking forward to it for a long time now. We're running with the C group, so it should be a bunch of other fat old people. We'll fit right in!

May 7th is the first of four time trials put on by the Greenville Spinners club that I am already a member of. Racing is free for members. This will be the first time I've tried a bike only race. Sure, it's just me against the clock just like in triathlon. There's not a big pelloton like in the tour de anything. Kelley has a cousin who's husband is a cat 3 bike racer. He's going to come down and ride the TT's too. We're very close with them, so this is very cool. But all of my other bike stuff is tri's or organized rides with distance but no time specification. This is a 10 mile out and back route that individuals get timed on and ranked by age group/time. You can choose to run cat 1 - 5 if you're a pro like Marcus, I'll stick with age group thanks. They run one TT every month for may - august, and it seems to me like a great way to spend a thursday night. So I'm really looking forward to it. Last year the first race only had two guys in my age group, so I'm looking for a top 3 finish.

The June time trial is June 11th. This falls nicely in between the Festival of Flowers international distance triathlon June 7th, and the Hatfields and McCoy's marathon June 13th. I'm not sure it's a good idea to do 3 races in 6 days, so that time trial might get dropped. Is a 10 mile bike race a good way to marathon taper? I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea to do my first oly tri 6 days before my first marathon.

The oly is double the TOA tri from last weekend. The 750m swim becomes a 1500m swim. The 10.5 mile bike becomes a 24 mile bike, and the 5k run becomes a 10k. So I have to ask myself when I was done with the race last weekend, did I feel like doing that again? Except for the post-water disorientation, yea I think I could have done it again. I've got to revisit my fuel strategy. No time goal, just try to complete, not compete. The run leg is going to be in some serious heat (over 90 degrees), and the overall time is going to be in the four hour range more than likely. Hydration and nutrition are super important here.

The marathon is going to be another story. It's a higher elevation, temps in the 80's, and maybe some hills. I still have to make travel plans for this one, get a hotel room, etc. But my first marathon is only 7 weeks away, and losing 9 days of training to pollen is not cool. I've really got to stick to my long runs more closely no matter what. 7 weeks to marathon!

Then I'm going to take a few weeks off. Good luck if you're racing this weekend, hopefully I will have garden pics to show off on monday, not a funeral announcement. Bye-bye pollen.

I am a weak little girl

it's true. You know how much I hate western med doctors anyway. I went to the doctor yesterday, and he basically just said "meh, it could be something", drew some blood and that was it. I was hoping for some antibiotics or some nutrition advice or something. Maybe the bloodwork will show more. But that was just a useless "come see me in 2 more weeks if you're not feeling better by then" kind of thing. If I wanted to take 2 more weeks off from training, I would have waited until then to call him in the first place. oh well, you get what you get I guess.

But really I'm calling myself a weak little girl because I did the Tri Power assessments last night. You are supposed to do these same assessments every 4 weeks to see progress. Let's just say I did not set the bar very high, so progress should be drastic. I'm going to do the same assessments every 4 weeks for the next 8 months on the program, so I am going to post these embarrassing numbers today just so we can all see how far I've gone later. And you can hold my feet to the fire if I wimp out, or don't show enough progress. I love me some trash talk, and I like to take it just as much as I like to give it out.

Pushups (60 seconds): 10
Wall Sit: 30 sec
Flex Arm Hang: 11 sec
Side Plank: 19 sec
Side Plank Bent Knee: 25 sec
Prone Plank: 20 sec
Extensor Chain: 50 sec
Core Strength: 30%

Some of these are pretty obvious. 10 pushups is pitiful. The flex arm hang is supposed to help you if you can't do a chinup. All of the "second" measurements are time to failure. The side plank bent knee is a side plank with your bottom knee bent for stabilization and the top leg raised. The extensor chain was a fun one. It's kind of a superman pose, where your feet are anchored, and you put a swiss ball under your hips and just see how long you can keep your body straight, arms back. it's a measure of lower back strength. The core strength one was really interesting too. A lot of times when we are supposed to be working core, we're actually using the hip flexors instead. Hip flexors are already strong from all the time on the bike. So you lie flat on the floor and put one hand under your back directly below the belly button. there will be an arch in your lower back at that point. Lift your legs straight up in the air, bend your knees 90 degrees, and your lower back will press down on your hand. Lower your legs until your lower back no longer presses down on your hand, and guage the percentage that your legs moved. If your feet hit the floor you have 100% core strength. My legs only moved about 30%. that's a really cool test.

Remember the Tri Power program is all about achieving balance. I've done the same ab excersices for years, and once it gave me a nice 6 pack with smallish love handles on the sides. I think these assessments shows just how out of balance the muscles are. I've got a pretty strong back, and the wall sit is not bad. but my front and side core is certainly weaker. So I'm out of balance. I truly think this program can restore that balance. and that's really cool.

So you see the moves, how do you fare on those assessments? Do you think you're stronger than a little girl? leave me comments with some of your times.

The training plan is finally finished! Ah, glorious. It is really cool, I must admit. I've got a FIRST marathon training plan and the swim/bike numbers for a oly tri plan combined. That phase wraps june 23rd with my hillbilly marathon. Then I'm taking a couple of weeks off, just because I can. Then the half ironman training plan kicks in leading up to the nov 7th Beach 2 Battleship. I pushed it online, you can download my complete plan from this link. It's an excel 2007 spreadsheet, but if you are using an older version of excel, it should convert ok. Email me if you can't open it, and I will get it to you in another format.

I've got three each swim, bike, and run workouts. The FIRST program has speedwork on tuesdays, a tempo run thursdays, and a long run on saturdays. That's the way I like it. The swim team I'm on practices mon, tues, and thurs at 5:30 am. I haven't figured out how or when I'm going to get in the bike rides yet. There's a long ride on sunday's, and I love getting in a long bike ride on sunday afternoon. I think it's the best recovery workout after a long run on saturday. I think there will be a regular group ride I can get into for that. but monday and wednesday rides are shorter, and the Spinners don't have a regular group ride those days. I might do some at the gym, or on the trainer, or find a safe route and fly solo.

The tri power program is my strength training workouts. It has 15 minutes on mon, wed, fri of basic stretching and corrective work. that's not too bad, and I can do it all in the office. Tues and thurs are the main strength days, and it's only 35 mins worth. Not bad. I'm also throwing in 30 minutes of yoga on tuesdays and thursdays. that's not too bad, really.

It's a comprehensive plan, and in the spreadsheet I added columns to track actual completions too. The sheet is preloaded with my races and those distances too. But get a load of these totals: 92.6 miles of swimming, 2,798 miles on the bike, 639.8 miles running, 70 hours of strength work, and 36 hours of yoga. that sounds like a lot. But it's only february, and that's to carry me through the end of the year. how cool!

So I'm feeling better today, but run out of energy really quickly. I did some yoga this morning, it felt pretty good. I have lost some weight being sick, so that's feeling great. I'm going to do a Tri Power workout later on today, and maybe a little bike time if I can squeeze it in. I don't want to rush back until I'm sure I'm over the flu thing, but if I don't get in a good run or decent bike ride soon I may start shooting things.

Nothing

I have nothing positive to report today. It's why I haven't posted since thursday. It's been incredibly hectic and downright depressing. I still don't feel right. Since missing the marathon with the flu, the flu symptoms have mostly gone, but something else is still not right. I'm going to the doctor tomorrow and hopefully he will be able to figure it out. But I can't seem to get the body feeling right. Some mornings I wake up with a fever. Last night I was awake and turning from 1:30 to 3:30 am. Yesterday i couldn't finish my breakfast, today I'm still hungry. There is nasea all over the place. Most of the time, I have no appetite and no energy. Tri training season started yesterday, so this is not cool and needs to go away soon. I need my fuel back, my energy back, so I can get into the workout routine. Or do you think it's the other way around? if I can get in a workout, the body will feel better? It's been this way for almost 2 weeks now, and it's driving me crazy.



Thursday night we got to visit Ben and the new baby in the hospital. I called him Barry, and you should have seen how red mom's face got! Here's the new little one, he is soooo cute!




So back to friday. We made it up to the mountains after work, and it was only about 18 degrees outside. Cranked up the heat in the house and it got comfy in a couple of hours. I was pleasantly suprised, the water remediation folks had left dehumidifiers running that had taken care of the moisture problem. no moldy smell, no rotten holes in the floor, etc. It could have been a lot worse. We hung out for a while and crashed.

Saturday we got the U-Haul after some breakfast, packed everything up and it went quicker than expected. met with the new tenant some, and were back on the road. I did climb the hill above the house and get a pic. We couldn't have asked for a better day!



You can see the house and the view from there. We share a driveway with the neighbor, and this new tenant is a friend of the neighbor. After talking with him, I think one of these guys will end up buying this house from us. Awesome! If you would want to buy it, see more at http://www.booneinv.com/, one of my other sites.

We made it home and unpacked the U-Haul saturday. Most of the stuff ended up in the garage or in my office. We're still trying to get everything settled and unpacked. That left Sunday as "get-it-all-done" day. More stuff didn't get done than did get done. I did get some things unpacked. Bigun found some funny bedroom slippers and started wearing them. She still won't take them off:

it's too funny! She loves those giant things. But up in the cold mountains those slippers were oversized, warm, and comfortable in the cold. My plan was to unpack, settle furniture, pay bills, get the tax stuff ready for the accountant, plant the grapes and berries (my Ison's order came in on thursday) because you're supposed to put the live plants in the ground within 24 hours. It's also time to get the tomato and pepper seeds started in the seed flats. I did get the unpacking and furniture done. I did get 2 posts in the ground for the grape trellis. I still have one more post to go, and wiring up the trellis. Plus clear and prep the bed for the 7 blueberry and 2 boysenberry bushes I ordered. I'm about to panic now it's been too long and I need to get those plants in the ground before $100 worth of fruits die in my office. I'm also sick of not having the tax stuff to the accountant. after getting 2 posts in the ground, I thought I was going to fall over with fatigue. last year i sunk 3 posts and bed prep all in one day. I'm sick of being sick.

I have found a FIRST training plan for my hillbilly marathon. I still need to plug those numbers into the spreadsheet. But I really think it's going to work out well. i'm still trying to find swim and bike numbers for an oly tri to fill in that part. And if I ever start feeling better, I will finally start the tri-power program. I should have started that yesterday too. And I didn't do the assessments on friday like I was supposed to.

So keep your chin up, I'm trying to do the same. I might be a little depressed after missing the MB marathon. All of these other symptoms could be psycho-sematic offshoots of that. Or it could be mono, or just something bacterial. Whatever it is, I'm ready to feel normal again.

Back on that horse

Well, the cold has finally cleared. My voice is still gone, but I got in a run yesterday and it felt GREAT! I was at the gym, and did my 5 miles per the training plan in about 53 minutes. It burned 800 calories, and the incline was set at random level 2 and didn't get over a 2.9. But it was still amazing and fantastic just to feel like running again.

There is something going around Greenville apparently. Several other G'town bloggers are also reporting being down with colds. My answer: pomegranate juice. Get the stuff with blueberry if you can find it, there's more anti-oxidents. This stuff is like OJ times 1000 for it's effectiveness. My chiropractor got me turned on to it a couple of years ago. He actually has cured colds for me several times just with adjustments. But this time I just went with the pomegranate juice.

And I've got to give some serious props to See Bride Run. Small changes make all the difference in the world of weight. For example, my youngest daughter wasn't gaining weight fast enough to even be on those percentage charts for weight/height/head things that the pediatricians use. She was 40% in height, and 45% in head size, but her weight was at -3%. Apparently 16 month old happy babies are supposed to weigh more than 16 lbs. So we switched her from the reduced fat cheese we normally buy for ourselves to the full fat cheese. This was ok'd by the doctor first, along with a couple of other small things going from reduced fat to full fat. And after only gaining <1 lbs in 3 months, she gained 1/2 lb in 3 weeks between weigh ins. The doctor was happy. She's still not on the chart, but the doctor is happy.

Oatmeal is a staple runner's fuel. I made a small change starting tuesday. I switched my normal morning cherios or other breakfast cereal to one of Caitlin's oatmeal recipes. It cut my 400ish calorie breakfast down to about 180 calories. And yesterday at the gym I weighed in at 201!!!!!!! (insert trumpets blaring here and general fanfare) This is the kind of thing I have been waiting for! A small change can make a big difference. What kind of small changes can you make to speed up a small goal? I'm going to be under 200 lbs next week I bet just from this one small change.

I'm teaching out at Spartanburg Community College today and it's a rest day anyway. Long run coming on saturday, so have a great weekend!

BLAH

Carlin did a routine on being *sick* that was hysterical. I'm reminded of this one run into my marathon training program by getting **sick** and a bad case of the blah's. The body pain started on saturday, but I blamed that on the run. I should have been a better listener. The sinuses started on sunday. Monday night I lost my voice. Now this is particularly bad timing because I have to teach a class at Spartanburg Community College on friday. It's only a one day class, but it will still be difficult to whisper through if I have no voice. No voice on Tuesday, which meant no phone calls from the office in Atlanta. That was a nice break. They tend to leave me alone to write code anyway, but it was a nice piece of mind. And I made some serious progress on this big project due COB Thursday.

So sun, mon, tues with no workouts really. I did take a nice, lazy ride on the bike around the 'hood here last night after work. It was such a cool evening, and just a nice time to be outside enjoying the fall in Greenville. I did maybe 5 miles, about 20 minutes, and barely broke a sweat. I wasn't trying to work through anything serious.

So now it's Wednesday morning, I still have no voice, my sinuses are really stuffy, and the head is about half swimmy. It's fun writing code with about half a brain. The good part about being sick is that the body's natural response is to focus on removing the bacteria or virus matter that is causing the sickness, not focusing on satisfying addiction. So even with no exercise the nicotine demons are still at bay. I'll know I'm over the cold when I start having cravings again.

I think today will be the day! This stuff started breaking up some early this morning. If everything goes well, I'll try to get back onto a run this afternoon and hopefully get back on the training schedule tomorrow.



But, I did get the training plan into a jpg:





email me if you want a copy in excel.