not much to say

I missed my swim training this weekend with the team. I was in Houston at a training with the Industrial Areas Foundation, which completely rocked my world, I'm still digesting a lot of it.

Anyhow, swimming today, that is if it dosn't thunder and lightening terribly.

cycle-iscous

My bike, pre clippless pedals and cool new saddle.

Last night was our first bicycle group workout. These first workouts on new sports always come with a lot of lecture, which is cool, I'm learning a lot, but I didn't get to ride as much as I wanted to. This was also the first time I got to ride with my new clipless pedals. I go the pedals last weekend, but a flat rear tire, old rim tape, and being in Bryan most of this week, I never got a chance to try them out until last night. I never actually fell, but it will happen. After a while I got the hang of the petals, they felt great, and I felt fast. I can't wait to go for my next ride tomorrow morning.

The pedals are the Shimano M520. It's a mountain bike pedal, but it has a bit more give tha road pedals (also I didn't need to get new shoes, which saved me more than $100 in the end). In a couple of months I hope to get some new shoes. I'm totally hot for Sidi, they're remarkably compfortable for cycling shoes.

On a side note. I have elected to subject myself to the weekly torture of a half hour deep tissue masage. My IT bands are so tight, when I run I feel like someone's squeezing my left knee. This afternoon is the first hour long kickoff to getting that worked out. I though masage was supposed to be this luxiurious relaxing thing.

New shoes!

First thing's first: Yesterday's workout was a swim, and it was AWESOME! A half dozen of my team mates were at the pool. Now, I know the Danskin Tri is all about coorperation and sportsmanship and girl power and all that crap, but I've got to let a little arrogance out. I totally smoked those ladies in the pool. Yes, the next clossest teammate in age is probably at least 10 years older. And I've been swimming this year since early March (and in the beginning, it was really ugly). But I've been really anxious about my swimming lately, yesterday I reallized I wasn't too bad. I'm no female Michael Phelps, but I'm not too terrible either.

Today was running day. I finally went and bought some new running shoes this morning. I used my handy $20 coupon for my fancy new Brooks shoes and my cool white reflective Yankz. Check out the Yankz, they are cool.

I've come to realize that everytime I go to an atheltic store that claims to know running shoes, they always tell me I'm in the wrong shoe. I think it's all a rackett. But I'm happy my new shoes feel good, look cool, and cost almost $40 less than my old shoes, without the coupon.

So, I'm in Bryan, TX today. It's a fine town, but the problem with this kind of travle is that it forces me to workout at the gym. Anyone out there know of good outdoor places to run in Bryan or Waco, please let me know. Anyhow, I hate running on treadmills. But I did it, and my shoes are awesome. My calf pull is even feeling better.

4/25/07: Swim 800 yards, 33 minutes, Zone 3 (average HR: 125bpm)
2/26/07: Run 2.25 miles, 35 minutes (includes warmup and cool down), Zone? (forgot HRM watch at home. Heart rate unknown).

Running

This Saturday (4/21) I met with my training group at the unholy hour of 7:30 am to work on running and establish my maximum heart rate.

A note about max heart rates (mhr). Apparently the whole 220-your age=MHR is not very accurate. More recent research has established that a person's MHR is thier own unique number that is genetically established, and not a sign of your cardio fitness. So we were doing all these tests with our handy heart rate monitors (hrm). Accroding to the old method my max should be 194. Now after doing five separate sub-max tests (meaning an estimate of the max but not actually reaching the max) my estimated MHR is 194. So far I'm the only one who's new max is close to the old estimate. Our two coaches have MHRs of 215bpm and 185 bpm. And apparently these max numbers change depending on what sport you're doing. So while my max for running is 194, my bike max may only be 184, and swim may be 174. These are all estimates, though.

Back to running. We did a timed one mile run. My old fastest mile was 12 minutes, as of Saturday, I've shaved off a minute. I now run a mile in 11:04...we'll just say that's an 11 minute mile. It's no olympics speed, but an improvement on before, for sure.

This morning I attempted to do my swim workout, but Stacey pool was still closed, so I'm going to try to go to another pool tonight. I'm a little rattled right now beause I got into yet another fender-bender this morning, scraped up the right side of my car and took out my passanger side mirror. And it was my fault. The other guy barely had a scratch. This is 3 accedents in less than a year (but the only one that's my fault). I want to move back to a place with real public transportation and a job that requires less travel.

Genesis

This blog is a record of my training and thoughts leading to my first triathlon. From today, there are seven weeks until I compete in my first trathlon. I'm hoping this won't be my last, but it's a little too soon.

Come back to find out...
Why I chose to do this, what training is like and how it's going,what a goof I look like swimming,and other fun/not so fun things.