Where did I leave off???

Sometime after my last update, I did a bit of working out. To sum up the week:

Wednesday: After biking too and from work, I considered that a work out. Evan and I walked to get dinner in the loop, another 2 miles, so I called that a "cross train" day.

Thursday: I got bribed into taking Casey for a run. Evan said if I took Casey to get some exercies, he would make dinner, start the laundry and do the dishes. Couldn't pass that up so I ran Casey 3 miles, in just under 24 minutes. 8 minute miles would be my dream 10K pace so just shy of a 5K, in under 24 minutes, I'll take it. I guess my time trails are paying off? I then swam but I was pretty tired and was there less than an hour. I think I only got in 1000M. Huge headache too. Could it be the swim cap? Seems unlikely but who knows.

Friday: Biked to work. National "bike to work day" so I stopped by the booth at forest park and then biked to work, probably about 7 miles total. I intended to bike home but decided to meet Evan and Amy at Houlihans so we got my bike in the morning.

Saturday: 10 mile bike ride at Creve Coeur Park. Nice FLAT path. Loved the flat. I wore Evan out on the back half and he was done when we got back to the car. There is a 3.6 mile trail that leads from Creve Coeur to the Katy trail, want to try that next time for sure. Evan doesn't like the bike rack, he was nervous the whole time. We have to get a bar for my bike so that it fits OK on there and today at Walmart we both a strap that will hopefully help hold things together so he's not so nervous. He won't take it out on the interstate yet which drasticly cuts down on the number of trails we can ride, but I'm sure as we use it more he'll get more comfortable. After the bike ride, Evan golfed and I swam. Again, I was tired and the headache returned but I noticed it got worse as I worked on my breathing so I think it was oxygen deprived. I also notice I only breath on one side and so I starting working on breathing on both sides. It's going to take some work.

Today: 1 hour walk in the park with the husband and dog. It was glorious! The weather was sunny and about 80 degrees. I loved every minute of it. I wish it could have gone on longer. I worked on flexibility with some stretches and calestetics and then a 3 mile run. I was shooting for under 8 min miles which only meant I went out too fast and then my last 2 miles were 16:26, so over 8 min. Which is dissapointing because I know I can do better (thursday night)

This is the last week of indoor swimming. Then I'm not sure what. I can join the Clayton community center for $32 a month and swim indoors at night or I can swim outside in the mornings at the U City pool. I'm not sure if you have to pay or if you have to "pay" like I was supposed to pay at the indoor pool. I think that will make my decision for me. If I can swim for free at the U City pool, I'll do that. If I buy a pass to the U City pool, we can use it all summer but in all actualy since we have like 4 free weekends this summer, am I going to get a chance to use the pass?

On an unrelated note: Their tee time was at 3pm yesterday which is when the pool closes. So I left the pool at about 3pm and biked home for about 3 minutes. When I got home, the house was all locked up (I had no phone and no keys, I was swimming and had no need for those things). I knew that since tee time was at 3, they would be gone AT LEAST 4 more hours and that does not include time to drive home. Good thing I had my bike! After talking to the neighbors for about an hour I biked around the neighborhood to waste time. Apparently when I was gone my landlord stopped by to show the apartment to someone. Ben told him I was locked out so he knew it and said he'd be back later to show to someone else. So when I got back after having exhausted all of my options (except riding to the landlords house, DUH) Amos was there showing the apartment again and let me in. Then today I went to get gas and then to the grocery store and I ran out of gas on my way to the gas station. This has NEVER happened to me before! I was seriously a block away so I just pulled over where I was. Evan was on his way to hockey and called to see what I was doing on the side of the road. This time I had my keys so I walked home and now I'm off to fill my car up with gas. What an event full weekend! I hope that's it for awhile. it was enough excitement for me!

The new bike rack came yesterday. I'm pleased with the product but not the service. I guess that's what you get when you buy from Ebay!

While Evan was assembling and getting the bikes ready for a bike ride, I took Casey to the park where the Loo's decided we should all go to dinner, so I ditched the work out and opted for dinner with friends instead. I'm still feeling a little guilty as I haven't been in the pool for over a week now but then Evan reminded me that 7 months ago it would have been no contest for working out or hanging out with friends. He's right but if I'm going to do this and be committed and get what I want out of it, I need to be committed. there are going to be many opportunities this summer to ditch the work out for an evening out so I either need to adjust my schedule or learn to say no.

So I decided to adjust my schedule. I got up before 5:3o am to get to the pool and then bike to work. I had my bag mostly packed although not totaly because to be quite honest, I wasn't 100% confident I would get up. So....with my bag packed I headed to the pool and after dealing with locked doors, a secret enterance to the locker room and a whole slew of confusion, I got to the pool to find no open lanes. So I left. I didn't want to share. what do I do, just jump in someones lane and start swimming? It felt weird so I left. I still biked to work though, and I was early so it wasn't a total lost of an early rise. Now I know for next time to get there early and what to do once I get there, hopefully I'll get in the pool on Friday.

Tonight it's either run or bike. I prefer to bike but Casey needs some lovin' and Evan's golfing so it looks like running, unless I want to be gone all night between the park and the run.

Francis Field

Not much to report....the weekend was pretty un athletic, unless you count dancing. I had such a great weekend though with Crystal and the girls. I wish they could be here every weekend.

Today it was back to the track. Man do I feel s l o w . There was some sort of track/runners club at Francis Field tonight and it made me crave being in awesome shape again and being able to dance around the track like no big deal.

Tonight I ran to the U City track, where there was track practice, so then I turned around and ran to Wash U track (AKA Francis Field). The track was recently re done and in very nice condition. I will go back. Hopefully more ofter than not since I really enjoyed the track workout, just need more of them! I wanted to do 10 quarters with 200 M recovery. What was I thinking?! I actualy made it with 8 and 2o0M recovery so all-in-all I got in 3 miles on the track and about 2 warm up and 1.5 cool down. My goal was 1:30 (OK actually 1:45 but 1:30 would have been nice). I was under 2:00 each time and under 1:45 all but 2 times. One lap I got so mesermized by the girl sprinting 3000M that I forgot what I was doing and looked down at my watch and was at like 1:05 at the 200M mark. YIKES!. That girl finished her 3200M (2 miles ) in 9:51. Crazy. She was doing 75 sec splits. What a feeling to be that fast. She had kick ass legs too. Now theres some motivation. Maybe if I keep going there I will get faster just breathing their air.....

One can dream huh!

Remember when....

I remember running in track meets and feeling like my legs could not keep up with my body. It's been a LONG time since I've felt that way. Monday night I headed back to fat girl park (there were no fat girls this time) to do timed 1/2 miles again. It felt so great to have some speed again. I am so used to running just to run and running long distance speed, I thought I forgot how to run fast. I had side cramps, troubles breathing and was sweating more than I've sweat in a long time.....and I loved it! Total run was over 6 miles with the warm up and cool down. What a great feeling.

Today I swam. After getting to the pool only to realize that Evan had the bike lock, I biked back home and then back to the pool again. So, I biked an extra 4 blocks! I did 1500M again, but this time had more of a structure to my work out. I did 100M warm up 100M Kicks, 100M swim (I thought this meant arms only but this didn't work well for me) as suggested by a work out I found. Then a 200M swim. After this 500 M warm up, I did 8x 50's then 10x 25's. Finished with a 550M swim. OK so I just realized this is acutaly 1650 M. I over shot it a bit I guess because I was only supposed to do 1500 M. I have goals now for speed and that's what I'm going to focus on. I'll stay at this distance for a while and work on getting faster. I have no desire to swim more than 1 mile.

Tomorrow they are calling for 90+ degree weather. I'm not ready for that yet. Maybe I'll take the say off to bottle the beer.....I think I could use a day off. :)

this weekend

Saturday:
Activity: bike/swim
Time: 25 min/50 min
Distance: 3 miles/1500 M

I wanted to bike but knew the park would be packed so I biked to the pool (plus around the neighborhood, the pool is only a block away) and then swam 1500 M and then biked back. This swim went much better than the others. I decided I was going to do 500 M and then keep doing 500M until I couldn't go any longer, or until the pool was closed. I started and once I got to 10 laps, I could keep going so I did 20 more!

Sunday:
Activity: Bike
Time 1 hour
Distance 10 + mies

Evan biked the park with me. We did the "hilly side". If you travel south, you get all the hills. If you go North, you get more down hills. I normaly run north, bike south. Then Evan gave me a bike tour or Wash U's campus. There were some new buildings he didn't know yet, but it was cool. You could tell it's the weekend before finals. We decided that Forest Park is not a good place to bike for fitness but for leisure. I came home and even though we were gone for an hour, we both felt like we didn't get a very good work out. The hills are tough but you are fighting so many other people it's hard to get any momentum going. We found the bike rack we are purchasing and hopefully getting in 6 hours when the bidding ends on Ebay. I love Ebay! In 2 weeks we are going out to the Katy trail, flat and long and (hopefully) less crowded.

Next weekend Crystal will be in town so I will be doing a lot of what we do when we all get togheter, drinking a lot of wine and chatting. So....I am going to have to work harder this week to make up for taking the entire weekend off next week. In other non-related news, Casey's first grooming appointment was a success. He was there 8 hours. I was worried about him and worried about how he would look. He looks much better than we thought. Still like Casey, just with short hair, and he's clean, nails cut, pads trimmed, ears cleaned, the works! He seemed happier today being less hot at the park. I'll put pictures up when Evan returns from golfing and I can find the flash drive to get the pics off of the lap top which is not cooperating for me at at the moment.

It was nice and sunny, a bit hot. I think i got some sun on 1 side of my body. Love uneven tans. I'm off to shoe shop....hard to believe it's that time already. Seems like I just got new shoes!

Busy week

It's been a busy week! I actualy got done almost everything I wanted to get done with the exception of cleaning the house.

Wednesday night
Activity: Running
Distance: 5 (plus some) miles
Time: No idea
I discovered a new park, fairly close to the house. It is called Millar park and it includes a 1/2 mile jogging path. I like the park but will now refer to it as fat girl park for a story you'll read in a moment. My goal was to do quarters on Wednesday night but there were 2 problems: Casey can't run on the track and both U City highschool and Wash U had practice so I had no track to run on. SO...the next best thing was to do halves at the park. I suppose this worked better because the park was further away than either track so I got more of a warm up and cool down. I was shooting for 3:30 halves. Evan and I talked about how fast my goal should be and I got sad thinking that when I was in highschool we did 16 quarters and our goal was 75 seconds. Now I'm trying hard for 3:30 halves and only doing 2 of them..... ahhhh getting old and lazy.

I started out with a 1.5 mile run to the park. Then jogged 1 lap. I did 2 sets of 1 lap sprint, 1 lap rest, for a total of 2 miles. Then I ran back home for another 1.5 miles.
The warm up, 1.5 to the park and 1 lap, came in at 14:59. Timed half #1 was at 3:42. Timed half #2 was at 3:37. I'm not all that thrilled but it gives me a starting point and I hope to get better from there. What would be ideal would be if Evan would run there with me and take the dog with him so I can focus on speed and not pulling Casey away from the squirls, bunny's kids, ect... The cool down was MUCH worse at 15 minutes.

I did manage to get hit on at the park, so that's a plus! When I first got to the park there were 2 women (approaching 250 easy) standing and talking. But the women decided that the best place to have their converstaion was RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PATH. When you ran, or walked, or biked, or skated towards them, they should move, right? No such luck. They just stood there, and continued to talk and then scowled at you like you were in THEIR way. 1 lap later another heavy womany, who had been walking before so I give her a bit of credit, had stopped to join the conversation. So now there are THREE women blocking the path. This continued till there were 4 large woman and 1 large kid taking up not only the path but a good 10 feet either side of it. I was NOT happy about it. Then, my luck changed and I got hit on. Always the way I like to end a work out. This poor kid was obviously there to loiter, seeing as he was wearing jeans and street shoes, starts sprinting every time he sees me coming. He would run for about 200 meters and then stop. He continued this for 2 laps. When I finaly got close enough to him he says to me "you working out too, huh". To which I wanted to reply, no, just running from the cops. He then asked if we could work out together sometime. "I'm Jim, but my friends call me slim" (he was NOT slim) "you live around here?". I kept moving, not wanting to engage in an actualy conversation but he didn't get the point. He didn't leave me alone until I left the park. I don't think I will go to that park in the dark, but I will go back.

Thursday night
Activity: Swimming.
Distance: I'd have to add and I don't feel like it
Time: 45 minutes total work out

Thursdays work out was far less exciting if you don't consider the hissy fit I threw when I thought Evan or the dog had taken my swimsuit just to be mean, and the fact that it took me about 20 minutes (the pool is 1 block from our house) to find the pool exactly. Once I found my suit, got dressed and got to the pool it was very uneventful, considering the previous nights experiences. There were 2 other men swimming and 2 kids "working" at the pool. I did not buy a pass because a) you have to buy it at another location and I wasn't sure I'd have time and b) I wanted to see if I liked it first. Turns out, there is no pass necessary. I asked them if they needed to see my pass and they said 'O, you actualy bought one of those, sorry you wasted your money'. So, they don't care I take it! I swam for 45 minutes and felt incredibly out of shape, inferior and water logged. The man that was there when I got there was still going strong and I never saw him stand or stop to rest. 45 minutes later! I started by getting comfortable with the water and then getting a few sample times so I would know where to go from here. Then I just thought I would see how far I could go. 500 M, 20 lenghts, seemed a bit impossible. I actualy did 11 lengths at one time without stopping which I thought was pretty good, till Evan told me that David swims 2000-3000 meters at a time with out stopping. I have no idea how many laps I actually went because I didn't count but it was at least an effort and I'm not ready to quit yet. But, needless to say, I have work to do in the swimming department. Normaly when I work out at the gym on the bike or the treadmill I'm there for a long period of time and see others come and go. Last night I was one of the "come and go" and I did not like that feeling. I felt like a slacker, and I was really tired. It was 9:30 pm, I'd been going strong since 7am and I'd not eaten dinner yet. No excuses, I know so I am trying to consider it an accompolishment that since it was so late in the day, I'd not eaten, I couldn't find my suit, I still went out anyway.

Small steps.....

Tuesday

Activity: Run
Distance: 4.6 miles
Time: 40m 41s
A little over 8 min 36 sec miles.....could it be? While I was running I was thinking that I should set a goal to run a half with 8 minute miles. Then I laughed to myself. I wonder how long it would take me to train and be ready for a half marathon doing 8 minute miles? Something to work for I guess. Mabye my first goal could be a 10K with 8 min miles?

Tomorrow is my first pool workout with my new work out plan. I know, how long have I been talking about this?

I was able to acquire some allen wrenches so tonight the bike handlebars get lowered. Maybe I'll ride to work tomorrow? I was waiting to see if I got the new job before making any changes to my morning routine but it's been 2 days and I still haven't hear anything so I'm going to write it off as another nice attempt.

About the new job prospect: I promised myself I would not get excited about this but when the first interview went so well on Friday, I couldn't help but get excited. My second inteview yesterday was much less than fun. I met with 3 people. The first, Steve Luvall, Director of Human resources. We talked for literly 5 minutes and he asked me 1 question. Then when it was my turn to ask questions I asked him how he played into the department, his job, his responsibilities. After he gave me a blanket answer I asked him if he liked it and he shrugged and said, well, you know, it's, well, it's fine. I wasn't sure if he was talking about St. Louis or the work he does but I was not impressed. The next person was Loraine, whose job they are filling and she talked like no one in the world will ever be better than her and no one will do a good enough job but "they'll just have to get used to who ever they hire and make adjustments accordingly". Finally was Tom, the VP of HR who didn't even get out of his chair when he was done with me. Said "OK, you can go now". He didn't seem to be impressed with me and he had no idea if they were done interviewing or when they would decided. I left Tom's office and told Loraine that I thought the recruiter needed to see me again to give me some paperwork but Loraine said, no I could leave. Then they watched me walk out!! It was the receptionist when I checked out that asked if anyone had given me a parking token. So....we'll see if they call tomorrow. If not, at least I still have a job and can afford to be a little picky about who and when I decide to interview with.

Off to get a strong back and arms! Hopefully I'll have a swim workout to write about tomorrow.

anxiously waiting

While I'm waiting for Evan to emerge fromt he bathroom so I can see if he decided to shave his beard, trim his beard, or create some sort of design in his beard, I thought I'd write about my biking experience today.

Activity: Biking
Distance: ??? Not sure but a 10K for at least plus another hour
Time: 2 hours 17 minutes total. The 10K was (I think) 32 minutes

After I road around the park once to complete a 10K, I decided to explore the park a bit. I really enjoyed it although I have no idea how far I went. I decided my handle bars are too high, on the ride back home my back hurt from the position I was in. We then tried to lower them and discovered we lack allen wrenches so that is on the list of things to obtain this week. I also discovered that my instruction booklet does not tell you how to lower the handlebars. I also decided that I do like the tire width. Anything thinner would not work well for the path. It is gravel/ limestone with only a portion being concrete. I think anything thinner would have been difficult in those conditions. Also, I rarely ride on the street (due to my own comfort level) and because of this often have to pass pedestrians on the grass. Thinner tires would cause a wipe out for sure. Also on the list of things to obtain are a helmet, bike rack, and a water bottle holder.

I also decided I should stay away from the park on days like today....there was an earth day celebration (or as the guy in the park said, a vegetarian festival) and there was entirely too much activity. I about killed myself, not to mention countless other innocent park goers, because I was trying to checkout everything. WAY too much going on for me. I was too distracted to actualy pay attention to what I was doing. But more than 2 hours later I returned home and felt like I got a pretty good work out despite my leisurely ride through the park.

Evan decided the beard stays, for now, but may decide it's coming off before too long. When it gets hot, he says. It's going to be cold all week (50-60 degrees) so not anytime soon it looks like.

Trying to get back into it

Activity: Run
Distance: 4 miles
Time: 38 minutes

Then we took the dog on a walk to get lunch. 2 miles round trip. I had tired legs yesterday. During the marathon training I read and article about injurys and how long you could be "out" with an injury without losing your fitness level. The article said 2 weeks. I disagree with this. I ran a marthon 3 weeks ago and yesterday had tired legs, worse than most long runs, after 4 miles of running and 2 miles of walking. I've got work to do.