A New Week, A New Focus, A New Perspective

Maybe I'm just still on Cloud 9...but I feel great! I am still thrilled with the whole marathon experience...I feel good about the accomplishment...I feel rested from last week...and I am excited about upcoming events. I'm just excited about life in general now! I have had two great workout days this week.

Yesterday (Monday) I met Michele at the rec center at 5:15 a.m. and we took off for a 3 mile run through town. We started at the rec center, ran out on the road and then over to Hwy 41 where we climbed jail hill (need hill practice for the Moon Pie race), then ran around town and turned left onto Hwy 55....ran to the greenway, and stayed on it until we reach the rec center again. It was beautiful outside. We ran the 3 miles in 27:15 (9:05 pace), and then headed inside to the pool. I swam 1600 meters solid, and felt pretty good the whole time. The water didn't bother my ears too bad - let's hope I'm getting tougher about that. I finished up with 5 minutes in the therapy pool, and then back to the hustle and bustle of getting the kids up and off to school and myself to work. After work, I had a treat. My mother had bought me a massage gift certificate as an Easter gift, and my appointment was at 5:30. The massage was wonderful. I then met up with J.T. and the boys, who had been at Briar's baseball practice, and we headed to our bi-weekly small group/Bible Study/get together. Leslie, the super-human triathlete of Coffee County, is in that group...so we talked alot about her upcoming Half Ironman this weekend. She's doing the Gulf Coast Triathlon in Panama City. I was hoping to go and cheer her on, but it doesn't look like it's gonna work out. I know she'll do great!

Today (Tuesday) I met Michele again at the rec center at 5:20 a.m. (supposed to be 5:20, but I didn't arrive until 5:25...sorry Michele) for some cycling. We got on our bikes and rode out to Blanton's Chapel Rd, cut through Ward's Chapel and over through Fire Lake, up to Hwy 55, and on down to the Rec Center for 20 miles in 1:17:00. This was a beautiful ride...it was a little cool outside, but nothing that bothered me after getting my heart rate up a bit. We could smell the honeysuckles everywhere, and we decided that we must have had like, evil vibes radiating from ourselves, because we had several encounters with BIG, SCARY DOGS but each time we just gave them our evil eyes, yelled at them with our evil screams, and they all like took off the other way. hahaha...seriously. It was wild. At one time there was like 4 that came out at once...3 on one side, and the other on the other side of us...but they couldn't hang. So just about the time I was getting all confident we came upon a stop sign.

Uh oh.

I clipped one foot out as usual and put it on the ground. I turned to make sure Michele was behind me, and noticed a truck approaching too.


It's been a while since I've tipped this bike over.

For some reason, my balance sort of got swept away from the side where the foot was still clipped in.

Uh oh...I might fall....no, I've got it...no I don't...oh *&%!#!!!!

Great. I didn't just go down...I got all tangled up...legs going everywhere and everything. And that dang guy in the little truck that was approaching would NOT just GO ON!!! I popped right back up, but I would NOT turn around and look at the truck...I just looked at Michele...and she confirmed that the dude was laughing. Oh well...maybe I brightened his day a little. LOL. So we made our way back to the rec center without any other episodes, and departed to prepare for Tuesday's hustle and bustle.

That was supposed to be all for me in the way of workouts today, but when I got to work Holly emailed saying she was running at lunch. My legs didn't feel tired at all, so I decided to run with her. I had eaten a banana following the ride, but since I hadn't had anything else to eat since, I decided to try out a Rasberry Hammer Gel (left over from a tri last year...hope it wasn't spoiled???) I managed to get about half of it down with a cup of water. I decided the flavor was definintely better than the plain ones. We ran 5 miles, and she really pushed me. Our time was 45:59 (9:12 pace). I hardly ever run that fast at lunch. But we had a good run, and I felt good. I'm gonna give a thumbs up to Hammer Gel, and hope that they will become easier to consume in the future.

I'll probably take it a little easier tommorrow...maybe get some strength training in.