Week 1 - Thursday (Steve)

Okay, so I know I haven't been good about following the program yet but I did get the brick in and since I kind of started my training already and have a pretty strong aerobic base built up I decided to go a little longer. I'll probably be adjusting the schedule by sliding everything one day because that will fit into life a little better for me.

First off, it was a fantastic training day! Guess rest days actually do work since that what I did yesterday even though I kept beating myself up for missing a workout. I had my gym stuff with me but had two meetings around lunch so I couldn't even grab 30 minutes to hit the workout room. Tonight I get home anxious to update the blog, then I see Matt puts the temperature in his update. 80 degrees? Are you kidding me? The highest temperature I saw today in my car was 13. Yes that's right only 67 degrees away from Matt's workout. We had a low of ZERO...I know it probably dipped into the mid 50's at some point out there in Cali and they had to break out the hats and gloves.

Well the plan was to start off the day with a bike ride, instead the day started off at 3AM with a call to 911 because there was some awfully suspicious activity on my street that woke me up and then I saw four people crawling into the window of a house three up from mine. So I decided to test out the Vonage 911 service and four police cars, four people walked out in cuffs, and an hour later I get back to sleep. No biggie I was working from home anyway so I decided to save my brick for the afternoon. Ended up with nearly an hour on the bike just working cadence and estimating my heart rate because I'm not all high tech like Matt (but I will be soon). Rather than getting right out to run I had to get in my car and head to the gym which is 10 minutes away (Did I mention it wasn't 80 in MA?). I get a treadmill and was feeling pretty good because my legs were already warmed up. But I was good and did a warm-up on the treadmill anyway. 10 minutes at 7.6mph with 1% incline. Then I decided I felt really good and went the next 20 minutes at 8.4 leaving the incline at 1% the whole time, then went 9.1 for 10 minutes and then 9.7 for two or three minutes and warmed down at 7.6. I was really excited with how I felt because I'm pretty sure I could have stayed on there for a while longer. I ended up just over 6.5 in 45 minutes. Definitely my best run of all time. I couldn't believe how good it felt. The only issues was a little tightness at the base of my left knee at the beginning of warm-up and it went away before I cranked up the speed.

Then headed over to Bryant and got in my swim:
300 Swim 4:00
2x200 IM Kick/Drill by 25 3:30
300 Swim 4:15 100 Free-100Breast-100Free

6x50 Odds Free/Evens Breast :55
12x25 1 Easy Free/3Fast Stroke :30
6x75 2 Easy Free/1 Fast Breast 1:20 (Got down to :52 on my breast which was solid)

3x(300 Free technique 4:15 / 200 Build Stroke 3:00)

200 Easy
Very happy with how the day went. Tomorrow will be a longer day on the trainer. Saturday I'm planning a good IM workout at 7AM in Boston (ugh!) followed by and OUTDOOR 8 mile run around the Charles with Jason. Looking forward to it!
If this is how I'm going to feel after the rest days, I've got to quit giving myself a hard time when I can't get a workout in. The only thing I'm dreading tomorrow is being on my trainer while thinking about how Matt gets to ride outside around the Rose Bowl without having to worry about loads of sand and salt in the road and having to avoid pot holes.
Even though it was a good day I'm still lacking the confidence of knowing I can "race" 56 miles on the bike followed by 13.1 miles of running. 13.1?!? What did I get myself into?