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APRIL 12, 2010 - BRI'S BLOG ADDRESS HAS CHANGED TO HTTP://BRIBLOG.MARTYGAAL.COM OR JUST BRIGAAL.COM. This page will no longer update.

-Marty

of swimming and vacuums

Big day tomorrow – first open water swim of our series, which is run in conjunction with the Beaver Dam Olympic Triathlon. I know a lot of people who will be out there racing and it will be a lot of fun cheering everyone on. I am not doing the open water swim or the triathlon – I’ve held steadfast to my belief that it is way too cold (for me) to do an open water swim race right now and I don’t believe that the water is actually 70 degrees despite what people have been declaring. Particularly since it rained last night (which washed a lot of the pollen away - thank god) – it’s now a wee bit chilly. I have done races where the water has been colder (59 degrees thankyouverymuch in Geelong, Australia), but this is just a swim and a swimmer I am not. Much less one who wants to get in cold water willingly.

In the afternoon we have a Master’s bbq/cookout. And then at night we have another party to go to – obviously we are not ones to turn down social gatherings.

And in the category of ‘how boring can I make this blog’ we bought a new-to-us vacuum. A second hand, not very used Dyson. And it is AWESOME.

Lame.

It has exploded

So last Saturday was all cold and I was bundled up on our bike ride. Not so this weekend, as I stripped down to trishorts and a sportsbra during the runs of our broken brick. And now that it warmed up all the trees rejoiced and have exploded their pollen all over. Our car is a dark green, not yellow:

Other Workouts

It can be easy getting caught just swimming/biking/running when training for triathlons. But lifting, core work, and drills (among other things) are still really important in making an all around good athlete. On Monday's before our evening Master's practice Marty has been meeting some athletes at a local park for a run and all sorts of plyometrics and drills. I went for the first time last night because I had been resting that pesky hip (which has been feeling a-okay recently).

Bond Park has one of those fitness trails that meanders through it - you know what I'm talking about - those stations where you do everything from pull ups to jumping jacks.

We run to each station and do whatever it is we're supposed to do (even if the thing you can only do consists of a whole two pull-ups, ahem). Some of it seems silly but most of it is really good to do to supplement the training. At the end we do run specific drills and strides. The entire run doesn't end up being all that long (2+ miles or so?) but with everything in between....holy crap am I sore today!

What's Been Going On?

• Marty bought me New Moon! He then watched it that night and admitted he liked it - having no expectations is always a good way to watch a movie. He knows I'm Team Edward and Tassie is obviously Team Jacob (you know, doggie/wolf thing) and he was going to be Team Bella but she is too whiney and frowny so he decided to be Team Charlie since he is obviously the best actor in the entire cast.
  
• I decided to punch Old Man Winter in the balls after making a return appearance this weekend.
  
• It didn't stop us from getting our longest ride in this year (50 miles) although we started much later than planned so we could try and get some warmth. At least it was bright and sunny. We had a nice little group including Steffan and Angela (who is getting very strong on the bike).
• This morning we met up with Ashley who was helping a friend at the Umstead 100 miler. Ashley is training for a 50 mile race in South Africa so we accompanied her on her second 11 mile loop.
• The past two years we've gone up to the Smithfield Sprint for a race, and I usually like getting in at least one race before St. Anthony's...but I feel so behind in my training I need every weekend I can get.

Oh Yeah Spring!

Spring has sprung and I took advantage of it this weekend! Marty drove to Atlantic City to meet his dad for some bonding time and I held down the fort here with Tassie.

Friday found me making a full pan of brownies for myself. And lots of tv watching March Madness.

Saturday I waited until the afternoon to do my bike ride because it promised to warm up to the mid 70's! It's about freaking time! I wore shorts and short sleeves and met Kari along the way for a couple hours of nice saddle time. We pushed it for a good effort for about half the time and were pleasantly surprised by our average since we are both pretty convinced that we are woefully out of shape for this time of year. I hopped off my bike and ran for a whole mile. Hey, it's still a brick :)

Went out with friends on Saturday night and then had a pretty good run in the late morning at Umstead. I ran into Kari again and coerced her into turning around and running with me which kept me better focused on my pace. She was like my little toy this weekend doing whatever I had to do and smiling the whole way (well not really, she probably had a snarky comment for everything).

My hip has been holding steady. The past few days I've been diligent with my stretching and have been doing Sage Rountree's yoga DVD (which is awesome by the way). Besides the regular routines she has on there, she has a 'problem areas' section - I've been doing the hip problem area and it seems to be helping. I should probably be doing the entire DVD but so far I've been too lazy.

Public Speaking

I am pretty much an introvert - I'm not super assertive or outgoing, and do much better in one-on-one and small group settings. So of course, public speaking is not something I gravitate towards but over the years Marty has made me give at least one presentation at our swim clinics so I have gotten a bit more comfortable doing it. The subject matter is also something I know quite a lot about so that makes it a bit easier.

I have been on a committee at work for the past 6 months that has put together training for a new reporting system that was just released. When asked recently by our lead if I would be willing to be the facilitator at the non-finance training classes, my response was something like, "Well, I don't really like speaking in front of large groups of people so would rather not, but if you can't find anyone else to do it, I can do it."

And that's how I got signed up for 4 different sessions. Cue anxiety.

This meant I actually had to put forth an effort in my appearance and look nice (I actually blew my hair dry and put on eyeshadow!) since I was getting up in front of groups of 15-20 people to train everyone on this new system. I gave 3 different sessions this week and felt pretty good about the first two. Today was a doozy - big class, lots of random questions I really couldn't answer, kept tripping over words, etc.

At the break, another girl on my team looked at me with sympathy and said, "You've got a really tough group." Sigh.

Afterwards people said I did a good job but they may have been trying to make me feel better and make sure I didn't bail on the session I'm signed up to facilitate next week. Meanwhile, my real job goes on in the background and people are starting to wonder where the heck I am.

I came home and got a tempo run in - some good stretching beforehand warded off the hip pain so that was a welcome relief today. It seems I never know if it's going to hurt or not.

And because blogs are always more interesting with a picture, here's one from the 8K we did last weekend in DC. I had a leprechaun tattoo on my cheek that said 'Kiss Me I'm Irish'

DC Weekend

It was a fun, albeit wet, weekend up in DC. I had never been there (I'm not counting the time I was up there with my family when I was 3 or 4 because I don't remember a thing) and our host Kathy showed us a lot of the sites. We were planning on hitting more of them on Sunday but the weather just wasn't in our favor. We'll just have to head back up there another time.

Saturday morning she let me ride her computrainer which was really, really nice. So much nicer than my bike trainer (but so much more expensive!) Marty got a swim in her endless pool that's in the garage. After our morning workouts we took the Metro into downtown. She lives a short walk away from one of the stops - I LOVE good public transportation! If I lived in a city like that, I would totally forego the house and yard to get the convenience of riding into the city. I also learned about slugging - I had never heard that term before. Very interesting.

First stop was lunch at a tapas restaurant then we walked to the Washington Monument (and went up to the top), WWII Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, Korean War Memorial, Lincoln Memorial and then we crossed the Potomac to Arlington National Cemetary and saw the eternal flame for JFK. It was A LOT of walking (~ 5miles?) and it pretty much rained the entire time. We were all very wet and very exhausted when we finally got to dinner.

Once we got home we all pretty much went right to bed since the time was going to leave us 1 hour short on sleep and we were doing the Shamrock 8K in downtown the next morning.

We caught the Metro in the morning for the race - so nice to not have to worry about parking and get dropped off right near the start! Marty and I had just enough time to hit the port-o-potties before lining up. No warmup which I didn't care at all about and thankfully the rain stopped for the race!! We were so lucky because not too long afterwards it started back up again.

The streets were all closed down and we started heading right for the Capitol. That was very, very neat and it kind of felt like we were in a movie. We ran by some famous stuff but since the buildings didn't all have the greatest signs, I wasn't quite sure what everything was. I did look around a lot trying to take in the sights. There were a little over 4,000 people in the race, which was apparently smaller than normal because of the weather.

I felt all right during the race. As I've mentioned before, my training hasn't been going so well and my hip is not doing too hot. It tightened up about halfway through - not to the point where I felt like I need to stop or anything, but where I felt like I couldn't push any harder. I'm kind of at an impasse - I know with how it's feeling I'm not going to be able to do the hard workouts I need to be doing right now. I can still run but it probably needs some downtime and serious strengthening work, but races loom in the not so distant future. What to do, what to do.

Anyways, results say I averaged 6:40 pace - heh, not bad. I felt fine physically other than the hip. It's interesting that my Garmin clocked the distance at 5.1 - someone who puts on a race recently told us that when certifying a course, they have to take the shortest line possible on all turns, even if that is not how the course is set up. That's a pretty weird way to mark a course, and with all the turns and u-turns the extra distance makes sense. So maybe I ran a bit faster. Double heh, not bad. Marty ran really well - his run training is so much better than it's been the past couple of years and he's sneaking in all sorts of extra mileage with his morning Tassie runs.

Next weekend - finally I'm staying at home! Marty isn't as he's meeting his dad in Atlantic City for some Father-Son time.