I Like My New Toys (HFHM - Week 9)

Well...I had a whole long post written for Week 9 - and then Blogger ate it!  Needless to say, I'm not happy about having to re-write a full post, so I think for this attempt, I'm just going to go with a summary.

Monday night was my cleat fitting appointment at Emery's.  I loaded up my bike over lunch and hauled it back to the office with me so I could go straight to my appointment after work.  When I got to the shop, I ended up having to pick out different shoes since the first pair I picked out didn't accept the kind of cleats that fit my pedals.  After trying on what felt like every other shoe in the place, I settled on the Pearl Izumi Tri Fly IV and they got the cleats bolted on and had me spin on a trainer while they made some minor adjustments.  After that, I headed home looking forward to trying out all my new toys!

Tuesday night was 5 miles with Mr. R&R.  The two miles and the last two miles were decent, but the one in the middle was a beast. I got an ugly side stitch and had to walk it off, which kind of wrecked my whole average.  On a positive note, at least I was able to get rid of the darn thing!

I finally got to take all my new bike toys out to play on Wednesday night.  Mr. R&R and I drove our bikes over to the Rail Trail for 14 easy miles.  The new helmet and shoes were everything I'd hoped they'd be and more.  Lots of nice ventilation in both.  The best part of the whole ride was that Mr. R&R's knee didn't hurt afterward!  That knee kept him off the bike most of last season, so let's hope that this is a sign of things to come.

I also did something else on Wednesday night. I registered for the USAT Sprint National Championships in August.  I have no illusions of earning a spot on Team USA that day, but it will be fun to compete in a national championship race in my city!  Now I just need to get cracking on the training.

Thursday was a rest day.  My legs felt like lead after the bike ride on Wednesday and I don't want to take any chances right now.

Friday night was Swim Night.  I drove myself out to the pool, swam just over 1000 yards (including testing myself for 400 nonstop yards), and was pretty pleased with how it went.  Open water swims are starting soon and my choices there are 400 yards without stopping - or looking like a complete idiot.

Saturday was spent dividing my time between the couch and a lawn chair in the back yard.  I really needed a "do nothing" day - and I got it.  The only useful thing I did was snuggle with Walter for an hour or so after his bath.

You'd think that by now I would have learned to do my long runs early in the day, but no.  The Hartfest Half doesn't start until 1pm (still not sure what the race director's logic is on this one), so that's about the time Mr. R&R and I set out to tackle 10 miles.  I have two words to describe that run: Slow and Miserable.  It was so hot out that our pace was reduced to a "slog" (one of my tri teammate's words to describe a slow job).  The best part of that run, other than being done with it, was the near religious experience I had while consuming a cherry slurpee on our walk home!

Since we already reeked, we decided it was a good excuse to fire up the grill and cook up some spicy italian sausages for our post race feast.  While they were cooking away, I hung out in my lawn chair reading and admiring our curious little visitor.

I closed out Week 9 with:

Swim: 1050 yards (31 minutes)
Bike: 14 miles (54 minutes)
Run: 15 miles (2 hours, 49 minutes)
Strength: 0
Totals: 29.71 miles (4 hours, 9 minutes)

9 weeks down. 3 to go!