Saturday morning I rode 51 miles on the bike. (see my previous post), got home and showered, and then headed north to Boston to go to work, picked up my friend and coworker Will at the airport and headed to the gig. Went out for thai food, went for a nice long walk and then went to bed. Worked 6am-6pm on Sunday, got dinner and went to bed. Monday (today) I was up at 5:15, showered, packed, walked to starbucks, and then went to the gig. Worked from 630am-10:45am and then left Boston headed to Providence.
Got to Providence at Noon and went straight to the YMCA and got in the pool. Did a frustrating 20 minutes of drills in the pool. Why frustrating? because my swim fins haven't arrived yet and the only drills Jacki has given me to do all involve fins. I'm learning that without them the drills don't really work as you just can't keep yourself properly balanced in the water without some form of propulsion beyond just your bare feet with no arm movements. So that was almost a wasted workout. In fact I felt embarrased as I had to keep putting my feet on the floor of the pool to stop and breath and who knows how silly I looked. I can't wait till I can actually swim some form of freestyle stroke or my fins show up so I can get some real pool workouts in on my own and not look so silly floundering about in the pool. Especially as it seems like the swimmers there are pretty hardcore and a tiny bit elitist. So I want to get myself into that world quickly so I don't feel so much on the outside of it.
After that I went to City sports for some retail therapy. I bought some Nike Lunar Glides to be my 5K / sprint tri shoe of choice hopefully as they have lovely cushioning and yet are very lightweight. And then got some new swim trunks and more bike shorts.
Then it was home and into bike clothes and out my front door on the bike. I decided today was time for a hill workout so I pointed the bike towards the hills of smithfield. I wanted a hill workout and I got one! Some giant hills on the road. All of which I managed to fight my way up. In fact I really enjoyed them in the end despite the effort it took to get up them! Descending however I need to work on. It freaks me out to be close to 30mph while cars are passing me a foot away going 40. I just need to keep being carefull and trying to ride just outside of my comfort zone. Not so far outside that I'm freaked, but enough that I'm slowly increasing the size of my comfort zone and getting faster. My bike feels great at speed and it feels really solid, but it still worries me that I will hit a pothole and its all over at that speed. That combined with the fact my health insurance doesn't start up till May 1st has me nervous not to get hurt till at least then!
Heres the speed, cadence, and elevation graphs for today's ride.
Not too shabby eh? Certainly room for improvement, but a decent ride none the less. And its nice that I recorded it so I can run the same route again and again and chart how I do. Hard to see speed results though with traffic. There were also two car accidents and a school letting out that had traffic moving really slowly and not much room to get around cars. So there were some pretty slow bits in there. Speaking of cars... cars worry me! Its amazing how little people notice runners and cyclists. There were several times I put the brakes on mid descent because I knew someone hadn't seen me and I didn't feel like going over their hood when they pulled out in front of me. There was another guy looking down at his cell phone and texting while he pulled into the road who totally didn't even look up to see me or any other oncoming traffic for that matter. IDIOT! A woman I made distinct eye contact with before turning onto the rotary at the same time as her who tried to run me off the road despite the fact I was half a bike's length in front of her. Providence is going to be the death of me! But at least I'll die happy.
Next up tomorrow morning is another swim training session with coach Jacki and then off to Baltimore for whats going to be a long week. Speaking of long weeks... Not being able to run is cramping my workouts on the road. Its tough when your work schedule is 6am-8pm and the gym or pool isn't open 24 hours, or closes at 8pm. Normally I'd fall back to running on those days, but not being able to run makes that impossible. So its a tricky balance. So I suppose it will be back to trying to do yoga in my hotel room again or something similar. We'll see.
Oh and in other random news... I really like "The Stick" massager. It showed up the other day. Seems to work really well and has been helping my calf/hamstring on my right leg after bike rides feel 100% quickly. Hopefully it keeps that up.
And keep your fingers crossed for me. May third is my appointment with the podiatrist where he hopefully gives me clearance to start running again!
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