Semi-sucky Swim

Breakfast with my friends was nice.  I got to listen to some lovely speakers talk about all of the great things that the Girl Scouts do.  I pretty much knew, but they had some moving stories from our area.  It is one of many times I wished our financial picture was more stable to allow more generous giving. 

Worked a little on a project at a friend's office and then headed over to catch the last hour of lap swimming at the ARC.  It was super quiet today - one guy finishing up in one lane shortly after I started and another lady finishing up shortly after that leaving just me swimming my laps with a bored lifeguard and one old lady walking against the current in the lazy river. 

To say that this swim was semi-sucky really is not 100% the truth.  It wasn't even that it sucked for any particular reason...I just wasn't all that excited about it.  Felt like I was just going through the motions.  I tried to focus on form, but I was feeling tired pretty quickly into it.  I watched the minutes slowly tick by and then pushed to finish kind of strong.  I guess 40 boring minutes in the pool is better than nothing.  Some days you just feel it and some days you don't.  Guess my "inner shark" just wasn't awake today.

Mom/Daughter Bike Ride

As I sat on the porch enjoying the continued beautiful weather and contemplating bailing on trying to get in a bike ride, my daughter (7) overheard me and decided that indeed SHE wanted to go on a bike ride with me.  She suggested a route that, although wasn't all that far, has a wicked uphill return and is on a arterial street that has no bike lane or sidewalk.  My husband was sitting there and suggested I take her down my usual direction (to the industrial area near our house which has little traffic in the evenings).  So I threw on my bike shorts and headed out with my daughter anxious to show she could keep up with me.

She did much better than on previous rides in finding the correct gears to try to keep up with me.  I did try to focus on a stupid easy ride, but we ended up averaging about 9.5 mph which I could tell was more of a "medium" pace for her little legs.  We stopped once about 3.5 miles in so she could catch her breath and get a drink (she doesn't have a bottle holder on her bike) and then again right before the steep hill on the way back - which, by the way, she managed to pedal up the entire way!  I was SO proud!  She has never attempted it before - the last time I took her this far, my husband picked her and her bike up about 3 miles in as he wasn't sure she could do it.  I should have known she could - she has got wicked strength for someone who doesn't even break 60 lbs!

Here she is last spring when she got her new bike (with dad)

Ended up getting in just under six miles which wasn't really the workout I had planned, but she'll remember it as a time her mom put her plan aside and spent time doing something we both like to do together.  And that is just fine too.  Up early for a charity breakfast with some women engineer friends in Columbia so tomorrow will be my swim day.  Yay!

Edit:  Forgot to note that it was very breezy today (like flag straight out) and kind of chilly on our bike ride.  Days are getting much shorter.  I made my daughter wear a light fleece pullover while I stuck with just a tee and am now "getting" why people use arm warmers.  I'm going to have to invest in some warmer gear soon.

Morning walk/jog

It was in the low 40's and the sun had been up for less than a half hour, but I decided to take advantage of being free from mom-duty and get my workout in.  Put on some tunes, walked to the corner, stretched and then did my usual walk/jog combination - just under 3 miles total with one big hill.  Fighting some shin pain that is annoying, but not awful.  Mostly frustrating.  Most will tell you that you are doing too much too soon, but how can jogging a few minutes out of a 30-40 min workout be too much?  May lay off the jogging until next weekend (Jog for the Cause 5K).  Should be able to get a couple bike workouts and at least one swim in this week even with my husband going back to work (thank you Lord for a brief respite from unemployment).

Cool, Long, Easy(?) Bike Ride

First off, autumn has officially arrived in central Missouri.  Not just by the calendar (which has been known to tease us), but with the weather too.  The "cool" in this post title was as in temperatures - not as in "awesome".  Alarm went off at 6:15 (on new sports watch - thank you walmart for being so ridiculously cheap) and it was still dark so I thought I'd sleep a little longer.  Umm..nope..it went off again 5 min later because I failed to read the instructions on how to turn it off.  So I got up and dressed and ready to go out the door as my family continued to snooze.  I left as the sun was just starting to ooze oranges, reds and purples over the horizon.  I failed to look at the temps, but forecast was for mid-40's at sunrise and I'm guessing it was pretty close.  When I got home 1.5 hours later, it was mid-50's.  So what I really want to know is: Do they make bike helmets with those fuzzy little ear flaps your child's winter hat has?  What am I going to do when it is actually cold? 

As for the "long", I headed across town on what is one of my longest non-looped routes.  I made minor modifications to the version of this ride I did in August, but it is generally a little over 15 miles. No dropping of the chain this time, but did have to push the hill by the cemetery again (along with a very short section of High Street after the rock cut and part of Landwehr Lane).  I know for more experienced athletes, 15 miles is a warm up, but it is still a helluva workout for me!  I try to remember that 5 flat miles completely gassed me only 6 months ago.

Which brings me to the "easy?" - I really tried to focus on not fretting about speed and just keep going.  I've come to the realization that I'm not sure a 100% easy ride is possible in Jefferson City because of our hills (or what to me are hills).  I go from easy (enough to "break into song") on the flats to OMG I'M GONNA DIE hard on the hills.  My lungs burn as I continue to gear down and try to avoid getting off the bike.  I also haven't really mastered the coordination of standing and pedaling.  I did better at it today on my first big hill, but it is still a challenge.  So I guess we'll call this an easy ride.  I definitly didn't break any land speed records, but I got through it. Average speed (including the walking) = 9.3 mph. 

And as an odd side note, I need to check if it is squirrel mating season or something.  I swear I rode past like 3 dead squirrels and nearly hit a few more.  I don't remember hardly ever seeing any (much less the heavy road kill) on previous rides.  The weird things I notice and think about on a long ride.

Last night was PAL (5-8th grade Parochial Athletic League) night at the Helias football game where my son got to walk out on the field in his jersey and this morning was a heartbreaking lost of the "purple" team to the "navy" team.  The cool weather definitely made it feel like football and fall.  Now the kiddos are going camping with their dad (cub scout pack event).  I'm sitting here trying to decide between calling some friends for a girls night out and just enjoying the peace and quiet alone at home. :)  Either way makes for a happy mom!  Tomorrow morning we'll go to mass and the rest of the day is kind of up in the air.  I'm hoping to do some walk/jog miles at some point.

Benchmark Bike Ride

Benchmarking is something I had read about last spring and early summer when I was following Eric Harr's "Slice above a couch potato" training plan, but something I never really did.  My goal was just to get through the prescribed minutes of workout in whichever discipline was on tap for the day.  But benchmarking is one of my current goals - to have more of a way to measure my progress.  So today I did my first benchmark bike ride.  The weather was again beautiful (seriously, I would LOVE it if we had this weather every day). But there was a bit of a westerly wind (9 mph) that I did feel on half of what was mostly an east-west ride.

I rode in the industrial area near my house about 20 minutes after the shift change traffic (although found out that the prison shift change must be about 30 min later, but this didn't affect my benchmark route).  According to Map My Ride - this is a 9.37 mi ride and I did it in 47 min for a 11.9 mph average.  I peddled at more of a "warm up" speed the first couple of miles, then tried to push it for the middle part of the ride and then rode pretty easy to recover after coming up the big hill and on home.  But my cool down was really a short walk and stretch afterwards.

Time to kick my kids off the couch and head outside to enjoy the last hour of daylight.

5K - Give or Take

Today was another beautiful day in central Missouri.  The sun was shining, the sky was so blue and the temps were perfect!  But I almost managed to miss it by working inside doing some research on stormwater treatment units for a client.  But with my daughter needing to go to Brownies tonight, so I thought - perfect!  I'll run from church/school until I think I've gone about 1.5 miles and turn around and go back.  Gotta make this all "fit" in my life and Brownies lasts about an hour (and I walk/jog slow).

A friend told me her house to church was about 1.5 miles and it is on the route I planned to take so I went a smidge past her house trying to make it a 5K (plus or minus).  It starts out with a long (±0.5 mi) downhill that I walked most of to warm up.  Then I did my "jog the chorus of the song" program - sometimes having to walk an extra chorus at the end and sometimes trying to push just a little further at the end of the chorus.  Unfortunately, Jefferson City has its fair share of hills and this route is no exception (East McCarty Street from basically Clark Lane to Landwehr Hills).  But I finished up.  Map My Ride said it was 3.03 mi, but my odometer said it was about 3.2 - so I'm going to call it about a 5K.  Yay me!

I recently lost my watch so I only have a vague idea of how long this took (40ish minutes - still oh, so slow).  As for the watch, I'm pretty heartbroken.  It is a gold watch my husband gave me as a wedding gift that I've worn nearly every moment of every day for over 16 years.  I still have hope it will turn up, but will probably stop by Walmart (hmmm...maybe jog there? it's just over the hill from our neighborhood) and pick up a cheap sports watch to hold me over as I hate looking down at my bare wrist only to remember the loss.

Swim/Walk Day

Just when I had finally sat around long enough to tell myself to quit with the excuses (shut up and walk/jog as the case may be) yesterday, it opened up and downpoured - then it got dark.  No real excuses, but I just didn't get off my duff and get moving yesterday.  But I knew I was going to Columbia today for a dental appointment and to check in with my surveyor friends so I also knew that I would get in a swim workout - YAY!

Knocked out 35 min in the pool.  Until the last 10, I was the fastest one in the lanes - seriously lapping two old guys and a younger lady that had web finger gloves on.  But then a CMC guy got in the pool after I offered to share my lane with him and he was way faster than me.  Not a big deal although he looked about 10 years my senior (although I'm getting really bad at guessing age).  Tried to keep up with him on one of my last laps just to see if I could - it was close but no cigar.  I'll chalk it up to having swam for 25-30 min longer than him.  Overall, it was a good workout and I continue to be amazed at how far I've come in just six months of swimming regularly.

Got home and ate a little supper and hung out with the family enjoying a GORGEOUS fall evening (our cloudy skies this morning gave way to some serious blue sky with sun and a cool breeze).  So when my dear husband wanted to go for his evening walk, I tagged along (again thankful that my newfound fitness allows me to do this now - he is tall and walks fast).  We did our fairly standard 2.1 mile loop in the neighborhood and chit chatted about the day.  I felt like I was working a little harder than normal to keep up with him - hoping that maybe he had just picked up his pace for some reason or maybe I was a little tired from my swim time.  Got home and downed some water and sat on the porch watching the kids play with their neighborhood buddies.  What a beautiful end to the day!