meh. (10 weeks to go to my first 70.3)

Meh, blah, yuck.  I'm glad this week is behind me.  I just wasn't into it at the beginning of the week.  Nothing seriously wrong, no health issues, nothing more sore than usual, I was just not into training.  It could have been a combination of winter, lack of sun, and generally being very busy, but I just didn't have any drive to train at the beginning of the week.  Monday night is usually a swim, I skipped.  Tuesday morning is usually a run, I skipped.  Tuesday we had a snow day and I did my scheduled trainer ride.  Wednesday evening I did do my swim.  Thursday morning is usually a run, I skipped.  I did get my trainer ride in Thursday night.  Friday is my day off and I took it (even though I didn't need it).  After Friday, I was out of my funk.  Thank goodness.

Friday night we got 4 inches of snow, surprise!  I had a 1:45 run on the schedule and the temperature was warm enough I could do it outside.  I ran some of it on the local trails.  They were treacherous with snow covering rutted ice.  I had to go slow and was worried about twisting my ankle.  I had to run slow but I was running outside (instead of the dreadmill), it was pretty outside, and I was out of my funk!  After some trail running, I ran through several neighborhoods.  It was tricky, slippery, but nice to be outside.  Then things got interesting.  I stepped in a couple ice cold puddles back to back.  Brrr!  That isn't good.  I turned to run home knowing my toes would be frozen by the time I made it back but a funny thing happened.  My Smartwool socks warmed my toes back up within a coupe minutes.  They were like magic!  I kept running.  I did stop about 45 minutes in to the run and bought a bottle of water and ate a Gu.  My run time was 1:50 and I felt decent.

The trail that runs past my house

A little further down the trail.

An old water tower in the older section of town.

A new tunnel they are building under a busy street.  We are lucky to have such a nice trail system.

My plan called for a 3 hour ride Sunday.  Not only is this the longest ride I've done to date, I did it on the trainer.  My plan was to watch a movie for the first 2 hours then TV after that.  I also planned to stand on the peddles and stretch my back and calves every 30 minutes, eat every 30 minutes (offset from my stretching by 15 minutes) and take a drink every 15 minutes.  I watched Arn, The Knight Templar.  It was pretty good.  I was worried at first because it wasn't in English at first and I didn't want to have to pay close attention to the movie.  It switched to English soon enough, so all was good.  Once the movie ended I switched over to Superbowl pre-game.  The last 30 minutes were a bit rough so I stretched a few extra times.Overall it was a really good ride.  I can't imagine doing it for six or seven hours like people training for Ironman do, but then again, last year I couldn't imagine doing three hour training rides.

I'm a big Steelers fan, so I was a bit disappointed about the game.  Congrats to all you Packer fans!