Doin' the Snoopy Happy Dance!

Well there are actually a few reasons for my dancing this morning. One being, it's Friday and I have had one hell of a work week and now it is over, the other, and most enjoyable is I ran this morning for 45 minutes with ZERO knee pain. Yes, that is right, NONE! And, to top it off I was running at a faster pace than I was earlier this week. So maybe, just maybe, I have gotten over the hump. We will see what happens on my longer run tomorrow. But I am thinking today was  good sign for sure.

I really am happy this week is over though and I am looking forward to our last weekend of shopping for kitchen remodeling items. We had a consultation this morning at 7am to get the final measurements and I think we are in the home stretch of planning and then it is kitchen demo time. At which time I will lock myself in my guest room and hide under a blanket until it is all done and cleaned up.

This weekends workouts are looking very similar to last. Tomorrow a long run with a recovery ride and Sunday a 2.5 hour brick workout. I really hope I didn't celebrate too early about my knee, but it would be nice to be able to run comfortably again. Am I asking too much?

Today I need to finish signing up for my 2012 season races and schedule a bike tune up and fitting. I am thinking about replacing my aerobars, so I thought that might be a good opportunity to get fitted. So now I am off to spend some $$$. I do love this sport, but it certainly does burn a hole in your pocket.

Feel the Burn

Yup I feel it! Last week was my first week back to heavier training. With last weekend being my first brick and all that fun. And, boy do I feel it. But at the same time, boy do I feel good! It is nice to get back to working hard and feeling tired after a hard day of work and work outs. Sounds a little nutty, huh?

This week started with spin and a quick lifting session. I usually also take this 30 min abs class after my 6am spin, but this Monday I wasn't feeling too hot. My stomach was killing me, so opted to skip the crunching and planking that would inevitably make my stomach feel worse. By Monday night I was feeling a little better, but I went light on dinner and went to bed early just in case I wasn't totally in the clear.

Tuesday I had planned to start the day early again with a workout, but my body had other plans. I slept through 2 hours of snoozing and woke up just in time to start work. I guess my body needed some sleep!? I got in a quick swim and 1:05 Z1 ride yesterday and then headed to spin class. Again, I was tired, but loving it by the time bedtime came.

This morning I managed to get up before my alarm (= body is done resting) and headed to the gym to lift and get in a 43 min Z1 run. What is strange is that I feel like my knee has a 40 min threshold. If I am running at a pace faster than 9:23, I will start feeling slight pain my knee, ITB at around 40 min. I ran 41 minutes and made the executive decision to stop and stretch when my knee starting acting up. Seriously though, when is this going to stop?

I think I am going to head back to the pool for a quick swim this afternoon, then it is dinner with some of my girl friends tonight. Gotta get a head start on working off some of the food I plan on eating tonight! Happy hump day!

Trying New Things

Due to my light training schedule the past two weeks, I decided to take some time to try some new things. Like getting on my bike, just because I want to, with no HR monitor and going on walks, just for fun. Well as I was doing all of this it dawned on me that there are a lot of fitness places/classes I can try out in my city for the first time for free! Now, some of them I have tried before, but that is when I realized, yes I did try them out before, but that was with my maiden name! So I could try it all again with my married name if I wanted to.

So I talked to one of my friends and her sister and we decided let's try all the places we can. So Saturday, we got up nice and early (really way earlier than I should be getting up on a Saturday)and we headed to an introductory Local Barre course. I had heard it was a great workout and I did take dance for several years up until I was a teenager, so I mean how hard could it be. Well holy crap, it was hard! I used muscles in my butt that I didn't even know existed. By the end of the hour every muscle in my body was twitching. I got home at 9:30am and was spent! By Sunday morning I was really feeling it. But I figured that had to be a good thing.

This week I am slowly getting back into the swing of things with my training. I started yesterday with my spin class, 30 minute swim and some lifting. Today I did a 1 hour Zone 1 bike and tonight I will be doing another 30 minute swim before my spin class. Tomorrow I will be testing out my legs again with a 40 min run. I am hoping it will go smoothly but we shall see.

Next up on the free class endeavour will be boot camp. The classes are 35 min and we get to go for a week for free. So that should be interesting. Man, I love trying all this new stuff, especially for free!

Still Slow Going Here

After my week of making up my own workouts, Coach P and I came the conclusion that I had the start of IT Band problems. So we said no running at all last week and that we would ease into it this week. Which I must say, while it makes me feel a little better to have a planned work out schedule, I am just not used to it being this light. I can obviously find a way to complain about anything!

So this week I have been teaching spin class nonstop, since I have the free time, why not, taking hour long rides, 30 min swims and 30 min runs. On Tuesday I went on my first run at a pace of 9:23, I was all good until about 27 min and then I got that nagging feeling in my knee. So I stopped the treadmill and headed to the dreaded foam roller. I am going to take a stab at it again today and see what happens. Maybe I will take it a little slower, if I am capable of it.

Other than that, life has been pretty blah. We had a fun Easter with my family, filled with mimosas and egg hunts. and lots of eating. And we are in the process of planning a total kitchen remodel at our place, so I can say I have logged more time at Home Depot than I ever have in my life. I figure this is my way of paying Nick back for all the triathlons he has sat through and also it is adding to my bank for this race season.

Hopefully tonight's run will be a bit more successful and if not, I have fantastic dinner plans so it really won't matter! Have a great night!

On my Own

After a week of rest and quite a bit of knee pain. I finished off the week with a massage and a big dinner with some friends. On Saturday we were going to start picking out our new kitchen, but before we went I wanted to try my luck on the bike to see if loosening up a bit and stretching might help the knee. I got on my bike in ZR for about 45 min and spent some time stretching. While it helped a bit, I was still feeling the knee pain which walking up and down stairs so I gave up and headed out for a day of cabinet shopping.

I took Sunday off again and decided to finally cheat on my diet a bit and sat on the couch and ate pizza all day, which I must say was glorious! On Monday I got up to teach spin and figured this would be a great test for the knee. While teaching my knee felt fine, but in the abs class I took after it seemed that doing a side plank was irritating it. After class I used the foam roller and headed home.

After talking to Coach P we agreed that maybe I still rest a bit this week. So this week I get to do whatever workouts I want, when I want, but I am just supposed to keep them light. I am still a little concerned though because I did a tiny bit of running yesterday and woke up with knee pain today. I think it could be my IT band, so I am going to just continue to roll and take Omega 3 and pray it doesn't get any worse!

Well that is all I have to report so far this week! I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!