BUBBLES!

Swim
1 x 200- Warm-up
Ladder
200- 3:00
300- 4:30
400- 6:00
500- 7:30
400- 6:00
300- 4:30
200- 3:00
1 x 100- Cool down
total- 2600yds

Bike
time-
day-


Reason #71 You Should Learn To Flip Turn- If you have gas during your workout, flip turns will help ease your pain.

BUBBLES!!!

This ladder went about as well as I could have expected considering my lack of swim time. I made it through the front end of the ladder just fine, but missed the 500 by about ten seconds. Then I missed the 400 by almost a minute, which makes me think I fell asleep during it and did at least 50 yards too many. But the final 300 and 200 were ok. Like I always go on and on (and on and on and on) about, the most important part of long swims is keeping technique consistent from beginning to end. And my stroke went wonky in the second 400, which I've noticed happens nearly every time I do this set, but I got it together at the end.
Normally, Thursday's are run days. But Wednesday as I was preparing for my ride I noticed the back tire was flat. Living room flats are the worst! Stoopid slow leaks. But I knew that I had a spare tube in my bag so I pulled it out. Something was wrong. This tube is, like the blonde in the story says, much too big. I look at the white paint on the side. "700x28-32c" Holy crap. My tires are 23s. I, somehow, bought the wrong size tube. D'oh! Makes me feel like a speshul snophlake. So the ride was ditched in favor of hitting the Bike Shop and Costco. Bummer.
The ride plan was two scoops of Pineapple, with the option of bailing after one of the weather got bad. It was one of those days where the big dark clouds did hover, and it was hard to tell if they were coming or going. I'm ok getting rained on from Dole to my house, that's easy. But I did not want to get caught on the hill in a downpour. Luckily, it dried out while I was rubber side down.
My focus for these laps was cruise the climbs, power the flats. Diesel preach preach preaches this every time we are out now and it's good climbing advice. So I'm down in the saddle, light gear, spinning uphill, then as soon as the road levels out I pop the gearing up heavier, get out of the saddle for some stomp action, and try to get going until the road rises back up. This ride was the first time I really felt like I was making a difference on the flats, and I felt it on both laps. In fact, I felt pretty fresh even on the second lap. I could have gone for a third, but light would have become an issue. Take a look at my Garmin information, you can see the spikes on the blue graph. Good stuff.

Gimme Two Scoops of the Pineapple

Ride
time- 2:19
distance- 32.43
elevation gain- 2,483ft

Crashing after teaching today. Didn't feel like working out. One of those, "Oh, might those be storm clouds a-comin'?" sort of days. But only a little, because since my trip to Big Island I'm feeling motivated as all hell to put in good regular workouts. I don't know if my Achilles is going to let me get the runs in I want, but I sure as hell can be riding like I want. Like I mentioned yesterday, I didn't have much pain after my short run, but today my left calf/heel was feeling awfully tight. Lots of stretching and foam rolling happening. Tomorrow after school I'll be throwing some more Rock Tape on there for my run, and hopefully it'll last the weekend. Course, the Warrior Dash is Saturday, so that hope is probably in vain.
Anyway, getting a good look at some of the bounces Hawi takes on the climb to the turn-around point of the ride portion of Ironman Honu 70.3 really woke me up. I don't feel ready, but I do feel ready to suffer some more. I'm motivated in that, "Ohcrapohcrapohcrapohcrap," kind of way. It's a good thing.
Good climb number one today. Cranked pretty hard, feel like I was holding a good cadence. Lost some time on the second one, and spent a lot of it thinking about how hungry I was. Good thing I ate a banana before I left the house or I would have been really hurting. Need to get this climbs strong.
Also, I was contacted by Mr. David Haas from the Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance about spreading the word about fitness and how beneficial that can be for cancer patients. He has an excellent post about it here, and I think he's going to write something special that I can put up in this space. Looking forward to it, Dirtbag Fitness is glad to spread the positive word and help cancer patients in any way we can. With that in mind, don't forget to occasionally click over to the Dirtbag Supports page and give a little. Even five bucks makes a difference. Cheers.