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October 9, 2006
A Great Day to be Alive
What. The. Heck. Our weather? Yeah - it's the bomb right now. 70 degrees. Sunny. Light breeze. Big blue sky. No humidity. And the leaves are changing and beautiful and when I was riding my favoritest bike in the whole wide world this afternoon I felt so lucky to be breathing and taking it all in and just to be alive. Life rocks my friends.
Backing up a little to this morning, I pulled my lazy butt out of bed and headed to the masters swim practice. Long course pool. Long intervals. Mondays are my favorites for those very reasons. I usually get elected to lead Monday workouts just because longer stuff is my forte and then I don't feel so bad bringing up the rear on Thursdays when we do fast short stuff and I'm sucking some serious wind.
Backing up a little more to Sunday - I think I may have forgotten to mention that my arm (my left one) felt like it was going to fall off at the shoulder. Actually to be more specific I felt like I wanted to cut the dang thing off it hurt so badly. I have no clue what I did to it but I seriously couldn't do simple tasks like pulling up my pants or turning the steering wheel in the car without my left shoulder protesting so badly I thought I was going to throw up. Seriously - we can't be having that. I called my coach in fear and he calmed me - probably just slept on it wrong. His answer to all woes in life is Celebrex so I took some of that.
This morning when I woke up the shoulder definitely felt better but it still hurt like something nasty when I was warming up for the swim workout. I decided to start the workout and see how things went and sure enough I didn't really notice it that much. Either it got warmed up, the Celebrex started to kick in, or I got so used to the pain I didn't even feel it. Whatever the reason, it was fine and I finished without any major complications. It's still a little sore now but I'm hoping whatever the problem is solves itself real quick before my Celebrex supply runs out.
Nonetheless I digress -
3500 meters total - 900 meters warmup, 200 meters cooldown
4 sets of (300, 2x150) w/all the 300s on 6 minutes and the 2x150s on 3 (for the first set), 2:50 (for the 2nd set), 2:40 and 2:30.
The only time I felt like I really had to push was on the last set of 150s on 2:30. I felt good in the water this morning!
Okay so technically that was all I was supposed to do today on the schedule. But seriously - how can you just go home and do homework when it's 70 and sunny outside? Instead I stopped at the shop, changed and had the tires of the BMC pumped before coach knew what happened. When I asked him what he thought I should do he suggested about 30 miles. Big smiles my friends, big smiles. He then told me to ride on the Green Belt, a ride from the shop I had never done.
Well let me tell you - "Green Belt" is secretly code for "ride every (*^Y#%(R*$HR# big hill north of the city, then turn around after 15 miles and ride every other )(#*%Y#HHN hill back to the shop." Dude - I think coach was trying to kill me! But truthfully I *really* enjoyed my ride. I just felt like hammering and so hammer I did. I didn't go down into my small chain ring once even though there were some big huge hills - I just stood up and turned the pedals as hard as I could. It felt so freaking good. I know it's not good to do that all the time but I just really, really needed to do that today. I know you all understand. I know you've all been there yourselves. And so 30 miles later I was back at the shop and wishing I was still out riding. Nonetheless, life must go on.
Tomorrow I'm running and going to my first pilates class. Should be interesting. I'm kind of scared for the pilates. The little machine things you are in look like big booby traps. Make a wrong move and you are a goner! :)
Smile - life is great!!
Posted by beth at October 9, 2006 7:46 PM
Comments
Beth,
This is an awesome entry. Not only is it blatantly obvious that you are most happy, you are exhuding it to all of us! How can I not feel great to hear how freaking awesome your day was. Happy running/riding/swimming!
Posted by: Meghan at October 10, 2006 8:40 PM