Good Days are Here

What a great few days I have had. Seriously, the past four of five days have been really good for multiple reasons. My training has been far better than anything I have had over the past four or five months, I have spent a bunch of time with my family (lots of laughs and smiles), and I was able to watch the Ironman World Championships on Saturday via ironman.com for the first time.

To quickly recap, my daughter had a soccer game on Saturday (I am the coach) and she scored the first goal of the game which just thrilled her. I am pretty sure that we won, but what was more important was that all of the players had a great time playing. All of the girls on my team left the game in good spirits and proud of the job that they did.

Watching the Ironman World Championships was awesome. I wasn't planted in front of my computer for the whole eight or nine hours it took for the men's and women's champions to be crowned, but I was there for a good part of it. I saw Craig Alexander run past Chris Lieto and claim his second championship in a row. I then got to see Chrissie Wellington make history by breaking the women's course record. It was amazing to see it all happen live from 4,000 miles away. I wish that I could have stayed up longer and watched more people finish (some of the Age Groupers and the folks who just gut it out for 15, 16, 17 hours), but it was getting late. Being able to see everyone compete really got me psyched to do an Ironman.

As for my training, I have been consistently running under 8:00/mile pace for the past week and I have felt great doing it. My body seems to be agreeable to faster pace and I have been waking up with out any sore muscles or pain anywhere. I am hoping that this is a bit of a break though!

Thursday
I decided to spurn a lunch invite from my fellow running partners and went for a 6.2 mile run. It was a good choice as the weather was perfect. Throughout the entire run I just felt so good, it seemed so easy for once. The run took me 48:48 for an average pace of 7:52 and my heart rate was 160 BPM (a bit high but I am OK with it). I pushed it a bit at the end to get as far under 8:00/pace as possible, with the last two miles at 7:50 and 7:30 pace.

Friday
DAY OFF!!!

Saturday
I decided to take a break from watching Ironman and went for a 7.6 mile run along some roads that I have never run on. Again, it was a gorgeous day and I was just enjoying the run. I was really happy with my pacing, keeping it right around 8 min/mile for the first 6 miles. I then decided that I wanted to try and finish up the run in under an hour so I picked up the pace and did mile 7 in 7:29 and the last .6 of a mile at 7:05/pace. I wasn't able to get in under an hour but I did finish it in 1:00:16, for a 7:53/mile pace, heart rate was 162 BPM, but that was high because of the last two miles that I pushed a bit harder.

Sunday
It was my first ride in a week and only my second ride in almost a month. I woke up a bit sore but nothing that didn't work itself out within the first hour of walking around. I got the OK from my wife to go out for an afternoon ride (God bless her!) and off I went. I did a lot of hills on the way out thus my average MPH was only around 15 for the first 10 miles. But on the way back I was able to reap the rewards of 40 minutes of climbing and I was able to just fly. the ride was 21 miles with my average speed finishing at 17.5 MPH. My heart rate monitor reading puts me at an average of 186 BPM, but I think that is a bit off (my max was 253 BPM...oh my).

Monday
I ran with Chris today and we just wanted to get out and do an easy run today. Both of us put in solid runs over the weekend and we wanted to take it a bit easy. Well, it was only a 3.6 mile run, but we still managed to run it in 8:12 pace with mile 3 at 7:38 pace (HR 156 BPM). He is such a lying bastard when he says he is OK running easy....he always pushes it.

I have already writing to much uninteresting stuff and I still lack the photo's to make this the slightest bit interesting. I hope to pick up a cheap camera soon and start posting some pictures of where I run/ride and of the important people in my life. Adios!