Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Stairs Stairs and more Stairs!!!

It was a beautiful day for torture in the City! Last weekend was a "boot camp" weekend with workout starting at 8am both days and ending at 4pm Saturday and 3pm on Sunday. We did swimming, biking, spinning, running, core and strength, over and over again. The highlight (ha ha) was the Lyon Street stairs. 310 Stairs from what I am told. And we did not do them once, or twice, but 7 times! The first time was just running. The second time was running every other step, 3 and 4 were repeats, 5 was hopping with both legs, 6 and 7 were hopping single leg. I guess I don't have to tell you that we were pretty sore the next couple of days. By the time we got to the last run segment of the workout on Sunday I must admit that my legs were about as beat as they were at the end of Ironman Lake Placid last year - I guess that is the point!

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Training Update
Well, it has been almost a month since I've updated the blog and I apologize. Skip and I both ended up with the winter crud that everyone seems to have had and I am just getting over the cough that lingered for 3 weeks. But, we still trained, and last weekend we completed the Solvang Century (100 miles) and a 12 mile run the next day.

This was our second century ride and the first time we did this course. Obviously, we started in Solvang, travelled through Lompoc, up Highway 1 and 135 to Santa Maria, then east of 101 through Fox Canyon and the hills back to Solvang. All in all it was a good ride, although the winds from mile 40-60 were tough and I must admit to tucking in behind Skip so that I could draft. This is not legal in an Ironman race, but perfectly OK in a Century ride. I really needed the mental break at that point. Miles 70-90 were great, through Fox canyon with lots of gradual climbs and I passed tons of people which was a good mental boost for my novice bike psyche. The last 10 miles was, well, the last 10 miles, with lots of nice downhills but unfortunately, also lots of wind. We finished the day with a 2 mile run to train us to transition to running legs after several hours on the bike.

It was fun (in retrospect) and we have 2 more century rides scheduled for the coming months.

In general, we are logging 12-15 hours of swimming, biking and running each week. Skip continues to loose weight and I continue to maintain weight! We have a 1/2 Ironman distance (1.2mile swim, 56mile bike, 13.1mile run) training race at the end of March at Lake San Antonio which we will hopefully be able to get some pictures from. Chelsie and Kyle will be in attendance to help with supporting our teammates at the aid stations. It will be good training for them before they travel with us to Canada in August to be our support crew for the "real thing".