Just another day- 082610

Goals: 6 mile run, eat healthy

Results: 6 mile run 1:11.

Diet setbacks: 3 diet mountain dews and some overeating of good stuff.

Thoughts: I went to sleep with work on my mind so I was only able to sleep until 3:30. I tossed and turned until 4:30 and then decided to just get up and bang out my run. I completed a 1 mile warm up, 4 mile tempo run, and 1 mile cool down. The cool down was almost a walk. All in all, it felt good. It was still cool enough outside that it was enjoyable, however I could feel the humidity rising through out the run. Not happy with my time, the pace for the tempo was to be just under 11 minutes.  I stayed in my zone per the garmin but still ended up with being about 30 minutes over for total time. I am not sure how this happened (but i will discuss my remedy later).

Another day at work feeling like I would rather be somewhere else. I did tell my boss how I felt and he told me to remember work is just 8 hours of 24. Bear with it and make the best of the other 16. I reminded him  that I work 8 hours, am here for lunch for an hour, spend an hour driving, and an hour getting ready. That is almost half my day centered around this job. Therefore i should be doing something I enjoy. Add 8 hours to sleep and that only leaves me three free hours a day for workouts, dinner, and family time. I need a change or something to get my mind off the funk (MattyO- thank you for the advice the other day about watching what I put in blogosphere, I do consider that when I write about work and have not said anything I have not said in public at work. Nothing here should be a surprise to my management, if I start applying for other jobs then it may become an issue.)

In the mid day I started feeling like some family time could really lift my spirits, so I made a movie date with my wife for after work. This made sense sine I had the time from getting my run done in the morning. I got home before her, cooked dinner, and we laid on the bed and watched night at the museum 2 and hung out. She was in a good mood and I can say I enjoyed it very much. We had a healthy dinner but I gorged and was left feeling sick. Plus I washed it down with three diet sodas and that made it worse.

As always she fell asleep after laying still for about an hour, so i worked on my tri obsession. I put together a gear wish list. Nothing extravagant just some entry level stuff. I did notice a personal quirk that I wondered if anyone else has. When I look at gear I have the strong desire to make it match. I feel like I will clash if i wear a zoot visor, orca top, under armour shorts, desoto belt, etc.. Does anyone else feel that way and try to make their kit match brand wise? I am not worried about shoes and socks so much, but I do feel that same way about bike parts. Some of the profile designs stuff look good and is affordable, anyone have thoughts on this brand?

Once I was well into my gear craze I started thinking of my bike. My bike, although old, is a tri bike so I am happy. I have some things I want to change for better fit or performance. I have been planning for some time to get Shimano Sora shifters off ebay to replace the down tube shifters. I have had the hardest time with this though. My bike is 2x7 and I have had a hard time finding a shifter for the cassette. shifters for 8's are there but 7's are hard to find. I priced shimano cassettes and they aren't too bad so I have thought about just changing to an 8. What are your thoughts on this, would it be of any benefit to my riding? I also want to shorten my stem and get wider bars. I read an article that your bars should be about the same width as your back/chest/shoulders. I have thought they felt small so I finally measured. My bars are between 38cm and 40cm, while by shoulders/chest/back are 45cm wide from the bony bump to the other bony bump. This confirms my thoughts. Would be best bet be a 44cm bar? One fo my friends at work swears that I will  feel a world of difference if I change to carbon bars as well. Once I decide I would also like to find some fun bar tape. Any suggestions?  Once I get all this done I am thinking of getting some add-on aero bars.

After all my gear thinking I had the hardest time going to sleep so I did one last thing. I entered my latest mile time into the McMillan running calculator and updated all my planned paces. I also shortened the ranges in my Garmin. Before I had it set so that when I wanted an 11:00 pace I could be as fast at 10:30 or as slow as about 11:30 . With the zones tighter I think it will help me be closer to my goals. I am loving the garmin for putting in preplanned workouts, but I am hoping it will be my bread and butter for learning how to pace myself.

I am truly happy to have spent a little family time tonight. I am looking forward to my workout tommorow because I am going to do my Friday brick but I am going to increase my workload from last weeks walk to a 5 minute easy run and then walk as suggested by triathlon mag this month. I am going to end the walk with 4 stride intervals and CB will be joining me for the walk. A little extra time together! Hopefully Saturday I can get her out on a trail with me somewhere. If not I may do some MTBing or take my kayak out.