083010

Goal: Lunchtime Hard Core Club Workout, PM- 18 mile ride

Results: 16 mile group ride

Diet setbacks: few midnight snacks when I couldn't sleep (goldfish and peperoni's)

Thoughts: Another day in paradise at work so I am glad I have training to take my mind off things.

I made it home in time for the group ride today. Last week I missed it and rode by myself. The only downside to the group ride is I can not control the mileage. I planned for an 18 mile ride, but we only road 16 miles. I really enjoy when I can get out and exercise with others so I suck up the mileage because I had fun.

I still worked hard. I stayed with the group the entire time, not getting left on any hills. I actually rode 2nd for a few miles, not sure if that person helps pull the group or not, but we had to slow down for the others to catch up at one point. A little through two thirds of the ride I kept have to slow down to stay with my group so I made a sprint for the faster pack ahead of us and stayed with them for the rest of the ride. Of course it is possible that they were having an off day but it sure makes me feel like I am making progress.

Oddly, the average pace speed for the ride was 11.4 mph, I usually ride faster than that on my own. The big difference that I found is that the group does a lot of coasting that I don't do. I pedal though almost everything the entire time I ride alone.

I looked at the numbers for the my training last week and can't believe I trained 6 hours and 45 minutes for a total of  43 miles. The week previous week was 5.5 hours and 19 miles. I still feel I can do more. I am getting in three runs, two swims, one ride, and one ride/run brick. I feel like I can do more but don't want to over train. Any suggestions?

I am thinking for the month of September in preparation for my October tri I may add an extra run, maybe speedwork or a hill run. I also plan to add a little more pool time n the last two or three weeks before the race. This way I am not having any feelings of being off come race day. I would like to add an extra bike workout but since these are a longer workout I ma not sure I can fit it in anywhere.

Long Run Sunday

Goal: 10 mile run.

Results: LONGEST RUN SINCE 2003

Diet setbacks: see below.

I am very excited today I got up and did my 10 mile run. This is my longest run since 2003. Summer 0f 2003 I ended the summer by being able to run 10 miles several times a week, however I negated my work by not eating enough.

My carb intake was very high today, but considering I did burn like 3,00 calories I am ok with it. In fact some of the intake was on purpose to recover from the run.

The run made me very happy. My goal was for LSD and to run in 12:00 miles, I took off right before 0700 with nothing but garmin for distance purposes. I made up my route as I went. 10 miles at a 12:00 pace should be 2 hours even. I completed in 1:55 with an average pace of 11:54. I think this acceptable. I only had one split of 12:00. it was 12:50 and the majority of the mile was up one of the steepest hills in the area. It makes me want to go run that hill more often to build strength.

All of the pain in knees, hips, etc from last week was gone. I did wear my fancy brook running shirt that I bough years ago but don't wear because it is too short, now that I did wear it the fabric rubbed my nipples until they bled.

It was amazing how so much work was so relaxing today and almost seemed effortless. It was getting a little long as it went by but that ok too. Having run the 9 miles last week I told myself in my head that only one mile of this would be knew and 1 mile is easy.

I can't wait to run my 11 miler next Sunday because that will be my longest run ever.

062710

Goals: PM brick

Results: Brick

Diet Setback: lots of Mexican food, fruit loops, chicken club sandwich

Thoughts: This is gonna be a quick one as I am ready for bed. Today was another one of those days at the office. On the way out I got reamed by a member of management who is mad because I won't do his job for him. I don't even work in the same department. He doesn't know what he is doing so he wants others to do his work for him.

The whole day had that theme so I went out for lunch and gorged on Mexican food. It didn't help that I couldn't bring lunch because I ran out of lunch food. I am sure I will pay for this as last nights over eating left me 2 pounds heavy.

After work I got in my brick. I started with a hill workout riding one of the hardest hills in the area four times. I rode 5.25 miles in 27 minutes. Afterword I changed shoes and CB and I completed by brick. I ran at an easy pace (12:15), then we walked for about 1.5 miles and I did 4 100m sprints with 1:30 breaks. Completed 2.5 miles in 34 minutes.

Tomorrow is my off day, but I have a desire to get something in just to burn calories. Once my lawn work is don I hope I can get my kayak or mtb out. Maybe hit a trail.

I wish everyone good training, better races and a fun, safe weekends with your loved ones.

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.

Throlo Sock Winner

It is Thursday..you know the day after Wednesday!

Wednesday was the last day to enter for free Thorlo Coolmax socks!

I complied a list of entrants and used http://www.random.org/ to choose the winner

#7 was.........

Big Daddy Diesel

Email me at Tucker_lr (@) yahoo (.) com and let me know what size size and height socks to put in the mail.
 (let me have your top two choices for height just in case they are out of one). 

082510

WARNING I AM GOING TO BITCH, WHINE, AND MOAN BELOW

Goal: 1000m long swim, eat healthy

Results: AM 400m swim, PM 500m swim

Diet setbacks: 2 slices of pizza, three brownies, and two classes of coke

Today is the kind of day that makes me glad I have fitness in my life to use to address stress. Over the three months since I began this blog you may have read once or twice that I do not like my job. I am usually in my office reading 20 blogs a day because I am bored. I was at my wit's end last night, I actually began praying for a new job or to be exposed to the essons I am suppose to elarn from this one.

My job is provide counselling to inmates and to run the incentive wage program at our facility. Incentive wage is inmate jobs within the facility. I do not hire or supervise the inmate's I just organize their hiring, paperwork, training, etc. I am like HR for inmate janitors and cooks. Although my co-workers would argue, managing my program and counselling 75 inmates is not a momentous task (this may be because I have had a larger workload before). I can usually do my job in 4 half days per week. In fact, and I apologize for the political incorrectness, after I learned my duties I even told my supervisors that I could be replaced by a retarded monkey.

Things have gotten worse lately. Not only is my job essentially useless, I have not been able to do it because the individuals I work with could care less. The work supervisors of the inmates are all of higher rank then me so when they do not care about Standard Operating Procedure (SOP), protocol, or paperwork it makes my job harder. Since they out rank me I can't order them to fix thier issues. Unfortunately, many of them are under-qualified for their positions and have gotten them via politics. Such is working for the government.  I know for a fact that I am better prepared for many of their jobs and could do the work with less effort. Some of the position would still leave me bored because, I have a fast learning curve for most things like this.

I learned that I could not go to my management to for help with my issues because they lack testicles. I bring a problem to their attention and I get responses like we can't reprimand her because she has been reprimanded too many times and she might try to file a law suit for discrimination, or we can't talk to him because he will pull the race card, or everyone knows he is in over his head so we don't want to put more on him. Put more on him? This is more this is learning how to do your duties that are already assigned!

By the end of my shift my head was pounding because I am was frustrated that my work is pointless, no one will help, and this job is not meeting my personal needs. Personal needs, how can a job meet personal needs? No, not those kind of needs! In a work environment I need a few things to remain happy (or enough of them to make me content). First, a mental challenge. Second, ability to be physically active. Third, a job with a purpose. Fourth, the ability to create. Fifth, money. I will not be happy with any one component alone and honestly money does rank last (so long as is in line with the duties and pays my bills).

This job meets none of these. I do not know where to go from here. My first high school jobs left me feeling a similar way. Through high school and summers in college I worked at Domino's Pizza, a grocery store, and many years in construction or landscaping. These were not intellectually challenging but at the times I knew they were not permanent.  Actually, I like construction because I got to be outside and build things.

In college I worked as a resident assistant and graduate hall director. These weren't as bad but with the speed I learn things I burnt out quickly. Luckily, they were also temporary.

Since leaving grad school, I first worked as Correctional Officer. I left this position because there was no mental challenge and I worked with a lot of people who did not care about public safety and barely had a general education. It is hard to sit with someone for 12 hours who the deepest thought they have is so did you hear Puff Daddy got a mohawk, I hope they show it on the news tonight. I left and became a Parole Officer, chance to make arrests, clean up the streets and make more money. Turned out I was working with the same quality of people, just with college degrees, and the job lacked a purpose. I learned quickly that we were only there for show, no real justice was being done in our system (in fact I tried to start a blog about the injustice in the system but writing it just made me mad http://ncppo.livejournal.com/ ). mY wife wabntes me to go back to parole because the money was better, but I can't convince her it not worth it to me.

In October I started this position as a Correctional Case Manager, less pay, but less stress. That is the only positive thing I can say. It sucks when in three jobs I have been told by a supervisor in each one that my expectation are too high.

I need a change, but I do not know to what. Very many of the jobs in my field (FBI, US Marshals, Secret Service, etc.) that i think I would like I am to get i can't due to my debt from college loans. I would love to find a jobs that allows me to use some of the skills I acquired during my master degree program. I laugh whenever I look back at being told in grad school not to accept a starting position making at least $40k. I took a position making half that when i got out of school.

I need a life change that allows me to meet the majority of the needs I listed above, but I do not  know how to get there.  I have though of going back to school but I need to pay the bills and don't need any more student loans. I have though about Thins I might enjoy doing, teaching civics in high school or middle school, teaching criminal justice or political science in college, web design, teaching martial arts, being a full time back country guide, airline pilot, military intel. or spec ops, or a photographer (the photo journalist type). If you want to call BS on any of these please feel free, I encourage others thoughts to help me evaluate my own logic. (I would also list pro athlete but I'm realistic enough to know that won't happen)

I feel like I am having a mid-life crisis at 27. I feel like I have so much potential that is being wasted. Once my potential is being capitalized and my earning matches my work, I have a backlog in my head of all the material things I would some day love to own, but those are secondary to reaching my potential and I think the desire for crap just comes from not having much ever.

Anyways, on to training and diet. I left work and headed straight to the pool for bubble therapy. I just wanted to let the water relax me. My goal was to make up the 1000 meter swim  I didn't complete this morning, but I only got in 500 meters before the pool closed. Before work I made my first attempt at this workout but there was an unposted geriatric physcial therapy class taking up the entire pool (not aqua aerobics).   The life guard said I could swim the short way, 44 feet each way. By her calculations I would need 75 laps to complete my workout. I forgot my goggles so  made it just over 400 meters before I quit.

After my PM workout I went home and attempted the Hard Core club workout, the last 9 times I have tried it something work related has come up and I didn't get the chance. This time I realized i left my list of exercises at work. I remembered the crunches, the push ups, side, hip, and supine bridge, plank, shoulder taps, and stretch. It was still decent, but would have been better for the whole workout. Not feeling very great I polished off the left over pizza, brownies, and coke from my wife's church group meeting.

082410

FREE SOCKS END TODAY

Goals: 2 mile recovery run, 500m speedwork swim, eat healthy

Results: 2 mile run in 19:27, 500m in 22 minutes

Diet Setbacks: BBQ sauce, one small bowl of baked beans and one small brownie

Thoughts: Today I headed to Marion, NC for some work related training. One of the highlights of going to Marion is heading to countryside BBQ. In general, I do not like BBQ pork, but whatever they do to theirs I love. I have only ever found two BBQ places that I like- Countryside in Marion, NC and Dan's BBQ in Cary, NC. Unfortunately, They do not have very many healthy options for sides,so I had green beans and baked beans. the baked beans may not be in tune with my diet but the serving is about 5 or 6 spoonfuls so I am just not going to worry about it. In addition, it is not a regular habit, just a one time treat.

After work I headed straight to the pool. I swam 500 meters via 50 meter warm and cool, 8x50meter sprints with 1:00 minute breaks between. This is my first week of 50 meters repeats, moving up from 25's. this was tough. I only did two or three completely using crawl, for the others I had to sub in some breast stroke. I am not happy with my splits, but I am still gaining experience. The splits were 1:05, 1:11, 1:15, 1:12, 1:19, 1:16, 1:12, and 1:16. Considering that my splits were over one minute, I should probably change my breaks to 1:30 or 2:00 minutes because as it is my rests are shorter than my work sessions.

After dinner back to the street for my run. This was to be my recovery run with a pace of 12 minutes per mile. I started out at a comfortable pace but when I looked at the garmin I was running at a 10:00 pace. I kept pushing it and I finished my first mile at 8:49. This is the fastest mile I have recorded OUTSIDE since high school. I am VERY ecstatic and it is encouraging and make me feel like I am doing something right. I had to slow down for the second mile because the last quarter mile is uphill, oh yeah this run wasn't flat my any means, but after slowing down to a 16:00 pace and dry heaving a little I pushed on finishing my second mile in 10:38. The overall time of 19:27. This is also my fastest 2 mile since I started training outside. It feels great to see progress, even if I didn't hit the goal for my workout. If I can keep this average pace up for a third mile I will can break my 5k PR at my next race.

Between my workouts I picked up the the July issue of triathlete. This one has a special on off road tri's. Oddly, in my last post I said this mag is over my head, this month has a lot of stuff I get. I scanned it last night, but can't wait to sit down and read it in depth tonight.