Sunburn?

I'm sure people thought I had a sunburn but it was more like a cold burn. I rode to the pool the other day but I couldn't find my full leg warmers and had to settle for knee warmers instead. That meant about 5 inches of skin on my shins open to the freezing air. I'm not sure the redness shows up that good in the picture.



Yep, it's winter.

My skin smells like chlorine

Basically no snow fell last night. Up at my house it looked like it might have snowed for a minute but the roads were like a slicktrack. I had an incredible urge to pull the emergency brake and spin in circles. Why at that point does my rational side have to kick in?

I had a great swim this afternoon - warmed up with an easy 400 meters, then did some drills for another 200 meters and then was the main set... 12 reps of 100 meters leaving every 2 minutes and 10 seconds. That means I start the timer and swim 100 meters. When I'm done I let the timer run until it reaches 2:10 and then repeat. So if I'm swimming fast then I get more rest, if I'm swimming slow I get no rest. It isn't a great speed by any means and I found myself easily completing those intervals. Next time I'll bump it down to 2:05 maybe...still seems like too much rest though. Just to give those of you who are metrically challenged a frame of reference, a football field is roughly 110 meters long. I followed it up with a few hundred yards of kicking and a few hundred yards of easy freestyle and backstroke.

You can't see it that great in this picture, but I caught a black widow at work.

What's in the bag?

We got a free turkey when we went grocery shopping so we cooked up a second round of Thanksgiving on Saturday. This was a new recipe and it turned out wonderfully! In case you forget or have never read Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, paper burns at 451 degrees so the key is to not turn the oven up past that temp or the bag will catch on fire!





It was another weekend of swimming for me, though I did ride my bike to the pool one day. Riding doesn't seem to hurt my knee too much...it's walking that does it.

Gobble gobble, pedal, pedal

We are fortunate to not have to travel far on Thanksgiving. We bundled up in our coats and hats (it was 28 degrees), loaded up our BOB trailer and rode over to our friend's house for a big dinner. The trailer was able to carry a case of beer, a pan of freshly baked herb focaccia, green bean casserole, and baked spinach artichoke cheese dip.

Turkylicious

Happy Everything!

Today I'm heading over to celebrate the day with some friends. We're bringing green bean casserole, freshly baked herb focaccia bread, and baked spinach artichoke cheese dip. YUM! I can hardly wait!

Today is a day off from swimming, but I did a long one yesterday so that I could eat extra today. I'm finding it easy to add distance and time to my swims but it's very difficult to add speed. I swam 3000 meters which is roughly 1.8 miles and then I did a bunch of kicking drills as well. Since it was FREEZING cold out, it was awesome to sit in the steam room for 20 minutes afterwards. When I walked outside there was steam coming off of me for the next 5 minutes!

Tomorrow is back to the pool, anyone want to join?

Breathless

My swimming is progressing and I have been able to add time and intensity rapidly. The other afternoon I swam half a mile, then did 3 X 100m 5 times. The first 100m was at a comfortably moderate pace, the second was a bit faster and the 3rd was all out as hard as I could go. Then I swam a super easy 100m for recovery and repeated the set 5 times. That left me breathless but I pushed on and swam another half a mile before relaxing in the steam room for 20 minutes. Feels good to get my heart rate up that high and challenge myself.

We had to break up a dog fight over breakfast. One of our dogs is a giant pig and the other doesn't eat much but still protects her food. With 3 pieces left she wandered off and then came charging and growling when the other snuck over to steal what was left. Actually, she snapped and got two puncture wounds in the piggy's face. Man, they are worse than kids! I couldn't get the beagle to hold still so I could take a better picture.

Attitude

There once was a woman who woke up one morning, looked in the mirror, and noticed she had only three hairs on her head. Well," she said, "I think I'll braid my hair today" So she did and she had a wonderful day.


The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and saw that she had only two hairs on her head. "H-M-M," she said, "I think I'll part my hair down the middle today" So she did and she had a grand day.


The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that she had only one hair on her head. "Well," she said, "today I'm going to wear my hair in a pony tail." So she did and she had a fun, fun day.


The next day she woke up, looked in the mirror and noticed that there wasn't a single hair on her head. "YEA!" she exclaimed, "I don't have to fix my hair today!"

Attitude is everything.

I did a nice long swim yesterday...not so hard since it was raining out anyway and I didn't have to wish I was out riding.

Here is a pic of our 70's outfits for a party we went to Friday. Neither my pants or top are very flattering.

Just a thought

"Most people are too busy living life to ever put life in their living..."

~Doug Firebaug

I saw this quote the other day on a workout website and it made me smile. Sure, you can "live" everyday and just go through the motions, but are you really living? Makes you think, huh? Are you happy, do you do the things you want to do and are you inspired? Hopefully you answer yes.

I put in another long swim the other day after work. It's funny because I am a pretty self motivated person and there are always little tricks my mind plays on me to keep me striving for the best. Last night I was actually done with the distance I planned to swim but for the last 15 minutes I had been slowly gaining on the guy I was splitting a lane with. It was usually only 1 or 2 feet year lap, but just that little bit was like a carrot dangling in front of me (or a beer, or some nachos). So, I vowed to keep swimming until I caught him. Just that little thing kept me motivated and I eventually did catch him!

I'm not a fish

With my knee in a funk right now I've increased my pool workouts so that they are currently replacing all my riding! It's tough because I don't have fun swimming like I have fun riding. Swimming actually feels like a workout. Still, I put in three solid days of swimming this past weekend. Saturday I did a long distance day and just swam freestyle laps for an hour. Sunday I mixed it up and threw some backstroke in, but still did an hour. Monday I did some intervals. Intervals are always tough, but a really crucial part of working out. Intervals were always some of the toughest training days on my bike. You basically are trying to get your heart rate up to a REALLY high rate. You are working so hard that everything around you is a blur and even though snot may be dripping out your eyes, you can't do anything about it because you are so beat. You swear your watch is skipping chunks of time when it beeps warning that the rest period between sets is over. Glamorous huh?

I actually don't know my max heart rate for swimming. Different sports yield different heart rates. Cycling it's 184 but I've never been able to come close to that using a cross trainer eliptical at the gym and I bet it's even lower swimming. Up until this point with my pool workouts I've basically just always done straight laps. I don't entirely know what I'm doing when I try to design a swim workout but I read up a bit on the internet and after a good long warm up I swam 3X50 meters descending my time for each 50 by 2 seconds. I rested 20 seconds then and repeated 4 more times. By the last 3 50's my arms were dead tired. Then I tacked on a 25 minutes lap swim and did another interval for good measure. This one was "fun" too. I swam as hard as I could for one length, then two easy lengths, swam as hard as I could for 2 lengths and then did one easy length, then as hard as I could for 3 lengths and took a break before repeating and then cooling down.

If you have read all through this and are still awake you get a reward....Derek and I went for a short walk the other night so he could practice taking pics. It was a beautiful evening out.

All is not good

To mix it up I've been going to a kickboxing aerobics class one night a week. This is the first aerobics class I've ever been to! I can't do some of the moves because of my bad knee but I just improvise. Anyway, I rode there the other night and it's a darn good thing I had my thermal vest on because when I left it was freezing. What I didn't remember though, were my warmer gloves. I like the feeling of cold nights...especially coming from a hot sweaty gym. I took back roads all the way home so I think I only encountered 1 car, making it very relaxing and quiet. The next day I was out walking at lunch and took a step and felt a horrible pain in my "good" knee. I couldn't walk on it at all and it was bad. I massaged it and it kind of went away. Later that night it got worse, swelled, and became pretty painful. It's been that way for a few days now and I'm very frustrated. I have always been a very active person and to be limited is really tough.

So of course it's a 3 day weekend and I can't ride. Grrrrrrrr.

Da Beach

Here are some more pics from our beach weekend.





You can't visit the beach without taking sunset photos.





I think it must be pretty annoying to live here along the bay because these guys were barking constantly. They seemed very territorial and fiesty. Whenever another one wanted up on the platform to bask in the sun they would bark and yell at it until it quit trying. Too funny.

Beervana

Interesting show on OPB tonight.

Beervana

Beach Bums

We spent this past weekend at the Oregon Coast - stayed in Newport. We brought our cyclocross bikes and went on a big adventure loop on Saturday. We rode through Waldport along the 101 down to Yachats and then made a left and rode along a winding country feeling road about 10 miles before making another left and beginning a brutal climb up and up and up into the trees. It lasted forever and we thought for sure we were lost. But eventually we popped out in a big logging area and then descended a lifetime back down to Waldport. It was a great loop with little to no car traffic once we got off 101. It's been awhile since I've ridden along the coast and I forgot that salty wet tangy taste you get if you ride with your mouth open and inhale. We stopped a lot along the way and took scenery pictures though it was too dark back along the climb to get much. Here are some of the best from that ride.







Here's the Waldport Bridge

Bend Bella Cyclists

Happy Post Sugar Day!

The Bend Bella Cyclists are meeting tonight at 6:30 over in the conference room at Deschutes Library in Bend. We’ll have Gina Miller from Fresh Air Sports talk about how she got involved with that organization, what do they do, who it is for and tips for staying in shape for the winter. We would love to have new faces at the meeting...you don't have to be a member to come and listen.