Swim, Bike, Run

Life gets busy fast.

Saturday I did 8 miles with the Speed Development Group, and it was very good, if not very fast. I felt great at the end.

Sunday: It was 74F!!! Gorgeous day. Number One Daughter and I started by looking at a lovely house on Capitol Hill—for her and her friends to live in (sans Mom. A big mistake if you ask me but no one is asking me.). It was a beautifully renovated old rowhouse with a front porch swing, directly across from a Safeway and within walking distance of two Metro stops. We fell in love! I asked the owners how they would decide amongst the applicants, and was told, "First come, first served." We were first! This thing was In. The. Bag.!! NOD gave him all her deets and then waited for the confirmation e-mail.

Which never came.

Instead she got a "We regret to inform you" letter. Like it was a job interview! We wracked our brains for what we could have/should have done differently. I can only surmise that the owners decided to rent to a nice professional couple instead of three nice girls one year out of college.

I honestly don't know how anyone on a budget finds housing. It's insane.

Sunday afternoon: Bike ride in Rock Creek Park. Got a flat before I left the parking lot. Sigh. Still, I remembered how to change it, and I remembered how to ride. All good.

Monday: Swim lesson #3! I love my instructor, sort of the way you fall in love with your captors (see: Stockholm syndrome). My arms are still sore two days later. She said, "You wouldn't like it if I went easy on you." I could have argued the point.

Monday night: Handbell practice! Handbells, swimming, running. Many many parallels. Hold your breath, breathe, focus, tempo! Don't stop 'til the end.

Tuesday: 4 miles on treadmill at 5:30 cuz I had to miss track Tuesday night cuz I had to go to the dentist. To find out that I need another crown, AND? An implant. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. Apparently the implant process takes about a year to complete, and in the meantime, you get to wear a denture. Fun times. I honestly don't know where I'm going to get the money. Time to emigrate. I hear Botswana is nice.

Tuesday night: After the dentist, what could be better than a trip to Hell Home Depot? Our kitchen guy came with us and we picked everything out. We're getting the cheapest in-stock cabinets, the cheapest vinyl flooring, and trying to figure out what the best/cheapest thing is to do for counters. (I have 25 square feet of countertop.)

Tuesday late night: All I can say is that Kelly is insane. Go Bethenny.

Wednesday morning: Slept in! Swimming on tap for tonight.

Update on Germany: I got turned down for an entry-level copy-editing job where speaking German was not a requirement. No explanation. Mad Fast Thomas makes the compelling argument that he's surrounded by ex-pats in Ireland who have no particular skills, so I could definitely move there! Thanks, I think!

Things can only look up, right?

The Many Benefits of Ignorance

Running: Track again tonight. If you recall, your heroine skipped last week's track session because of a pulled calf muscle, putting her seriously behind the eight ball.

And if you recall, the National Half Marathon is this coming Saturday (I think I've mentioned this in every post since January, so I don't know how you could not recall), so I wasn't sure if I should run track tonight or not.

But then I read D.C. Rainmaker. And he said HE was doing a track workout tonight, so of course that meant I had to. (Ray, you should really be more careful with your posts!) Because I have to keep up with a 28-year-old.

On tonight's menu was 4 x 1600 @ Interval pace with 400 recovery. For those keeping track at home, 1600=1 mile. With 1 mile warmup and 1 mile cooldown.

And away we go...

Except I had no idea what my interval pace was because I forgot to check. And as usual, there was no one there from my pace group, so I hung with B. who is in a faster pace group and said she was aiming for 9:10s. I figured I'd aim for 9:40s. I checked when I got home and it turns out...I should have been aiming for 10:15s. Ah, ignorance.

1st 1600: 9:25
2nd 1600: 9:45
3rd 1600: 9:55
4th 1600: 9:58

You might notice, as I did, that these times are going in the wrong direction. I'm pretty sure the goal is to get faster with each repeat. Sigh. This is week 10,000 of the Speed Development Program, and I would like to register an official complaint: I do not feel any faster. The other thing I don't feel are my legs. They had turned into jello by mile 4.

Who doesn't like jello??

I told my coach tonight if I didn't PR on Saturday I was gonna demand a refund. He laughed.

I'm hilarious.

The good news is 1) I went faster than I should have (I think that is good?), and b) I said at the start that I would only do 3 repeats because I could not possibly do 4 and yet? I did 4 anyway. I totally rule.

Swimming, the forgotten sport: In other news: I hired myself a swim coach. We didn't meet Sunday night, because of massive communication fail, so I got all dolled up in my speedo and ambled over to the pool for nothing, but then we DID meet Monday morning at the ass crack of dawn, and it was great!! I'd become so discouraged after all my swim clinic-ing last fall, which added 1 solid minute to my 100s, that I pretty much quit swimming. So she took a look, and guess what? It turns out that when I'm swimming? I'm not actually USING MY ARMS TO MOVE THE WATER. (I'm sure that part of the swim has a name—I just don't know what it is.) So when I swim, my form is terrific (she said), I just have no power.

Who knew? So she had me work on a bunch of stuff until my head was about to explode. You work on one thing and the other 75 parts of swimming fall to pieces. Sigh.

I told her my goal is to join the masters class/team/whatever at my YMCA. She said most masters programs want you to be able to "do 100 on the 2:00" (why must swimmers speak this way?? Why not just say "Swim 100 meters in 2 minutes"?? WHY?)

So I went swimming again this morning, by myself, and I did a gazillion drills and then swam a few 100s and I was at least under 3 minutes. Which totally sucks, but sucks a lot less than the last time I timed myself.

Germany: So...You might remember, that way back in January, our heroine hired a life coach who coached her to set some ambitious goals. And one of them was to live overseas. And Number One Daughter's BF finally got sick of hearing me say this (yes I'm writing in several voices, sue me) so he challenged me to SET A DATE and develop a plan and EXECUTE. And reminded me that I have ONE skill that many Europeans lack, that I might possibly use to earn a living: I speak English. AND, he suggested that this skill might possibly come in very handy in a country in which the main language is NOT English. Well, this led to that, and he sent me a bunch of links about living/working overseas and blah blah yada, the next thing I knew I was applying for a job as a copy editor in Germany.

P.S. I fired my life coach cuz I have NOD's BF for free.

It's All Good

I skipped track for the first time this week. And immediately felt like I had just tossed the previous 8 weeks of SOLID track workouts into the can.

But I went to spin on Tuesday (with wimpy spin instructor) and again on Wednesday (with kick-ass spin instructor), AND my calf slowly felt better. I took all your advice and marched back to the shoe store where I bought the evil Saucony Triumphs, prepared for a fight. Showed the guy behind the counter my old NB 1023s, told him my tale, and he said, "Oh no problem. We don't want you to keep something that's not working."

Exsqueeze me??

Come again???

He went to the back of the store and pulled out:

NikeNew BALANCE 1023s, Women's, size 11

Say what????

Yep, he had two pairs of 1023s, size 5 and size 11.

I took 'em and ran.

Shout out to Gotta Run, Pentagon Row in Arlington!


In fact, I ran 5 (ish) miles on the treadmill the next morning, and all was well.

I really like running at the Y on Thursday mornings, cuz the treadmills have televisions, you don't get kicked off after 30 minutes, and I get to flip back and forth between Joe and Mika on MSNBC and American Morning on CNN, which is thrilling cuz I never ever watch TV news other than the great NewsHour. So it's quite a treat, for instance, to see the entire American media industry all camped out in front of Bernie Madoff's apartment, waiting with bated breath, to film a CAR MOVING SLOWLY OUT OF A DRIVEWAY.

I miss a lot, I know, because of my crazy addiction to public television.

Thursdays are usually threshold runs, so the schedule says "6 miles, 2 x 15 at threshold," and I like those because I like talking like a runner. OK, I never actually get up to six miles because I run too slow to get it in AND get to work at a reasonable hour, but still.

Thursdays I always also run into fellow D.C. Tri-club-er, L, who is training for Ceour d'Alene Ironman on June 21, and is already running when I get there at 6 and still there after I leave. Plus, she runs at the speed of light. You go girl.

Thursdays are good.

So the calf is good. Maybe one day it will grow up to be a cow.

Meanwhile, 14 miles is on the schedule, YET AGAIN. I'm sick of seeing that number. Plus, the National Half is apparently next SATURDAY. Who knew?? So I'm thinking I should be tapering.

CALL ME!

If you're running the National Half and want to meet the great and very scientific Danielle, gimme a shout. (I don't really answer the phone. E-mail.) We're setting up dinner.

Finally, in other news, I'm thinking of moving to Germany. Hi Jack! And in the great tradition of cliffhangers, I'll save details for another post.

Night!