This past weekend it felt like summer finally arrived - temperatures in the 80's and 90's. For the first time on Saturday, we left the house and did not have to wear multiple layers. We could leave the jackets and vests at home. We joined up with team Saturday morning out on the first miles of the RAAM course for the prescribed 4x20 min race pace intervals. The first and third efforts were ridden solo and numbers two and four where with you partner. Two minutes into the first one my body was scolding me for neglecting my IT bands. My legs were so tight and painful. I need to be disciplined and stretch more and make my foam roller my friend instead of foe. Karla rocked on her efforts. She was teamed up with Jim this week and they make a great team. She set new PR's during her individual efforts and I was 15 seconds slower than last week. It may have to do with the volume for the week. The heat was great - it felt so good to work up a heavy sweat riding. I went into the ride playing a little nutrition game. I only took 350 calories with me. This is probably not the smartest thing to do when you are going for a 5 hour ride. Karla punished me the last 5 miles home as I could feel my body bonking. Food never tasted so good when we got home. The plan was to do a long run Sunday morning followed by a easy ride. I felt horrible (probably from the nutrition experiment) and proceeded to drink a pot of coffee and eat 3/4 of an angel food cake I made the day before. With all that caffeine and sugar I felt awesome. We went out for a 30 mile ride in the late morning to refresh the legs from Saturday's efforts. The temperature hit 98 degrees yesterday with strong winds. We finished the day with a solid swim to cool down from the heat. Swimming would be easy if you could always have the sun shining and have it warm instead of the 5:30 am cold wake up call.
So for the past week:
Bike - 280 miles/15.5 hr
Run - 20 miles/2.5 hr
Swim - 7000 yds/2.5 hrs
This week we will continue to build the efforts and focus on the bike. The plan is to do 350 miles on the bike while maintaining the run and swim volume. We will do 8x1 mile hill repeats on Wednesday on the inside road at Torrey Pines and 4x25 min flat intervals Saturday on the RAAM course.
We started this morning off with a great run - it was nice to run in shorts and t-shirt and leave the jacket and tights at home (even at 4:30 am). 10 miles in 67 minutes with an avg. hr of 154. This low HR training stuff is working well. It is not long slow distance but long steady distance training as Chuckie V (http://chuckiev.blogspot.com/), Jeff Keil (http://timluchinske.blogspot.com/) and Lucho (http://timluchinske.blogspot.com/) preach. It was actually challenging to get my HR up without the help of hills.
What this is all about -
You may ask why are we signed up and trained for such a race. For our team, RAAM is not just a Race Across AMerica, it is a race to better our community. Our charity is North Coast Community Service (NCCS), which teams with 11 nonprofit organizations in San Diego County to make a difference in people’s lives. In the past 12 months, 5,500 NCCS volunteers have completed over 450 unique service projects. There is a broad spectrum of support which include the following: feeding and providing shelter for the homeless, assistance to a drug and alcohol recovery program, a home for people disabled by HIV/AIDS, support of military families by providing: financial support, home improvements, baby supplies, childcare, and counseling, outreach to nursing home residences, help to pregnant teenagers and adult women, help for homeless kids, and non-profit resale for foster children. This is just a short summary of the help provided by the organization we are raising money to support. If you feel compelled to join us on our journey and support making a difference in this world, you can make a tax-deductible contribution to our team. Please follow this link Support NCCS RAAM 2008.
Monday, April 28, 2008
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