Viva Vegas!

Hello, hello to the select, but important, few who read this. :) Well, we are sitting in the Las Vegas airport awaiting our flight back home (otherwise known as the frozen tundra). The past 7 days have been a blur despite the never-ending first day we were here (up at 4:30 am central time and arrived in Vegas at 8:15 am pacific time). For a more detailed rundown of what we did just go to Brendan's blog: www.brendansbikeblog.blogspot.com The only few differences are that I didn't go biking AT ALL, went running once, hiking/trail speed walking once and actually had a relatively relaxing vacation. The hiking was awesome! I went with a great friend Jen (great name she's got!) and we were able to hike through some canyons that used to be under the ocean and then found some natural hot springs. Very fun! Here's a pic of Jen (the other one) climbin up the ladder to get to the springs.

We found it so amazing how the springs became this waterfall you can see behind the ladder and then within 30-40 feet had been absorbed back into the earth and there was no trace of their existance! CRAZY!

On Tuesday night we went out with some of my girlies from school to Studio 54... I will not judge it until I'm there on a weekend night because nothing to write home about regarding the crowd we experienced except they made us feel like models...which isn't such a bad feeling, though, except for sore feet. Damn sexy shoes hurt! Still, we were THE fine ladies there despite the fact that we had to pay for all of our own drinks. I guess that's what happens when 21ish year olds try to dance with you and you tell them you're married! HA!

On our last full day, us girls (minus Jen M. ... the other one) spent the day lounging by the pool. Even though we didn't actually go swimming, Brendan made sure to squirt me with his water bottle when he got back from riding... revenge will be sweet.

Ok, one last pic... Brendan and I before our fancy-pants dinner. Peace and love... ~j

Sore, Sore, Sore... massage please!!!

It's almost Hump Day... so I hope you're getting in the mood to hump :)

Howdy, howdy, howdy! Things today are coming in threes, I guess. My students' art project involved 3 stars, I had 3 students absent and I've had 3 hard days of work-outs in a row, make that 5 actually... and hard is saying things nicely.

Many of you also check my husband's blog (www.brendansbikeblog.blogspot.com) but either way, if you live in the cities you know the weather has been CRAZIE the past few days. Planning my runs is coming along, and this week was no exception. Brendan wants me to mention that I'm comando right now (I'll get to the reason in a bit)... ok back to the story. I got home on Friday in good time and decided to get my run in while it was still beautiful (upper 40's low 50's for temp). I was avoiding my hill sprints all week, and I knew I needed to get it in, so it was time. At least the weather would keep my spirits up. So I ran my 1 or 1.25 mile warm up to this hill about that far away... not some crazy hill, but exactly what the workout calls for (approx. 200m long). It was to be 5 times up that sucker. The first 2 sprints went well... tough, but not horrible. It felt good to sprint, it's been years since I went that hard and fast. The only thing that was pissin me off at that point was some stupid Doberman at the bottom of the hill. He has a shock collar/invisible fence so wouldn't go out of the yard, but would shut up and freaked out when I tried to let him smell me. 3rd time up the hill was a bit tougher and I was seriously considering only doing 4 instead of 5 trips, but I wasn't gonna short myself. Darn it all if I wasn't dying by the end of that one, but I just can't keep pace when I run alone. Needless to say the "cool down" mile was still at a sub 8 min pace.

I had a 4 mile and 13 mile run left for the week; Saturday was supposed to be warm, but windy and Sunday the opposite, cool-cold but little to no wind. I hate running in the cold, but I hate wind even more, especially on long runs, so I decided to do the 4 on Saturday and the 13 on Sunday. Not a whole lot to report on those except, like I said, that darn pace problem: Sub 8min pace for the 4 (in a 20 mph wind or so Brendan reports) and between 8 and 8:30 for the 13 and SUPER hilly. Turns out the 13 was more like 12, but I decided those hills really made up for it.

So, there was 3 harder workouts. Then there was shoveling the whole flippin' driveway on Monday (a snow-day--> no school) because I got Brendan's car stuck IN the driveway as I was backing out. This pic does my job no justice :(


THEN, tonight B and I went to our friend Sarah's spin class at Lifetime and I pushed to the point that I was about to passout, but dang it feels good to push that threshold! I'll be beggin for a massage tonight... cross your fingers that I get it. Which gets me to the comando thing: after spinning we went in the hot tub and I didn't bring dry clothes and didn't feel like wearing sweaty bike shorts or a swimsuit under my sweats, so I didn't. HA!

So I Blog like I Journal...life goes on.

Hello to all who read this, however many or few that is. Word on the street (specifically my husband) is that I should keep up on my blog a little more frequently than I have been lately; so here goes.

So, yet again I've changed my training regimine. The Advanced I was just kicking me in the you-know-what a little more than I'd like and taking nearly 2 weeks off for my case of strep and then a sinus infection didn't help matters. Basically, the only difference between the 2 training schedules is the mileage and intensity. In my new one the runs, as a whole, don't get as long and as intense as quickly as the Advanced schedule. I'm gonna try to get my new schedule on here, but this blogger thing doesn't really support spreadsheets, at least not when I've tried. I've got a few more tricks up my sleeve before I give up on that endeavor.

I have decided that my official goal pace for the Med-City is 8:30. For the TC Marathon I had a goal pace of 9:00, which calculates out to about a 4hr marathon time, but being that I finished at 4hr42min I didn't really achieve that goal... even if you take out the 10 minutes that I was harfing on the side of the road that only takes me down to about a 4 1/2hr time. This way, with a 8:30 pace and a resulting total time of approx. 3:45, I should be able to hit that 4 hr mark a little more closely this time. Plus, now I know what various bodily feelings are telling me and those override preset schedules (such as, drink when I'm thirsty and don't drink just cause it's available). Hopefully this will solve one major problem. Also, just cause it feels like I need to pee at mile 20 doesn't mean that I really need to. :) A few interesting things I've learned in my extensive marathon career... or maybe just trying not to repeat past mistakes.

Ok, enough gabbing for tonight. I just made cookies and they are smelling great so I think I'm gonna go reward myself for my workout tonight (which I pushed myself quite hard at! GO ME!) Happy Hump Day!
~jen