mixy monday mashup
Last year I found a pair of bike shoes on a clearance table somewhere for $15. The reason they were on the clearance table? They were the previous year's shoes. So I bought them and have beat the crap out of them over the past year. There's nothing wrong with them, but I don't like them because they don't match my bike (I know). And every time I go into the bike shop, I wander over to the shoes and drool until one of my bike guys says sternly, "Your shoes are fine!"
Well, this weekend I went on a loonnnng ride, and when I got back, I noticed one of my shoes was wiggling around on the cleat quite a bit. It turned out that I had lost 2 of my cleat screws. So I toddled off to the shop to see if they had any spares. After an exhaustive screw man-hunt, I decided to just buy new cleats. "They" say that you should replace them every 5000 miles anyway, and I'm pretty sure I blew past that in April. But the other screws were pretty stripped, and it was looking like it was going to be tough to get them out, and it really wasn't that hard at all to talk me into...
Beautiful new bike shoes! They also don't match my bike, but they are much closer than my last pair. And do I think I got $15 of wear out of those shoes? Absolutely. So long, faithful soldiers.
Speaking of that long ride...I think we discovered this weekend that lasagna is the perfect pre-long ride fuel, and Coke is the perfect mid-ride drink. Emily and I stuffed ourselves with carbs on Friday night and headed out at 5:30am Saturday morning, hoping to beat the heat.
She just needed to hit a time goal, and I'm not training for anything right now, so we headed to Purcellville on the W&OD. It was fortunately not very hot, although humid as crap, and the bugs were out in full force. When I came home and blew my nose, 2 dead ones came out. We stopped once on the way out, for a few minutes at the turn-around, and once on the way back. My fingers were swollen from the humidity and I decided that a Coke would be a great way to refuel: cold + bubbles + sodium + sugar, sounds like everything this girl needs! I never drink caffeine and I almost never drink soda, and it cracked me right out. After about a minute of standing there, I made Emily get back on her bike because I was jittery and shaky. It powered me HARD through the last 20 miles of our 80+ mile ride, and I was still pretty buzzed even after getting off the bike (I tried to convince Emily to go out for an extra 16 to hit 100 on the day, but she wasn't all strung out on Coke and turned me down. Lame.).
And, running. I decided at the beginning of last week to just do one speed workout a week, and later downgraded that to zero. Right now, in PT, I can see - and feel, holy glutes! - great progress on a daily basis. This morning's session was particularly good, in which I learned how to do three different kinds of dead lifts (normal, Romanian, and single leg) as well as another box step-up exercise, all of which are making my booter sore in a way no one ever has (sorry, the poet). So I've kind of decided that while all this is going on, I'm just going to run easy. I do think it's important that I do keep running, so that everything I am doing in PT is immediately translating over into my gait. But for the immediate future, no training plans, no tempo, no intervals, no hills, and no ridiculous long runs. A mid-distance run with maybe a gentle negative split every other day seems like it'll treat me just fine, and it goes along very well with my "not training to race do whatever I want to" summer plans.
The bad news about this decision is that it means no San Francisco Half Marathon, which makes me incredibly sad for a lot of reasons. I was really looking forward to a great girl's weekend out there, because SO many of my (real and blog) friends are running the race. I started looking for a plane ticket about 3 weeks ago, and I just haven't been able to justify spending that much money on a race that I will not be in shape to truly race. And I don't want to fly to SF to do an easy but hilly run that may or may not set back everything I'm doing to heal. It's the smart but very very sad decision. I really want to have a solid fall racing season this year, so I have to take care of these lingering problems now.
So that's the Monday mashup. How was your weekend?
Well, this weekend I went on a loonnnng ride, and when I got back, I noticed one of my shoes was wiggling around on the cleat quite a bit. It turned out that I had lost 2 of my cleat screws. So I toddled off to the shop to see if they had any spares. After an exhaustive screw man-hunt, I decided to just buy new cleats. "They" say that you should replace them every 5000 miles anyway, and I'm pretty sure I blew past that in April. But the other screws were pretty stripped, and it was looking like it was going to be tough to get them out, and it really wasn't that hard at all to talk me into...
She just needed to hit a time goal, and I'm not training for anything right now, so we headed to Purcellville on the W&OD. It was fortunately not very hot, although humid as crap, and the bugs were out in full force. When I came home and blew my nose, 2 dead ones came out. We stopped once on the way out, for a few minutes at the turn-around, and once on the way back. My fingers were swollen from the humidity and I decided that a Coke would be a great way to refuel: cold + bubbles + sodium + sugar, sounds like everything this girl needs! I never drink caffeine and I almost never drink soda, and it cracked me right out. After about a minute of standing there, I made Emily get back on her bike because I was jittery and shaky. It powered me HARD through the last 20 miles of our 80+ mile ride, and I was still pretty buzzed even after getting off the bike (I tried to convince Emily to go out for an extra 16 to hit 100 on the day, but she wasn't all strung out on Coke and turned me down. Lame.).
And, running. I decided at the beginning of last week to just do one speed workout a week, and later downgraded that to zero. Right now, in PT, I can see - and feel, holy glutes! - great progress on a daily basis. This morning's session was particularly good, in which I learned how to do three different kinds of dead lifts (normal, Romanian, and single leg) as well as another box step-up exercise, all of which are making my booter sore in a way no one ever has (sorry, the poet). So I've kind of decided that while all this is going on, I'm just going to run easy. I do think it's important that I do keep running, so that everything I am doing in PT is immediately translating over into my gait. But for the immediate future, no training plans, no tempo, no intervals, no hills, and no ridiculous long runs. A mid-distance run with maybe a gentle negative split every other day seems like it'll treat me just fine, and it goes along very well with my "not training to race do whatever I want to" summer plans.
The bad news about this decision is that it means no San Francisco Half Marathon, which makes me incredibly sad for a lot of reasons. I was really looking forward to a great girl's weekend out there, because SO many of my (real and blog) friends are running the race. I started looking for a plane ticket about 3 weeks ago, and I just haven't been able to justify spending that much money on a race that I will not be in shape to truly race. And I don't want to fly to SF to do an easy but hilly run that may or may not set back everything I'm doing to heal. It's the smart but very very sad decision. I really want to have a solid fall racing season this year, so I have to take care of these lingering problems now.
So that's the Monday mashup. How was your weekend?