Afternoon all!

Usual commute in for me (mid 19s); short on the way home so I can take DD to driver's ed...

Awesome concert at Prescott Park last night (Martin Sexton) - after an impressive thunderstorm blew across the area. Glad we stuck it out (had heard of him, but never heard him .. what a great live performer!).

G.

Speed work today at the track. Ha... Just running circles for me. hubster did some speed work and N1 did agility stuff that would me twisting ankles, knees and anything else that can twist. Quite impressive. Scott came by and ran a few laps to be social since we were only a few miles from his house.






















I started with 4 laps to warm up. Then 4 laps sprinting the straights and walking the curves. 6 800s all at or below 4:15 target pace. Yay! Was supposed to get in 8 but girls HS soccer showed up and threw their bags all over the track instead of the sidelines. Dodged a few for my last few laps. I'm calling that agility training. (Side note is posting screen an issue for anyone else today? I can't seem to format. Ugh!)

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Good afternoon, TEAM LIT!

LRR: YES!

MQ: Way to get in that speed. Sorry I couldn't swing by this morning. I hope to be able to do that soon, but not this week. Was a bit dicey this morning with the two little ones.

Double for me today...

4+ mile run early this morning. Legs tired from Iron Strength but otherwise good.

Then at noon...

5.5 mile run including 8 passes of a 2 minute hill as such:
o WU - .5 miles
o 8 x 2' HILL w/jog back down to the other side
o CD - .5 miles

Great day, friends!

I'm going to try to get something in before my massage. That might be a ride, it might be a swim. It just depends on when I can break out of jail.... ooops, I mean work!

Yesterday I hopped on the trainer for a 20 minute spin to help with soreness. I think it worked, but I'm still a bit sore from Tuesday's long run. We'll see how the legs feel tonight.

Planned DOR today. Kinda lame it being only my 2nd day back posting

MQ - Way to go !
Thor - hang in there. My DD weighed a bit less than 5lbs 6oz and was considered underweight. It took a while for her to 'grow up' a bit and get used to the world. Madison will soon give you and Hearher a peaceful night.
Sparty - congrats to DH!! Is your tri this weekend up north? If your goal is just to get back to the competition scene, do it! You have no prob with finish with a smile!

Prob DOR. Heading to a Lake Michigan lake house to get together with DH's cousin's family from Chicago. Looks like a great weather. Hope to do some swimming! I'm sure it's brrrrr.

well after being away a week and catching up most of a week I'm stuck awaiting the arrival of the gas & electric truck. They were supposed to give 48 hours notice instead they popped up "no parking" signs on my sidewalk sometime after 6pm last night. Since there are some major issues with what they want to do..I can't leave the house until they arrive. Calls to the office are only yielding "I'll call you back". Its a nice day out too but what can you do. I've had nice swims all week and a good walk Monday. I agreed to join a friend at a Tour de Donut event in Texas in the fall so its time to dust off the bicycle too!

Yesterday in the chair wasn't too bad. With the new mitigating side-effects meds they started giving me a few times ago, I was much less meh in the chair by the afternoon. Which also meant I could be more productive.

The only close call was that my blood work was a little borderline (for things like white blood count and such), but the doc made the call to go ahead with it. Postponing after being all hyped up for the "last" one would have sucked. I'll go back on Monday for more blood work and a WBC booster shot if necessary.

Somebody asked for pics of the tennis ball --> juggling ball project.

Since I needed 100 of them, I took a shortcut and ordered balls from JustUsedTennisBalls.com. We got the pre-slit ones. These are intended to put on chair legs in schools to eliminate annoying screeches as desks and chairs move about. But it looked like a great way of eliminating one step and reducing the odds that I'd slice off something important. Once I received the balls, I stuck a funnel in the hole made by the slits, put in just under a 1/4 cup of sand. Then used silicone caulk to seal it up. Then, both for added insurance in case the silicone didn't hold, and for a little decoration, I cut the necks off of 12 inch balloons and stretched them over the balls.

Since the new company has an eye in their logo, I did the bulk of them with a black outer balloon and a blue inner one, to kind evoke the Oculus logo.

They juggle well and should be fun to play with. Hopefully, it won't devolve quickly into people throwing them AT each other (and not in a proper ball-passing way). At least seeing that won't be as painful for my psyche as if they were using real juggling balls.







Happy training all!

Popping in to wish Kaiser a happy birthday.

Ducking back out because I'm lame and not doing much.

Happy birthday, JK!

Hi Tri Peeps!

I don't even know where to begin with my day. I was walking into work when I got this sudden, sharp pain on the inside of my right knee. Just walking - nothing crazy. The pain was sharp enough that I had to limp to my office. I waited to see if the pain would go away. When it didn't I called my Sports Med doctor and literally begged and pleaded for them to fit me in.

X-rays came back perfect so they had me do MRIs. The doctor has 3 possible scenarios (two of which will mean the end to IML):
1. torn meniscus
2. stress fracture
3. an impingement of some sort

I get the results on Friday at 1pm. I am a nervous wreck. Fingers crossed and hoping for the best!

Yikes, Topo1! Hoping it's just taper madness...

Yikes, topo! Hope your knee is feeling better today and that it was just one of those weird taper niggles.
Those are some fun-looking balls, TASM! Glad to hear you're doing ok with your last round.
MG...hi!
MoCo...solid work on your long run! hope the ride helped out with the soreness.

(catching up)...

zoj...so sorry to hear about your cousin's son; I'll bet DS is all packed for collegeYoshiko...hope your moste unfortunate case of poison ivy is healing!
sparty...hope the trip to the MI shore was awesome and restorative; GREAT news re: DH and the offer!
Thor...hard not to take notice of Amber Ferreira on the course at IMLP! She looked awesome every time I saw her.
AK Mike...kudos on the Chi to Mac race! So, DW enjoyed the return sail?
TASM...sorry to hear about your rough week, hope this next session is better; fun stuff re: juggling day
ksurp...sounds like you had a great training day on the Timberman course; hope your back is feeling better...yay taper!
X...WTG on your swim TT!
Geo...I admire your dedication to the bike commute

When I last posted, I was deep into a long training weekend in Lake Placid. It was a great trip! Tom enjoyed hanging out and going to the Olympic museum. AdCo and MoCo...I just have to say are the best and I would surely be at a loss without their friendship, support, and humor. On Sat in LP, I rode two loops of the bike course with AdCo (no tempo this day!) and then ran 3 miles. On Sun, I saw the age groupers head out on the swim and then headed out on my long run, 20 miles (mostly on the run course) with about 7 miles in the rain. It was all good except for some blisters and a wicked pissed ITB (which I chaulked up to the cambered roads and cumulative volume...it was much improved the next day).

The last week of July wasn't quite full volume, but definitely was not taper and included a couple of swims, a tempo run, a FTP test, a 2hour:6mile brick, a divided long run (8mi in the a.m. and 7mi in the p.m.), a 77mi:4mi brick, and a strength workout. Squeaked in some ART at the end of the week.

Taper began on Monday this week and I'm pretty sure contains more volume than any week did back when I did my first few sprint triathlons. LOL.
Mon- DOR; ART and massage
Tue- a.m. OWS with hard effort intervals (about 37min total); took bike in for a tune up; p.m. brick: 70 min on the trainer @72% FTP, 1.5mi run
Wed- brick: 30 min on the trainer (20 @65% FTP, 10 @85% FTP), 4mi run
Thu- woke up to find that one of my training metrics was in the "red zone" and coach told me to take the day off, so no 4mi run

So far, so good...

Like.

1T - hope that's nothing serious. I had one of weird pains in my knee during a marathon training a few years ago, limping home on a long run. Next day absolutely nothing. Hope your knee is already feeling better.

TASM - those are fun-packed balls!