What ever it takes!

I feel like I wasted a morning today, pretty lazy.  We are hosting some professional soccer players from England at our house for a Challenger soccer camp my kids are doing this week.  They were so excited they could hardly stand themselves last night.  Its almost like they have never seen a house with a Pool Table, Pinball machine and full 7.2 surround sound theater in it before :)  So I was up late watching Iron Man 2 with them last night.

Woke up at normal time anyway and headed to the gym for 1 hour of elliptical and 30 minutes of weights.  Never really felt like I was working out.  I brought my bike up to my office (cube) and had my  friend adjust all the derailers and breaks for me so I can start commuting 3 -4 times a week on my bike.  I've decided between swimming and biking that will be my best non-running training I can do to start getting ready for St. George training.  I want to be done with elliptical, I feel like that is wasted time at this point.

The leg is feeling really good, but I want to give it as much time as possible before I start running on it so I can go into it full swing.

Met with my new cycling group, it works out really nice cause they start like 1/2 mile away from my work and know routes around Salt Lake that I never new existed.  Dave came with us this morning too.  Went North today out to Sunnyside up around the Zoo and back on Wasatch.  The group seemed really chatty this morning so when we got to Sunnyside I sprinted up to the Zoo cause I was bored with the slow pace, I pretty much pushed the pace hard the rest of the way back.  Felt good, absolutely perfect morning for a bike ride, gotta take advantage of the extra sunlight for the next couple of weeks.

If I'm not careful I may need to leave this blog and join Fastbikingblog.com.

Rode my bike to work, the first 8 miles just seemed like a bike commute but then when I started heading up into the foothills it was actually quite enjoyable.  I started going North on 13th but then got bored and headed up 106th and took Dimple Dell road.  Great ride and felt really good the whole way.  Went up Little Cottonwood to the intersection and then back down to Wasatch.  My morning rides I don't mind going long but I would love to get my commute home to right around 1 hour.  If it wasn't for all the detours and construction in my neighborhood I could probably do it.  But the closed road adds about 3 miles to the commute.

25.85 miles in 1:24  Avg Speed 18.4. 

I have 1 week to get my leg healed, next week I fly out for 3 weeks so no bike.  First stop, South Beach Miami, maybe barefoot running on the beach will be a good way to get back into running.

P.M.

Rode my bike home, 21.9 miles in 1:14:41 Avg speed 18 mph with a very un-favorable wind.

Rode with my new friends again this morning.  There was a new guy from Australia that was know for his hill climbing skills.  It was fun to have someone to race up all the hills against.  The rest of the group probably didn't appreciate our hard effort up every hill but I sure had alot of fun. He only beat me once to the top of Dimple Dell  Very much like interval work today, hard uphill sprints followed my relaxed downhill coasting.

Garmin is dead so I don't know my average pace or time.

I felt like I had forgotten how to swim this morning, it took me about 10 laps to get my breathing right so I didn't feel like I was suckin air every stroke.  Finally got into it, I was going to try for 2 miles but 48 laps is about all I'm good for.  Not physically, just mentally.

1.5 miles in 55 minutes.

Yesterday my work had a health clinic in the office, I found out I still have really high cholesterol and they suggested  I should do more cardiovascular activity.  Any ideas on how I can increase my cardiovascular activity :)  Perhaps I should take up jogging, I heard that's pretty good for you.

http://ryanhall.competitor.com/2011/06/14/how-many-miles-do-you-run/

I was going to ride up American Fork Canyon this morning but it was cold and windy and I thought that sounded miserable so I went from my house and threw a couple of my running routes together for a flat ride.  Went out main street Lehi to Utah Lake, up to Redwood, back over camp Williams into Bluffdale up to the frontage road and back home.  I was trying to keep a 20 Mph avg and I would have gotten away with it if it too weren't for that pesky mountain I live on.  I think runners probably make good time trial cyclists because we are trained to keep our legs moving even when going downhills.  This flat route was just what I needed, a longish route where I could keep my HR at a fairly constant rate for over 90 minutes.  I would have liked to go further but I have a huge list of house chores since this will be my last weekend in town for the next 5 weeks.

32 miles in 1:40:15  19.2 Mph avg,  149 avg HR.