A story of going from being a non-runner to planning for a marathon in three years...

Monday, June 18, 2012

Weekend Wildness

tan-lines-from-typical-summer-activities

Ladies and Gentleman, let me introduce to you the Stupid Tan Lines: Summer 2012 Collection.

Item #1 :

bike_ride 004Bike shorts tan line

 

Item #2:

bike_ride 006Bike jersey tan line

 

Item #3:

 bike_ride 005Bike glove tan line

 

And just how, exactly, did I end up with this lovely collection of tan lines?

By parking my car here:

 10_mile_run_part_2006

And riding my bike to here:

 

bike_ride 001

And then 5 more miles to get lunch here:

bike_ride 002 

And then turning around and doing it all again to get back to my car.  Plus a slight detour when I got a little lost.  Total mileage?

bike_ride 003

64.22 miles.  Today my legs feel sore in all sorts of new places.

I am not the world’s fastest cyclist so not counting stops for traffic or my stop for lunch I did those 64.22 miles in just shy of four and a half hours.  My Garmin died around mile 52 so, sadly, it didn’t catch the last four miles where I was pushing it really hard and probably averaging closer to 18 miles per hour (instead of the 14 for the rest of the trip). 

I really just wanted to be done and, thankfully, an older gentleman on a bike behind me gave me the motivation to push harder. 

But riding my bike my furthest distance ever (by a factor of 2) wasn’t the only wild and crazy thing I did this weekend.

Oh, no.  On Friday afternoon I biked over to the nearest gym to which I still have a membership (until the end of July, anyway) I decided to swim some laps. 

That went….let’s go with….well, at least I didn’t drown. 

I have forgotten everything I learned from my lesson back in January.  I think I’ll be taking my work bonus and getting myself some swim lessons.  I felt awkward and ungangly in the water and I think I swallowed half the pool.  I was in the water for 30 minutes and I hope that at least half of that was swimming.  For the first 10 minutes I just did laps, for the next 10 I used a kick board to try and work on my breathing.  For the last 10 I used a pull buoy so I could work on my arm movements. 

I slept really well on Friday night. 

Saturday I tried a new strength workout that left me feeling a bit sore.  Peace Love and Oats posted a workout she recently tried and I thought, hey, why not?  I swapped out the cardio parts, though, for some deadlifts, dumbbell rows, and stability ball work. 

And today?  Today I am taking a rest day.  I think I earned it.