nice time be sick

Well, here it finally gets up to about 40 degrees and I have to be in bed sick. When I ran on Saturday I felt a little funny. By Saturday night I began to feel a little scratch in the back of my throat, and Sunday, I woke up fully ill. Sore throat, cough, wheezing and fever. Lots of bed rest and fluids and I am starting to feel better today. I took the day off work and have been in bed sleeping and reading a new book I got on clearance at REI last week. The book is called Total Heart Rate Training by Joe Friel.

The book has been an interesting read as I also bought a Garmin Forerunner 305 last month.

When I am feeling better, I’ll talk about the book. Back to bed for now.

sleep, where are you?

Where hides sleep?

So much for running today.

Woke up at 1:30 am to go to work, got off at 3 pm, put gas in the truck, did some grocery shopping and spread salt on the driveway. By the time I got done there was just enough time that if I ate fast I could get to bed and maybe get 6 ½ hours of sleep before it starts all over again.

Being that I was tired and a bit crabby from knowing I have to go work another 12-hour day tomorrow, I decided to make some junk food for dinner.

For me anymore junk food means either pizza or something like Morningstar farms chik'n tenders. Tonight I did the chick’n tenders with some brown rice and peas. To make it really bad I threw some BBQ sauce on the tenders too.

 I washed this fine culinary delight down with a glass of apple juice and the occasional drink from a bottle of port. I was too tired and lazy to pour a proper glass of port so I just drank from the bottle like a pirate (or whino, but I’m going with pirate). Ahh, the good life.

I took to long to clean up and get my lunch ready for tomorrow so I guess 6 hours is all I get in the sack.  

Tomorrow…swimming!!!

Here I am!

Anyway, I am back and trying to keep up with this thing again. What did you miss? Well, not much really. The last 4 months have flown by in a flurry of work the likes of which I’ve not seen in a few years. We have been in the middle of a new car launch at work and I have been working 60-70 hours a week since the middle of September. I didn’t  do anything exercise related for 12 weeks. Not much time to train when your working 12 hours a day. But then again, if I wanted it bad enough, I would find a way.

  now I think I want it bad enough.

To get things into gear for the 2011 I decided to sign up for swim lessons. I can SORT of swim, but I don’t think of myself as a good swimmer. I always watch the lap swimmers with envy as they slowly and methodically go up and down the pool in such a graceful way. They all look so at ease and relaxed, and I want to learn their secret.

 So anyway, 4 weeks ago I figured it was best to sign up for a class and start from scratch. I make arrangements to leave work an hour early on Sundays so I can go to class. Sunday afternoon comes and I go down to the YMCA. At the start of the first lesson, the instructor asked me to swim a few lengths of the pool to evaluate my form and, to my surprise, she said my form is pretty good but I need to work on breathing and endurance. I expected that my endurance and breathing were poor, but I didn’t think my form was all that good. Its hard to watch yourself when your swimming and I usually feel rushed and very rarely relaxed like the lap swimmers.

With the evaluation out of the way, its time to start working on my breathing and endurance. For the sprint triathlon I am going to do, I only need to swim about 500 yards so we are going to set that as a goal for now. When I say ONLY 500 yards I really mean “oh my god, I cant swim 100 yards without stopping”. After the first 50 yards  My heart rate is racing and I’m trying to catch my breath. “its OK”, the instructor says, it will get better as we move on.

Well, 4 weeks later and things have gotten a bit better. I can now do the 50 yards in front crawl without stopping, and can do 100 yards if I switch between crawl, side and breast stroke. The instructor says the biggest thing for me to work on is breathing slower. Yeah me, slower? I am so hyper active sometimes that I cant slow down. I was breathing every 2 strokes before but now, after lots of work, I am breathing every 4 strokes.

We’ll see how this goes. There are only 2 weeks left in class but I am going to sign up for another 6 weeks.

here we go again...

I'm not dead yet

still here, just need to make some time for an update.

Endomondo Running Workout

Endomondo Running Workout: "was out running 5.04 miles in 53m:31s using Endomondo."

8 days a week

Well here I am on Monday morning trying to think of what to say. Most of last week was spent trying to avoid the Woodward Dream Cruise. The Dream cruise is a 3-7 day rolling classic car show up and down Woodward Ave. in the suburbs of Detroit. By 3-7 day I mean that the event is only suppsed to be Friday, Saturday, Sunday but it has gotten so huge that it starts the weekend before now and goes all through the week. Don’t get me wrong, the dream cruise is a really cool event for car lovers but having lived on Woodward ave. for 5 years and 2 blocks away for 8, I have seen so many old and rare cars I hardly care now. “1956 Corvette?” Dime a dozen any more.  “1965 Mustang GT350KR?” wow, not impressed. On Friday I did happen to go to the street party put on by Ford Motor Co in dowtown Ferndale. There was a beatles tribute band playing and I could hear them in my backyard. After an hour or so of this I was humming the songs and decided I needed to go see it for myself.

  The band was decent and while listening to them I decided to go stand near Woodward and see a few of the cars drive by. Every time I say I cant be impressed by any of the cruisers, the cruisers prove me wrong. This Volkswagen bug has got to be one of the coolest cars I have every seen at the cruise. I cant imagine the time and effort involved to bring this peice of art to life but it really stood out among the rest.

   Now, the exercise week in review...

Where the he** is Pentwater?

 the car ferry "S.S. Badger" leaving for Wisconsin at sunset

   Ok, I'm back from vacation and as promised I am going to put this blog, and my training in the right direction.

   Today I’m going to talk about our recent trip, birding, cycling and, uh, lighthouse hunting.