I got competitive this weekend. The results were okay for a guy in the lousy shape I'm in but I was pleased. Muscle memory apparently is a real phenomenon.
Saturday morning I did only the third sanctioned 10K (6.2 miles) run in my life, just needing the six miles as part of my training. Just so happened that the first run of the 2008 Winter Running Series in Shreveport was the same day so I decided to enter...only $5 and the chance to be beat down by some good runners from the area. It was windy and cloudy and had just rained but it was a good day to run otherwise! I got 15th of 50 entrants with a 47:29 (I was thinking I'd be lucky to break 50 minutes) so I can't complain...that's a 7:38/mile pace. I wasn't really pushing it since this was suppose to be volume miles run....usually I do a 8-minute-mile pace for volume work. And it felt good! Of course, I was sore later. No surprise there.
Later, Jonnene and I went appliance shopping for the new house. We picked out a washer and dryer made by LG. These are very handsome front-loading machines and we plan to stack them in the laundry room to give us more floor space. I'll have to do some modifications in the room before they arrive. That night we saw "Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" with Johnny Depp and I thought it was an interesting film, definitely a Tim Burton production and done very well. The singing was better than I expected, cinematography was excellent...but it was one bloody film!! Blood everywhere, dripping everywhere, spilling out everywhere....in some ways gory, some ways funny.
Sunday was the Dustbuster Duathlon: a 1.5 mile run, 11.9 mile bike, and a 1.5 mile run. Short story was that I got 27th overall out of 134 entrants but 5th in the 50-59 age group (these old guys are FAST!) with a time of 58:20. The wind was the main factor for everyone, if you could deal with it on the bike. This was the first time I'd been on my time trial bike since the district TT's in September and it behaved beautifully. The motor (me) could have been better but the wind has always been tough on me. However, it seemed to work in my favor today....I was riding at 18-19 mph for the first 5 miles as we all rode into the wind which was blowing at 15-20 mph out of the south....and I was passing people! That was wild. I averaged 20.6 for the entire route (which includes me running with the bike through the transistion area twice). My first run was at a 6:49/mile pace but the second run slowed down to a 7:56/mile pace. I had not practiced bike-to-run transistions so my legs weren't quite prepared for the change-of-muscle shock. I thought that second run would never end!
I wolved down a well-packed Quizno's chicken sub for lunch, then The Wife and I went out to get a refrigerator for the house, another LG with a titanium finish to modernize the kitchen a bit. Then we finally went to our neighbors house next door to break the news to them that we were moving. I know they wish that we would stay but they also knew the day would come since we had been talking about it for almost a year. Rick and Mary are good neighbors to have and I'm going to miss them.
I just checked the blog of a good cycling friend of mine and she listed me as a Long Time Supporter in her Important People and Places links. How super-duper-freakin' cool is that? Gotta love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment