Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Preparing for winter

This week I am preparing for winter, and that means getting the workout room ready. Now I am certain that after I shuffle everything around into this reclaimed space, our house will sell, but I am still going forward with it.
I have my bike set up on the trainer in the den, so I have decided that is where the new treadmill will go. Now this new treadmill is something else. If you will recall my old one gave up the ghost not too long ago so we had to get a new one. This will be the fourth one I have owned and virtually everyone of them was plum wore out when it packed it in. You see living in Canada a treadmill is not a luxury item for the serious endurance athlete, it is a necessity. Between the eight months of winter and the four months of poor sledding there are a lot of opportunities to benefit from using the equipment. Anyway, back to the new 'mill. This mother is huge! It is a Nordic Track E3000 and the control panel on it looks like it came from the USS Enterprise. It has a couple of fans, the iPod plugs in to it, along with just about every other electronic device I own. However the problem now becomes getting the beast into the house. It will take three strong men and a hairy ass midget to get this sucker where I want it. I have a plan but I will need some help to execute it along with two 4 x 8 sheets of plywood.
I have also purchased some nice cushioned flooring for everything to sit on and to spare the hardwood floor from sweat and spilled sports drinks. All in all I think it is going to be a great set up, just short lived as I am sure once I plug the treadmill in, the house will sell!
When I left you on Saturday I was planning on heading out for my first double digit run in awhile. Well it happened, except there was a decimal point between the two digits! I thought I had prepared myself well with a good breakfast, and a then a bottle of Gatorade and a Power Bar before heading out. But after only 1.5 miles I started to get a little light headed and had to stop. At that point I was heading onto the trails and thought I better at least stick to the highway. But even after the rest I still was unable to get going again so the run ended with a miserable 3.3 miles.
Sunday I was off to the city so that was a scratch day.
Monday I had a great swim at lunch and logged 1,900 metres. The workout consisted of a 400 metre warm up, 400 metres of drills, 10 x 100 metre intervals with 5 on 2:10 and 5 on 2:00 and 100 metre cool down. It was a struggle to stay on the 2:00 clock as I was getting tired but I gave it a good try.
In the evening I was back on the bike for a high cadence technique workout and managed an hour and covered 17.5 miles with an average cadence of 98 RPM.
Tuesday I ran at lunch on the Town trails. The weather was perfect, about 15 degrees Celsius and a little bit of sun. The trails were nice and soft and I covered the 9 mile route in 1:04. I felt great the whole time and really enjoyed myself out there.
I also signed up for a Community Coaching Clinic in Calgary this November. It is sort of an introductory coaching clinic for triathlon so I am going to test the waters. It's a two day course and then you are certified. It is also an introductory to the National Coaching Program so if I like it I will start down that path.
Have a great day!

2 comments:

TRI TO BE FUNNY said...

I can't say that I'm jealous of the treadmill necessity ;-) I do everything in my power to avoid it! Good Luck with the Coaching Camp. You'd make a tremendous and very methodical coach!!!

Love2Run said...

Winter!? Treadmills? It's OK as a last resort but I prefer the slippery roads and fresh air most days. They've announced a frost warning here tonite...