Wednesday, June 28, 2006

A Progressive Brick

Wednesdays are normaly my day off from work but I took one for the team and I worked 1/2 day. I could've squeezed some form of training in this morning before having to get M to camp by 9am, but putzed around the house instead, made M a hot breakfast for a change, fixed her lunch, combed her hair ( I often let her fend for herself) and we walked Brandy before heading off. I feel I got some brownie points at least in the mom dept.

The half day turned into a 3/4 day and I didn't get out of there until after 2:00 pm. It was a weird weather day all over the bay area, rain and hail in the morning that turned into a warmish windy afternoon. I didn't know what to expect weather wise, so I just packed everything in my gym bag....or so I thought! I wanted to do a swim/bike brick so I headed over to Cowel pool. Now that the kiddies are out of school they only have 2 lanes designated for lap swimming. The place was crawling with kids, this is normally not an issue for me but today I wasn't feeling it.

I had forgotten my sunglasses earlier but was sure I had another pair in my gym bag...god knows I have everything else in there! NOT!!! So this compelled me to scrap swimming at Cowel and head over to Heather Farms Pool where there was a RiteAid nearby so I could pick up another pair of glasses...my luck was turning and I bought one and got one free. I then noticed the car needed gas and that took another stop.

By the time I got into the pool it was 3:15. I swam a good 45 minutes, my usual free,breast, drills. I always seem to forget the # of laps I lost count after 10. By the time I showered and changed into my biking duds (T got me my first official biking jersey for my birthday, it's purple of course) it was 4:15....guh! Too late to bike in Walnut Creek and avoid rush hour traffic, so I decided to head over Tilden for some hill work.

I arrived at Inspiration Point close to 5pm and rode for 45 minutes, covering some decent hills, mostly rollers with a few times needing to get my butt off the saddle, just enough to get the legs humming. At one point on the Nimitz Trail, I noticed the cows had wandered onto the paved trail. As I slowed down I wondered if they would be skittish or knock me off the bike, they just sort've stared at me at first not appearing to know what to do and then scurried off . Riding over cow grates is rather unnerving as well. I worried about getting a flat and rode over them each time slowly.

The wind was picking up and the sun was bright but not hot, I felt good and decided to add a run, a 29 minute 3 miler to top off. The fact that I pulled all this off so late in the day is major for me. I think I'm getting stronger too cuz the bike/run transition was so smoooooth, no jello legs at all! Considering I didn't know what was gonna happen training wise today, it turned out alright. Being prepared paid off.