Week 21: Focus Week - Running

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This was the first of 3 Focus Weeks. The series started with running, the discipline of which I need the most improvement. The training calendar had us doing a few back to back running days. On Wednesday, I met up for a captain's run at Heather Farms. After our 80 minute run, there were lots of groans. It was actually pretty funny. Here we are endurance athletes training for one of the most difficult races to exist and if you make us run 2 days in a row we start to whimper. Our bodies are just so used to recovering one group of muscles by working out another, so a week of running feels like a huge effort.

Saturday's workout in Novato was great. We started with one hour of Triathlon University. The topic, "What keeps you up at night?" It was a great way for us all to air out our anxieties and worries. The overall message here was maintain your commitment, listen to you body, and take it one day at a time. Easy enough. We had a 2 hour pool workout, in which we had a 500 meter marker set. I swam my 500 meters in 7 minutes and 17 seconds, which I thought was pretty good. I later learned that my teammate Skip had done it in 4 minutes and 54 seconds. What!? Turns out, he swam in the Olympic trials in 1980, but never realized the dream due to the U.S. choosing not to participate in the Moscow Olympics. Ok, I guess don't mind getting blown away by an almost Olympian. After that we had a 90 minute trail run on a looped course. I have to be honest, parts of this run really sucked. There were two long inclines that were so steep, my feet were slipping down as I hiked up them. The good part was reaching the top, where there were the most beautiful mounds of wildflowers, trees, another ridge, and a spectacular view of the bay. Then another sucky part - the downhill was so steep I almost slipped down it while walking. So it had it's ups and downs, literally.

On Sunday, I participated in the second annual Rhodes Race. This is a fun run put on my friends Matt & Claire. They raised over $5K for LLS and had 164 runners participate, by far the most successful fundraiser I have ever seen. Your registration fee was a donation and it was done on a sliding scale, for $50 you got a 30 second head start, for $100 you got a 60 second head start, and for $1,000 you won! I couldn't resist, so I bought a 30 second head start (pictured above). Unfortunatly, my advantage ended quickly when Dennis, Christian Kierney (the winner), Corey, and a blur of other fast runners blew past me within 45 seconds of my start. It was a beautiful day for a run around the lake and so many of my TNT friends were there. Thanks Matt & Claire for putting on such a fun event :)

Condition: Happy to move on to my swim focus week