I’m back!

It’s been it little bit since I posted last.  Tax season has picked up a bit I’ve been in my third training block of the year.  Training hours picked up over the last last training block but nothing to crazy.  Sometimes its hard to get all the sleep that my body craves but I do my best to sleep as much as possible.  I strive to be in bed by 9pm every night and sometimes 7:30 or 8 if I can get out of work in time.

This upcoming week is a recovery week which means that tomorrow I have an off day and will get to sleep in until 7am!  I am very very excited.

Well thats the skinny on that.  Now let me tell you what I’ve been up to lately.  I’ve been watching a lot of Weeds Episodes, a lot of Dexter episodes, and still loving brussels sprouts.  Ha!  But seriously, I procured a Netflix subscription last week and I have since been devouring all kinds of videos and tv shows while I ride my bike.  I would like to personally thank Netflix for singlehandedly getting me through the winter on my trainer. With that said I must say that I am uber-envious of Pat Wheeler and his QT2 group who have a spot where they can Time Trial each weekend.  We really need to get something started in Rochester like that!  If only I had some disposable capital…..any takers?  I could get the place up and running in no time 🙂

What else…Oh yeah!  I received my tax refund early last week!  Mid-Febuary and I already got the government to fork over some money.  It’s like a bonus from work, so nice to have a little money to dump in the savings account for once.

And in the racing world I finally was able to jump into my first official race of 2011.  It was a small 5k out in Mendon Ponds Park this morning.  I went into the race feeling pretty good of where I was at.  I got a good nights sleep since I was able to sleep in until 7:30am.  The race was at 10am so that gave me plenty of time to go to Dunkin for some coffee, eat my breakfast, check the internet, and then head on over to the park to get warmed up.  Since this was my first 5k since I have begun training with my coach (ie I haven’t run a flat out 5k in about a year and a half) I actually had a warm up routine planned (15 minutes with 3 x 30 second pickups to get the legs warm and HR up).  As I was warming up I was kind of like sh*@!  Running fast might hurt a little bit today.  Well anyways, I jogged on back to the start area, popped a powergel, and got ready to spike the HR.  Right from the start I jumped out in front of everyone and started cranking along, the first section of the run was downhill so I hit about a quarter of a mile at around 5:15 pace..which was way to fast but I knew I had a decent little climb coming up so I pulled back a bit and chugged along.  This race was pretty small, not sure on the numbers maybe 50-60 so I was alone for the whole race and I must say it was pretty cool to have the pace car in front of you the whole time.  At one mile out there was a turn around (I hate turnarounds!, a whole 180 degree turn does nothing but give you blisters and totally stop your momentum) and a turn around that went from downhill one way to uphill as soon as you made that 180 motion..grr!! Anyways I got up over the little hill and made my back past the starting line.  The second mile was the best.  I only missed my target pace by 1 second, so that was nice to see.  Over the last mile there were a couple hills and another turn around.  At the turn around I saw the nearest competitor and thought it was kinda cool that I’d get to actually win a race for the first time.  I cruised up the last hill and then down the short descent and crossed the line at 18:28 I think, don’t quote me on that, but it was somewhere near there.  After the race I got to meet a facebook friend in real living color!  It’s always fun to meet a cyber friend whom you’ve never had real interaction with.  Then I headed back out into the cold for 40 more minutes of blissful running Mendon Ponds. I absolutely love it out in the park, so peaceful.  I really feel at home when I am there.  Maybe someday I will find a nice little house for myself in the woods….or I could just get a van and live in the beach parking lot, that could work!