recap and workouts

The recap first. That way you at least have to skim through it if you're just looking for workout info. (not that you would, you don't know what I mean yet...)

So yesterday after work I went to the bike tune-up for the MS bike tour. It was weird. I was there alone, didn't know anybody else. Didn't want to eat burgers and chips, so had some watermelon and sat by myself. There were only about 20 people there. They were all visiting and talking and I was alone. I pretended to be busy on my cell phone texting or something. Then I left when my bike was done being tuned up. It is now awesome. I used to be not able to shift at all (had 3 gears and that's it) but now I've got them all, AND the brakes work great, freshly greased everything. JUST in time for my tri, hehe, it's supposed to be so I can train for the bike tour 66 km event in Sept. But come on, that's a long time from now.

Anyway, got home, waited for hubby to get home and gave him his watch. He really liked it. It made him feel a little bit guilty because he just got me flowers (the other present was silky playboy sleep pants for himself, in which case, my other present for him became the 3 bras I just bought). But he did really like it and I think got over his guilt because I reminded him that he bought me a diamond necklace at Christmas which was unbalanced so it really doesn't matter. Then we went to subway for a romantic sandwich. I got the turkey breast, no cheese, honey oat bread (most fibre!) all veggies, honey mustard sauce. Go me, but I ate the full 12 inch. boo me. BUT, I turned down the cookies and just had a diet coke. So I will sacrifice this as 1 of my cheats. 2 left for the weekend. Likely to be used after my Tri.

Then home. I tried out my bike a little bit with the dog. She keeps up so well and love running fast. But I think I pushed her too hard because she was panting for a ridiculous long time when we got home. We were only biking 15 minutes and she panted probably for 25 minutes. Ooops.

All of SILs stuff was in a pile in the living room so it would be easier for them to pack it in the truck on Sunday. Seeing her shampoo out of the shower sort of made me feel sad. Like on the Friends when Rachel has to move out (because Monica wanted her to) but Monica was still sad that she was leaving, "it's the end of an ERA!". 10 months isn't quite an era but I was sort of sad-ish. But then I felt bad because I was kicking her out basically so she probably didn't want to hear how I was sad. ("well then you shouldn't have made us leave!")

Friends came over because we were borrowing an 8 mm video camera to back up our wedding videos and wanted to do theirs too. But the season finale of LOST was on and I was taping and couldn't do both. Unfortunately after they left I checked the tapes and there was nothing on them, either it got erased, these are the wrong tapes, or something else went wrong, because they were both blank. Now I have to feel guilty and tell them, instead of them seeing for themselves. Oh well. Meant I could go to bed earlier.

Tonight going bowling with hubby's work. Then trying to go to my sister's casino night fundraiser for the Easter Seal's 24 hour relay. Fun on both counts.

Tomorrow probably doing a trip to the farmer's market, then to the dog groomer and maybe some garage sales. Pick up my race package and then chill at home, maybe finally plant my tomatoes etc. Light jog with the dog. Saturday night is early to bed. RACE DAY SUNDAY! Other than that, not too many plans. I want to go out for brunch afterwards as a celebration. So maybe a big brunch buffet thing, or maybe just a Boston Cream donut and an Iced Cap from tim hortons. If hubby comes which ever he prefers, if it's just me, just the donut, I'm not going to a buffet alone, how sad. Then help SIL move maybe. Reclaim my spare bedroom at home.

Sometime before sunday I want to do some mental training (we used to do this for provincial volleyball in high school) for my Tri. Just visualization. I'm a bit nervous about it because I sort of haven't thought about it much. Need to go through the race and plan my attack.

Ok so I wanted to talk about workouts. I think everybody is starting to hop on the HIIT bandwagon, which is awesome because that's what's gonna work baby! (HIIT - high intensity interval training). It's not easy, but it's short. From what I've read, if you can do more than 20 minutes of HIIT, you're not doing it right. You should be wanting to barf at the end. I've been doing it, slightly incorrect for almost a year now. I would just throw sprint intervals in my running. Jog at a slow-ish pace for 2 minutes, then run as fast as I could for 1 minute. then back to jogging. Not right. The fast part was, but the slow part, not so much. (well according to TT, which I just learned on the message boards). The rest period, should be at like a level 3 out of 10, where 1 is nothing and 10 is running from a bear. I was informed that I should be walking for the rest period. That way I'll be able to push it harder for the fast part. Interesting. I have yet to try it. the creator of the program said that even if he was training Lance Armstrong, for the rest part, he'd be walking at 3.5 miles/hr. And I am not fitter than Lance.

So I know I've been side tracked with my Tri and longer distance running. But I am still doing TT. I like it. I think I should be pushing it more. And I will be when my races are done. My main goal is still fat loss. Though the secondary goal of health and fitness is still there. And since I am a blunt person I'm gonna just say this, not to offend people, but I may. So sorry. But just my thoughts. A lot of people who are running marathons and half marathons and triathlongs and other long distance running things, who are also trying to lose weight, are still overweight. I remember thinking that if I trained to run a marathon, there'd be no way I would still have this belly. But that's not true. Long distance running does not make you thin. To win a marathon or race you'll be thin. But to just complete it, even more than one, you probably won't be obese, but you can still be overweight. There are even studies out there right now that show that long slow cardio (aka marathons, or even walking) can make you retain fat in your lower body. I don't know if I think it will make you fatter, but just because you run, doesn't mean you'll look like a runner.

Just my thoughts.

What should you do? The HIIT stuff, DEFINATELY some weight training stuff. You wanna do stuff that your body isn't used to. And really, if you can run for 40 minutes straight, your body is used to running right? Like if you were just starting to run, it would be much harder on your body, feel more difficult, and you'd drop pounds. But once you're used to it, your body has adapted to it, become efficient in the running motion, you're stalled.

So for myself personally, after June 8th, I'm going to focus more on the hard stuff, less on the time. I'll still do my 1 long run/week for my Cananda day race. But I'm gonna start walking on my rest intervals. Doing sprinting and walking will probably not help my endurance or my whatever threshold to make me run a 10K faster. But it will help me drop some pounds, which as described above, was priority #1.