Tuesday, August 28, 2007

False alarm on the back...

Sort of.

It still twinges a bit, but after 48 hours of being useless and another 48 of just being in constant pain, I'm nearly back to normal.

I still wouldn't play any sort of sport that involves twisting or jerky movements, but running and cycling seem to be fine. Thus, I am in the race and have five days to go until I get to test myself in a totally new sport. (Totally new given if I haven't done it in a decade, it's totally new)

Aside from the minor setback, training volume has been down somewhat, stress at work and such has been getting into my outside life, which always sucks, that seems to be fading though. I've got about 6 weeks until the first cross race that I can attend. The first race being on the same weekend as Susan's wedding, so I'll be in Toronto with the rest of the Ottawa crew that weekend. So 8 races this year if all goes well. Lead lap on more than one? That's the goal.

The unfortunate side to this is that since we're getting nice and close to race season, it means it's time for more and more painful workouts. Yay. Lactate acid. Fun, fun, fun!

Friday, August 24, 2007

I hate cheap people.

Great weekend forming up here.

Pulled something in my back yesterday, so that means the physical activities I had planned are now out. It's also a week away from the tri, so that could also be shot. Yay. Nothing like riding the trainer indoors in summer because cracks in the road hurt the back too much.

Hillary is out of town, so I'm on my own, poorly timed injury on my part, socks this morning took several minutes.

To make matters better, the long awaited raise came in today. On the one hand, it was substantial, which is nice. On the other hand, I'm still being underpaid for the work I do by at least 10k. The hell of it is that the work is interesting and being the design lead is enjoyable and rewarding. Until I get told that someone who spent 6 months on a two week feature is 'valuable' or some such crap. And damn me for not being able to speak negatively about said person and just being suitably incredulous.

Okay, rant over, but it's going to be a LONG weekend.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

August Update

On the athletic front, running and swimming are going well. I'm hitting the water twice a week for about 45 minutes each and running 5km two to three times per week. Though I think twice a week it's going to be upped to about 8.

I am no longer concerned about surviving the tri.

On a cycling note, I set a couple of Warren Training Records, a two hour ride at an average of 33km/h, including warmup and warm down and a 35km/h average for a 30km stretch. That included some pretty slow hills and some nasty headwinds, so that bodes well for the 30km tri ride. Average heartrate in that 30km was well below the lactate threshold (avg about 168, where 176 or so is my threshold) so that means I have at least a bit more power on tap. I haven't hit my limit since the Paris-Roubaix, so I'm getting anxious to test myself.

On a totally unrelated note, I have a wedding venue now. This is awesome, the hard part is over, now I just have to write cheques and take care of the 10 million other little things.