The Adventures of Rain Dance Mary

I am have been sleeping really well the last couple of nights and it is so nice! Ive been wide awake before the alarm and ready to get after it! How I wish every morning was like that!

Started the day with a swim, 1,000 of drills then a 1,000 Time trial – 17.42. I felt like I was swimming pretty well today. My shoulder felt ok when I got up but it was still a little ouchy when I got in the water. I think by tomorrow it will be fine. Did 50 of breaststroke and 50 of backstroke to cool down.

Well it is STILL raining here and it expected to rain through the weekend so back onto the trainer with the bike again today. 10 minute warmup adding a gear every 2 minutes. Then 20 minutes pushing a hard gear. Followed by  a 10 minute cooldown where I was spinning an easy gear. I really hate riding the trainer but it is hard to get out and ride in these conditions. Especially since I’ve been doing this on my lunch hour. I don’t have much time to get cleaned up afterwards. I don't really care about training in the rain if i had time to not look like a drowned rat afterwards. The knee is hanging in there!

So I found myself on Athlinks today and I have to say I really like this website. It is a great accumulation of your racing stats and I plan to use the website more frequently. www.athlinks.com - if you have ever done any racing your on there and it is free to join.  So many kool stats. and you can compared yourself against others too. I was surprised with how many races i had in there. They really get all of the little races and if something isn't in there you can search for it and add it. I am really impressed with it so far.

I am really hoping the rain lets up for the weekend. Bike racing in the rain doesn’t make for the safest race and running a trail that is dry would be nice too. Creeks are flooding and there is talk about the river following suite because we are just getting an insane amount of rain. I doubt the races would be cancelled but i have a feeling the trail isn't going to be in the best shape after this many inches of rain. I would really like to get this race in on sunday for many reasons. mostly i need the training for pocono mountain but doing it on that specific day is also going to be kinda spritual for me too with it being the 10 year anniversary of 9/11.  For those of you that don't know I lived in Manhattan during that time and it was a pretty dark time in my life.  I lost my job in the city after it and I was probably in the worst shape of my life on many levels then.  So it will be a celebration of how much has changed for the better over those 10 years. 9+1+1+1+1 = 13 so it's meant to be.

I got the splits for my 5k open water swim race today. I know these are a little late but here they are.

26.54

55.30

1.24.23

1.54.32

so basically  each segment was about 29-30 minutes. While I did slow down a little it was good to see that is wasn't a huge crash. I didn't think it was as the effort felt pretty consistent the whole time.