Bittersweet

I wanted this to be a great post. I try to be very positive, but I know that I tend to be negative sometimes and bitch a lot. I had a great morning this morning until I learned about a piece of bad news. I really needed a totally great day, but today wasn't it. However, I'm going to try to have the enthusiasm that I wanted to put in this morning before I found out the news.

First of all, congrats to Jodi who kicked ass on her first Ironman.

My weight check in yesterday was 184.5. Today was 186 but I'll get to that in a minute.

This morning, I went on a run. I thought I had a fairly short run, but my coach wanted me to a 15min warmup, then (6) 1 mile repeats with 2 minutes rest with increasing effort each interval, and then 10 min cooldown. I left my house at around 6:00 and was back by 7:30. The first mile repeat was 8:13 with 146bpm. Second was 8:42 with 154bpm. I noticed that this was a lot slower because this is uphill and the rest of the splits show it. 7:49 with 160bpm, 8:12 with 167bpm, 7:32 with 169bpm, and finally 7:54 with 173bpm. Now, here is what made me so happy. On that last interval, I really pushed it. I mean REALLY pushed it. I wanted to get my heart rate up as high as possible. Why? Why not? Towards the end of my interval, I kept pushing and pushing to see how high I could go. I saw 180. Then 183. I felt like I had more so I put my head down and kept going. I reached the end of my interval, stopped my watch, and saw 189bpm on my HRM. I yelled "Fuck yeah! Woohoo!". Man, I'm stoked about this. My previous max HRM since I left college on the run was 183. I've seen 184 on the bike in the last 3 months and 188 in the last 2 years. I've always wondered why the max HRM on the bike was higher than the run when it should be the other way around. Well, I found out that I kept pussing out. Now, I know that when I push myself, how much more that I can go. Even hitting 189 today, I felt like I could've gotten it higher to 190 or even 192. This was just a huge mental boost that I needed for my running. It felt great, too! I did my cool down and had a smoothie. I've been using OJ instead of chocolate milk and it's good.

Oh, one more thing. I weighed 186 this morning before my run. During the run, it felt more like a swim than a run; it was just damn humid. I didn't drink anything during the run so I got back and weighed myself. 182. I dropped 4 pounds of fluid during the run. And I was completely soaked in sweat and it was only 75 degrees outside.

Now, the bad news. I got to work and went to Slowtwitch. I found out that Doug Stern passed away yesterday. Talk about a total buzzkill since I was in such a good mood this morning. Doug posted on ST a few months ago about his battle with cancer. I didn't follow it that closely, unfortunately. He was oldish, around 62 or so, but he definitely didn't look that old. He didn't act that old either. He's been swimming for something like 40 years too. He's just a great guy with a lot of character. He was able to put complex techniques of swimming into simple terms that people could identify with. I owe him a lot of my swim stroke since I was a fan of his theories of swimming. I even met him at a clinic that he taught in November of 2005. I was also looking forward to going on one of his amazing training vacations that he puts on in Curacao. He used to have 1 per year, but it gained in such popularity that he was going to offer 2 of them. I was always waiting until I met him again. Like I said, he's a great guy, very wise, and someone that you could look up to. This is really important for me since I'm not close to my family and don't really have a strong father figure. Well, I didn't realize that our first meeting would also be the last. There's not much else I can say about this. I'm deeply saddened by it. Once I found out about his death, I close the window to ST because I just didn't want to mourn this today. Rest in peace, Doug.

Now, after something like that, I don't really want to write more, but I need to. I went to see my PT today for the first time in like 8 months. I had to get my PF, TFL, and IT band issues looked at. Well, I do have some PF going on. I also have some TFL and IT band issues like I thought. Found out that my hips are super duper weak. I have some exercises to get them strong again. I also took my running shoes in there as well. She pretty much confirmed what I thought. My New Balance shoes are better for my feet than my Nike shoes. I actually look better in the New Balance without my orthodcis than in my Nikes with orthodics. Also, nothing about me is simple. When I'm standing, she was more worried about my lef foot because it tends to pronate naturally and fall in more. Also, it isn't as stable on the ground as my right foot is. However, in my shoes, my right foot falls in more. It's more prevalant on the Nikes, too. They've been bothering my feet a bit, too. Once they are worn out, I won't buy that model again. So, I'm in my orthodics every day now. Also, the Nikes are limited to short runs now with orthodics. New Balance are short runs with orthodics and long runs without until I get used to them. I have to do some ball on the foot, rocking back on the heels stretches, and calf stretches for the PF. for the TFL and IT band, I need to do 2 different exercises for my hips. Other than that, I'm doing good. I needed to go in and have her yell at me a bit to get me back on track and it worked.

That's my story for this bittersweet day today. Like I said, I really wanted a great, upbeat day all day long, but that didn't happen.

New Balance mileage: 41.5 miles
Nike mileage: 48.5 miles