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January 2003
1/6/03-1/12/03
New year, new plan. The first week has gone very well. The shorter workouts during the week are definitely easier to deal with, especially the light Mondays. Friday night we took a 2-hour freestyle clinic with the Masters coach. He did a lot of the classic Total Immersion drills, but we were able to pick up a few tidbits here and there. Two things that seemed to help involved focusing on my hand entry and acceleration through the stroke (i.e., starting slow and setting up at the catch phase, then accelerating through to the end of the stroke).

There were about 20 people there so nobody seemed to get individual attention unless you were really sucking wind. What do you expect for $8, right? I did have one of the newer girls from Masters tell me I had a "beautiful stroke" and that she was learning a lot by watching me. That's good I 'spose. Coach Bob keeps trying to move me from Lane 2 to 3 but they go too stinkin' fast! I don't want every practice to be anaerobic.

On Saturday I bagged my scheduled workouts (1:15 bike, 2:00 run) in favor of 6 hours of cross-country skiing. We had a good time and it was definitely a workout. I also bagged my Sunday workouts (1:00 bike, 30 min run) because my hip flexors were begging for a day off after skiing.

1/13/03 -1/19/03
This was a good week. The workouts during the week were pretty run-of-the-mill. No injuries and everything felt good.

On Saturday, Jeff had a looooooonnnnnngggg ride scheduled (6+ hours). I'm not quite up to that distance yet. I probably could have done the whole ride, but didn't want to be miserable. My longest rides this season have been 5 hours on a MTB. We left together and rode the Bend-Sisters-Redmond-Bend loop, which took about 4.5 hours (not counting the mocha stop :). Then Jeff dropped me off at home and rode for another hour or so. We refueled with pasta from Outback. Gotta love the recovery meal.

Sunday was the one hour postal swim at Masters. It was scheduled to start at 9:00, but we went to church first so didn't get in the pool until 10:45 or so, about the time the second group was halfway through. At least there were people in the pool to swim with. I did a 45-minute straight swim over Christmas break and I was the only one in the pool - that was not fun. For the hour, I swam 3430 yards for an average of about 1:43/100yd. That was about the same pace as my ½ hour swim two months ago so that's good.

1/20/03 - 1/26/03
Recovery week. Which was a good thing because I have a business trip to California and I usually don't have time to train as much as I'd like. I was able to get weights, a swim and a bike session in before I left on Wednesday. I rode the stationary bike on Wednesday, lifted on Thursday, and ran on Friday. I had more free time than usual so it worked out well. The trip was to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo because our company donated some software to the Graphic Communication department. When I realized how close I was to the Wildflower course I had to make a drive. Well, "close" is relative when you're talking about Wildflower - it is really out in the middle of nowhere. It took about an hour to get there from my hotel. It's funny - you round the corner to the park entrance and there's a huge cutout of Scott Tinley in a singlet. I mean huge. It's gotta be 20 feet tall. Kinda freaked me out. I'm assuming it's supposed to be him because the part of his singlet that's visible says "Tin". Maybe that's a stupid assumption because I've never seen a pro wear his/her name on the front of a singlet. But I digress….

So if the road I came in on is any indication, that is one hilly course. But you couldn't ask for a more beautiful setting (well, Hawaii maybe). With the whole Wildflower "festival" thing happening, it's gotta be a pretty cool place to be during the first week of May.

Jeff planned to do a 30K race in Prineville (about 30 minutes from Bend) on Sunday and I was debating whether or not I would race. I decided to do the 10K at the last minute. I almost bagged it completely because I woke up with a cold, but decided I'd just do it anyway as a training run. I ran right behind a guy for the first ten minutes or so. When I went to pass him he started talking to me so I just chatted with him for the rest of the race. He was just coming back after an injury. He was hoping to get into medical school in a couple of years, so I filled him in on the joys of helping a spouse get through graduate/professional school. Sounds like his wife was very supportive. We ended up finishing in 61:15. Not exactly an Olympic qualifying time, but I tried to run it at marathon pace and I was yapping the whole time, so I wasn't disappointed. Ten minute miles for an Ironman would be outstanding for me. After walking for a few minutes and getting some fruit, I hopped in the car to go find Jeff. His race was a point-to-point that started ½ hour before the 10K, so he was at around the 15 mile mark when I found him. He seemed to be in good spirits and his calf wasn't bothering him to the point of walking. I hung around for a little while, then went to find a store to pick up some Gatorade for him since there wasn't anything like that at the finish line, only fruit and water. When I went back out on the course to look for Jeff, I saw that he had made a wrong turn less than a mile from the finish so I chased him down and turned him back. He probably added 1K or so. He had a good race and finished in about 2:30. If I could run that fast on an injured calf I'd be ecstatic!

After the race we headed back to town, grabbed a couple of sandwiches at Subway and raced over to a friend's house for the Super Bowl. I was mostly rooting for the Raiders 'cuz I'm a west-coast gal, but I really didn't care much one way or another. We had a good time and ate a lot.

1/27/03 - 2/2/03
My cold got worse on Monday and I didn't really do anything for three days. A lot of people will train through illness or injury, but I'm just not that motivated. I figure I'll recover faster if I just take it easy and don't stress my body more than it already is. I started feeling better by Thursday so I rode the trainer and swam with the Masters group (30 minutes of 100s on 10 sec. rest - ugh!). Friday was an hour run. We were supposed to go to a backstroke clinic but Coach Bob was sick (i.e., he didn't have a voice so he couldn't yell at us for 2 hours :) so it got postponed.

Saturday we went to Masters (90 minutes of IM sets, basically) and rode just over 4 hours. We did the Bend - Sisters - Redmond - Bend loop again. It was windy that day, my friends. There was a BAD headwind on the Bend - Sisters leg. I was thrilled to be going 10 MPH on the flats. I just kept thinking that at least we'd have a tailwind on the way home. There's nothing worse than riding an out-and-back course and realizing at the turnaround why the first half was so easy and fast. It took nearly two hours to go 20 miles, then we stopped for soy mochas and snacks. Then we headed home, grabbed some Italian take-out, and watched a movie. I always wonder what I used to do on the weekends before triathlon :.

Sunday we went for a 90 minute trail run in Shevlin Park. Hilly, but fun. I do so much better on trails than roads. Too bad all races aren't trail runs :