Sick Week...

And I don't mean "sick" in a good way. Last Monday my son Taylor starting throwing up out of both ends, body aches--slight fever... then Tuesday Amy and Scarlett followed suite. I thought I dodged a bullet, then woke up Wednesday morning with it. I was in bed for 2 days straight. Friday couldn't have come sooner. I decided to do a little "jog" to try and shake some cobwebs. I told Amy that night to keep an eye on me and my crazy workout plans for the weekend. After all, I did lose like 5 more pounds and still felt pretty week.

So the next morning I woke up and hit the pool for a leisure 2000 yard swim. I felt horrible as I hadn't swam in a week. It's funny, when I take a week off of running or biking - I definitely don't feel sharp, but man---when I take a week off of swimming, I feel like I forgot how to stay afloat! I got through that and just hung out with family for the day until it was time for me to jump on the bike for a little hill repeat session on Blue Steel, followed by a 30 minute brick run that included 3 mins on, 2 mins off. The hill repeats were brutal. I found this really steep hill not too far from my house that I'm excited about doing again in the future. It's about a 1 mile, 300 foot climb straight up. I originally wanted to do 5 of them, but opted for 3 (my way of holding back a little from being sick). All in all I put in 2000 feet of climbing in a short 90 min ride with some hard hill efforts. This was my first hill workout I've ever done on the road bike. Quite different from the mountain bike...I got back and did a quick transition to the run and actually felt really good. I pushed it a little at first to warm up and then after hitting a mile, I did 3 mins on, 2 mins off (fartlek style) for 2 miles and then finished up with a mile cool down. I didn't really realize hard hard I pushed it until I was cooling down. I probably pressed a little too hard for being sick all week.

The next day I woke up pretty sore, but needed to get out and get a long run in. I just chilled, put in a little climbing but after about 8 miles, my IT band flared up badly. I concluded about a month ago that I knew the source of the problem is the road bike. When I was solely training for Xterra, I didn't touch my road bike and I had zero IT issues. As soon as I started riding again, it has flared up big time. Even after talking with some guys at the bike shop with pedal and seat adjustments --I measured everything and it is identical to my mountain bike...so my only conclusion is, it's Blue Steel. The bike was a smart purchase when I first started training because it was only like $400 bucks and I had no idea if I would like triathlons or even riding on the road for that matter. It is a very weird bike structurally because everything is sized wrong. The cranks and seat are just about right for my body size, but then the handlebars are made for a 12 year old girl I think. Super narrow. It just feels awkward to ride, especially when I stand up to sprint, feels like I'm going to go over the handlebars. Sooo...needless to say, I need a new bike, especially since it's causing my IT band to flare up...I have to make a choice on whether I get a road bike or a triathlon bike though. I know a road bike will be more comfortable on rides and I won't look like a douche when I go on group rides but....if I'm going to be racing on a tt bike, I want to be training on one too, so I think I might go that route...I'm really liking the Cannondale Slice...we'll see.

Sunday was all about Mother's Day. I can't say enough about how much my wife, the mother of my children rocks. We are blessed to have her be a stay at home mom and she is knocking it out of the park! She expends so much energy on those kiddos (trust me, they have a lot of energy!) and still puts up with my heavy training load AND even gets out the door for runs and rides herself! After being raised by such a wonderful mom myself, it is such a blessing to see Amy do the same to my kids. So I took her to one of her favorite places -The Wild Animal Park (or Safari park...whatever they're calling it) and had a Mother's Day brunch and afterwards we cruised around and checked out all of the animals. I could tell she had a blast along with the kids and myself. It was just a great day to celebrate mom.
This week, I'm just getting back into the swing of things with training and rolling out that IT band as hard as I can. No racing this week, but next week I might jump into the Kenda Big Bear Shootout---we'll see.