Love the Hurt: Busy.

Busy. Everybody is, right? It's a pretty common saying in small talk. Almost worse then talking about the weather. I'm not big on small talk - even with strangers. Yes, I know the weather's been crazy. I live here too. And I'm pretty sure that as long as you're not homeless, you're probably busy like the next guy. I've been doing this blog now for about 9 months now and I always try and get a post out early each week, but this week I've been "busier" then usual. I've been having a lot of fun with the blog, it's cool to go back and see what I was doing 9 months ago and get detailed reports about what I was doing in racing/training. Although I've always been good at keeping a training log (all the way back to high school) - my logs weren't exactly the most detailed. In my note section, 90% of the time you would see "Felt like crap, Felt great, Hot outside, Sore from yesterday"....that's about the extent of my detail. It's funny, in my old high school running logs (before GPS watches or mapmyrun.com were around) I was sooo off on my mileage. I would either record it way to short or way to long. I remember seeing things like "30 mins easy...7 miles." That's a pretty freakin fast 7 miles....But then I would also see things like 75 mins...7 miles. I remember when I had a particularly good session, I would ask my dad if he could take me on the course and see how many miles it was so I could figure out my pacing and how fast I went. Eventually as I got older, I would just measure out like 5 courses and just do the same route every single time...I so wish we had that technology back then! Running would have been so much more fun! Although after doing that for so many years, I still pick the same 5 or so routes up in Temecula. I'm trying to mix it up more often.

Needless to say, with 4 dudes in this -it smelled in the morning

That was quite the tangent...Busy. Work has been crazy busy. Don't think I've ever shared what I do on this blog before. I am the Director of Marketing for a local Commercial Roofing Contractor that specializes in energy-efficient roofing systems like white-reflective and solar panel systems. I do a lot of events, a lot of those are on week nights which makes the ability to schedule training very difficult. Then last week was my lil bro's bachelor party - he's getting married this weekend, super excited for him. Although....I was not excited on my run the night AFTER the bachelor party. We camped up at Paso Picacho campground (up by Cuyamaca Lake) had some beers and good times the night before and when morning came around -

Although you can't see it from this angle, you can run all
the way to the top of this, really cool

I felt fine. Woke up, had some coffee and a snack, took
care of business and off I went. I decided to do some climbing and climbed up Stonewall Peak which ends at 5,700 feet of elevation and has amazing views at the top. My legs actually felt great after a hard 45 mile ride on the Slice the day before. However, when I got to the top I started getting what I like to call some serious "beer diarrhea cramps." For most of you that workout a lot, you know what I'm talking about. Because I'm in great shape, not only do I metabolize the alcohol (rarely get drunk or have hangovers) really well, but my body also gets rid of the toxins pretty quick. In this case, too quick. After taking in the views I headed back down the mountain to try and get to the bathroom. About 5 minutes in, I started to struggle. I started laughing because as I was leaving the campsite one of the guys said, "Hope you make it back with both socks..." I started doing a shuffle / jog / walk / hunch over and that's when I saw a group of the guys hiking up including my brother and asked if any of them have any TP, they kinda laughed...I fake laughed back and continued on until I got about 1 mile from the bathroom. It was horrible at this point. Even though I could see the bathroom, with the switchbacks, there was no way I was going to make it...So there I was, a 32 year old grown man, taking off his sweaty socks to relieve himself on the side of a hiking trail (sorry if this is grossing you out...I'm not one for small talk...). The thing about it was I was more bummed about littering then anything. I'm going to have to volunteer for a trail clean up now somewhere...

Because of the crazy week ahead (these past 4 days) Amy and I stayed in Ramona Monday night so I decided to hit up my Alma mater for a track session. The whole family hit up the track and it was pretty cool to have my wife and kids running on the same track that I spent countless hours of suffering on back in high school. Now, it's not exactly the same...we ran on a cinder track and had more weeds than grass on the football field...With some 10ks on the horizon, I decided to do 10x400 meters w/1 minute rest. I haven't done any speed work since I ran competitively. If you could pick out the single genetic gift that I have in endurance sports, it's speed work on the track. 20x400's, 30x200's, countless 150's, 300's, 600's - you name it. I did about 10 years worth of it and those workouts always seemed to come easy for me as opposed to the mile repeats in the grass or 50 minute lactate threshold sessions. No matter what kind of shape I'm in, I always seem to be able to survive these workouts. Surprisingly, Monday was no different. I was curious how my body would react. Here's my splits (w/1 minute jog/rest in between):

1:11
1:10
1:12
1:09
1:09
1:08
1:08
1:09
1:09
1:09

Once again, I felt in control the whole time. It's amazing how great you can feel when you have such a huge aerobic base behind you. Makes me want to race on the track again, although that's not gonna happen. The next day (Tuesday) Amy and I had a few drinks (on a planned day off of training) down at Joe's Crab Shack down at Embarcadero Park after a work function....But later that night I got the urge and decided that I wanted to ride. My legs were pretty hammered from 3 hard days in a row, but I couldn't help myself and so I hit the road to some Tiesto -a DJ I just discovered for riding and also Deadmau5 (thanks Eric for the recommendation). I've never been into this kind of music, but for some reason I just love riding to it, I think it's because it kind just gets you into a rhythm and helps you zone out through the pain cave. I keep tweaking the fit for my bike a bit each time and I think I almost got it dialed in. I definitely felt more power in my ride (especially in the aero position uphill). And after a week and a half of no swimming because of my horrible neck/pinched nerve pain, I finally got back into the pool. I really feel like my fitness is getting dialed in just in time for the San Diego International Triathlon in a few weeks. As long as I can stay within a few minutes to the leaders getting onto the bike, I think I'm going to do some serious damage on the bike and run. This course plays to my strengths. It's a short 1000 meter swim, followed by a short/hilly 18.6 mile bike ride and then a 10k run. So the distances are a little lopsided in favor of the runner, which I'm excited about. I have a feeling I'm going to have an over 30 PR on that 10k.

Thanks for reading everyone, here's some more pics: