And I'm Back!

2/21/09 - Bike Ride

It's been raining cats and dogs here in Santa Cruz, but Saturday morning there was a small break in the rain. I grabbed my bike and met up with Cristy at 8:30 for our first, full-fledged, small wheel, clipped-in road bike ride! We jumped on the bikes, ok, really we fudged around for 10 minutes trying to figure out the clips and then made it to the first traffic light. With a little luck, and a whole lot of screaming "TURN GREEN, TURN GREEN!" the light was green and we didn't have to clip in and out quite yet.

Our first stop was a nice open parking lot where we practiced and practiced the art of the clip-in. I would get up a good amount of speed and then imagine little children or small animals that defenselessly happened in my way. Quickly I'd throw on the brakes and come to a complete stop, all the while unclipping and resting my foot on the ground. I did it, I spared my imaginary object's life! Hooray for me!

After our triumphant practice, we hit the road and head out to the beach, and talked about how wonderful road biking is! It's quiet, fluid, and on that morning, fresh from pneumonia and a week's worth of rain, with the sun popping over the ocean, it was almost Zen.

2/23/09 - Track
Back to track and I couldn't be happier! We started out with about a mile warm up, and then a quicker paced set called 1-2-3-2... that's 100 yd tempo, then 100 rest, 200 yd temp, 100 rest, 300 yd tempo, 100 rest, and 200 yd tempo, 100 rest. I'll be speaking in this lingo when referring to track, so I thought it best to get it out of the way. Next was some fast 500's followed by a 4-3-2-1, and cool down.

Oh it felt great to be back. Cristy and I arrived a little late because of my inability to leave work in a timely fashion (sorry C). But, on this night, it was just our luck. We ended up meeting a great gal, who we chatted with throughout our workout and seemed to have comparable paces. It made the 4 or so miles just fly by! Truly though, besides getting out and stretching my legs again, the best part of our track practice has to be our fun-loving, inspiring, and overwhelmingly posititve coach, Rod Heskett. As an elite athelete, you might expect an intimidating demeanor from him, but I've encountered nothing but encouragement and excitement. Rod is also a life coach, and from my perspective, has done a great job of seaming these two careers to form one great coach. As a newer athelete, it's great to feel his strength and I can't wait to see where it takes me. Here's his website if interested: http://www.selfquestconsult.com/index.html

I'll have to try and start bringing the camera around to post some pics, as my mom informed me last night that she's a visual follower!