Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Snow Day

Who doesn't love a snow day ? You get up and the weather hands you an invitation to trade what you do for what you want to do -if those two things are really different.

True, a snow day starts for me at 6 AM, when I get the call that there is a closing (or delay, which is what we started with today). Then it takes me about 15 minutes to get the word out, starting with the text message and ending with Twitter. But then I can relax- go back to bed for another fifteen or twenty minutes and then get up and eat or workout.

I'd been itching to do Time Trialapalooza for a week now. The workout is a little over one hour and twenty minutes, and every time I'd thought I was going to get 80 minutes together to do it, my free time turned into 60 minutes.

Today though, I was able to get up, do my job, check the day care closings (Ian's was) make some coffee and eat some grapefruit, and then have most of the workout done before anyone else in the house had even gotten up.

The great thing about getting this opportunity was realizing why I'd been itching to do this workout. I'd only done it once or twice before and didn't really remember what it was like at all. Time trial efforts really are important- if there is one thing that we triathletes are prone to it's blowing up during races because we go out to hard, and the whole point of this particular DVD is to cook yourself until you are well-done, without getting burnt. You start with 20 minutes at 85%, then 15 minutes at 90%, then 10 minutes at 92.5% and 5 minutes at 95%- reminding you how you have to get stronger as the race goes on.

I felt like I nailed the workout today- I was tired, but I felt really good about how I'd actually paced myself. Instead of being worn-out, was a recharged, especially after a very hard week at work.

Yes- everyone loves a snow day.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mac,
Thought I would post a recent training run occurence here. Thursday, I was running a 'marathon pace' workout on an out n back loop. It was snowing, about 1-2inches on the ground. 1.5m warm-up, then started 3-miles @MP. Less than a halfmile into the run, a car spots me and hits the brakes, skids into the guard rail. I run past the car, focusing on my workout, and the driver gets out, yells some negative comments towards me (calling me a "abc", and about being out on a night like this, etc), and I thought he started running to catch me, because it seemed like I could still here him. Fortunately, he wasn't there when I was running the back part. Though, I felt bad the driver perhaps put a dent in his car, however I was wearing a reflector vest and he shouldn't have been driving 40mph while the road was soaked w/ snow. In hindsight, I never thought about people driving when I was running a faster workout on the roads in bad conditions.

-Barks

alan said...

Barks-

I think about it all the time when I'm out there because it just doesn't seem that people down here quite have snow driving down- like you said, the guy was driving too fast for the conditions.

Michael D'Addetta and I went out one snowy Sunday morning- early- and were shocked by how many people were out- it seemed like everyone had gone out of their way to get out and drive in the snow rather than sit home and enjoy the day. The roads down here (and everywhere in CT) tend to be tight.

The thing that worries me about the snow is that you have to watch your back because of people coming across the road if they lose control.

Just glad you didn't get hurt.