<cue chariots of fire soundtrack>
Well, I didn’t think I had it in me, but I ran 8.3 miles today. All at once. Uphill both ways. Well, the last bit was all uphill as I loped up De Haro back to the crow’s nest. I originally set out just to run for an hour straight, per the training schedule, but ended up pushing myself to get to the ferry building before heading home. So I ran from my house, down 20th Street into the Dogpatch, ran by the many broken down vans and buses that serve as home or burning man staging areas for some to the corner of 25th and Illinois before heading back down 3rd Street. Ran by the ballpark and down the embarcadero to the ferry building. Did a lap around the building and headed back down the embarcadero, hooking a left on Brannon. I think I made it about 6.8 miles in about an hour, which is better than yesterday and certainly better than I thought I’d be doing. I have to say my ankle and knee started grousing at me, but I aim to do some exercises some cutie showed me to strengthen ’em up. I also bought a strap for my knee that seemed to help a lot. Now that I know how far I ran, I’m not really surprised I started to ache a bit, heh. Anyway, I ended up running for a total of 72 minutes, which means I was running at about a 8:40 mile pace or so. We’ll see how my legs feel about this in the morning, but right now, I’m pretty stoked. 🙂

Other Tri workouts the past few days:
I got my goggles from sister (thanks Sister!) on Thursday at work so I was able to go swimming on Friday morning. Didn’t go too hard as we had a group swim and bike the next day. Ended up swimming about 1450 meters. Felt good to be in the pool. Swimming is pretty relaxing, once you settle down.

Saturday was up early-like and got picked up to head out to Marin for our group swim. I broke down and bought a pair of tri shorts. You know–the ones that make you look like an idiot? Yeah. Those shorts. I was actually getting kind of tired of feeling my swim trunks drag. Swallowing my pride paid off as we did a marker set in practice and my time increased dramatically. My previous baseline 100 was an abysmal: 2:24, mostly because I was so winded. Well, this time, thanks to my better lung capacity and those nifty shorts, I shaved almost a minute off my time: 1:27! I was pretty surprised myself. The best part is that it wasn’t all out as we had to go back and do more drills afterward. It’s pretty crazy to see how quick the body can adapt, huh? We did some pretty fun drills in practice too–some dolphin kicky drills and then she crowded four of us into a lane and made us swim laps together. Supposed to simulate race day. I found that I swam a bit faster/harder with someone next to me. Have to remember not to burn myself out trying to catch up with some barracuda of a swimmer, heh. We swan a total of 1600 meters, I’m told. After that we geared up for a quick bike ride. I helped my mentor change a tire and we had to race to catch up a bit. It was a pretty easy ride to Mike’s Bike’s and back up Camino Alto (long hill). I got pretty winded because I was racing to catch up with the group and caught them just as we climbed these two wicked little hills. Oh well. I got up ’em ok and made the rest of the trip ok. it was about 15 miles, altogether, including an unintended detour with Mika (who made the maps we were supposed to be following, no less). Oops.

Sunday
The weather was really nice, so I hopped on my motorcycle–intending to drive down to the marina for a run near the GG Bridge. Well, nice in Potrero does not guarantee nice in the Marina. Admittedly, I got a late start. But I wasn’t super psyched at the chilly, fogginess that greeted me. I did a 60 minute timed run, since I missed the captains run. Ran from the Sports Basement to the wharf (mason and jefferson) and back (30 minutes and back). My coming back time was faster, which is a good sign. My knees started to hurt toward the end of the run, but I managed to run about 6 miles, as near as I can figger. Not to bad for a non-runner. It’s kind of fun running by the Wharf–you get all sorts of tourist obstacles…

Total Tri Training Numbers
Swim: 10690 meters
Bike: 121 miles
Run: 45.3 miles