Sighting in the Conquest Pro

Ok, so here is the deal. I was thinking about going deer hunting this weekend (emphasis on the was). I have not been doing much hunting lately, but I needed to pick some things up in Duluth this weekend, and it is deer season in Minnesota, and I was pretty sure my friend Steve would have thought it was a fine idea. Being a little impulsive, I came up with this plan last Thursday, and got it approved by the family powers that be. Then I got sick and basically slept for the whole weekend last week (that means the garage still needs cleaning), and Kathy pointed out that we eat red meat maybe once a month and if I actually got a deer it would be about a 10 year supply, not to mention that she and Linnea are not all that fond of venison to start with so it would probably last even longer. So the deer are safe from me this year! But there was a nice tree stand just off the loop we were doing our intervals on today so I decided to mix sports a bit...

Today's workout was suppose to be 4x90 second race paced intervals which John and Kat rounded that up to an even 10. This was my first real workout since getting sick, apart from and intermittent bloody nose, it felt pretty good. We did them on the usual loop in George Wyth Park and put one set of barriers in the course. I apparently pushed the wrong button on my monitor so I did not record my HR data but my heart rate was lower than usual, but my perceived effort did not seem less than usual.

It is nice to be back riding again!

I Had a Nice Ride on Thursday and Have Been in Bed Ever Since

I decided to come back to Owatonna on Thursday, because I had a full weekend of things to do back in Iowa. After doing the interval workout that was planned I met up with a couple of guys from the Owatonna group who were planning a night ride. They showed up on road bikes (I was on my CX bike) and after trying to hang on at over 20 mph in the dark I decided to let them go. I came back into town at a nice easy pace but about 20 minutes after I got home it was clear, I have the flu! I had the chills, and a headache, and a cough, and almost all of the H1N1 symptoms. Now it is Sunday and I have really not been out of bed since Thursday night. I am really glad to have the opportunity to slowly build my immunity to this particular virus!

On a non-training note I have started to shape the Stand Up Paddle board. I have done enough to observe that surfboard shaping is a really messy job! This feels so much like when I made my first sea kayak. I had never been in a kayak when I made my first. I have never tried Stand Up Paddling. It could be could be I will not like it or I will not have enough balance to stand on the thing :-) I do think it would be funny to see a group of them coming down the Cedar River. . .

Woah Today's Workout Counted!

Monday was a nice easy recovery ride. We stayed on the roads, didn't work all that hard. It was a bit windy but the ride was excellent.

Tuesday we were back into the real training again. The plan called for intervals 2 mins. on 2 mins. off; 1:30 on 1:30 0ff; then 1 min. on 1 min. off, then 3o seconds on 30 seconds off. We did 3 sets of these intervals on the practice fields behind the dome. The grass was wet and the ground was soft in some places. We were suppose to be in zone 5b-5c. When I look at the charts for the workout I am not sure I made it, I had 2 minutes in Zone 5a. The 5a time all came at the end of the 2 minute intervals so I wonder if this might be a matter of my heart not catching up with my effort. I sure hope so, because I cannot imagine pushing much harder. In fact it was good that John and Kat where there or I might have pushed a lot less :-)

Today's Interval workout

I am still trying to decide if I am going to go for the run that is on the plan for today. It is so easy to skip them, but I do think they help.