Racquetball and a bad blister

Got up this morning and played Racquetball at SDRC. Played in some shoes that aren't that good and ended up with a pretty bad blister. My skills haven't diminished too bad since the long break I took. I beat Sean twice and almost one in a cutthroat with Tom and Steve. Worked up a good sweat and I'm thinking I'll definitely stick with this. Will play on Friday morning in Layton.

Plan on playing TT at lunch again and will be going to Glen's tonight with Austin for some TT coaching.

Good ride and lots of table tennis.

This morning I got up early and went to work. I had a good Table Tennis practice session with Gyan at noon. After work I went downstairs and biked the good old 6 minute set for an hour:

1:00 - 10 x 6:00 - 1 min super easy, 2 min easy, 2 min moderate, 1 min tough standing.

Went home and drilled with Austin for another hour. I have a feeling that the tournament in Evanston is going to go well. I feel like I'm at the top of my game right now.

My swimming on the other hand has taken a back seat. After the Western Open, I'll be giving table tennis a break and going back to swimming. Will be doing racquetball tomorrow morning at SDRC.

Sore from yesterday

I'm a little sore from yesterday's racuetball. That's good. I did 30 minutes on the trainer this morning at Tomax. Had to cut the workout short to get in enough work hours today. Need to leave early for Scouts this evening. Hoping it ends early enough for me to swim.

Raquetball again finally

I finally got back in the court. Went to Surf N' Swim and played with Blair and Eric Larson. Didn't bomb completely. I played pretty good considering the time off. I also almost beat Blair which was a shock. Lost by two. Definitely going to get back into it. It's the most fun way to work up a sweat. Even more than biking.

Excellent Ride

This evening I went downstairs at Tomax and rode hard:

1:18 - 15 x (1m fastest on 1, 2m fast on 2, 2m medium on 3, 1m hard w/standing on 4)
2m fast and easy

1:20 total. Very good workout.

Blah

Came in to work early (6:30am) to bike again. After about 30 minutes I was just not able to get the same level of effort as I did yesterday. So I stopped and moved over to the row machine and did 1000 M in 4:38. Then I lifted Bench and Preacher Curls.

Did 1 hour of exercises, but not happy with the level of effort. Energy level feels low and I didn't get a full night's sleep. I got to bed late thanks to the Draper Temple trip with the youth last night.

Nice ride

Got up at 4:45 am this morning and went to work and did the following in the Tomax Gym:

1:12 - 12 x (1 min real easy high cadence, 2 min easy high cadence, 2 min medium effort, 1 min high effort lower cadence)

3 min crunches
75 pushups all in one set

Sweat a ton and feeling good about today's effort.

Not my day

This morning Cathi woke me up before she went to the gym so I could go bike downstairs. When I got down there the door to the storage room was locked and so I had to go back upstairs to get my keys. Then the DVD player was broken, then the battery on my computer was nearly dead so I had to replace that. Then I realized I had to reenter the wheel code to get the speed right. I threw the manual away so I went online to try and find it, but only got a close number, but I'm not sure it's very accurate. Will email Dale to see if he could give me the number.

By the time I started biking I was already 30 minutes behind schedule. But I finally got my big butt (literally) on the saddle.

This time I have data (although it's probably a little inaccurate).

1 hour - 15.0 miles

Monday morning and lunch

Did one hour with Coach Troy on the 3rd DVD of the Spinervals 100 set. One more hour and I will have done the whole thing. I'm gonna call Dale today to see if my computer has arrived yet cause I'm sure that my rpms are low for what Troy is prescribing.

1 hour on the trainer.

Afterwards did 1 set of 70 pushups and 50 crunches

At lunch nobody was available for table tennis practice, so I did another hour on the bike. This time no DVD available so I put my stopwatch in the middle of the handlebars of the stationary bike and did the following:

10 sets of:

1 minute super easy and high cadence spinning
2 minutes with tension knob turned one full turn
2 minutes with tension knob turned once more (go aero)
1 minute with tension knob turned once more fully (stand up the whole minute)

60 minutes total and boy was I sweating! What a great workout. I then did 70 pushups and 50 crunches again. Makes missing table tennis not a big deal when I get in a productive workout like that.

Two hours with Coach Troy (and Cathi)

After a decent swim this morning I was determined to get a good bike ride in. I put on the Spinervals 100 Disk 2 and did two hours of tough sets. Still no computer yet. Dale had to special order one and should be in on Mon/Tue.

Sweat a ton. Cathi came down and watched the DVD and encouraged me while coach Troy said, "Cmon! Cmon!". One of the older guys in the training looks just like my Dad. Seriously. I'd say, "Cmon Dad, don't give up, keep it going!" Cathi would laugh cause he not only looks like my Dad, but makes many of the same facial expressions and smile, etc. I'll take the DVD over so my Dad can see himself biking like a madman!

Great workout today. Probably burned close to 3000 Calories. Need to get back under 200!

2009 Goals

1. Get down to 179 and maintain that weight.


2. Swim the Deer Creek 10K Open Water Swim


3. Do 2 Olympic Distance Tris


4. Break my own 1500 M Free record at the Utah Summer Games


5. Get a kayak this spring and practice Salt Water Open Water swimming in the good ole' GSL


6. Bike and swim no less than four times/week

With that said I did 1 hr on the trainer this morning. Man it is really hard for me to get up early!

During our trip down to Boulder City, NV for Cathi's Marathon since I was the designated driver, I decided to self medicate myself with some Mountain Dew - over 250 fl oz over the weekend to be exact. Boy was that nice. But now that the need is gone, its on the black list. I'll tell you that Mountain Dew is my "wicked fruit". It is so delicious to the taste, and very desirable! But for me it is a medicine and dangerous. It could be misused, and I have to be strong and consider it such.

I'm back to eating baby carrots and having a salad for lunch. Time to get real girly, it's the only way to really get that weight off since winter involves much less hours working out than during non winter months.

Cathi's Running From An Angel Marathon

We left for Boulder City on Friday Morning (1/2/09). We ended up going all the way through Las Vegas. What a long drive. Gordon stopped in Cedar City to decorate the car with some encouraging words which meant a lot to Cathi. When we got to the Hacienda Hotel it was a smooth check in. The hotel/casino sure seemed catered to gamblers rather than runners. No shuttle bus, no shower accommodations after the race, no extra perks, just a smoke filled, bell ringing place. At least it wasn't sleazy.

On Friday night we met up with Aaron and his family, and went for Pizza at a nice little place in Boulder City. Watched a little of the Utah Sugar Bowl against Alabama. What a fantastic game. It was nice to get to know Aaron and his wife Becky better. They have two cute kids, Joey and Miranda who fit right in with our kids.

When we got home we played a few round of dice game and Gordon fell fast asleep.

On Saturday morning Gordon drove Cathi to the starting line which was only 5 minutes from the Hotel. He went back to the room, packed up the things and the kids and headed out. We saw Cathi at around mile 5 and parked about every 3 miles to cheer her on. Austin and Jacob were excited to ride their new Ripstiks. Jonas, Isaac, Sam and Oliver were excited looking for snakes, throwing rocks, and making sand castles with the small gravel dirt.

It was a long day, lots of hills for poor Cathi, the wind was gusting at times and sometimes it was fairly cool, and other times a little warm. Overall though the temperature was just about perfect for running. Cathi was able to run the first half, and stay with Aaron, Scott and Arizona Kathy. At just after the half way point she told them to go on ahead and she wasn't able to maintain the same pace. She started walking up the hills and running down. Jacob joined up at around Mile 17 and stayed with her through to the finish. Thank goodness for Jacob or we would probably have sent out a search and rescue party. Her finish time was 4:58:48.

This was the second slowest time in the Marathon for Cathi so it's due every once in a while to have a bad one, so now its time to have a good few in a row. Definitely the highlight of the race was getting to catch up with Aaron, a dear old friend from BYU, who she hadn't seen for probably 15 years. He ran a great race and cut around 45 minutes off his time from his first marathon. He didn't walk at all on any of the hills which is simply amazing. He must be very satisfied with his results. I bet he's caught the Marathon bug now. Cathi and Aaron will be running together again in the Ogden Marathon in May.


We left for Salt Lake at around 2pm. We met with Mom and Dad in St. George who will now spend the winter months there. We went to Chuck A Rama and the kids ate up and as rowdy as ever. When we left it was already dark and knew we had a long night of driving home. Thank goodness for the laptop and all the movies on several hard drives. The kids were quiet watching movies the whole time. We made it home about 11pm and were grateful for 1pm church so we could sleep in a bit.