July Recap

Sorry, sorry this has taken so long to get together.  I am on vacation and my time to sit at the computer and formulate a post is limited.  In between watching the Olympics, eating (which has become an Olympic event for me), watching the kids swim, fishing and just sitting around looking at the lake, I just haven't found a moment to be at the computer.  I have managed a run or two and a couple of bike rides so I'm not going to head home as Henrietta Hippo.  So here we go--

Miles Run--41.4.  This is up from last month.  I'm not sure how, but I got in a couple more miles than June.  Not a big improvement, but still something.

Spin/bike minutes--420  Biking is up almost 100 minutes from June!  With this hot weather it is so much easier to just head to the Y at lunch and spin.  Plus, my friend Cheryl is meeting me again and so it becomes so much more than just spinning.  We get to bitch and chat and in no time at all, we've worked out for 40 minutes!  Exercise really is so much better with a friend.

Weight training--85 minutes  I kicked butt with weight training this month!  I think some of it had to do with the planks, lunges and pushups challenge I started the month with.  It really fizzled out the last two weeks but the first part, I really did keep up with it.  It's a good challenge and I may try it again.

Tennis--3 hours

Swim--6000 yds  I switched up my swim day and had been going Saturday morning while the family was out hauling lobster traps.  This seems to work better than the Friday.  Once school starts again, Friday will be much better but for now I just need to get my swims in.  This OWS is coming up pretty soon--like 3 weeks--so I need to keep my fitness there.  <says the girl who hasn't swam at all the last 3 weeks....>

75 minutes of field hockey played--which is basically 75 minutes of sprinting, gasping for breath, then sprinting again.  Excellent for me as I never sprint.  My ass hurt for 3 days.  If you can hook up with a local high school/middle school team and they are willing to let you play with them, you may want to consider it.  It kicked my butt!  And was a lot of fun.

Races--The Lobster Roll 5k.  A local race in Boothbay Harbor in it's third year.  I have run it each year so far and even though I didn't feel like running that morning, I went anyway because I'm going to see how many years in a row I can run in it.  I felt like it was a good race while running it, but it was not my best time.

Books Read--I read a couple of books this month that Terzah from BQ by 40 had recommended to me. River Town Two Years on the Yangtze is a book about a man in the Peace Corps who goes to China to teach English for two years.  Very interesting non-fiction book about his time there.  I learned a lot about China and it's culture.  Let the Great World Spin was another book that she recommended and I really enjoyed it as well.   I have a  couple more books lined up to read but really haven't done much reading while on vacation except for my Running Times magazines.

Current Annoyance--my plantar faciitis has been acting up on my left heel.  It hurts like hell sometimes after running and sometimes it doesn't.  I'm not sure if it's my sneakers or what.  I've gotten lots of advice from Facebook friends so I'm going to try a few things and hope that helps.  If I can immediately ice it and stretch after running, it seems to be fine so we'll go with that for awhile.

One other annoying thing was in the large race I was in this past weekend, The Beach to Beacon 10K, once again there was not one single professional race picture of me.  I swear to God, those photographers never seem to be able to get any shot of me at all.  I'm not even talking about bad shots!  I mean, any pictures whatsoever!  I'm always just behind another runner or you can see my feet but not my face, or half of me gets cut off.  I will buy this stupid-crazy-expensive pictures people!!!  Get a freakin' picture of me, will ya?

Current Excitement--In just 3 weeks time, I will be racing the Rev 3 Olympic length tri in Old Orchard Beach.  I am pretty excited to see how well I can do at this length, but scared to death of the swim part. I still have not completed an OWS in lake or ocean and I don't have a wetsuit as of yet.  I guess I'll just do it (as Nike says) that morning and hope I can get through it.  I'm pretty sure I can side stroke or back stroke the distance if I have to.

One other excitement was racing the Beach to Beacon with my friends!  What luck to find them at the race in a sea of 6000 other runners!  Thank goodness for friends with iPhones to take pictures!  At least I got some good photos that way.

How did your July go?  

August is looking to be a pretty busy race month for me, do you find you have a lot of races coming up?