in Washington

Washington state. It's been mostly cloudy and cool. Monday I did a 1.5mi run along part of the Clear Creek Salmon Run trail. It was very pretty and green, lots of plants new to me.  If you have the right view, you can see the snow-capped Olympic mountains, and in another direction Mt Ranier is a solid cap of white. I was told that it's actually a glacier-covered volcano with ice caves and stuff. The hotel backs onto an inlet. Very pretty.

Lots of geocaches around here. I found 6! Well, a friend actually found 1 of them--his first cache (aww). :-P One of them was one of those really-challenging-until-you-find-it-then-it's-easy ones.

That tiny green thing was hiding here:

Saw several ships too:

That day was sunny and warm--a little over 70deg. Apparently summer doesn't start till after July 4th and lasts all the way through August! Nice place for a summer home... ;-P

To tri or not to tri

So the only women-only triathlon in NM is Aug 25th, the day after I get back from a week-long businss trip. 7am, at least an hour away. Should I go for it?

I asked a friend about doing the tri together. She said she doesn't bike--but she's fine with running and swimming. We could do a rely. But then I'd only get to bike? (She'd run, I'd bike, she'd swim)

Also, my right knee has been hurting right along the outside of my kneecap whenever I run or even walk for a while. Usually after 30min, but almost from the start during my fitness test--maybe b/c I'd biked to work and then to the gym already. I guess I should see the doctor about it; it's just that if I see the same doc as last time, he'll likely just say "don't run or walk", maybe order an x-ray (I never found out the results of the one on my left knee, but since it's not hurting anymore I guess it doesn't matter).

So, should I tri?

Last night's run

After a .75mi 15min walking warm-up I ran for a solid 15 minutes--woohoo! That ended up being 1.25mi at about a 12:30 pace. I'll need to pick it up a bit Thursday for my fitness test, but this is the first time I've run that long all at once in quite a while (quite possibly since my last test 6 months ago--sadly).  Since I did my run straight out, the walk back was long (there were a couple of jogging sessions in there). BUT my right knee started hurting again just along the outside of my knee. I guess I'll have to see the Dr about it after all. Hopefully he can refer me to someone who can help me with whatever is causing the pain and not just tell me to stop running (and poss walking) for a few weeks. It would probably help if I did better cool downs, warm ups, and used my foam roller. At least I haven't had shin pain in a while.

Abq 10K

I finally looked up my score for the Albuquerque Half 10K event. I knew I was very close to the end, especially having to walk the last 2+ miles.
I was 179 out of 184 participants, and 19th in my age group. I would've thought there'd be more than 19 people in my age group, but apparently not. :-P Bib #834
My knee has continued to bother me since then, thought not quite as much. Chip time = Gun time b/c there was no mat at the beginning; all times were based off Gun time. My pace was actually better than I expected--I hadn't calculated it. It's really not far off my regular pace when I include my warm-up.

Place  City         Bib No  Age Gend    Age Group  Chip Time    Gun Time    Pace 

179    Albuquerque   834    39   F      19 35-39   1:35:22.1    1:35:22.1  15:21/M

from 6/2/21012 just found another draft

Just finished a good 2mi run. It was my second run of the week. No biking, no walking, just a few sets of pushups & sit ups. I kept staying up late--for some reason.
I ran Thursday in Shreveport; it was hot, & muggy, but green.

I'm a slug, 7/17/11

Found an old draft post I apparently never finished:

Aside from 8min bike rides to and from work, I didn't work out last week. I threw in a couple of sets of push-ups against the bathroom counter and scrubbed 2 bathtubs. But no running, not even chasing kids.

In the meantime, my 3yo likes to wear his "swim soup" to play in the water, and my 6yo thinks it's a good idea to put a folding chair at the end of the slide.  We had a good visit from my brother and his family last night. They stopped to spend the night on their way back home from vacation. They have 4 kids, the oldest of whom is 10 days younger than my 6yo. The youngest does a mean army crawl. :)

I almost made up this weekend for sleep lost during the week due to staying up too late (as usual). Used the bone stimulator a couple of times last week. My shin's been hurting more; hopefully it's just the stress. I'm looking for a new job. Scary.

The new house is nice, not really any bigger as far as actual living space goes. In fact, the kitchen's smaller. But the master closet, inside storage, and utility room are all about twice the size as in the other house. Oh and the back patio too! And we lucked out and got a fenced back yard, so now we can put up the trampoline.

Bike Ride

It was a nice morning for a ride. I went out the bike path along Wyoming and kept going south. After a while it turned east past the archery range and down a steep hill and across an arroyo. I almost turned around at the top of the hill b/c I knew the hill would be a killer to ride up. But I also knew it'd be fun to ride down, so I rode down and across the bridge. It was fun, and a little scary, going down (I haven't ridden down a steep hill in a long time). I turned around at the far end of the bridge. Coming back up the hill was a killer--I had my bike in the lowest gear and almost got off to walk it up, but I had just enough determination not to. It felt great afterward to know I'd made it up the hill.

I finally got my bike fixed and started riding again last Monday, and of course it was a very windy day. I almost walked to work it was so windy, but I decided to ride anyway and did make it to work faster than if I'd walked (the going-with-the-wind part really makes the difference, and against the wind I may still have been faster than walking). Of course my butt was sore by Thursday; riding only 8 minutes twice a day can do that when you haven't ridden since the 1st of November. But the riding has already made a difference in my running. I did my 3rd weekly long walk on Friday night and put a fair amount of running into it this time. It was a good, windy run. I did start to feel the tightness along the outside of my right knee like I felt at the 10K, but I stopped and stretched my ITB a few times, and that helped.