Heeeeeere's Johnny!

Morning Workout
BIKE
2 hours, including our favorite, the hill repeats
Heart Rate Zone: 2 x 15 minutes climbing up the hill at Steady State Threshold (Zone 4) plus 1 x 15 minutes climbing up the same hill at VO2 (Zone 5+) while standing up on the pedals the whole damn time, I might add

Evening Workout
LIFT WEIGHTS
1 hour

Random Comments: It is Cat's mother's birthday today. There was a birthday dinner for her last night. We had Indian food. Mental note: Don't ever eat Indian food before a high intensity bike workout again. Me stomach no likey.
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I'm a bit frustrated for a variety of reasons and I'm going to tell you all of them right now whether you want to hear them or not and I might even do it in one long run-on sentence just to make you as frustrated as I am since we're on the frustrated theme and if I'm going to be frustrated, well it only seems fair that you're frustrated too after all if we have a theme for this rambling here we might as well make it all encompassing don't you think?

OK, that got annoying pretty quickly.

I did the hill repeats today on the bike like I've been doing every week for the past 3 weeks. And every week for the past three weeks I slightly increased the distance I traveled on each 15 minute repeat. That is, until today. Today I rode up the same hill, at the same cadence, with the same heartrate as I've done for the past few weeks. My legs felt fine, my breathing felt fine, my body felt fine. Everything checked out. There was only one problem: I didn't go far. In fact, I couldn't ride nearly as far as I've done in the past. Why, you ask? I have absolutely no idea. And that, my friend, is a wee bit annoying.

So let's file that wee bit annoying fact in the fortress of our minds as we harken back to a day not long ago - in fact, it was last Saturday - when I did the 30 minute bike time trial up the mountain only to find that I rode a mere 10 yards further than I did 6 weeks prior. Ten yards improvement. In the grand scale of improvement over 6 weeks of intense training, that's in the "pretty lame" category. From what I've done in the past, I expect to improve much more than 10 yards. Frankly, it's got me all bollixed up.

So now we have bollixed up piled on top of our wee bit annoying. Let's keep going, shall we?

In fact, let's take it down a bit. Way down. Somewhere around ankle level should do just fine which, coincidentally enough, is where my achilles is. The same achilles that has been injured and has left me unable to run for two weeks. I love running. I thrive on running. I need to run. All work and no running makes J. a dull boy. I get all out of sorts when I can't run. That's what I am now - out of sorts. And when you pile the out of sorts on top of the bollixed up on top of the wee bit annoying, it starts to mold into frustration, which brings us back to the annoying run-on sentence I started with.

And so I watch Cat fly. She gets a PR in the half marathon and wins her age group. She rides nearly a quarter mile further in the time trial than she did six weeks prior. Every day she gets stronger. Every day she gets better. And that makes me happy - it makes me smile. And just thinking about that seems to ease my frustrations. At least she is improving. Growing. Flying.

So here I am laying on the couch with an ice pack on my left calf, trying to get all excited to wake up early for my 30 minute aqua jog with the old Russian ladies who I really don't think like me in the slightest. Meanwhile, Cat will be on the track doing her 2000 meter repeats at top speed. I wish I could be there with her. Just the thought of running those repeats brings butterflies to my stomach. But I must tame those butterflies. Well, maybe not tame as much as squish them until they all lay dead, scattered about my large intestines. I seem to have a lot of dead butterflies clogging up my large intestines lately. Of course, it could also be the Indian food I ate last night.