Independence

Happy Independence Day tomorrow, to those of you who are Americans. I wore this suit swimming to the lake this morning, just for fun. It was a gorgeous day, the water was smooth as silk. And though I've had a major knot in my shoulder this week that kept me from swimming on Tuesday and Thursday, the wetsuit provided enough extra support that I could cruise along through the open water without any discomfort whatsoever, a pleasant surprise for the morning.

This afternoon we went to a BBQ at some friends' house and I had one of those "small world" experiences. I met a triathlete that lives not a mile from my house, we have tons of mutual friends, we've been apparently swimming in the lane next to each other at the outdoor pool on Tuesday mornings, but we'd never met. We chatted about races, trails, rides, and the Ironman. One thing about having done the Ironman is that when you meet another Ironman it's like you both just know what the other is made of. To have done that distance, that says something about a person, about their ability to dig deep and to persevere. I guess I'd never really thought of that before.

Speaking of digging deep, I did a ride yesterday with my hubby, about 40 miles of hills that he kicked my booty up and down and all over town. I can make an excuse for some of that, I had done a really killer Crossfit track workout that morning that absolutely blew me up for the day (see below for details) but the other half of the equation is that hubby has gotten to be a killer cyclist. He's been mountain biking like crazy, training for some nutty 55 mile mountain bike race with like a million feet of elevation gain. So his pedal stroke has gotten very efficient and smooth. He's also lost 10 pounds since starting the Paleo eating plan, and is now at 10% body fat, which is pretty lean. This means he climbs hills like a madman and while I can still take a turn letting him draft me into the headwind, he pretty much dropped me on every hill. Still, after eighteen years of being together, it's just plain awesome that we can go out and do stuff like this. Our relationship has always been glued together by mutual interests and just enjoying each other's company.

So here's the killer workout I devised for Friday morning. Any old time that you feel like you haven't beaten yourself up enough for the week, give this one a try. This is done for total time at a track:

1600 meter run
40 squats (quads below parallel)
1200 meter run
30 situps (arms folded across chest, no kipping with arms, shoulders to ground and then breaking vertical plane)
800 meter run
20 pushups (chest to ground and full extension)
400 meter run
10 Burpees (including jump to full hip extension)

This took me 23:52 and like I said, it was a killer workout. After the first round of squats, you can really feel your legs on the run. After the round of situps, it makes you very aware of your core on the run. After the pushups, you even get a good feel for how engaged your arms are on the run. So it really lets you zero in on all of your major muscle groupings as you run.