Life as a "normal" person

Last week was a good recovery week. Actually did some things that normal people do. We went to a movie, the auto show, and bowling. It was nice to get out and do social things that didn't involve working out. Bowling was an adventure. We checked out Grand Central Lanes with my Aunt and Uncle. It is a newly renovated bowling alley that is now a restaurant/bar/bowling alley. The lanes have big leather couches and coffee tables to put your beers on. It is a very cool place. The crowd on a Saturday night was mostly mid thirties and after 11:00pm everyone is hammered! We got there about 7:30 for our dinner reservation and were told we couldn't get on a lane until 11:30. So through out dinner we continually hassled our waiter and the girls running the bowling lane reservations. My Uncle was able to get the waiter to hook us up and we were told at about 10pm that the next available lane was ours. Some how in the all of the confusion we went from the "Thompson Party of 4" to the "Norm Thompson Party". Apparently at Grand Central it's all about who you know, or who they think you are. As it turns out our original lane reservation was called (to my cell phone) at 11:45pm. So to summarize, it's a very cool place to bowl, but if you go on Friday or Saturday make sure are ether with or pretend to be someone famous.


Now back to reality... This could be the biggest volume week I've ever done if everything goes right. So far I have 4.5 hrs done with 23.5 to go. That's right, 29 hrs total! I think I am going to be able to get most of it done, it's the 7 hr ride on Saturday that will be the biggest challenge due to the weather. We'll see what happens. But like Dave C. says, "No one cares what your log looks like." He's right, big deal if I throw down a 29 hr week if I can't buck up on race day. It's your race results that count. For that reason I'm not hung up on reaching the magic number as much as I'm focusing on quality workouts. If along the way this week I need to make adjustments based on how I'm feeling then I will do so. I think that's one area I am starting to get. Making those key workouts count and keeping the recovery workouts light. I am much more aware of how I'm feeling now and I have enough confidence to allow myself to recover even if it means missing a workout here and there. I think the plan is working. I did a threshold run today (3x10 min zone 5 w/ 4 min rest) and was able to avg a 6 min pace. This is about where I was going into Soma, but the big difference now is my HR. Before this pace produced ~175 HR avg, today the avg was at 169. The hardest part right now is not being able to race. I have this fitness, I want to go use it! Winter sucks, I can't wait for the season to pick back up in a few months so I can see if my times improve at all.