This weekend was a weekend of mini-road trips.  To start off, Friday night I headed down to Ithaca to revisit my old stomping grounds from undergrad.  It was a beautiful afternoon and a great excuse to get away from home for a bit and enjoy a good walk down memory lane.  While many things are still the same, a lot has changed over the course of the past 7 years – yes, 7 years – not sure how that happened.  Time really does fly.  There were so many new buildings on campus, all with new design features which sit alongside the traditional buildings.  It was a little weird, but kind of neat to see all the changes too.  After a long walk around campus with a friend, we grabbed dinner at an Irish pub in the commons before grabbing a drink at the Chapter House and then a second one at Dunbars – oh the memories I have from those two bars.  College certainly was a fun and interesting time, and it was a fun to relive a few of those memories!

The Clock Tower – Cornell University.

One of the new buildings at Cornell.

A little visit to Dunbars…

On Saturday morning, I was up bright and early to head up to Fulton for a two hour swim clinic with my coach.  The pool in Fulton really is beautiful.  It made me a little jealous compared to the city pools… but I guess that is to be expected.  The swim clinic was a good breakdown of form and technique to help boost power and efficiency in the water.  Definitely all good things for helping me finish the 1.2 mile swim that I’ll be completing in the Syracuse 70.3!

Morning Swim Session in Fulton.

After the swim clinic, my coach and a few of the girls that are on the team headed to Oswego for a computrainer session.  This was the first time I had completed a computrainer session and I have to admit it was totally cool.  Basically your bike is hooked up to a trainer that is controlled by a computer to add resistance, incline, etc.  It also measures cadence, mph, power output, and other stats.  The goal of the day was to complete a 20 minute Time Trial to help set our heart rate zones and then to ride a portion of the Lake Placid Ironman course.

I had no idea what to expect with the Time Trial since you basically want to ride full out for 20 minutes to determine your max heart rate.  The owner told us to monitor our power output and let us know that generally the best bikers average about a 170 output for the trial.  With this information, he warned us to not go too hard in the beginning and that we might want to stick with 150-160 on the power meters. However, about 10 minutes into the trial, I realized that I had a lot of energy left and started to push a bit.  After the trial was over, I found that I was able to average a 187 – and still had energy left over… which means that I want to try again since I realize that I could have gone a lot harder.  We get to try again in about a month, so hopefully I can get a better read next time!

Afternoon Computrainer Session in Oswego

After the swimming and biking on Saturday, I scooted home to watch SU win the game against Marquette to earn a spot in the final four (Yea CUSE!).  Later I was able to catch my old roomie and her husband who live in NZ on Skype for a bit.  It was so great to catch up and to see her,  since I have not talked to her in a few months now.  She’s about to have a baby in the next month or so and it was fun to see her with her baby bump!  Also, I’m super excited since she, her husband, and the baby will be coming to the US this summer!! I can’t wait to see her again, it’s been almost 2 years since we’ve seen each other (other than on Skype).  Finally, I closed out Saturday by catching a drink with a friend to celebrate the SU win, a great ending to a fantastic day!

On Sunday, the Easter Bunny visited our house and brought Rox a new toy.  It’s pretty much the coolest toy ever… a purple dinosaur which actually made it a whole half hour before she was able to rip into it and kill the squeaker (that’s a new record for a squeak toy in our house).

Rox & her present from the Easter Bunny!

The rest of Easter included a 6 mile trail run in Green Lakes in the rain.  I thought I would find a lot of mud to have some fun in, but surprisingly the trails were almost bone dry – even in the upper trails of the park!  I was shocked as I usually get at least a few mud runs in during the spring.  I guess it shows you how dry the region really is right now.  It also makes me hope that we don’t continue to have a drought again this summer.  That would really hurt a lot of the farms in the region to go through a second dry summer.

Finally, I finished out Easter by going to a coworker’s family gathering in Caz.  She invited myself and another coworker to attend, it was really fun, the food was fabulous and everyone was super friendly.  They really made us feel quite at home, and it was a great way to spend the holiday evening!

Now, we’re back to Monday which started off with a cold and rainy morning.  Looks like the start of spring might continue to be a little cold, but I’m going to keep crossing my fingers for some warmer temps.  Although I have to admit that the cold weather does make it easier to continue to stick to my workout plan involving the bike trainer and the treadmill.

Back at it – Full Schedule this week!

We’re into block #2 of training and starting to build the workouts again this week.  I have my first brick workout this Wednesday and a couple of whopper workouts coming toward the weekend with a 13 mile run on Friday and a 2.5 hour bike ride Sunday.  In between these 2 fun workouts, I have my youngest sister’s wedding on Saturday!! Can’t wait for the fun, festivities and the dancing!  It should be a fun filled weekend after what is promised to be a busy week at work!  🙂