Friday, March 14, 2008

Getting Runs In & Multisport Training?

I seem to have failed to mention the running in yesterday’s post. So on Wednesday Jason and I went first to Fleet Feet (the new location over on Wells is so swanky!) and picked up our new Brooks Adrenalines as well as some socks for Jason and pants for me since I had misjudged the weather and was wearing shorts.

Then we headed over to the lake front path to do our 7x400m repeats. I had taken the Garmin with me in order to measure out 400m chunks, but when I turned it on I realized the batteries were low since I haven’t used it in forever. So we just jogged over to the lakefront path and then picked what we thought was roughly 1/4 mile and did the 7 repeats. Our method for this is to fun the 400 at 5K pace as the plan says, then walk for 200m, then jog for 200m, then repeat. It was really fun to run on the path and we had a really nice time. Jason had his 6 month review lunch earlier in the day for which he got rave reviews (of course!) and so we talked a lot about that. I’m so happy for him that he’s doing so well at the job.

Yesterday was 3 miles + strength, but I can’t ever seem to get up to do the strength part. The original plan was to run to the gym which is about 1.5 miles away and then workout, then run home, but we opted to just run 3 miles outside since it was so beautiful out.

Last night we went out with a grad school friend who just moved into the neighborhood. We went to The Blind Robin on Western which is about 10 steps from our front door. I think I also made plans to go out with him on St. Patricks day, which is awesome because 2 beers anymore just about lays me out so it should be interesting if that happens.

I am becoming more intrigued with the idea of mulitsport training. After reading this girls post today and this guys comment, I am wonder if we could really enjoy adding in some swimming and biking. I have no doubt that if we got nice bikes and got into biking the way we got into running (just starting out for fun and then slowing adding in more and more technical parts) that we would really enjoy it. As far as swimming, well yeah that would take more pure stubbornness as it would be more difficult as neither of us are good swimmers and I think of all three sports it is by far the most technical.

So we’ll see what happens with our taxes. We usually owe because there is no money taken out of our graduate student pay, BUT Jason took a ton out of his check so that might even out his stuff. If we have some left in our savings we might take a look at some niceish bikes. I don’t want to buy them though if we aren’t going to do it and waste that kind of money. We have big heavy clunky mountain bikes, so we might just try and ride them more and then see if we are interested in moving up in the world.

5 comments:

Triseverance said...

If you have access to a pool and a desire to ride a bike I would go for it.
Look at the FIRST running plan. Lots of room for cross training. Sort of a runners first multisport/cross training plan.
My opinion you would be a rocking triathlete, that tall long build would serve you well.
I have an 06 Giant OCR 2 medium I am looking to sell. Thinking of posting it on e-bay. Let me know if you might have an interest before I post it.

Undrunk Panda said...

As you know, I bought my first "real" bike in January. It is a road bike w/out the drop bars, though. I didn't want to be bent over like that until I knew that I need to go fast.

As it stands right now, I LOVE having the cycling to break up some of the running. It also seems to be letting my body rest a bit and I feel like I'm getting in better shape.

I tried swimming and failed horribly!!! I need lessons or something.

MNFirefly said...

Have you and Jason thought about doing duathons? I know that there's a lot of them in tbe Chicago area. I hope you guys can afford to get a decent bike.

Andrea Hill said...

I was going to ask the duathlon question myself :) I recently got a bike and was looking at that to complement my running.. hope it works out for you two (too!)

it's funny, a few years ago I said "my friends may do tris, but I wouldn't; I don't like biking or swimming". Now I'm considering biking... makes me wonder when swimming will seem like an option!

Iron Jayhawk said...

I'm telling ya...I'm going to kidnap you to go to the park district pool with me sometime!! ;)

Don't rule Danskin out!!