The Birthday Workouts

Saturday was my 51st Birthday!!  So I thought what better way to celebrate than with some Birthday Workouts!!!

I'd mentioned "Birthday Swim" to the coach in a workout a few weeks back.  I may be wrong but he seemed gleefully happy to put up a 5100 yard workout for the day.  The amazing part to me was how the entire Masters Swim group gladly accepted the challenge without one complaint.  Very cool!  I told my friend Judy about the swim and she and her husband Sam came out Friday morning to help celebrate!  That was very nice!

Friday Swim:
10 x 25 @ :30
10 x 50 @ 1:00
10 x 75 @ 1:15
10 x 100 @ 1:30
10 x 150 @ 2:00
5  x 200 @  3:00
1x 100 FLY!

More rest at the beginning of the workout.  He could have reversed the distances but no...that would have made it too easy.  He did have to add :15 for the 200's, by that point I was starting to fade.

Saturday - to continue on with the birthday plan I wanted to ride at least 51 miles.  Of course when I woke up that morning the weather was ridiculous!  It was about 35 degrees out with winds from the NNW at 12-15 mph!  Not particularly ideal cycling conditions.  My friends Deanna and Lesley are training for a century and needed to ride for 5 hours that morning.  So we formulated a plan to meet them at mile 22.  Again like troopers Judy and Sam showed up to ride!  The weather conditions weren't as bad as they sounded - recently I got a Cannondale Morphis jacket and that thing is pretty much 100% windproof.  It has sleeves that attach with magnets so it's really easy to convert it into a vest if the temperature rises. I wore tights, booties, my Craft windproof shirt, l/s jersey, my jacket, a fleece beanie and winter gloves with glove liners.  I also put "hot hands" under the toes of my booties and in my gloves.  I was very comfortable!!


We rode out and back on the Trace - headwind out, tailwind back - sweet!!  Pushed the pace on the way back with the tailwind with Sam.  Ended up with 45.63 miles when we got back to the cars.  :(  Booo.... that meant I needed to ride another 6.  No other takers so I went out and back 3 to get my 51! 

Sunday is my long run.  Typically for this birthday I would have been completely satisfied with running 5.1 miles but I've got the New Orleans Rock n' Roll Half Mary in a few weeks so the training schedule said 11.  Ugh.  Another chilly morning so I planned to meet Judy at 10:00am.  Late getting there - like 10:20 because I was following Lance at the IM Panama 70.3 on Ironmanlive!  I don't know if any of you kept up with the race - it was awesome!

My husband Bill was out there running too!  He's also doing the NOLA race, his longest race ever - Bill is an awesome golfer and I can sometimes get him to run.  He's from New Orleans so this will be really fun for us!  Judy ran with me out and back for 6 miles and then I had to carry on solo for the last 5.  Ended up with a 8:53 average pace.  Happy with that - my long run pace is typically 9:00s. 

Monday - I rested. 

One of the guys I swim with told me that he hoped he didn't know me when I was 71. Funny!