No Track???

What do you mean no track? We got an email yesterday from our coach saying that both track workouts for this week were cancelled because of the icky weather we are having. I thought that was pretty funny because on the run team Coach Al never cancelled the runs unless there was lightning out. We ALWAYS ran no matter how cold or wet it was outside. It hasn't even been raining since 1pm in my area. Funny how I'm complaining, geesh. I should be juming up and down that I get to relax after those darn hill repeats on Saturday, which by the way I am still sore from. So tonight I will rest and enjoy all my shows on TV. American Idol and Amazing Race are both one :o) YIPEE!!! This week was suppose to be a rest week anway or an easy workout week so I guess the storms came at a good time. I'm still not feeling 100% so I will take advantage it. If I'm up to it tomorrow and it's not storming I plan on going swimming.

btw...to my friends on Team Balance (spring east bay run team) YOU ROCK!! I know you guys were out there running tonight in this dry but super chilly evening. I hope you had a great run!

Ppppssssshhhhhhhh

NOT a sound I like to hear. Yesterday was a Bike Day and I needed to get out and bike 10-15miles. I had a SUPER long day on Saturday so when my friend Debbie called at 9am to see if I still wanted to ride I tried to bail....didn't happen though. Thanks to her I got my butt out of bed and headed out to meet her in Livermore. She lives out there and there are lots of trails to ride on. The weather was icky and it rained on us for most of the ride. Things were going really good til I heard the pppsssshhhh.....I had a flat tired :o( Luckily I was prepared and had my extra tube and tools with me. This was the first time I tried to change my own tire and believe me it was not fun. It was cold, it was rainy and changing a brand new tire sucks. After about 30 minutes I finally got my tire changed and we were going to head back. We were towards the end of the ride anyway. So I hope on my bike and PPPSSSSHHHHH AGAIN...what the heck? I don't think I put the tube in correctly and it got pinched somewhere. We ended up having to walk back to her house. Walking in my biking shoes for 15 minutes was not fun at all. I was able to get 10 miles in before my tire incident. Tonight I will go home and try to fix my tire once again, hopefully I can do it right.

THANK YOU Debbie for the donation :o) I am now at $1761.

Swim/Run/Honoree Potluck/Wedding...oh my!

Today was a great workout day. I thought I was going to be dying considering I haven't worked out at all this week because I've been sick. We started out with our swim workout and here is how it went:

100m warm up

Drills# 1-4 (2 times)
Each time we do a drill though it is....kick 25m, drill 25m, swim 25m....so just my drills added up to 600m.

Then we did our main set
2 - 100m, rest 20seconds, 1 - 200m, rest 20 seconds, 3 - 100m, rest 20 seconds, 1 - 300m, rest 20 seconds = 1000m

100m cool down

for a total of 1800m swam this morning. I was feeling pretty good the whole time and it was beautiful outside. The sun came out for us and it wasn't as cold as last week. I do have to admit though I was tired when I got out of the water. It was off to the showers and then our running clothes.

I ran 6 miles today but 2 of those miles were hills. We ran on Moraga Road for a little bit and then made a left hand turn onto Camino Ricardo. Camino Ricardo is a 1 mile hill with a dead end...YIKES. So we had to go up that, turn around, come back down, go back up and come back down again and then run back to the school. The run kicked my booty. I was not prepared for the hill repeats so I didn't have my gels or any water with me. Luckily we had a water stop.

Today we had our Honoree Potluck so when we got back there was lots of yummy food and drinks. I didn't stay long because I had to hurry home and get ready to go to a wedding. I grabbed a turkey sandwich and ate it on my way home....I was starving after that workout. My belly needed some fuel.

Now I'm off to Ms. Monica's wedding (my run team manager) WOOOHOOO. CONGRATULATIONS MONICA & KIEREN.

Honoree - Week #4

Debby Greer-Costello
Stem Cell Transplant Date Scheduled for February 27, 2006

I have taken parts of a blog entry that Deb wrote this week so you can get an idea of what she is going through…to read the complete entry you can go to http://www.debutaunt.com/ and read the entry for February 22, 2006.

I'm Deb. I'm a single mom with a sweet 5 year old named Zoe. I have 6 siblings - 3 brothers and 3 sisters. I'm super tight with them.

On October 21, 2005, I was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia that is Philadelphia Chromosome positive. After that date, I was told that my daughter couldn't live with me any more because of the risk of infection, and that I would have to get admitted to the hospital a lot to get chemo and go to the hospital a lot for outpatient services. She is now living with my Sis #2 and her family.

On Sunday, February 19th, I was admitted to the hospital for a stem cell transplant. It is a serious scary procedure but it is the best treatment for my form of the disease and hopefully will be a complete cure.

A little less than 4000 people in the United States get ALL each year. Most of those people are children. No one knows what causes ALL.

In the meantime, I'm just making observations about what is happening and trying to focus on the positive stuff that could possibly come from this experience and share how much we should appreciate life - everything little and small, joyous, precious, amazing, silly, frustrating and annoying. You can take nothing in life for granted - so choose to enjoy it the best you can with what you have.

I can do this!!!!!

Deb

Deb and her daughter, Zoe

Thank You

Just a little note to say a BIG Thank You to those who donated this week....Amy Ryan, Karen Barnes, Bruce Miller, Lindy Rollo & Tom Stokley....you guys are awesome. I am 55% to my $3000 goal, your donations have brought my total to $1661.00.....waaahoooo.

Boo, hoo....

.....I am sickie :o( so not much to update for this week since I haven't been to any of my workouts. My plan for this week is to rest, rest, rest so I can be back up and running for my workouts this weekend.

Last Saturday was another Coached Workout at Miramonte High School. We started out in the pool for more drills, drills, drills. I am still surprised at how I am progressing on my swimming. I would have never thought that I'd be able to keep up with everyone. I'm pretty happy. We did our drills and then played swimming golf. We had to swim 50m and count each stroke, then swim 50m again and try to lessen the amount of strokes did the first time. We had to do this 5 times. I went from 48 to 40 strokes and that was the lowest I could get it. Then it was out of the pool and into our bike clothes for a 15 mile bike ride. It was FREEZING, remember this was the day that it was snowing in places like Berkeley :o( it was not a fun ride. I was cold the entire time and my feet went numb. I was also a little freaked out during the ride because it was my first time out on a two lane road with traffic driving by me. I managed to do my bike ride and return in one peace....phew!

Holy Smokes

One of my mentees emailed me a question this morning about how many times we were suppose to do the drills so I just responded back to her and wrote out how the workout should have gone last night and HOLY SMOKES I by the time I did my warm up, drills and cool down I did a total of 1700m .....waaahoooo. I did the entire workout :o) and felt awesome. I think I'm beginning to like this swim thing.