Felled by the Death Cold and Shin Splints!

Argh!!! December has NOT been my month. First after a long ride, we went on a run. I felt horrible on the run as my legs were not in shape for running after biking but I tried to keep up with the others. I ran in a rain gutter (to allow the person I was running with to run on flat ground). Big mistake. Unfortunately doing that meant I exacerbated a previous injury from two years ago and according to Dr. Rabbetz I have shin splints!! Ugh. I am not the biggest fan of running but when you can't run, you miss it. (Always want what you can't have. :-)

Then I got the death cold. Two weeks later I went back to the gym for the first time. Impressive feat I must say. First time I ever hit a max heart rate doing lunges! Here is to hoping January will be a healthier month all around!

Cycling in December

December already and two months of training down. Today was a 2.5 hour bike ride lead by Coach Alex around the San Pablo Reservoir. It was a beautiful ride and thanks to the skills and patience of Mr. Doug Li who has been taking such good care of my bike and all of the components that go along with it, I had a smooth ride with only two instances of the chain falling off. (Unfortunately since Doug just brought the bike to the shop to get tuned up, I could no longer blame the chain falling off to anything but operator error). And, even more impressive, no problem getting my feet in or out of the clips!

After riding up gently sloping and slightly grueling hills (which I am sure I will look back at and laugh at in the spring after many more bike practices), we had hill repeats. This comprised of riding up and down a hill until the last person of our riding group caught up to us. This meant I went up and down about 5 times. Throughout the trips up and down I noticed my speed decreasing with each additional climb until the last one when we saw the last person of the group which was a beautiful sight and gave me an extra burst of energy to quickly climb the hill. One thing I noticed is that I need to learn is how to go downhill. It sounds easy...just point your bike downhill and go. But unfortunately for me, there appears to be some skill involved which I need to learn since I can climb well but as for the downhill, not so impressive.

Tomorrow is our first bay swim. Heard the water was a nice 54 degrees!