Oh my aching quads...

I'm hobbling around like an old woman tonight.

"Well you are an old woman," you may be thinking.

Bitch.

So anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, I'm abnormally aware of my quads right about now. In large part because of the insane workouts I've done over the last two days. Not insane by say Ironman training standards but pretty insane for me.

Yesterday, I had six 1/2 mile repeats on the schedule. Now knowing that I would never in a million years do 1/2 mile repeats on my own, I headed down to the weekly TriGirl run at the ungodly hour of 6 a.m. That's two days in a row of pre-dawn wake up, in case you're counting. Which I am.

Thank goodness Megan was there and she was doing the repeats too. We commiserated for a bit - long enough for some other TriGirls to join us in our pain. Liz, Megan and I ended up doing them together. Which translated into them taking off like a shot and me trailing behind.

I've only done repeats once before which is pretty pathetic considering how many times they've been on my schedule. I thought they were for speed work, but yesterday I was told (possibly seriously) that they are designed to get you used to feeling like you're going to throw up. I totally believe it.

So yesterday my times were 3:34, 3:45, 3:33, 3:34, 3:33, 3:45. My interval goal based on a timed mile is 3:35 so I'm meeting it at least some. I had a little consistency problem on the 2nd and last ones though.

This weekend is the last long workout weekend before I start tapering somewhat for Luray, but I had to get it in today. Fortunately, Annnn agreed to join me. Otherwise, I suspect I may have come up with excuses to skip. My goal today was to bike 40 and run 6 miles.

We planned to start at West Creek and cut through Cap One to do Cyndi's loop, but Annn wisely pointed out that we may not be able to loop Cap One given that it is a work day. We opted to meet at my house instead and decided to wing it a bit.

We started heading west on Broad Street, which I later learned struck terror in Annn's heart. She was a trooper though. We next made the truly scary mistake of turning onto 623. It was a nightmare, full of huge semis and construction trucks with an interstate exchange thrown in for good measure. I was seriously worried. We finally made it to a turn option and grabbed the road less travelled. Whew!!! From there, we rode part of Cyndi's route then headed back to my house for a total of 23 miles together.

Thank you, Annn! It was great to ride with you, even though you were hurling profanity and wishing for my immanent demise the entire time. Ha!

Have I mentioned lately how cool Annn is?

After Annn left, I had a hard time motivating myself to get back out there. Temperatures were in the mid-90s with lots of humidity thrown in for good measure. My kids gave me little choice though - they told me I stunk and that I had to either finish my workout or get in the shower, pronto. Reluctantly, I crawled back on my bike.

The rest of the ride was relatively unremarkable. I didn't almost die and I had no fun company. I finished slightly over 40 miles at an average pace of 16.2 mph.

After another lengthy stretch of procrastination, I changed into fresh clothes and started running. Initially I planned to run 6 miles. About a mile in, I was seriously questioning why I do this. It was so not fun anymore. I started bargaining with myself... I could trade today's six for one of the four milers coming up next week. Yeah, that's it - I'll run four. By 1 1/2 miles, I started thinking I was majorly deranged. What kind of lunatic runs in the middle of the day in August in Virginia? Final results: three miles, 9:36/mi average speed.

Upon returning home, I ate everything in the house then took the longest cold shower ever. I contemplated a nap at that point but sadly didn't have time after almost four hours of working out.

I am so looking forward to a rest day tomorrow. And other than the aching quads, I feel pretty darn good.