Team McAlister

is paved with good intentions, I’m sure.  I really meant to make the open water swim yesterday.  But, I was tired and over-worked, the weather was threatening, and the water nasty. So, I skipped it.  And, the weather was bad this morning, so I missed the Tri Training group ride.  BUT, this afternoon I did get in a nice little 20-mile ride in the first stages of a thunderstorm.  Didn’t get struck by lightning (obviously) and barely got sprinkled by the rain…but I was still leg weary from Thursday’s ride.  It was good to get that in though!

Tags: cycling, Weather

Okay, the weather has stunk!  And, the riding has been confined to elliptical rollers.  But, today the rain broke so I jumped out there for one of the usual 40-milers.  Great roll out…about 20 miles in the first hour.  I hadn’t counted on 100% humidity though, so I was totally under prepared.  No food… dumb.  Plain water… double dumb.  Hit the wall on the return and dark caught up with me… had to be sagged in.  Did I mention that I had to fight with my computer?  My usually reliable Garmin appears to be losing its mind and is practically useless recently.

Tomorrow has a 1000 yard open water lake swim available to the CARVE members that I’m thinking about.  I hear the lake is pretty nasty though.  yuck.

Tags: cycling, Weather

It’s finals time, so not a lot of time to train… Just as well, since it’s about as humid as Swamp Thing’s butt-crease right now. I did manage a 3-mile trot today, but not having run for the past week and a half combined with the humidity made it pretty unpleasant. Weather’s supposed to clear up today and be nice into the foreseeable future so hopefully I’ll make time to get out and enjoy it before leaving for Little Rock.

Tags: running, Weather

Today was my first run on my new running shoes, and MAN does having the right shoes make a difference! I ran (ok, mostly walked) 4.8 miles in 56 minutes. My best mile, I think, was 9:36. I say I think because I used the iPhone app Fitnio to track my run, and I’m not sure exactly what that “9:36 mile” is referring to. Let’s just go with that being my best mile time. The weather is amazing right now, so I’m very glad to have shoes that don’t constrain me to the treadmill.

The shoes are the Saucony Progrid Guide 2. I was pretty set on getting Adidas, since they were my favorites when I sold them, but the Sauconys just fit better. I tried at least one shoe in every brand at Lombardi’s before I made up my mind. Hopefully it was worth the trouble and I’ll be able to run regularly again without fear of injury. Oh, and the best part? My former boss gave me the employee discount. So now I’m sitting on the exercise ball I got with the money I saved!

Tags: equipment, running, shoes, Weather

Never having been a runner, I’m not all that familiar with the attendant injuries. For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to learn to distinguish between all the different sorts of pain that come with this sport. Sure my legs are going to be sore, my calves feel like they’re on fire about 60% of the time now. My upper leg muscles weren’t used to anything more strenuous than walking up a hill or an occasional bike ride. So there’s a certain amount of just shutting up and getting over it that I have to do. But the past few runs have had me worrying. All the info I can find points to shin splints, but fortunately at this point it’s not bad enough to warrant real recovery time.

I’m pretty sure that it’s my shoes’ fault. I’m running on neutral trail shoes when I definitely need at least a stability shoe, more likely a motion control, in the road variety. Maybe this week I’ll hit a few specialty running stores and get gait analyses and shoe advice. Until I can afford new shoes though, I’ll just have to back off on the running and maybe substitute biking. If it would just stop freaking raining all the time I’d put some miles on the ol’ Cannondale, but until that happens I’ll be on the stationary at the gym (ugh). Now’s as good a time as any to start swimming, I suppose, but I want to swim even less than I want to run.

Tags: equipment, injuries, running, Weather

I’m gonna start running again as soon as it stops raining. So like, probably in May or something.

Tags: san francisco, Weather

…my name might be Gimpy.

A day after completing this ridiculous 20-mile run, I’m still a bit stiff and sore.  I’ve got some tightness in my left hip flexor, and my left ankle isn’t feeling too grand either.  Interestingly, both knees are fine, as is the right ankle, which earlier had been giving me trouble.

So, 20 miles.  We’re having this heat wave up here:  55 degrees on Saturday, 56 today, 63 tomorrow!  But yesterday there was a bit of a break in the warmth–it was about 35 degrees with a stiff south wind.  I set out at approximately 2:00 p.m., headed east to the lake, turned north for about three miles, then went back south.  I did this because there’s only one water fountain along the lakefront path that stays on through the winter, and I wanted to hit it about midway through the run to refill my water bottles.  Going south, I reached said fountain at about the eighth mile, and continued south to the Museum Campus, where I turned around and went home.  This divided up the run into four somewhat equal phases.  Map of the run here.

Phase One:  Home to Foster Avenue
Mild stiffness in the left ankle to begin the run.  A slight fear that I’m not wearing enough clothing.  I wear UnderArmor tights, running shorts, a long-sleeved microfiber shirt, running gloves, and my new technical fleece hat.  (This new hat is much, much warmer than the one I lost in Arkansas.)  Also my long-run socks and the new pair of shoes.  Running into the wind without an UnderArmor top, this ensemble is a little chilly.  Some mud on the path at the lakefront, but heading north, the path is mostly clear.  The south wind, at my back, makes this part of the run very easy.  Belmont Harbor is still frozen over, which makes it a little like an air conditioner.  Phases two through four after the jump. Continue Reading »

Tags: Chicago, clothing, equipment, gu, hydration, long run, running, Weather

I know this is not Chicago, but it was 28 degrees out there officially today. I think in the shade by the river (where I was) it was much colder than that. Today was scheduled for an easy 6 miles. I did a moderate, okay maybe it was easy, 5. All I know is that I was freezing at the end as well as in the middle and at the start. I think the new shoes help. I think the training is beginning to help. I think the activity is still ridiculous. Give me a bike any time! It’s been over 4 hours since I finished and I’m still cold. Please tell me that it gets better.

Tags: cycling, fitness, health, running, triathlon, Weather

I bought some new shoes today – New Balance, size 15 (!) with some sort of insole to help with my latter stage pronation (or something like that). To stay on schedule, I needed to complete 12 miles.

So, OK, it’s a nice day – chilly, breezy, and sunny. I forgot my headphones! grrrrrrrrr but otherwise was in good shape with my kit. Did the usual 10 minute walking warm-up. I then alternated running with walking on a 60% running, 40% walking mix. That worked out pretty well, mostly.

So the 12.14 miles took 2:54:32 – it appears that I maintain a pace of about 14:20.

No blisters, just some tender feet and one very black toe nail.

Too sleepy to write more…crash…

Tags: equipment, running, shoes, Weather

This morning, as I was out for my 8-mile run (27 degrees; 1:13:24), I saw something that I’ve never seen during a Chicago winter.  Around North Avenue, at the place where, in the summer, older men gather to play chess, I saw two guys walking towards me.  They were wearing wetsuits and full scuba gear, and were dripping with water.  They were a bit red in the face, which isn’t surprising, because, unless they had been diving in a snowbank, they had just emerged from Lake Michigan.

At this point, I would like aver that at no point during the future years of triathlon training will I go swimming in Lake Michigan when the air temperature is below 32 degrees.

Tags: Chicago, crazy people, Lake Michigan, running, Weather

It was a beautiful day here in Chicago — clear skies, not too much wind, and a balmy 18 degrees.  After what seemed like a grueling 8 mile pace run yesterday, I overslept and didn’t get to start my long run today as early as I’d planned.  But when I finally hit the road about 2:00, the air was crisp, and all engines were go.

Surprisingly, most of the lakefront path has been cleared of snow, so the bulk of my run was really quite easy.  There was, of course, this one mile, from around Oak Street south to Navy Pier (see map), where Lake Michigan likes to vomit itself up onto the path — it was about 8 inches deep in snow and ice, and very difficult going.  When I passed Navy Pier (Mile 6), the big sign there told me it was 16 degrees.  Around the Museum Campus there was a poorly marked detour, because a bunch of the path is being rebuilt, and I got lost for a little bit.  Of course, I got lost again on my way back, and the map I attach I think only approximates what actually happened down around there.  When I hit Navy Pier again on the way back (Mile 12), the temperature was down to 11 degrees.

The last four miles or so, I was running into the wind, and it was starting to get dark.  I thought my face was going to freeze.  In my final mile, when I re-enter the city streets, I had a couple unfortunate run-ins with pedestrians, a few of whom were walking dogs.  After two and a half hours of running, one doesn’t want to break pace because others are mindlessly taking up the whole of a sidewalk, unaware of what is going on around them.  In any case, I dug in, gritted my teeth, and shuffled on home.  My total time:  2:43:02.  Split times after the jump.

Map of today’s run

Continue Reading »

Tags: Chicago, Lake Michigan, long run, running, snow, Weather

Jett's car, with snow

My week in training was going so well.  On Monday, I swam a mile–the first time I’d ever gone that far.  Granted, I’m slow, and have to take a lot of pauses, and have terrible form, but I made it through 72 lengths of the pool.

Yesterday, as the Arctic blasts were beginning to hit us, I hit the treadmill for a quick 4-miler, and did some upper-body stuff in the weight room after that.  (The run took exactly 37:02, for those of you who care about that sort of thing.)

Today, I was scheduled to do 8 miles.  But four more inches of snow, contributing to what is now a 15-inch snowpack, made my car quite impossible to move. Continue Reading »

Tags: Chicago, Weather