Back to Blogging!

Well I’ve been getting back into a training routine the past few weeks (mostly), however not so much with the blogging (obviously).  But one step at a time I suppose.

It has been awesome exploring our new neighborhood through training.  I will say that The Hubster definitely should win an award for finding the best place to live up here.  We live about a quarter mile from a great park with 8+ miles of paved trails winding through woods, grassland, and around a small lake

We also live just a couple miles from a different lake with a beach/swimming area.  Perfect distance for a short warm-up ride before a swim.  I even met a couple of fellow triathletes there my first time out a couple weeks ago.

I have been trying to find a good spot to ride.  This city is incredibly bike friendly; however there are a lot of stop lights and intersections that like to slow down a ride. I feel like as soon as I get a good pace going I’m putting on the brakes.  Just means more exploring to be done.

Yesterday I got a great swim in at the beach. The weather has been unbelievable.  Perfect puffy white clouds.  Mid-seventies.  Calm breeze.  So amazing.  I have definitely missed Minnesota summers… We won’t discuss winters yet…

The Lake.

Yesterday’s swim consisted of 12 laps.  I’m going to guess they were about 100 yard laps? Not positive of the distance.  But I split it up into two laps, four laps, three laps, two laps, and one lap.  On the last lap I swam out to the floating raft to get a quick dive in and swam back into shore.  The water is so clear that I can see the bottom even where it’s five feet deep. This also means that I can see all of the sunfish hanging out at the weed line. Too bad there’s no fishing allowed in the beach area…

 

I did go fishing on the other side of the lake a couple weeks ago, and I made the mistake of looking up what types of fish are in the lake today… I was thinking some sunnies and a few bass.  But did not expect to find that there are Northern pike and Muskies.  Makes swimming through the tall weeds a little less than ideal.  But I’ll try to choke down my fears next time I go.  I always have to whisper to myself that the fish are more scared of me than I am of them…

Caught some whoppers!

Today, I went for a three mile run.  It was rough.  My right leg felt sluggish and a little tight, which made my left knee start to hurt afterwards (probably because I was partially favoring my right).  The run itself wasn’t very exciting.  Ran through the park with the pupper. Had to walk a couple of times but kept a decent pace.  It definitely did not feel as good as the 5-mile run I did last week though. Hoping for a better long run later in the week as long as my knee feels better.

Post 5-mile run last week.

I’m going to call it a win after doing a seven mile hike with the Hubster this weekend during our camping trip for our anniversary. Talk about some good cross training!

On a side note, my summer vacation is getting cut a bit short because I got a job!  I found out a few weeks ago but don’t start until mid-July.  I’m pretty ecstatic about the timeline.  It’ll give me just enough time to feel like I got a summer break, get bored out of my mind, and then go back to work.  I haven’t had any teaching seminars to keep me busy this summer, so I’ve been feeling a little lost on what to do with my time.  You’d think that would have led to a lot of training, but really it just led to a lot of Netflix.

I’m hoping to get back into regular blogging now that we’re getting a little more settled and into a routine.  I finally picked two more races, too.  One in July, and one in September.  Feels good to get a couple more on the calendar.