June

June started off well, with a half-marathon in the San Juan Islands. I went there with Lauren and her co-workers as part of a fund-raiser for School's Out Washington. It was pretty fun. The race itself was actually 1.5 miles too long. They didn't measure out the distance correctly and several people with GPS watches were complaining after the race.

When Lauren told the race director about the discrepancy, he just said "Yeah, I knew it was a little long." Weird, huh? For many people, a half-marathon is the longest, hardest thing they have ever done and the least you could do is drive the course once with your car and get the friggin distance right. I finished in around 1:50 and felt pretty good about the race. Since then, however, I have become pretty bored with running. I tried, I really tried, but in the end running is just not that fun. The "runner's high" is still miles below basketball, surfing, snowboarding, climbing and all the other sports.

For biking, we came up with a new system this month. As you will see below, we tried to ride 30 miles on Wednesday, 20 miles on Thursday and then a long ride on the weekend. This idea came from an article we read in an outdoors magazine about an ironman triathlete who trains each week by doing an "iron-week", or the distance of an ironman each week. I think our system has worked pretty well, except we are now bumping up the mileage a little.

We found an incredible biking trail in Idaho. It is part of the "rails to trails" program that turns old train tracks into bike paths. The Burke Gilman trail in Seattle is actually part of this program. The trail is 70 miles long, curves through the forest and around lakes, and basically dominates all other biking routes. Stay away, it is our turf, and we urinated along the whole route to advertise this fact.


My swimming has fallen a little this month. Or a lot. The emphasis on the bike, our trips to Seattle and my new job have taken their toll. I hope to bump this up again after the STP July 15th. Oh, that's right, I have a new job. I am working with a summer camp program at the local elementary school. I basically go on field trips and play sports with young teens. It is fine, except it pays pennies and my "sub" position has morphed into a daily routine. Oh, the things I do when the savings start to fade.
















Training Schedule:
June 1st 5.5 mile run
2 rest
3 1/2 marathon at San Juan Islands
4 rest
5 1.5 mile swim at Eastern
6 30 mile bike Palouse
7 20 mile bike Palouse
8 1hr swim
9 45 min run
10 50 mile bike
11 rest
12 6 mile run/ 1.5 mile swim
13 30 mile bike
14 20 mile bike
15 Bloomsday course 7.5 miles
16 1.5 hrs tennis
17 60 mile bike
18 rest
19 1hr swim/ 1:15 run
20 30 mile bike
21 1hr bike
22 50 min run
23 1hr swim
24 42 mile bike
25 rest
26 52 mile bike
27 rest
28 1.5 mile swim/ 45 min bike
29 missed workout (driving back to Spokane)
30 52 mile bike