February 10, 2010

I had to laugh as I walked out of my apartment this morning around 5:00 a.m.: no snow on the ground whatsoever. Smart move, I thought, thinking of New York City's seemingly premature decision to close public schools for the day. However, the D. of E. had the last laugh, as you all must know; the blizzard kicked in while we were in the pool.

The Big Snow Day yielded a much smaller Full Throttle force than usual--maybe 20 people in all. But those of us who showed turned in the requisite swim speed workout followed by one on the track. The swim featured 15 x 75 meters, broken into sets of 5 with 20 seconds rest between each 75 but then a minute's rest between sets. Then we did a 200 steady followed by 2 x 50 hard on the 1:00. The trick is to pull off that second 50. After that it was 10 x 100 pull (alternating easy and solid), although our lane #3 only managed to fit in only 8.

The track speed work was 4 x 800 with a 200 recovery after each. It was lonely without Tommy and Bobby, but I managed to pull off the 4 in 3:08, 3:09, 3:02, 3:03. Between my half mile warm-up (too much hot tub to fit in the full mile), the 800s and recovery, and a mile cool-down, I put in 4 miles on the track. Then I did a very easy 3 on the treadmill for a total of 7 for the day.

In the evening I did Chris Griffin's hour-long spin class at Equinox along with Stuart and our pal--currently of Terrier Tri--Neil Brenner. That session included 20 minutes of rollers, then one 10-minute climb out of the saddle followed by a 30-minute climb out of the saddle. Glad not to be spinning tomorrow morning. Despite all the snow, I'm hoping to put in a lap of Central Park tomorrow morning. We'll see. . .