The Bionic Woman...

Today was most definitely a triathlon day....I swam...I biked...I ran....I am now one very tired princess triathlete, haha.

First off was the swim. We did a 400 m warm up, then went into a kick drill. The purpose of the kick drill was to stay on our sides and reach slowly as if we were going to do the pull of the stroke, but not pull and bring our hands back. Amazingly enough I could actually do this - although I must admit at the time I wasn't sure! After we'd done 50 m of this Jen asked if I could demonstrate to the class how it was done. Why yes, yes of course I can, I said with a great big grin across my face!! Go ahead and say it.....KEENER, KEENER. haha. We did 50 m more of this drill using fins...then it was on to 50 m sprints.

We did the following 50 m sprints 5 x 1:15, 4 x 1:12, 3 x 1:05, 2 x 1:00 minutes. I was pretty happy with my swimming because I was completing 50 m in under 50 seconds. This was pretty consistent throughout. On our last 50 m we were to go all out and breathe every 5 strokes...my time was 44 seconds. I worked hard and it was a great swim!

After work I headed to the Human Performance Lab at the University. My friend Lisa is conducting a study for a running shoe company. What do I have to do? Well, the first thing was a threshold test to find out my lactate threshold. Next I'll do a one hour run at that threshold level (so basically run at my 10 k race pace). I'll do that one more time, but with the fancy new sneakers! (Yes, I get new sneakers....there has to be SOME incentive, haha.)

Tonight was my threshold test. I ran for 10 minutes to warm up, then put on my bionic woman attire. I had a harness that had a battery pack and some sort of thingymajig (yes, I know, very technical) that recorded stuff and transmitted it to the computer. Along with that I had on an oxygen mask whatchamacallit. Damn I looked fine! A good thing too as there was a rather handsome fellow that kept walking past the treadmill...

Lisa had started me off at a pace of 5.2 miles/hr, it then went up in 0.3 increments every 2 minutes. There was a very nice woman helping out. Her job was to count down the last 10 seconds then increase the speed. It was pretty funny cause she had this wonderful German or Swiss accent and would say '3, 2, 1 and now we go up!'. haha. Perhaps you had to be there. As the pace got harder, the 'now we go up' got even funnier. I will add that I was not laughing however, I was concentrating very hard on the little Buddha statue on a desk nearby as I ran my tush off!! I think I stopped after doing a 7.0 mile/hr pace. I was pretty comfortable, but it was getting hard.

Once I finished my run test I rushed over to the tri shop for IronGreg's spin class. Tonight's class involved a 20 minute time trial...also known as ANOTHER threshold test, haha. We did some one legged spinning, then speed ups, etc. After a couple of 3 minutes steady state intervals it was time for the test! Woohoooo!

I actually have never done this before so was looking forward to it. My legs however, weren't so sure... I got into a gear I figured I could handle for 20 minutes and started pedaling. At first my legs felt tired, then they felt uncomfortable, then I didn't feel a heck of a lot...haha. I have to say it all went pretty quickly, every two minutes IronGreg would ask for our heart rates and cadence. In all honesty I am way too tired to remember what I started out at...but I do know I held the gears and my cadence at 90 and my heart rate got to 157.

Needless to say it was a very, very long day...but a productive one!!!

I think this day calls for a great big HOOOOYAAAAH!!! I AM a bionic woman. tee hee.