Turning off the Frontage Road and on to the on Ramp

That's where I am now. I'm not quite on that highway, the Road to IM CDA 09, but I'm on the on ramp. After a welcome break I'm starting to ramp up the training a bit. Making sure I make it to yoga 2x week, getting on the treadmill (or outside when it's not in the single digits) and starting back on the trainer
Here's the form that has gotten me to this point. I hooked up with Larry and Sophie at The Fix Studio and have a new position. I don't have a photo of it yet. Here's the scoop, raised the seat (increasing leg angle to 141), lowered the bars (hip angle down to 98.8), shortened the cockpit (elbow angle down to 90.1). It's slightly more aggressive, but also more efficient as my upper arm should carry more weight instead of back and lats. I've ridden it a couple of times and it seems good. If you really want to see the new position send me an email. I can send you a file and a viewer and you can see it in motion. I can almost feel the excitement.

I'm anxious to get on the Computrainer but that will have to wait until next week, once we get back from Rockford.

Minneapolis Marathon - I've signed up to run the Minneapolis Marathon 1/2 on May 31. I'm scheduled for a 2 hr 40 minute run that weekend so I may have to run to the start or something. Brian, accross the street has also registered and I think NS Rob too.

Have a great Christmas and may achieve all your race goals in the new year (or at least learn from missing them).

Better Late Than Never . . . Maybe

So my sister Tracy, and the rest of my mom's side of the family (the Tracy Tribe) came into town for Thanksgiving weekend plus. I dubbed it our clown car Thanksgiving since our little story and a 1/2 house wasn't really designed for having 14 for dinner and lodging. We stashed half of them up at the lake and kicked Zman and JRose upstairs to the Doc's and my room.

Anyhow, I told Tracy she was going to have to run the Turkey Day 5k with me. It was surprisingly easy to convince her - especially when compared to the arm twisting it took to get her to do the run leg of the Rockman 1/2 IM with Team Lack of Enthusiasm (thus the name).

I even found this sweet hat online to get ready for it.

We had no idea what we were getting into. Sure Lifetime had several packet pick up opportunities, but we don't live by a Lifetime (and I didn't want a Friends episode type sales pitch).

We left the house 50 minutes before the race. It takes about 5 minutes to get downtown so we had 45 minutes to pick up our packets and warm up by jogging to the start. WRONG!

Downtown was a zoo. The Target Center was packed. They were out of shirt sizes XS, S, M, XL, XXL. This was on the level for pre-registration. It's hard to figure how you run out of shirts for pre-registered athletes, but they did.

We ended up getting to the line about 12 minutes after the start. That was far enough back to be behind ALL of the walkers, dogs, and strollers. I've never passed so many people in a race. We quickly abandoned running together. It was every runner for themselves trying to negotiate the crowd. Tracy and I were running about the same for the first 2 1/2 miles. At that point I started to get a little tired and wasn't willing to dive for every opening in the crowd. Tracy left me behind.



















I thought I'd include this pick of us before Childress finally found someone he could out coach. Lovie - you've tried 3 times from the 1. Take the 3 points on the road to go up 7. Oh well, at least now it looks like the Queens will be saddled with Chilly for another year.