First Fall Spin and LSD Sunday

...What happened to autosave? Writing this for the second time. :(

Yesterday (Saturday) was the first non-busy weekend we've had in months! I'd finished the deck, built a bench in the garage, got the new shelves built in the basement, and we didn't have any plans. Amazing. But of course this left me with no more excuses, so after dragging myself out of bed, and spending a few hours bumming around, I finally got my bike set up in the basement on the spin trainer.

I used my Real Rides IMC course DVD a few times last winter, including once at a friend's house. I have to say, watching it at eye level is so much better than trying to look at the screen on the floor in front of you. Well, maybe not easier-- in the middle of a tough set, I've usually got my head down-- but it is so much more "realistic". Or at least it encourages me to look where I'm (not) going.

The New Shelves (built from deck scraps!)

The old "TV on the floor" setup. Even Milo the cat questions this.

The spin itself was nothing epic- 1:11, the first DVD in the Penticton set, so they're still going easy on you. But since I haven't been in the saddle since the Calgary 70.3. I'm not sure if it's possible to develop actual calluses *ahem* down there, but after riding consistently for a few months, an hour is no biggie, so there must be some toughening up of some sort that happens. But I'm telling you, two months is apparently enough time to lose that posterior padding. I preferred to stand for the rest of the day.

Sunday morning was the first LSD run of the new Running Room clinic, so it was (only!?) 7km. When I phrase it that way in conversation, I seem to get a lot of "What do you mean ONLY 7k?! That's a lot!", but on the other hand, I know that for any marathoner, 7k is a break. And it's interesting to be kind of in-between those two groups. Although I've run (casually) for many years, I didn't do very much distance, probably 3-5km for most of my runs. I've now done 21.1 + exactly 3 times, with a few training runs that got close. I can't quite yet wrap my head around doing the type of training distance required to do a Marathon, or Ironman, but I know some day I will.

More on those goals in another post-- to summarize this morning's run, it was chilly and foggy, I ran with my pace buddy Richard and two others that I hadn't met before. It always takes me a few times to remember people's names! We set out to do 6:00min /km, doing 10 and 1s... and did pretty well: