April

April, well, it kind of sucked. That's what I had been thinking anyway. I've been composing this post in my head for a good week now. It's always started with that same opening thought. But now that it is over I look over everything, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't all that bad.

The bad, I didn't make any of my time/distance goals I set for myself at the beginning of the month. I missed way to many workouts, including a couple of the big ones. Can't keep doing that. Averaged roughly 10-hours a week, maybe a bit more.

Swimming is coming along, missed hitting the 30k mark in April by 600 yards. I did manage to break 10-minutes for a 500 twice, roughly two weeks apart. First time was 9:59:40. Sub-10 is sub-10, and yes I was wearing my watch. More recently I did it in 9:46. Yeah me! I also did a 11:40 earlier this week, so I'm not getting to excited about it.

The stroke clinic was well worth it. Picked up a couple of things to work on. Body position is ok, catch and pull are weak. Need to work on keeping the elbows up. Haven't swam enough since last Saturday to know what impact it will have long term.

Running is still going strong. Hoped to hit 100-miles for the month, missed it by less than 5. Average pace for the month, including the hellish 20k trail run from last week, 9:17. Double yeah me! There were a couple of individual 10-minute miles sprinkled in, but all my runs in total came in at sub-10. Last April my average pace was 10:35. Big improvement. Looking forward to running the Madison 1/2 marathon at the end of May.

I took the bike off the trainer early in the month and refused to put it back on when the weather turned shitty. As a result I actually rode about 60 miles less than last month, for a grand total of 240 miles. I did get a couple of good long rides in, one loop of the Ironman course earlier in the month, then last week I rode from Madison to Verona and up through Sauk to Devils Lake.

I've resigned myself to the fact that I'm going to have to pony up the dollars and get a proper bike fit. I'm still slower than dirt, actually quite a bit slower than last year at this time even though I have significantly more miles in. I monkeyed with the fit some this winter on the trainer, and now self doubt is really creeping in about everything fit related. I meant to call Chronometro today but totally forgot. If nothing else it will get rid of the mental games going on in my head, at least the fit related ones.

So May is upon us, I hope to start commuting to work by bike regularly. Looking forward to getting in the lakes and out of the pool. Can't forget to keep running. Last May I ran 11.7 miles, total, that can't happen again. Really getting the itch to race, but still nothing on the schedule in the immediate future. Madison 1/2 marathon and I think the first Aquathon of the year. That's it for May.