Claire is 23 weeks old and is quite the joy. She's starting to hold onto things and likes being rolled around and really enjoys pullups and bicycles. She is smiling non-stop.
Claire decided to invest in her education and bought some books this week. Her favorite by far is Skippyjon Jones. Actually, that's my favorite one to read so it's now her favorite too. My neice, Savannah, was repeating the words to this book while we were in Clearwater and now I actually know what she was talking about.
New training partner :: I ran with Jordan Kinley on Sunday for the first time and the pace was perfect along with some great conversation. Time flew by on the run and I hope we'll be able to push each other in the upcoming months. I won't be much help to him in workouts right now but can fill in the gaps on some medium to long runs where the pace isn't too hot. He's a rep for a vast product line including Karhu shoes, Craft apparel, NUUN, Fuel Belt, etc. On top of that.......he wins every race on the local circuit. I always think it's best to surround yourself with top performers in any field whether it be sports, work, etc.
Steve did a lot of work this week so all we had to do when I got there on Sunday was to hang all of the joists. This took from about 10am until 5pm and I was a bit dehydrated from the run so I was on the edge of cracking at any moment. We got it knocked out though and hope to be completely done by the end of next weekend.
Above is Jen's 10 year anniversary gift. Jen has had her eye on the Volvo SUV for quite some time and we have our 10 year anniversary coming up at the tail end of the month so I put my viewpoints aside and took one for the team with this purchase. I'm not all that big into materialistic things and for the most part neither is Jen so this went against the grain for us. It was quite a challenge for me to buy something that is expensive, heavily depreciates and just gets you from point A to point B. Since it will be a company vehicle the tax savings made it more appealing. On top of that, a wise woman (Jen) once told me that a happy wife is a happy life.
RUNNING RECAP:
* 31 mi running (6:37 pace ave) :: 3 hrs 23 mins
* 60 mi cycling :: 3 hrs 9 mins
* Total Aerobic: 6 hrs 33 mins
This week was a scheduled down week to ensure that my legs recover before the next increase. I'm continuing my climb to 60 miles/week with 3 hrs of cycling and am keeping everything pretty easy. I did an aerobic assessment on Thursday where I run 3 miles @ 160 bpm and take the average of my last two miles to guage my aerobic development. It's a short and easy method to guage development any day of the week. I was 15 seconds faster per mile during this assessment (6:01 pace) than the last assessment (6:16 pace) on June 30th. I'm still looking for this assessment to drop down between 5:40-5:45 pace before I get started with any kind of real workouts. Once I can hold that pace without an increase in HR for 10 miles I will bump my efforts up to 170 bpm and add in some neuromuscular workouts to work the turnover.
My notable sessions from this week were the aerobic assessment on Thursday, the Saturday Morning Shootout and my Sunday run with Jordan.