Posted by Mark on March 29, 2005

World of WarKrak

I am really enjoying World of Warcraft. I played last night for a little bit and I am litterally >< that close from hitting level 32. I need to get to level 34 in order to get the spell "levitate". Basically I think they threw this in a s a gimic, however I have heard you can use the spell to climb mountains. If that is the case then it will open a whole new aspect of the game for me. I really find it annoying that I can't get to places like the Goblin Airfield and the top of Ironforge.

Last night I was dorking around in the Shimmering Flats, a raceway for rocket-cars in Thousand Needles. Some ore, a few good quests. I could NOT hit 32 though…

Tonight I am playing hookey from training and going to see Peter Reid at my local tri-club. I have been a fan of his for years, we’ll see what he’s like in person.

Posted by Mark on March 28, 2005

A tough weekend…

Friday night:

I ended up doing a 1:20 run, leveling up every 20 minutes as per my coach wrote in the workout plan, however I needed to take a cool-down between cycles to get my heart rate back down before I spiked it up again. It was a good hard workout.

Saturday’s bike:

There was a ton of snow on the ground and it was freezing, so I decided to do a trainer workout which was 5.5 hours as per my schedule. constant effort, slowly amping up the stress then backing it back down again. Two breaks for more fluids, good heart rate, lots of sweat, and several movies. I bought the Incredibles, as well as volume 5 of “Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex”. I watched a couple of movies, but the big news is that I figured out how to play World of Warcraft while riding. I’m going to get a couple of devices, and develop straps so I can play while spinning. Spinning is boring as hell.

My current running pace is 12’s, can boost to 10’s for a short period, sub 9’s for ~1-2 minutes. As a benchmark, I have run a 5k at sub 8’s, but that was anerobic the entire time @ sea level a couple of years ago. I think I threw up at the end.

Sunday my legs felt . It took me about a half hour to get them warmed up to the point where I didn’t feel like my hips were simply throwing them in front of me. I now totally agree with the “run on sunday” logic. The basic premise is that if you ride on Saturday you run on Sunday with tired legs. This is SERIOUSLY true.

I took 3L of fluids (gatoraid endurance formula, ie. seawater) with me in the cammelback, and managed to bang back 2 liters on the actual run. I wanted to take the large resevoir (I have a 2l and a 3l) because I would like to use it on super long runs/ultra races, and want the max amount of fluids possible. I also want to use the cammelback at Ironman because I don’t trust the formulation of fluids they’ll have. I’ll put pre-measured baggies of GEF in my needs bags so I should be able to mix it on the fly with water at the aid stations. Having fluids I know have what I need (sodium!) will go a long way to making my life easier.

All in all a great week. I’m on call this week, which means that my workouts are going to be complex. I have heard that you can maintain your fitness with shorter distances at extremely high intensity (Tim Sheeper told me this) so that might be a good idea for the runs- Short distance but high intensity, a-la the treadmill in my garage. The bike trainer is gonna be my friend this week.