Hitting the Trails

Hello November.  You know what that means, right?  It's time to HIT THE TRAILS. That's exactly what G and I did this weekend.  We drove out to Durham Forest on Saturday morning and joined the tons of other people that thought mountain biking was a good idea.  It was a heck of lot nicer this time around then the last time I was out there.  And I'm proud to say that I felt much more confident and comfortable on the trails than I did last year.  I'm chalking that up to riding with Morning Glory this summer.  I still had a bit of trouble on some of the more technical single track spots but all in all, I'm really happy with the way I rode.  We were out for an hour and 20 minutes.  My legs were pretty tired by the end of it.  But it was absolutely perfect out.

Perfect day to be out!

G showing me how it's done!

Afterwards we went to Running Free because I wanted to try on a pair of Altra running shoes.  I'm thinking a lot of my issues are stemming from a few things that aren't working they way they should.  My feet being one of them - in particular my big toes.  They don't flex or splay the way they should and I know when I run I tend to curl them a bit.  I've been working on my toe flexibility for the last few weeks and I've heard nothing but good things about these shoes and how they're supposed to be very good for your feet.  I ended up buying the Torin 2.0.  I haven't taken them out yet but I suspect that will happen this week given the nice warm temps we're supposed to see mid week.  After Running Free, we went to our local bike shop and I got some new pedals for my mountain bike.  I was using egg beaters but I found them really difficult to clip into so I've switched to Shimanos.  We'll see how I like those.  Hopefully they're a bit easier to get in and out of.  It was almost 4 pm by the time we got home.  That made for a long and fairly expensive day.   Saturday night we had a ton of kids come by the house for Halloween.  It was the busiest 90 minutes ever, ha ha.

Sunday I finally made it back to a Sunday swim at the pool.  I actually managed to get 3000m in.  In the afternoon, I hopped on the bike and tried out one of the Watts Up Cycling, home based workouts.  I haven't quite figured out the ERG mode on my computrainer so I'm not sure I did it right but it's been explained to me now so when I get back on the bike on Tuesday, I'll do it correctly.  Stay tuned for a review of this program!

I had a pretty full week of workouts.  I'm slowly building things up again.  My back is feeling better.  Lots of ART work has helped but the knots are pretty deep so I think I need a few more treatments before it's back to it's normal state.

This is what I got up to last week:

Monday:  2000m swim.  The main set was on a certain pace time (1:50/100m) and I consistently came in around 1:35/100m.  It wasn't easy but I'm pretty pleased with this given my lack of speed work in the pool. 
Tuesday:  45 minute strength session
Wednesday:  2100m swim in a.m.  1:05 ride in the p.m.  Started watching the Hunger Games Catching Fire- so good!
Thursday:  60 minute strength session
Friday:  OFF
Saturday:  1h 20 minutes of mountain biking
Sunday:  3000m swim + 90 minutes on the bike.

Total time:  8h 23 minutes.  All the riding was done at an easier pace.  With the exception of the mountain biking.  It's impossible not to spike your heart rate when you're on the trails!

Have you ever tried mountain biking?  How are you changing things up in your off season?