Basically it was a mental health day: life and work stress running fairly high (the work stress primarily because I'm hardly making any time to do any work, not because of anything intrinsically challenging!), last night I was in total mental overload - but it turned out that taking today for exercise with friends was totally the way to go. Best of all, I feel like I renewed my triathlon commitment - one thing that's on my mind has been that while it's no tragedy if I don't do the SOS race, I really do want to do it, it's my favorite race ever and it makes a lot of sense to me to spend about 3 months every year training for something like that. (At least it makes sense for now - may reconsider this in future.)
So I had a date to ride with Joanna in Prospect Park, and I haven't been on a bicycle in NYC since September, and the DREAD had just built up - I tried to weasel my way out of it this morning on the basis of light rain, but fortunately Joanna didn't let me off the hook! And of course it was then REALLY nice - nice to see her and catch up a bit, but also riding midday PP is pretty relaxing (barring some wayward young people doing irresponsible things!). So that really took the edge off, I feel like I officially rechristened my bicycle and rendered it usable by me. My IT band was pronging on the hill (need to tweak cleat placement on the shoe, it's clearly much askew) so I called it after not too much more than an hour - it must have been four loops (five loops? maybe - anyway that is either about 13 miles or about 16?). I HAVE NO BIKE FITNESS, I note - huffing and puffing going up the very small hill! That's because I have hardly been to a spin class since Joanna left, and haven't even been running hills either. Good reminder of what I should be doing - if there's no spin instructor currently doing hill-based workouts, I should just do them on my own at the gym as it suits me, on top of whatever outdoor riding I can manage - that has served me well in the past.
Had brought one change of (exercise) clothes as it wasn't clear that it would make sense to go home before going to powerlifting at 5 (I live far uptown), and indeed I decided to just take the train from Grand Army Plaza to Chambers St. and ride up the greenway to Chelsea Piers.
Had a very short swim - needed to finish up so that I could eat proper food and digest in time for powerlifting: 600 as 200 swim, 200 kick, 2 x 100 drill-swim by 25 (front scull, finger drag) - was still feeling quite keen to swim up to 1000 at least, but as I said, the thought of digestive intervals made me get out.
Had DELICIOUS hot entree at the cafe (they have one or two every day, not always appealing, but this one was exactly what I like - roast chicken breast with roast potatoes and broccoli rabe with chickpeas!). Digested. Met my friend B. who has become interested in powerlifting recently as well and brought him to SQUATS day.
And it was super! B. got some good tips from Josh, but the more amazing thing is that my squat has just suddenly come together! Still MUCH to work on of course, but I feel far more optimistic - this thing is actually HAPPENING.....
1+hr riding
600 yards swim
1hr lower body
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