The Road to Nationals

Hey followers! So, we’re obviously not doing too great with posting every day…  but I’ll make sure we include everyday’s workout at least. We started this blog three weeks ago, yay! That means we’ve got 6 weeks until nationals (whoa!) 1 week until the first sprint conference race of the season, 2 until the first olympic… everything’s coming up so fast! Anyway, on to our workouts:

Morgan:

Wednesday: off

Thursday: 4 mile run

Friday: off

Totals: S: 4,700 yards B: 66 miles, 2 hours spin R: 16 miles

Shannon:

Wednesday: 27 miles with Caitlin and Nick. Really strong headwind, and they got me to pull for a good while. Overall I averaged around 18-19, but Rickenbacker causeway was killer, as always.

Thursday: I thought Tuesday’s swim was good, Thursday’s was great! Leigh came to swim practice for the first time and did awesome. Amanda joined us part of the way through, and we did mostly intervals of 100’s, 200 pulls, lots and lots of kicks, and then 10 50’s on 1 minute… which was killer. Brian called for us and kept us from stopping, and I managed to keep up with Amanda the whole time, which was awesome!

Friday: off day

Saturday: 3 mile run at 1pm = really, really hot, which really slowed me down. I was trying to get reaccustomed to running in the wonderful Florida heat for some of the upcoming races. I’m planning on a long run tomorrow night because I definitely need some of those!

Totals: S: 13,100 yards B: 176 road miles, 3 hours spin R: 24.5 miles

Song of the Day: Danza Kuduro, Don Omar

I’m going to leave the last post there, because Morgan seems to need that for her self-esteem. I did the whole workout, and she did 100 more yards ( and looked like a frog. I just want to remind everyone that I’ve been putting in the yards all along- let’s look at our totals here. So here’s the real blog for today, since Morgan seems to be incapable of that ;)

Morgan: Sunday: rest day

Monday: I think she went to the gym or something.

Tuesday: swim practice, 2700 yards

Totals: S: 4700 yards B: 66 miles, 2 hours spin R: 12 miles

Shannon:

Sunday: rest day, I could barely move after 122 miles.

Monday: track workout! I wrote this on my other blog, so here’s about that workout:

I’m not sure what it was, but tonight I was flying. My normal pace buddy didn’t show up (again) leaving me with the option of running by myself or trying to pace with one of the guys. The goal times for each set go by your 10k time, and the slowest guy there had a 10k time of 42 minutes, while at my best I’ve run a 56. So, by myself sounded good. Until Ryan decided I was going to be his pace buddy, because he didn’t want to be alone. “So, 1:44s sound good?” [this was for the first pace, max 02 pace, going by a training chart. I’m supposed to run the first 3 400’s at 2:17] “Sounds good for you, I’ll meet you on the rest interval.”

So we take off. And I keep up with him. How, I have no idea. I ran wayyy below my suggested pace the whole time, averaging 1:40-1:50. Ryan got hurt, so I ran the rest bouncing between Holly, Meghan, and the other guys.

Tuesday: 2,600 swim with Morgan and Amanda- we did all the sprints, and heard the 10 second call on every 25- meaning we did all of them in less than 20 seconds. It was awesome!

Totals: S: 10,300 yards B: 149 road miles, 3 hours spin R: 21.5 miles ( I really need some more run miles)

Song of the Day: Pretty Girl Rock, Keri Hilson

I swam more than Shannon today

Just thought you guys should know

<3 Morgan

(Shannon is gonna come back and change this)

Hey Y’all-

Whatcha guys doing?  Shannon and I are writing our first co-blog since Day 1 so we are very excited! We took Thursday and Friday off [Shannon did to study, and Morgan was feeling sick, although Morgan seems to think she did something, she just can’t remember] for an epic adventure to Key Largo yesterday.

Our adventure to Key Largo was with Brian, Nick and David.  Basically, we rode 60 miles there, stopped for lunch and then rode 60 miles back.  Tragically, Morgan did not finish.  She made it to Kay Largo and on the way back her knees gave up.  Although I/Morgan would like to point out that I had a cold all week, just learned how to use clip-in pedals the day before, and had never ridden further than 14 miles before this ride. 

All said and done, the ride went well and we are both glad that we did it.

Morgan: I rode.  That is all.

Totals: S: 2000 yards B: 66 miles, 2 hours spin R: 12 miles

Shannon: I had an awesome time on the ride! The way back totally kicked my ass. For the first 30 miles back we averaged about 20mph, which is much faster than I’m used to. The next 20 after that were slower because of annoying stoplights, but the last 10 were super fast as well. I got extremely burned (some awesome tan lines!) and got an amazing workout. It was awesome!

Totals: S: 7,700 yards B: 149 road miles, 3 hours spin R: 17.5 miles

song of the day: “Somebody to Love” by Justin Bieber ft. Usher

Hey followers! Shannon here. So, we’ve been neglecting this blog a little a lot. Since we’re so behind, I”m going to just try to keep it simple and brief.

Morgan: Monday: 40 minutes of stairs and a long walk with me, haha

Tuesday: I think she had a cold?

Wednesday: spin class!

Thursday: off

Totals: S: 2000 yards B: 2 hours spin R: 12 miles

Shannon:

I’m still trying to decide if I should go for the ride out to Key Largo tomorrow morning [125 miles]. I’d love the challenge but I’m afraid of slowing the guys down and I need the time to study biology…

 Monday: I went on a Tempo run with Brian, 2 minutes on and 3 minutes off for 4 miles. It was a great run and I was feeling really good because I wasn’t too far behind him on the hard 2 minutes… Until I realized I lost my cane card. I ran another mile and rewalked at least 3 miles looking for it. [5 mile run]

Tuesday: I went to swim practice even though I was feeling super busy. Not many people were there, but Amanda and I got in the pool right away,determined to d the whole workout and finish it. It was 2,700 of wu, 400’s, pulls, kicks, sprints, and cd. My arms were pretty sore the next day because I worked really hard, but it was definitely worth it! [swim 2,700 yards]

Wednesday: The day of cycling. I met Caitlin for our first afternoon ride and we rode out and did a loop around Key Biscayne. We averaged about 17ish, and my gears were stuck on the largest chain ring, but I felt pretty good with the big Ricky bridge. We went like 27ish miles. I also went to spin class that night and totally rocked it. [bike 27 miles, 1 hour]

Thursday: off day, chem exam Friday morning at 8am!

Totals: S: 7,700 yards B: 27 road miles, 3 hours spin R: 17.5 miles

Song of the day: Waiting for The End- Linkin Park

Okay, so if I don’t blog immediately Shannon is going to kill me and that would suck considering that nationals is in less than 8 weeks.

thats right, 8 weeks people, 8 short weeks

This weekend was probably the craziest most hectic weekend of me and shannon’s life at college so far.  Basically, Friday through Saturday was Sportsfest, a 26 year tradition at the U.  The weekend is comprised of tons of events such as canoe races, soccer, flag football, obstacle courses, rock paper scissors, kickball… you get the idea.  Each residential college competes against one another and then each individual floor in the residential colleges competes against one another.  I live in Hecht and Shannon lives in Stanford (the two freshman residential colleges and the two best competitors/rivals at sportsfest.  Hecht had won nine years in a row till this year when Stanford won by ten points, but we’re not gonna talk about that)  What we are gonna talk about is that my floor, PT12 RILFs (residence I’d like to… facebook) DOMINATED sportsfest, despite the fact that Hecht as a building lost.  My floor beat out all the other girls teams that compete (all 33) and won most spirited!!!!!  Yeah, we carried Hecht.  

It was a great weekend, but that also means that we didn’t really have much time to train.  The only thing we did was on Friday night when Shannon, Leigh, Emily and I ran 4 miles.  

Morgan: It was honestly the best 4 miles I have ever run.  I can’t explain but it just went really well and I hope that this progress continues for the next 8 weeks.  I also credit Emily for helping me get through and running with me the entire time (Shannon is too fast) I also partook in the obstacle course, tug-of-war and canoe races this weekend. (total so far: swim=3000m? bike=1hour, run=10miles, other=40minutes)

Shannon: She got new tennis shoes this weekend and ran 5 miles in them while I was running 4 and she was really fast (at least from my perspective).  She also partook in Sportsfest activities but I don’t really know all of them and I don’t know her totals at the moment… I know, horrible friend :(

song of the weekend: I would love to put the entire Downtown Fiction album since I listened to it on repeat during my run, but Shannon said that wasn’t allowed so instead, song of the weekend is one that was played a lot during sportsfest, “What’s My Name” by Rihanna ft. Drake