I was feeling pretty decent today so I decided to do the 2400m Step Assessment to get a baseline for future tests. Here's the protocol:

1. Run 2400m @ 140 bpm and record time. Take 90 secs rest.
2. Run 2400m @ 150 bpm and record time. Take 90 secs rest.
3. Run 2400m @ 160 bpm and record time. Take 90 secs rest.
4. Run 2400m @ 170 bpm and record time. Take 90 secs rest.
5. Run 2400m @ 180 bpm and record time. Take 90 secs rest.

Here were the results. I took splits at the 1200m mark and will only use the last 1200m because it takes a little while to get to stable HRs. I only did 800m on the last one (180 bpm) because I was in serious need of finding a bathroom due to eating a bowl of cereal right before heading out for my run.  All of the paces felt pretty comfortable. The only difference I noticed was once I hit 170 bpm my breathing started to feel slightly more labored. 180 bpm felt fast but only because I haven't spent any time there yet. Overall this is a good sign that my run fitness is moving in the right direction.

140 bpm: 6:41 pace (138) @ 1200m split, 6:55 pace (141) @ 2400m split
150 bpm: 6:18 pace (145), 6:28 pace (151)
160 bpm: 5:48 pace (153), 5:56 pace (161)
170 bpm: 5:12 pace (164), 5:30 pace (171)
180 bpm: 4:57 pace (164) only 1/2 mile

My usable data will be:

6:55, 6:28, 5:56, 5:30, X:XX

My goal for this year is as follows:

6:48, 6:18, 5:45, 5:20, 4:57

Once I can hit that type of an assessment I will know that my base is fully developed and I'm ready to start specific training for either 5k/10k or Half Marathon/Marathon. I've noticed this on past assessments that the correlation between pace and HR is about 30 seconds for every 10 bpm give or take 3-4 seconds.

Claire is 25 weeks old and hates being on her stomach........wait a minute.......here she is sleeping on her stomach in the mountains??  She must have been super tired from the ride up there.  The only reason they let her sleep on her stomach was because she was supervised.  Otherwise, it is suggested that babies sleep on their back.


I didn't take any photos this week.  Here's a shot from Beth's camera in the mountains.  I missed all the action because things have really picked up at work and I'm slammed.


What a nice view from their cabin.  Jen and I will be going back here later in the month for our anniversary.


More mountains.  I wasn't there.  Bummer.


Ernie hooked us up with VIP treatment at "The Madhouse".  Ernie's brother-in-law runs the show at Bowman Gray stadium so we had the best seats in the house right by the press box.  Here's a shot from the roof.


I wanted to fit in as much as possible so I went with the Science Diet (cat food) mesh trucker hat and an Iron Maiden t-shirt.  When you're going to watch some short track car racing you better play the part.  I would have grown out a mullet or rat tail but Jen wouldn't approve.  Speaking of mullets........can you pick out the mullet in this photo?

RECAP:
Jen, Beth, and Claire went up to the mountains from Monday through Wednesday while I stayed home.  Work has been very busy lately so it was actually good timing that they were gone because I ended up working late from home both nights.  That didn't stop me from grilling a steak and taking down a couple of glasses of wine in the process though.  On Saturday Jen and I went to Winston Salem to watch some short track car racing and we left Claire with Julianna.  We want Claire to get used to hanging out with other people so we're trying to find things to do each Saturday.  Julianna is from Columbia (the country...not SC) so we asked that she speak to Claire in spanish so it might be easier for her to pick up on later down the road.  On Sunday I ran with Jordan as usual and then helped Watty with his deck for the remainder of the afternoon.  I think we will only have one more weekend before his deck is complete.  After that, Sundays will go back to being "family day" for the Frank household.

TRAINING:
Running: 42 miles @ 6:19 pace average :: 4 hrs 00 mins
Cycling: 99 miles :: 4 hrs 47 mins
Total: 8 hrs 47 mins

Training was business as usual this week.  I'm trying to hover around somewhere in the 40s for weekly run mileage and I added in another bike ride on Tuesday night to increase overall aerobic hours.  I haven't found any studies on the subject but I'm a believer that cycling hours do benefit running in some fashion or another.  Since I wouldn't be able to increase my run volume any quicker than I am without getting injured there really is no downside.  Plus, I've been enjoying the bike lately and it's nice to see the guys again.  I really needed that 4-5 month break from endurance training to realize that I actually do enjoy it.  That being said, I don't foresee myself doing any triathlons in the near future.  I don't miss the pool one bit and don't have the necessary time to designate to the bike in order to get into triathlon racing shape.  For now, my competitions are The Saturday Morning Shootout and any running road races that I decide to jump into over the next few months.

This week's training was nothing special.  Basically just trying to keep 5 of my runs at around 145 bpm and my Tuesday and Sunday runs closer to 160 bpm.  I'm just slowly building my base and the 160 bpm runs are meant to get my legs moving at a faster pace without major risk for injuries.  Along with that, even though it's well below lactate threshold they will still help to push the LT upwards.  Here's what the notable sessions looked like this week:

Tuesday: 8 miles @ 157 bpm ave :: 6:15 pace ave
Thursday: 4 miles @ 5:49 pace on treadmill
Saturday: Shootout Ride :: 3T beat NTT Nation by 35 points
Sunday: 12 miles @ 153 bpm ave :: 6:20 pace ave

Claire is 24 weeks old and is getting tall.  This week Claire and I started to do what I call our morning tumbling routine on our Tempur-Pedic mattress.  The routine consists of rolling her around, placing her on her stomach and cheering her on when she rolls onto her back, and guiding her in the crawling motion.  She seems to really enjoy it and she's gotten so much better in just a couple of days. 


Jen's friend from high school, Beth, came into town for a quick Sunday through Wednesday visit.  We had steaks and wine on Sunday and then they all left for the mountains from Monday through Wednesday while I stayed home and worked.  That's right, I'm a work horse.


Jen having some laughs with an old friend over some steaks and wine.


Steve got the floor boards down on his deck during the week so all we had to do when I got there was to lay down the boards on the steps leading to the upper deck.  I thought we would plow through it but it actually took a while and I was heading home by 5pm for dinner.


His deck is looking nice and is going to be quite large and in charge.  Looking forward to their first deck party.

RECAP:
Aside from the mentions in the photos we had quite a busy Saturday.  It started off with a wedding shower for Kelley & Matt, followed by the criterium hosted by Sir Clarke Rodgers, and last but not least we made our way over to an 80s themed 40th birthday party for Jen's client.  Quite the night.  Unfortunately, we spent more time driving around than actually hanging out.  On the flip side, I was inspired to throw another 80s party sometime in the near future because the outfits were hilarious.

TRAINING RECAP:
Running: 47 miles @ 6:36 pace average :: 5 hrs 12 mins
Cycling: 63 miles :: 3 hrs 15 mins
Strength: 20 mins
Total: 8 hrs 48 mins

I'm still hanging around in the 40 mpw range and continue to make my 160 bpm runs my focus for now.  My aerobic abilities seem to be developing well so I just need my leg durability to catch up.  Once the two mesh I should be able to kick things up a slight notch.  It's been really nice to run with Jordan for my Thursday and Sunday runs.  Time flies by and I don't even realize that we've put in 10+ miles.  I'm looking forward to being able to do workouts together but I need to be patient or I will most certainly get injured. 

The Saturday Shootout was fun this week.  3T had their first designated bye week so The NTT Nation had a scrimmage.  My team was down by 8 points at the end of regulation and somehow we pulled out the victory with a late breakaway to win by 2 points.

For some reason I get sucked back into endurance sports no matter how hard I try to just live a normal life.  The good thing is that running is not as demanding as triathlon in the form of hours training and set up time.  The bad thing is that I'm OCD when it comes to training and hitting my specific paces and goals.  I'm trying to find that delicate balance between wanting to compete at something and still living an enjoyable life with balance and loads of fun.

The web hosting company that I have been using for the past seven years was recently bought by another company.  They used to be a very good hosting company and the support staff seemed knowledgeable and I didn't really have many problems.  After being bought out in January they started to transition all of their clients to a new hosting platform with a new support staff.  Since then I've had nothing but problems with site uptime and a real scare with a near loss of data.  All of the time spent dealing with these issues and running up against brick walls with the support staff pushed me to finally migrate all of our websites over to a new hosting company.  Below is the transcript with my old hosting company when I wanted to cancel their services.  I changed the support dude's name to "Johnny" and the company's name to "Bad Hosting Company".

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You are now chatting with Johnny

Johnny: Hi Nick. My name is Johnny, how are you today?

Nick Frank: Great, how are you.

Nick Frank: How do I go about canceling my hosting plan?

Johnny: I'm great, thank you.

Johnny: We are sorry to hear that you wish to cancel your account.

Johnny: Is there a specific reason why you are canceling your account? Perhaps, if we knew why you were canceling, we could work something out so that we could better suit your needs.

Nick Frank: Yes. Since moving to the new platform I've had nothing but problems including a near loss of months of data. I had to be overly persistent with the old and new support crew to get my data back and nobody seemed to care. I gave them multiple chances over the course of weeks to fix the issues and my last resort was switching to a different hosting company. I've been with “Bad Hosting Company” since 2003!!

Nick Frank: I'm sorry to say at this point there is nothing that you can do to keep me on your new hosting platform.

Johnny: Okay.

Johnny: I have noticed that your account is already renewed on July 15, 2010.

Johnny: If you cancel the account immediately, then we will charge $35.00 as cancellation fee and then refund the remaining amount to the credit card on file.

Nick Frank: How about you waive the cancellation fee and I will forget about all of the downtime and issues that I've had with your company.

Johnny: I am sorry, it is not possible to waive.

Nick Frank: Yes it is.

Nick Frank: You would be doing your company a big favor.

Johnny: We have clearly mentioned in the BadHostingCompany's User Agreement page that we will be deducting the cancellation fee.

Johnny: You can check out our User Agreement page at:

Johnny: http://www.badhostingcompany.com/legal/legal_useragreement.bml

Nick Frank: That was not in place when I signed my agreement over the past 7 + years

Johnny: Since you are existing long-time customer with us, so we deduct $35.00 as cancellation fee instead of $50.

Nick Frank: Does your company care anything about reputation?

Nick Frank: All I'm asking for is my cancellation fee to be waived. Do you know how many countless hours I've WASTED on support chats, emails, and phone calls?

Johnny: I apologize.

Nick Frank: All I'm asking for is a nice gesture saying that you failed to hold up your end of the 99.9% uptime guarantee and wasted hours of my time so we're going to waive the cancellation fee that wasn't even in place until the new company took over.

Johnny: Okay.

Johnny: I will schedule the account to cancel on August 13, 2010 and ask our specialists to provide full refund.

Nick Frank: Thank you Johnny.

Nick Frank: That was a nice thing to do.

Johnny: You're welcome!

Johnny: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?

Nick Frank: That is it. Have a great day.

Johnny: Thank you for chatting with us. Please feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24x7.

Johnny: Bye!

Chat session has been terminated by the site operator.

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I really didn't care if I had to pay the $35 or not but after all I've gone through I thought it was like kicking a man while he's down.  I know that it's not the operator's fault that their service has gone down the toilet but I also didn't want to give them another dime when I felt they should have been giving me my last month's hosting fees back.

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

The NNT Nation is an organized group of athletes focused on inflicting pain and suffering to Triple Threat Racing (3T) on any given Saturday during the Saturday Morning Shootout.

For immediate press release

7/31/2010
Charlotte, NC

The first official showdown between The NTT Nation (Non Triple Threaters) and 3T (Triple Threat) was a test of willpower and team strategy that left the 3T team coming home down West Blvd on fumes and The NTT Nation celebrating their sweet victory. The day started with a good showing by The NTT Nation having five riders in the peloton (Dave (Tyler's friend), Nick, Redmond, Todd, Tyler, & Waldo) while 3T only had two guys (Murph, Woody) to fend off the barrage of attacks that were soon to come. Just after the neutral zone Todd and Redmond fired off attack after attack which Murph and Woody had to chase down to avoid the 10 point break away points. Woody would then counter attack with no luck since he had The Red(mond) Rocket covering him like a warm blanket. This continued until the sprint stages got under way.

STAGE 1: (downhill sprint on Mt. Holly Rd): Tied: 0
1st: Waldo (3), 2nd: Woody (2), 3rd: Murph (1)
Sprint 1 was a down hill sprint which lines up perfectly for The NTT Nation to get "The Man From The Isle of Waldo" into a position for a stage victory. Waldo was the only man in the field that can sprint downhill at over 50 mph so we knew he was a shoe in if in the right position.

STAGE 2: (slight uphill sprint @ stop ahead sign at end of 15 min slight incline on Old NC 27): The NTT Nation +2
* Can't remember exact placings.
On the lead up to Sprint 2 the 3T team put the pressure on the peloton and whittled The NTT Nation down to three riders (Dave, Nick, Tyler). The NTT Nation came out ahead by 2 points.

STAGE 3: (KOM on Spencer mountain): The NTT Nation +5
1st: Nick (5), 2nd: Woody (3), 3rd: Dave (1)
This stage was the beginning of the end for 3T.

STAGE 4: (flat sprint in Lowell): The NTT Nation +5
1st: Nick (3), 2nd: Woody (2), 3rd: Tyler (1)
No gain in points on this sprint but a big loss in energy.

STAGE 5: (KOM on McAdenville): The NTT Nation +12
1st: Nick (5), 2nd: Tyler (3), 3rd: Woody (1)
The first 1-2 punch of the day for either team. Let the creaming begin.

STAGE 6: (KOM on Cramerton): The NTT Nation + 19
1st: Dave (5), 2nd: Nick (3), 3rd: Murph (1)
The NTT Nation sent Dave up the road with no response from 3T. Another dominating mountain stage by The NTT Nation .

STAGE 7: (uphill sprint on Armstrong Ford Rd.): The NTT Nation + 23
1st: Tyler (3), 2nd: Nick (2), 3rd: Murph (1)
The NTT Nation attacked on the downhill leading into this sprint. A group of three regrouped midway through the climb until The NTT Nation launched their man again to yet another victory. We're starting to see a pattern here.

STAGE 8: (final sprint across bridge on Wilkinson): The NTT Nation +29
1st: Dave (3), 2nd: Tyler (2), 3rd: Nick (1)
This stage was what we call total domination. Also known as the trifecta or the triple crown. Call it what you will....it was a thing of beauty. The NTT Nation send Dave on a solo attack and got up the road while 3T could do nothing but pedal as if they were in quick sand. Tyler and Nick followed suit while Murph and Woody were strategizing their counter attack up the hill after the sprint. Directly after the sprint Murph launched off the front and opened a gap only to be closed within 40 seconds by the The NTT Nation member formerly known as Nick.

BREAKAWAY: The NTT Nation +49
Tyler (10), Nick (10)
This attack was like taking candy from a baby. Just after the rail road crossing Tyler attacked to stack up some more points against the weakened 3T crew and after about 15 seconds Nick decided to go for "Double Jeopardy" and rub it in even further. The duo stayed away for the minimum 3 mins and tried to wait up on the 3T crew but you can only coast so slowly.

RECAP: The NTT Nation made a net gain of 49 point over 3T!! As you can imagine, this was quite embarrassing for 3T to have a group of scrappers dominate them so handily. To officially be considered as "skunked" you need to get beat by more than 50 points so this is about as close to a skunking as you will ever see. The Saturday Morning Shootout has never seen such a beat down as was seen by our very eyes last weekend. It was a day that will go down in the history books as one of the greatest ass whoopings of all time. Team strategy and starting numbers were key to opening the flood gates of stage victories for The NTT Nation. The Red(mond) Rocket and T-O-Double-D Kaish played an integral role in dishing out body shots to 3T in the form of attacks and covering moves early in the day. The Man From The Isle of Waldo took the first stage victory which set the tone for the rest of the day. From that point on the remaining The NTT Nation dominated the mountain stages and once 3T was out of gas they launched a two man breaker that stayed away until the day was over. If 3T wants to win next week they will need to field a much larger team and hope for a miracle from the cycling gods. They are now 49 points down in the yearly standings and can only hope to chip away at that deficit in the weeks and months to come.

Claire is now 23 weeks old.  Her neck is getting stronger and she loves to color coordinate her dresses with her blankets.


It's only fitting for the "Claire Bear" to have a bear's head on her butt.  She's starting to tolerate tummy time but still doesn't like it much.


We broke ground on Steve's deck on Sunday and were able to get the framing completed for the "upper deck".  His deck is going to have two levels.  The first level is ~8ft X 8ft and the second level will be two steps down and will fill out the complete 24ft X 24ft deck.  We got a lot accomplished on day 1.

RUNNING RECAP:
* 40 mi running (6:23 pace ave) :: 4 hrs 15 mins

Our tenant from our Highland Creek house called us this week because she came home to a flooded house after being gone for 5 hours.  The hose to the toilet in the upstairs bathroom came disconnected and was spraying water for 5 hours.


Nearly all of the flooring has been torn out of the whole house from the restoration company due to saturation.  Their dehumidifiers have been running for 4 days.


Upstairs hallway.


Stairs.


The drywall from the ceiling fell down onto the living room floor and some of our tenant's furniture.


The ceiling had to be completely removed in the living room.


The wood in the foyer was trashed and had to be removed as well.


Like I said, nearly all of the flooring was removed.  Even in the dining room.

Our Highland Creek rental is a 4BR/2.5BA house up in the university area.  We lived there from 2000-2004 and decided to rent it out when we moved out.  When we got a call from our tenant saying that there was water damage I couldn't have imagined the extent of the damage done.  Luckily our tenant and her children were gone on vacation for the remainder of the week so they didn't have to live in these conditions.  We met with the insurance adjuster and are in the process of getting quotes from some contracters to see if we can get this taken care of before they get back from vacation.

Playing around on the blanket with my little girl.


Jen's parents came for another short visit from Illinois this week.



Claire giving me the staredown while hanging out in the baby bjorn.


Claire showing her support for the largest mammals on land.


Clarke & Katie came over for dinner on Saturday night.


A nice shot of a beer that tastes great and is less filling.

RUNNING RECAP:

Claire is laughing a lot.  She's got a really funny laugh that makes me laugh and then she laughs even more.  I say she laughs like Frankenstein.


Claire and I were playing Charades.  It took me a while to figure it out but she was playing out the Leaning Toward of Pisa.


Mom playing Pat-A-Cake with Claire.


Dad and I made 4 corn hole sets while he was here.  Marquette colors!!


We made two "Extreme Cornhole" sets and two regular sets.  The extreme cornhole attachment adds a 10 point hole and a couple of drink holders.


Dad holding Claire before they headed back to Wisconsin.


We moved Claire up to the level 3 nipple this week because she was taking an hour or so to eat.  She's eating much faster now.

RECAP:
The photos recap most of the week.  I also changed web hosting companies from WebHost4Life to Arvixe because WebHost4Life "upgraded" their systems and ever since doing so our websites were having uptime issues.  I had been using Webhost4Life for 7 years and told them I would continue using their service if they could fix the issue but after a few weeks I decided to make the switch.

We also moved Claire to a 4 hour routine instead of her old 3 hour routine and it seems to be working just fine.  She's sleeping between 7-9 hrs each night.

TRAINING:
Total Aerobic Hours: 3 hrs 38 mins
Running: 32 mi :: 3 hrs 38 mins (6:47 pace ave)

I've set some goals to get back into running shape for next year (2011) so I'll start posting progress here again.  This was my 3rd week of running over 20 miles.  My previous two weeks were both 23 miles.  I plan to slowly work my way up to 60 miles of running with 3 hours of cycling and hold there.  Right now I'm just trying to build a solid foundation of aerobic miles so won't really be doing much work above 160 bpm (lactate threshold minus 20 bpm) until I see that my pace and heart rate remain constant during my 10 mile run test.  I also won't be working above that level until my paces at 160 bpm are between 5:40-5:45 pace.  I suspect that will take another 2-3 months of aerobic development.  My plan is to run 2-3 runs per week at 160 bpm and the rest between 145-150 bpm to ensure that I'm working the lower aerobic zones as well.  The heat is definitely slowing these paces at the moment but I'm in no rush to start any faster work yet anyway.