by Greg Kogan, https://www.gregkogan.com/cartoons/sport/

I love yoga and I’ve heard a bunch of buzz about Hot Yoga for the past year but had never tried it. I’m always on the lookout for new workout options so when my daily email from Groupon featured Hot Bikram Yoga in my neighborhood I jumped on it. Tri partner, Christine, and I headed out there this past week and I don’t know if it was the specific shop or hot yoga itself, but it was not my thing at all! While I could rant, I’m not going to, but it was not a great experience for me and I’ll be sticking to regular normal temperature yoga! I am glad that I went at a reduced rate through Groupon…

Theresa and I headed out to Hood River, Oregon last weekend for our trek to ProMotion Wetsuits. What a great experience! They have a great shop with a huge selection of wetsuits for all different sports, including triathlon. We got measured up and tried on several, ranging from entry to more advanced performance level suits. Their suits are gender-specific, which is great, and vary in buoyancy for different swimming strengths. Theresa got a long-sleeve suit and I picked up a sleeveless suit with separate tri-sleeves to go underneath during colder conditions as needed. I love the versatility of having separate sleeves instead of buying two suits for temperature conditions. They are having a sale now and giving Portland Triathlon Club members additional discounts, so pass the word!

Have had some good workouts this week. Tornadoes Master Swim team is on spring break (they operate on the kids’ schedule) so swim workouts have been on my own. Got a few runs in, including a very frustrating one where my running pants kept sliding down! Apparently I’ve lost some girth and my favorite non-drawstring running capris are too big for me now….yeah and wah!! Participated in this week’s Portland Triathlon Club Thursday Run from Foot Traffic in downtown Portland. Beautiful weather, cherry blossoms, just heavenly! Did a 5 mile run they call “Naito Left” which is a run along the Willamette River along Naito Parkway. And if you don’t like the weather in the Pacific Northwest in Springtime, just wait five minutes and it will be something different….or, should I say, if you see great workout weather, you better hurry and get out in it because it will do a 180 on you before you know it!

Wednesday afternoon I went on a great 20 mile road ride through Brush Prairie/Hockinson. The weather was superb, partly sunny, warm, dry. It was so great to get the bike off the trainer in on the road. If you can believe it, the photo above is one hour after I finished my ride while on my way to swim workout with Christine!! It started snowing and then hailed for an hour, so much that we had accumulations and cars were sliding all over the road! Unbelievable!

I’m still learning how to use my Garmin Forerunner. Somehow I locked the screen right before my Thursday run and after playing with it got it unlocked seconds before the run started. I’ll be spending more time with it today to get more efficient with it.

Will be heading out this weekend with Christine and friends to do a 55-mile ride in the Champoeg/Salem area. Really looking forward to that ride. Weather is supposed to be nice…ha! I did get my bike in to Bad Boyz Bicycles for a tune-up and major cleaning; it was way in need of cleaning since I hadn’t known how to maintain my bike until Tori from Gracie’s Wrench did her presentation at the February PTC meeting. So between my bike fit and the tune-up, now my bike just sings!

I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but I’ll just add it in to the next posting! Have a great week!