I can summarize this post for you very simply… This airline should simply rename themselves No-Spirit Airlines! I should have seen this coming when the week before my trip the pilots went on strike. Fortunately, they worked out their labor dispute (read: the pilots wanted more money) 3 days before my flight.

My wife and I arrived at the airport about 1.5 hours before our flight. Usually enough time to check our bag, clear security, get some breakfast, and get on the flight. Not today. I am convinced that the check-in agents were pissed that they did not get pay raise and were taking it out on the customers in line. I am not exaggerating when I say it took these 3 agents over 45 minutes to work through the 20 people in front of me in line. It was obvious from their body language that they just did not care and would get the people through the line when they were good and ready. When were finally done checking in we had about 40 minutes to get to the gate and the agent said, “Go directly to the plane and you might make it!”

After clearing security and getting to the gate we sat down on the plane about 10 minutes before they closed the doors. However, this did not stop the gate agent from telling us how late we were and that “I was about to close the door.” Glad that we made it and we took our seats and settled into the hour flight to Fort Lauderdale.

A quick side note about the actual planes. We took a total of 4 flights on our trip. Every single plane had squeaky armrests. Every time someone raised or lowered an armrest it would wake up everyone on the plane that had dozed off. To top it off, I hadn’t realized that it was possible to put the seats closer together than most airlines already had… It is. I felt Like a giant in their seats. I am barely 5 foot 10 and my knees actually touched the seat in front of me.

The pre-flight safety demonstration was almost comical to watch. One flight attendant read the instructions over the loud speaker while the other flight attendants followed along trying as hard as they could to not have any facial expressions or emotion during the process. This carried over to the service as well. I nicknamed one of the attendants “ROZ” (from Monsters Inc) because of her monotone reading of the safety instructions and overall treatment of the guests on the flight. The others around me were just calling her “Helga”.

In summary. I told my wife that I will never fly Spirit Airlines again. I would rather pay more than deal with lousy service and employees that just don’t care. While cost does matter, I will gladly pay a few more dollars for better service on the way to my destination.

P.S. I am writing this while on a Delta flight while enjoying some complimentary peanuts and drink that I was given by a friendly flight attendant. Not to mention the access to in-flight Internet access.

Now that I am running based on heart rate zones I needed a new running watch.  Enter the Garmin 405cx.  This is essentially the same watch as my older Garmin 405 except that it comes with the heart rate monitoring built in.  Now, beside being able to track times, distances, laps, pace, etc I now can tell you what my instant heart rate is as well as my average heart rate for a run.

It has been interesting getting used to running based on my heart rate rather than just killing myself on every run.  When I am done with a run I can sync the watch with my computer and analyze my run.  I can even share the data with Dale so he can see how I am progressing on his training plan.

Now that I have a running coach, Dale, the first thing he needed to get was a baseline of my fitness so that he knew how to construct a training plan.  To do this he used VO2 max testing.  VO2 max is the point where your body cannot consume or transport any more oxygen to your muscles.

To do this test I got on the treadmill and was hooked up to a VO2 testing machine with both a face mask and heart rate monitor.  It was a little awkward because not only do you look funny, but you don’t normally run with wires and hoses connected to you.  (Well, at least I don’t normally do that!)

In the end we found that my resting heart rate was 54 BPM and my max heart rate was 187 BPM.  From the data collected Dale was able to create 4 heart rate zones that he will use for my training.  They are:

• Zone 1: 115 to 123 BPM
• Zone 2: 123 to 134 BPM
• Zone 3: 134 to 144 BPM
• Zone 4: 144 to 157 BPM

This was an interesting experience to say the least.  The “good” news is that Dale says that we will do the testing again in a few weeks to see how things have improved on his training plan.

My NYC marathon training started with a trip to the physical therapist.  About 2 weeks after the Georgia half marathon I felt something “odd” in my left hamstring near the end of a 5 mile run.  After a few weeks of very light running, and mostly resting, the hamstring was still bothering me.  On a recommendation from someone I play soccer with I went to see Emily Yakes at PT Solutions.

Emily instantly went to work on the hamstring.  The first day she did this deep tissue massage that had she not been pregnant I might have slapped her.  Then she did acupuncture (or dry needling as she called it).  I was not a fan of either procedure but the combination of the massages and some strengthening exercises had me back up and running in no time.  After about 4 weeks I was able to stop going to see Emily.  I am not sure who was more relieved… me or her!!  (Honestly this is best physical therapist experience I have ever had so if you need physical therapy and there is a PT Solutions near you I would recommend trying it out.)

On my last day I asked Emily if she knew any good running coaches.  Turns out that her husband Dale is a USAT Level 1 triathlon certified coach.  I am not sure what all that means but since running is part of the triathlon I figured he could help.

Now I have a physical therapist and a coach so I guess I am ready to tackle the marathon on my bucket list.  The coaching process has been interesting, but I will write more about that later.