Dang Communists

Kelley's mom and stepdad are communists. They may claim to be typical SC ultra-conservative republicans, but I can see through that crap. They were supposed to keep our kids for 2 - 4 nights. instead they brought them back after 24 hours! Anyone who takes away our freedom like that is a commie in my book! So yes, the kids came back about noon on saturday. We got nothing done that could only be done without kids. Well, we did go out to dinner friday night. But FREEDOM gone.

I still got in an 8 mile run saturday in around 1:10:something. Good pace, good sweat, felt great.

I also got to work on the tree saturday morning. The girls don't like it when I run the chainsaw, so I wanted to do that before they got back. Got about half of it cut up, but the chainsaw is bound for the repair shop. Morgan borrowed it for a few months, now it won't cut through a stick of butter. Instead, I just started ripping the tree apart by hand. It felt like a very manly way to cut through the "my wife thinks I'm gay" thing; no axe, no chainsaw, just grip it and rip it. Got to flex a little muscle. I got the tree down to just a trunk on the ground, and used an axe to cut off the top 8' or so and drug it away. That let me have my first look at the muscadine vines since early June. They have already started to come back! I still have to rebuild the trellis, but the vines are growing nicely along the ground right now. I thought for sure I was going to have to replace the plants.

There is still 20' of trunk on the ground I need to cut up and dispose of, but this is great progress. I can now start working on the fence repair and rebuilding the vine trellis. Good weekend projects.

Sunday I got to attend my first spinning class! Everyone says it's a good workout, and it was. I got a good sweat on, my legs were sore at the end, it seemed like a good calorie burn. It's good to mix up the bike training I guess, I'm getting tired of just putting in mindless miles. But I'm not sure if it will help my muscular endurance or speed on the road bike. Any of you guys do spin? I can't decide if it's something I would want to do again or not. I tend to not like classes b/c it's tough for me to commit to being somewhere at a certain time. This class went for an hour and 15 minutes.

Today the roofers are here putting the new roof on our house, and the kids are still asleep! I know it's going to freak them out when the hammers start swinging. This is why we wanted the kids gone through tomorrow. Dang communists.

July's totals:

Swimming: 4 swims, 5250 meters (3.28 miles)
Bike: 6 rides, 113 miles
Run: 9 runs, 45.6 miles
Strength: 16 workouts, 6 hours total
Yoga: 7 sessions, 3.5 hours

161.88 total miles.

It was so cool to finally get some swimming in. I feel much better going into the sprint tri on the 16th. My mind and body I think are ready to get into 2 a day workouts like so many other tri guys do. I'm still trying to find a schedule for that. 113 miles on the bike is a good month, and 45 miles running is appropriate. This was my first month of tri training. So by october, all of these numbers should be doubled at least.

Assuming there are 4 weeks in a month, there should be 8 swims, 8 bikes, and 12 runs in every month. that's swim and bike twice a week, run 3 times because I like to run 3 times a week. So if I can get in the right number of workouts, then eventually the milage will catch up. I only did one brick workout in July, getting back to my regular thursday night brick will help a lot.

I also geared up some this week. I've been looking around locally for a Headsweats visor after some of you reccomended it, and finally ended up ordering one online. I also had to toss my Camelbak for bacteria problems, so I ordered another one of those online. I did a little research to, and found that the Hydrapak is the easiest to clean, the bladders' flip inside out to clean and can be replaced easily. Also it's easy to replace the tube and bite valve if they get moldy. Kelley's been complaining about how filthy my Camelbak was (but was also unwilling to clean it for me) so I tossed it. I also needed a new bike helmet, so I got the Hydrapak and helmet both from amazon and got free shipping. I'm a sucker for free shipping. My old helmet was a mountain bike helmet I bought back in college (ouch - 15 years ago).

Speaking of 15 years ago, I also got to see an old friend from high school this weekend. Jami was in town (she lives in alaska now - husband in the military up there), and it was great to see her again! Moving to alaska limits the visitation, but she's awesome to just hang out with.

Hope you all had a good weekend. Now it's back to that daily grind.