This week

This week is nuts. and tons of fun. It all started last thursday.

I love a long holiday weekend. Gives me the time to do whatever needs to be done. Thursday I got to put in a fun brick after work. 15 miles on the bike followed by a hard, fast and fun 6.5 mile run. I feel like I'm starting to plateau my speed and conditioning, especially on the bike and run. So that was a well earned brick workout. and it was FUN.

Friday I rested. it was glorious. We went out to dinner with some friends to kick off the holiday.

By Saturday, I knew it was time to swim. I hit the pool and left 100 laps in there. That's 1.55 miles, and a personal distance record. I hit it in 1:03, which is also a pretty fast time to go that long. No stops, rests, catching my breath between sets..... Just start swimming and keep on freaking swimming. I'm trying to get ready for The Big Deuce 2 mile open water swim on July 24th, and this has me feeling great. I feel like I could have gone longer if I needed to. This is like the 20 mile run before the marathon; it gives you confidence going into the event. and that's fantastic.

Sunday I went outside for a run. I tried Lake Johnson after hearing there was a good trail around the lake. You may remember how much I loved running around the lake at Furman University. It was a 1.1 mile loop around the lake with some shade and some sun. There were water fountains and rest rooms on both sides of the lake. and there was a hill at furman, or a cutoff to keep from having to run it.

Lake Johnson = hill work. I had no idea, and started out on the flat side of the path. Then hit the hills just before coming to the closing of the loop at the parking lot/boathouse. I discovered that it was easier if you ran the route the other way. So the total path was 2.9 miles. There were no bathroom or water fountains along the way, but there were trash cans. and did I mention I got surprised by the hills? It looks like a fun place to take the family, but not the Furman lake replacement trail that I was hoping for. Still, a long run outside on a hot day can only be so bad. I covered 7 miles total.

The funny part was that my mp3 player battery died less than 2 miles in. Then about 5.5 miles in the Garmin battery died off. So I was left with just me and the mile markers. and the heat. yes it was about 98 out there.

Sunday night we had a fantastic cookout with the Pattersons (Chris ran the B2B with me last year), and then watched fireworks from the backyard. The new backyard is very close to the state fairgrounds, so we had the best fireworks show in raleigh from the comfort of our own backyard. Bigun called it "the best appendix day fireworks show ever" and absolutely loved it. In the past she's been scared of the loud sounds and bright explosions. It was so much fun to see her enjoy it.

Monday was reserved for a bike ride with the Raleigh Gyros. It turned out to be about 100 degrees, so I opted out of that and instead went to the gym for a couple of hours. I hit abs and lower back first, then an hour and a half on the bike. My legs were pretty sore after the hill run, so it felt great to spin them out. Again, I'm still feeling plateau'd on the bike so it's crazy. I've got to find a way to push the bounds more. To make matters worse, the gym plays cardio cinema, where they put a different movie every day on a big projection screen. There's no treadmills in the theater, but there is a good bike. so the movie (Surrogates with Bruce Willis) was playing monday, and I watched it.

Today I got in some good yoga before work, and a hard and fast 1000 yds in the pool over lunch. I'm feeling good in the water these days.

Tomorrow's going to be fun. For starter's, it's my 35th birthday! Mentally I'm having kind of a midlife thing. But it's still going to be a good day. A lot of people took this week off from work, so it's an easy week in the office. And I'm hitting up another brick after work tomorrow. Going to be a long one, maybe an hour on the bike and an hour running. maybe even a longer bike ride.

It's also the last workout of the week. Saturday I've got the Triangle Sprint triathlon and I am ready to taper! if you can call 3 days a taper. This promises to be a tough course. I'm ready for it. The 750 m swim is in Lake Harris, which I'm not familiar with. It's a local race though, not far away from the house. The bike is 17.5 miles of rollers, and the run is a 5k in rolling trails. It's going to be hot. I'm going to go fast. I'm not setting official time goals, but I want to cover the bike in under an hour and the run in under 30 minutes.

The real goal for this triathlon was set back in January with my First of the Year Goal post. Specifically, this particularly gay goal was set to run a summer triathlon without a shirt, and look like I belong there. Since this is my only summer triathlon, I'm going topless. and I'll let fate (and the gentle interweb pictures) tell if I deserved to be running with the hardbodies. That means I've been watching the fuel really closely this week, trying to make myself as lean as possible. I hope I can pull it off. Kelley's coming to take pics, so sometime over the weekend I'll post a race report.

Then saturday night we're having some peeps over for beers and fun to celebrate my birthday. should be a blast! have a great week!

Also, happy birthday to Amanda, who turned 30 yesterday. Welcome to the new age group! She's still way faster than me.