This is for the (naked) birds

If I haven't mentioned it lately, Ironman training has begun. What? This is my first post in march? But it's the 20th already? yea......

The 5:30 am workouts and 4:45 am alarm clock is just plain wrong. I'm abandoning that plan already, only 3 weeks in. I've done plenty of 2-a-days before without that crap. New schedule has the RAM swim team workouts tuesday and thursday nights at 7:15 pm, and sunday mornings at 8 am. This will finish in time for the 10 am group bike ride with the IOSDT team, and may be followed with a run if I'm really feeling ambitious. I missed the sunday morning swim 2 weeks ago thanks to the time change and today missed it because I was a bit under the weather this weekend.

Happy St Patty's day! From the department of "the company I work for is cooler than the company you work for" we brought a keg of Guinnes into the office thursday. It was actually as awesome as it sounds. Tuesday night the swim practice was great. I left with kind of a strange scratch in my throat. Wednesday the scratchy was still there. Thursday I got in a good run before work and then really enjoyed the beer thursday afternoon. About 5:30 pm the sinuses kicked in hard. Friday I ended up working from home, no workouts and saturday also had no workouts. Felt like my head was going to explode.

But today is the first day of spring! I don't like to medicate my way through a cold, and this time I didn't. It was gone by the time I woke up Sunday morning. Love the vitamin C! I felt ok enough to try a run this afternoon.

Now I have a previously unpublished goal to run a half marathon every month this year. I know the toughest is going to be december after Ironman. but this month is right up there. This weekend was the Tobacco Road marathon that I ran last year and absolutely loved. Couldn't do it this year thanks to the schedule. It's a good thing I didn't sign up anyway, being under the weather and all. Also the Wrightsville beach marathon was today, my friend Jon from the MB half marathon fame set a sweet PR today at 1:42 in the half. So today was my day to put up a 13.1.

I didn't plan for it very well since I had no idea how my lungs would hold up after the cold. So I grabbed one gel, filled the camelbak with water and took off. Turns out, it's only 5 miles to the state capital building from my house. That's really cool to know.

Also, turns out the entire run back to my house is uphill. Next time I'm bringing cab fare. Actually I tooled around downtown Raleigh some and looped through the NC state campus and Meredith college campuses to tack on the extra miles I needed. Getting downtown I felt so refreshed, and full of energy. It was fantastic, so I decided to finish out the 13.1.

I was slowing down for sure. Finally about 11.5 miles in I hit the wall. Dizzy, getting hungry, it was not cool. So I walked straight to the house from there. I did hit the driveway at exactly 13.1 miles and 2:13:39, which is still not my slowest half marathon. I still don't know why I thought I would finish a half happy and feeling good with only one gel and water. Really? 100 calories for a 2 hour workout? Should have been more like 300 or 400 calories. Rookie mistake? Nah, I know better.

So going into week 4 of ironman training I'm feeling ok. Still losing some weight, def losing some body fat. The first 3 weeks have kicked me in all the right places and I think I've got the kinks worked out now. So it's just a matter of execution. Time to roll!