ready to sleep

Let's start out in February:

Swim: 6400 meters, 4 swims
Bike: 314 miles, 19 rides
Run: 60.5 miles, 12 runs
Strength: 19 workouts
Yoga: 10 times

Ah, it was so nice to get back in the pool for reals this month.  I love Ironman training.  It's such a comfortable routine.  February saw the start of the training plan and it all kicked off with a bang.  That's a loooooooot of time on the bike.  March has seen me join the RAM team again, and the first practice put up half of the total swim distance from February.  I had 19 strength workouts thanks to the habits I built up during the 30 day challenge group on Facebook, which I finished off after getting a bit less consistent towards the end.  10 times on the yoga mat feels pitiful but I know it's really not that bad.

Then there was this week (week 4, base week 2).

Saturday I got back in the pool with the RAM team!!!  3200 meters in an hour and a half practice.  First team practice since September.  Even finished things off with some relays for a little sprint work.  I was completely wiped out for the rest of the day.  The midweek stuff was fine, but Sat & Sun deserve an explanation.

Saturday afternoon we had planned to go to the Marbles kids museum to get the kids playing with the sights in there, and a veterinarian was supposed to bring some animals.  The vet never showed, the kids got completely worn out, but the cool part was going on outside the museum.  There was an 8k kilt race going on with the expo right outside on Moore Square.  So when we walked up there was a parade of bagpipers and drummers going on, which was incredibly cool.  The organizers were trying to set a guiness book of world records attempt for the most racers wearing a kilt.  They did a run around the square 15 minutes before the race.  Then the race went off of course, and downtown Raleigh was filled with men in kilts. 

There's also something called the Oaks & Spokes festival going on.  Really it's all downtown rides and stuff going on, kind of a cool thing.  Saturday afternoon was the Triangle Tweed Ride, so there were a few hundred people riding like it was 1899 (their slogan) in tweed jackets and corduroy pants and total hipster costumes.  It was pretty hilarious.    And as you can imagine that made for quite a site.  A bagpipe parade, thousands of runners in kilts, and bikers in 1800's costumes?  I wish I could say that was a typical day here, but it's pretty wild even for Raleigh standards. 

Sunday was another wild ride.  The kids got so incredibly worked up at the museum saturday that all I wanted to do was take a nap.  They wore me out too.  So my swim/bike brick turned into a swim/lunch/museum/nap day, and I hit the bike trainer for an hour and a half  Sunday morning before church to make up for saturday's missed workout. 

Kelley and the kids actually headed out of town this morning, and I'm not going to share those details but they are in for a wild time!  And I'm getting to be a batchelor for a week, so happy days to me too!  They hit the road right before I left for church this morning, and we had another good time in the choir (it always is).  So after lunch I got on with the business of today's workout.  A simple 45 minute bike before the 12 mile long run.  By the end of it, I was completely wiped, again.  Time to crash and eat.

For the Cast Iron Club, I'm up to 3.62 iron swims, 4.62 iron bikes, and 3.89 iron runs on the year.  For this week I got 2 miles of swimming, 90 miles on the bike, and 21 miles of running in.  For time, that's 1:30 swimming, 4:24 on the bike, and 2:45 running, for a total of 8:39.  Compared to last week's 7:20 i'd say that's a pretty good week.

I've begun hoarding Gu products for the duration of the ironman training plan. The Clymb recently had a good Gu sale, and I picked up a 50 pack of mint gels and some peanut butter/chocolate gels too.  Really I've been digging on some of the new flavors this year.  Lemon Chomps while into a long bike ride are really fantastic.  I've been digging the Gu Brew this year too.  The Tri-Berry flavor is pretty great.  Go Gu!