First weekend off?

Well, almost.  After racing three weekends in a row and taking Bigun to the beach last weekend, it felt like an easy weekend at home.  With some fun and some nerves.

It started with a job change. I don't talk about job stuff on here as a rule, but this was really cool. Thursday afternoon I got a job offer from IBM. This huge company wanted me to come on board with a senior level position. seriously cool. It's not easy for me to leave Compuware, and I'm going into a really deep lake here.  It's quite a leap, but I have to go into it with confidence.

Saturday we hit the big farmers market here to pick up some fresh goodness.  I've been reading a lot on raw vegan stuff lately, green smoothies and tons of fruit goodness.  We ended up getting an unbelievable end-of-the-season haul:

Yes that's a whole case of blueberries.  Scored it for only $20.

That's a lot of yummy goodness.  And that's only about half of the haul.  We also got some corn, tomatoes, kale and collards.  The farmers market was packed and everyone seemed to be enjoying the bounty of our local farms.  That's a beautiful thing.

I also had a decent workout on saturday, getting in 2000 yards in the pool and a 26 mile bike ride.  Felt good, I hit a 300 free/200 IM set pretty hard in the pool.  After a warmup and 3 of those sets, I was ready to get on the bike.  I'm starting to build up endurance for the half iron coming up September 22nd.  Sundays workout was a 20 mile ride 3 mile run brick, but it was totally boring.  Really the kind of day where it would be great to sit at home drinking coffee, eating blueberry mufffins, and watching movies (can you guess what Kelley did?  totally jealous).

Sunday morning was the kicker.  I had a solo performing with the church choir in the 11:00 service.  Scary, scary stuff.

Solo - Johnny Flynn.  terrifying.

Some people may remember that I was a music major in college and really enjoyed signing.  Back then, I sang some in voice lessons but wasn't good enough to actually score solos in any of the college choirs.  So really I hadn't done a solo since high school (I think).  To say I was nervous was an understatement.  Plus it's a tenor solo, and I always sang baritone or bass.  A pretty high tenor solo at that.  So it was a bit intimidating.  Kelley got some video on the flip, and if you really have nothing better to listen to here it is.

My theory behind the raw smoothie stuff is that it should be easy to get in a lot of calories in a dense format of foods that will fuel up long workouts and the endurance base I need, while not adding bodyfat.  The new job with IBM means I'll have to go into an office every day instead of working from home, and (I predict) I won't be able to take long lunch workouts either.  So Sunday night was a prep night to see if I could make a green smoothie for breakfast, a melon (or other fruit) smoothie for lunch, see how many calories I could get in, and see how the texture of the smoothies held up overnight.

The green smoothie had:
1 baby bok choy
handful of spinach
2 bananas
2 small apples
3 dates
handful of blueberries
2 cups of OJ

Turns out, that is an incredibly delicious combination.  I haven't calculated the calories yet, but it did keep its texture overnight in the fridge and made for a spectacular breakfast.  Next time I'll try 2 bok choy's and 4 bananas, but it really kept me full for most of the morning.  Time to get in a run today and try out the lunch fruit smoothie.  yum!

Big congrats goes out to Kevin and Mandy for rocking IMMT yesterday.  Very cool.