A week of adventure!

Whew!  Where did this past week go?  I love a week like this... full of training with friends and lots of fun.  The kind of stuff that keeps me motivated to do all this crazy tri-stuff day in and day out.

The weather is warming up quickly here.  With heat indexes nearing 90F every day for the last two weeks, summer is finally upon us.  However, the winter winds still won't completely let go of their hold on Florida and all of this equals some challenging (and beneficial) training... heat + wind!  Soon the winds will die down and we'll just be left with the heat.  Phooey!  That's when the sweat stops evaporating and I start having trouble.  Until then, however, I am eating it up.  I'm training hard for IMFL 70.3, getting out there in the middle of the day to roast (and acclimate) and noticing improvements in my fitness that I didn't think I would see so soon.  We'll get to that in a moment.

Up first,  I had a little bit of fun at Naples Cyclery this past Wednesday.  I sold my P2 and am now aboard a P3.  I also had my awesome mac-daddy fitter, Dave Harris, stick me on an Exit Cycle and begin to dial my fit in for a 'future' road bike.  It's really neat to know what bikes will fit under me properly before jumping into a purchase.

I learned A LOT from being on the Exit Cycle

Saturday's swim was F-U-N (at least the end of it was)!  Sondra showed up just as Scott & I were finishing our final pull set AND... we discovered that we were wearing the same swim suits!  Of course the camera had to come out for that!

Sondra and I... matching BFF goobers!  My goggle straps look like horns. I need to remember to tuck those things!

Yesterday marked the 8th annual Sharky's Ride the Beaches charity ride benefitting Livestrong- The Lance Armstrong Foundation.  Over 700 cyclists were signed up for what turned out to be an awesome, but super windy ride!  I borrowed a road bike from my friend Robyn.  A STEEL Lemond Buenos Aires that had a paint job resembling a Latin fiesta... and I pretty much fell in love with thing.  OK, steel is heavy... but can you say 'rides like buttttt-ah'!!!  OMG, sweet stuff  If she was selling it, I would be buying it.

Scott and I before the start of the event.  Can you see how festive that Lemond is? Like my high school friend Jed said, "Steel is REAL!"

The bike ride in itself was awesome.  Wind coming from what felt like every direction.  It was blowing hard enough for the RD at St. Anthony's Tri to shorten the swim yesterday b/c of the chop the winds were causing (better than canceling it like he did last year).  I felt very strong on the bike yesterday.  Stronger than I think I've ever felt.  I pulled the pace line a lot and got a great work out.  It ended up feeling like 68 miles worth of intervals to me.  Great training.  I think I need to ride in a group more often. Normally Scott and I ride alone and we do not draft off of each other, but we also don't push ourselves.  Yesterday, even with the pace line, we were able to push ourselves and really get our HR up.

The only mistake that I made yesterday was in regards to my nutrition.  I packed my Camelbak with Gatorade, but I took the rest of my calories per hour for granted.  I just figured that I would grab some good snacks at the two aid stations.  I hadn't counted on the possibility that the aid stations wouldn't have anything that I wanted to eat.  So, my normal intake of 300 cals/hour (to sustain me for a long ride + brick run) ended up being more like 100 calories per hour and not nearly enough for me to have a satisfactory run afterwards.

I forged through the run, but I was pooped.  My legs felt TERRIFIC (no pain), which was awesome because muscular endurance was something that I struggled with at Augusta last year, but I just didn't have any glycogen left in my body to fuel me.  Lesson learned.  Next time all of my calories are coming with me.  I'm going to pretend that the aid stations are stocked with water only.

I feel absolutely GREAT today.  I don't feel like I put in a 4:30 training day yesterday on limited calories, however it's been 4 weeks since I've taken a full day off so that's what I'm doing today.  My 'Monday Weigh-In' was also a surprise.  I've been watching my weight slowly but surely come down over the past 4 months and this morning I finally dipped below 120 pounds.  I haven't see that since I graduated Air Force basic training and was 19 years old!  It's amazing!  I'm not even trying!  I'm just not eating crap all of the time anymore.  So, that's officially 10 pounds... gone!  Moving on, Scott and I baked in the morning for his crew and then we took my mom to see 'Alice in Wonderland' at the theater.  I even ate some movie theater popcorn (no butter though; although it's still crazy-bad-for-you even without the butter).  Tonight, we are chillaxin' with the fur-kids, but it's back to work tomorrow with a 2:15 long run and a 3000 yd. swim.

Ironman Florida 70.3 is less than three weeks away and I'm excited.  I know it's going to be difficult with the heat and the sans wetsuit lake swim.  I'm not expecting to PR, I'm not expecting to be cozy-comfy, but I AM expecting my legs to hold up this time (unlike Augusta where I overrode the bike).  I plan to make pacing my #1 priority, which most likely is going to equate to going .5 to 1 mph slower on the bike than I did at Augusta.  More on that later, though, as I'm sure I'll have an entire post dedicated to pre-IMFL 70.3 thoughts.

My baker with his mom's award winning Cheddar Pear Pie.  Of course, we lightened it up a bit with whole wheat flour and a sugar/splenda mix.  He'll be surprising his crew at work with it on Wednesday!