I'm tired today. Been having trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Guess I will have to start going to bed earlier. Blahhh.

Last night was a 20 mile ride. It was dark and cold so I went to the gym and watched the UNC v. OSU basketball game while I road 20 miles on a stationary bike. This was extremely fun. Seriously. After the "ride" I lifted a bit - I just did 2 sets of 15 on all of my arm exercises - Kind of weak, yes, but oh well.

Got home and crashed quickly. Need to start going to bed earlier!!

Week 1 - Day 2.
I survived! After dragging my feet at work and finally realizing I had become totally unproductive at 7 last night, I headed off to the gym. I hadn't ever been to the one on Balboa before, but I went there because it has a pool - I have to say, I was pretty happy when I arrived. Kevin and I spent countless days swimming in the cruddy 24 hour pool at the Bryant St. gym back in SF. Let me tell you - this pool sucks. Reasons why it sucked - let me count the ways - First, there was always a contingency of creepy people sitting on the side of the pool on the steps and in the hot tub - Not swimming, mind you - but staring. Who comes to the gym to sit on the side and stare at flabby people in Speedos - CREEPS. Anyways, other reasons why that pool sucked - It was short, probably about 17 yards or so, maybe less. Basically you swim about 2 feet and you have to turn around. Since you aren't supposed to do flip turns (gives a false boost you won't have in open water swimming), it feels like you're always stopping. To top off why I hate that pool - It's just plain dirty - Often I would see nasty hair balls and such floating through the water with the elegance and grace of a jelly fish - NASTY. Yuck. I tried to swim in the Stanford pool whenever I had the chance, which was at least once per week. I was spoiled. The Stanford pool - pristine - huge - 50m - outside and always a perfect temperature. Loved swimming there.

Anyways, back to the new pool - Outside! A plus. I guess that is a perk of living in SoCal. Much longer - probably about 25 yards? And cleaner too. This pool was also not very busy, although it was about 9 by the time I got in...

So now that I have critiqued the pools - Here is what I accomplished last night - My first IM workout :-)

Run (on treadmill) blahhhhh - 40 minutes - Made it a little over 4 miles as I was running snail pace.
Swim - 1000 yards - 20 laps (40 lengths).

Had a lot of fun despite my complaining. Got home, made some black beans and rice and fell asleep watching my new Foo Fighters DVD - I love the Foos :-)

All right - gotta run. Work awaits. I am sure you are all enthralled to read about tonight's bike workout tomorrow! Hurrah!!

Made it home at 10 or so -

And so it begins....

Well, officially yesterday, but I was on a plane coming back from snowy Seattle. Yes, that is right - Snow in Seattle - Perhaps you saw all of it on Monday night football? Looked more like Green Bay than Seattle.

I'm not sick anymore and feeling tons better after spending a pretty lame few days on my new couch doused with Thera-flu. I left for Seattle last night to visit the family and was a complete lazy arse. No exercising.

Now the fun begins. I was going to get up and start my morning with a swim. I am supposed to do 1000 yds. I even had my wetsuit ready to go. Who am I kidding? I still have not trained mself to love mornings. Actually, I haven't yet trained myself to even begin to wake up as early as I would need to to even think about swimming before work. SO, I'll add that to my goals - Learn to workout (at least partially) in the morning before work. Think of how good I would feel had I already completed this. So tonight, after I escape work, I have to head to the dwarf-sized 24-Hour Fitness pool and complete 1000 yards. Thereafter I need to either bike 20 miles (which must be completed either on my trainer or on a stationary since it gets dark so dang early) or run 40 minutes. Whose ideas was this again? I'd really like to go home and put on my new fuzzy pink bootie slippers I picked up in the Emerald City this weekend. Then I'd like to curl up with Calvin on my new couch and watch movies and eat Thai food. Nope. No room for slacking. So I'm finishing up my work and then off to the pool I go.

Hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving!!

Thanks goodness for Jamba Juice ColdBuster! :-)
I have a cold - nothing serious, but I feel like crap. Better now than when the training gets tough. Because of this I am skipping the gym (and any kind of training for that matter). All of this flying around has finally caught up with me. I realized I have been flying at least once a week for a little over 3 months now. This weekend I am not flying - FINALLY. I will rest, drink my tea, hydrate, watch my Blockbuster online movies that have stacked up and remained by the TV unwatched, and sleep in my own bed. Hurrah! Better get the rest in now - My official training program begins November 27th! Getting excited!

Well - I'm gonna get out of here! Happy Weekend everyone!

My goals on paper (or a screen).

I'm stuck in a conference call. We're going on 2 hours now. So I decided to develop my time goals for the race. My initial goal is to finish. But hell, I need something a little more concrete than that. SO here it goes:
6 hours, 30 minutes.

Here it is broken down:
Swim - 45 Minutes (might be a stretch, but it's a goal!)
Bike - 3 hours 30 minutes (a little shy of 15 mph average speed)
Run - 2 hours (10 minute miles)
2 Transitions - ~7.5 minutes a pop or 15 minutes total

There it is. I was initially thinking about 8 hours for this bad boy, but 6:30 seems a little better. If I completed the race last year at this time, then I would only finish ahead of 25% of my age division. I don't care though. This is acceptable to me.

All right - I had better get back to my occasional "ahem".

Happy Thursday.