There was a smaller crowd this month. A lot of the regulars raced Ironman Mont Treblant or USAT Nationals in VT the weekend before, or were on their way to next weekend's Ironman Canada. The temperature was cool! Only about 80! But the skies were threatening. Race director Dan gave us instructions in case of thunder. If we heard the long siren, and ( Read more... )

Thought for the day #1: The only thing I can control is my attitude. 
Thought for the day #2: Smiling makes everything better.
Thought for the day #3: This is Ironman. It's supposed to be hard.
Those thoughts are what powered me through the day. That and Pringles.
I've been writing this race report for days now, and decided I should break it up so that ( Read more... )

I've only been officially 1/2 IM training for 2 weeks, and the second week is a recovery week!  I love it!  Thursday I couldn't attend TZPPT so I did my run in the morning.  3-4 intervals of 1K at 5K pace and .5 mile at recovery pace.  I was going to do 4, but a neighbor asked me what I was training for at the end of the 3rd recovery and by the ( Read more... )

Monday was a delightful rest day, but apparently not quite enough ( Read more... )

This past weekend the calendar called for a 3 hour bike/30 minute run on Saturday and a 30 minute swim/8 mile run on Sunday.  That's probably the hardest weekend workout I've done in a very long time.  And this is weekend 1.  Oh boy.  What have I gotten myself into?

I swapped the workouts, since Mr. & Mrs. sweetmonster  were trail running on Saturday and riding ( Read more... )

Last week I finally felt like I got back into the swing of training ( Read more... )

I did NOT want to swim last night.  I need to swim.  I had swum only twice this season before last night.  Cool weather does not motivate me to swim.  I figured if I just showed up at the workout swimming would follow.  I showed up.  I still did NOT want to swim.  I told myself if I put my hand in the water and it felt at all cool, I could bail.  I ( Read more... )

Tuesday - core strength, swimming with Trizones - the water was heated, but still cooler than I wanted it to be.  It felt surprisingly good to swim for the first time since last fall ( Read more... )

I took it easy again this week.  30 minute swim on Monday.  3 neighborhood bike loops on Thursday.  No 5am wakeups for workouts.  Tomorrow I run 12 miles and next week get back into the routine of marathon training.

Last night's Trizones workout was an open water swim at Mansfield Dam park.  For me it was a recovery workout from the Austin Tri, so no matter what the instructions were to the group, my instructions were to swim easy.  So my workout was to swim out to the buoy and back three times.  And then I skipped the mass start practice since my tri season ( Read more... )