Back in Bouldah!

I arrived back in Bouldah Tuesday evening and I've been pretty busy since then.
Tuesday i was up early unpacking and rearranging the dozen or so boxes in my room (along with massive bags of luggage/clothing). This was mostly an effort to get enough space free in my room to put my bike back together, which I did. There were a few adjustments still to be made but the bike and a lot of unpacking were done by noon.
Lunch and a stroll around Bouldah brought me home in time for a 1:30 run. Not my smartest choice as far as time, however I kept a short course that looped back to my house every 10 minutes or so. This allowed me to cut the run short if the altitude and heat got to me and allowed me to hydrate frequently (there was a water fountain at the far point of my loop so I could hydrate every 5 minutes if necessary). I ended up getting in a 40+ minute run and didn't have any of the lower back acheyness I had on Monday.
Today I headed out to the DMV to get my new license. The DMV was as much fun as I remember it being... which is to say NONE! I also headed over to the NoBo Rec Center and got an annual pass. Then i headed home for some food and to prep for the Stroke N Stride. This was also when the bubble was about to burst.
Thinking the SnS was at 7, I took out my bike out to do some last minute adjustments since I was going to ride it to the SnS and as I was doing them, I popped over to the SnS website to check the temp at the Res.
There at the top of the page was the start time... 6pm. NUTS! It was 5:30... no was I was going to get there in half an our, I didn't even have air in my tires yet!
Scratch the SnS, there was no time to get there.
So I decided to finish up the bike and take it for a ride. I did some extra tweaking and adjusting, then brought it outside to fill up the tires. I pump up the rear tires, take off the pump and the valve seal to the tires breaks! Tube = Dead 45 minutes of searching told me I had somehow left my spare back in Cincinnati. Nuts.
Oh, and by then, UBikes was closed so no new tube tonight. Double Nuts.
My productive roll had hit a serious wall.

The big bummer of it is that I've been looking forward to that Stroke N Stride for about 2 months.... There's always next week, but still...

Long swim

If there's one thing that has suffered more than anything over the last month, between my thesis, graduation and moving, it's been my swim.
So when I found myself with the opportunity to actually get to a pool yesterday (I'm in the Boston area this week and getting to a pool is tricky) and saw that I had 3500 yards on the schedule... I was a little uncertain that I'd be able to do the whole workout.
So I set some priorities for the swim.
#1 Keep my form clean. If my form started to fall apart, there wouldn't be a whole lot of good coming out of struggling through the rest of the swim.
#2 Finish the distance. 3500 yards is probably the longest swim I've done in a workout, just under 2 miles.
#3 Escalate my times. The workout calls for 3x1000, with each 1000 being faster than the one preceding.
So how did I do?
Well not to hop around but I did the whole distance (huzzah!) and I kept my form pretty clean. I felt it start to slip a little going into the last 1000, but I was able to keep it going ok. I haven't looked at the data yet but I'm pretty sure I beat my first 1000 with my second one, but my third was almost certainly my slowest.
I'm really looking forward to getting back to Boulder next week and being able to establish a routine again. Especially one that involves a 40 hour work week instead of 18+ hours a day in studio!

Eagleman 70.3

THis is MVA's first race as a pro and he's off to a blistering start. He's got the best pro men's time on the swim (no shock there!) with a 23:26 and has the third best bike time with a 2:09:10 which puts him in first place coming off the bike by roughly 2 minutes.
Mark has been concerned about his run, we'll see how he does here...

Whoa... A New Post?!?

Momentum.
There are few things that I have found to be more important in my own training than momentum. When you have momentum, even if the workouts aren't going great, it's easy to keep it going and the workouts will come around.
When you don't have it or when it gets lost... it's hard to build up again.
This week has been all about trying to rebuild momentum again. I've been feeling fat and slow and lazy. The momentum I had for so long was lost in the insanity that was graduate school and my thesis. I was getting 4-5 hours of sleep a night for about 3 weeks and there were a couple 3-4 day stretches when I didn't go home, just slept on a couch in studio for a couple hours before waking up and going back to work. my workouts fell off a lot. Most of my runs were for stress reduction reasons and I got only one swim and one bike ride each week in each of those three weeks.
This week, I was finally, FINALLY able to start working out and having *gasp* free time again. I practically had to mentally berate myself early this week to get myself to do my workouts. But I did them, albeit not well. My swim especially has been terrible. My right arm has been getting tired earlier in the workout than I had been and my hand has been cramping slightly and 'complaining' about being held stiff through the workout.
Yesterday was the first day it felt really right to be working out. Not just feeling good to be physically active, but I didn't have to really push myself to do the workout.
I've got my momentum back!