The Thin Red Line... and some workouts

No, I’m not thinking about the movie, I’ve never actually seen it. What I’m referring to is the 12-14 inch long, half inch wide sunburn I got on my lower back on Saturday. Apparently my bike jersey inched up on me during my ride, exposing a small gap between the jersey and my shorts. It’s not large enough to really hurt a lot, but when I brush something up against it, I sure feel it.
Plus, it looks really, really ridiculous. I’m tempted to take a picture and post it if not for being so close to certain posterior anatomies. There’s a valuable lesson learned.

I had a tough run yesterday. My legs felt really heavy at the start, I think this was due to two factors. The first was a really big breakfast that I didn’t give quite enough time to settle, though I think that was less of a factor on my legs than on the occasional stomach upset I felt through my run. The bigger factor, I believe, was the longer than intended bike ride from the day before. Plus there was the hills, I started out with a ‘run’ in Settlers’ Park. Really it was more like trying to run up the hills and all too frequently it became a hike. After fleeing the park, I headed up Boulder Canyon, which felt like a Breeze after Settlers’ Park.
The swim on the other hand went great. How great? Well, my 2000 yard TT was 38:31. That same pace, projected over 2500 yards, like my swim yesterday, makes for a 48:08 swim. I did it in 48:16. I wasn’t trying to set a new personal best by any means, but I did go into the swim with a little bit of an edge to my attitude, I wanted to push it a little more than I had been, I was concerned that maybe I had gotten lazy, that maybe I had let the altitude become something of a crutch to excuse less intense workouts. I certainly don’t think that is true on the run or the bike, but I hadn’t been feeling the altitude much, if at all, on my swim and I decided I needed to challenge myself a little.
Also, my first 2000 yards was done in 38:26. That’s 5 seconds better than my TT, on top of which I did another 500 yards and didn’t push myself to exhaustion like I did in the TT. ROCK!
Now, if only I could put up similar results in the other two disciplines…