'Sup?

Inquiring minds want to know.....just *what* have I been up to?!?! Okay, so maybe there aren't inquiring minds, but just let me pretend that there are.

Training is going along, swimming, biking, running, more swimming, more biking, not too much more running. And of course there's work, which hasn't really slowed down too much. Sigh.

With my runs I've been working on keeping a steady pace. Harder than it sounds, really. On my *easy* runs, I'm shooting for 10:15, but somehow manage to hit either 9:30 or 10:30 and nothing in between. I think it has something to do with the lag time of the Garmin GPS. It yells at me "SPEED UP" (well, it beeps insistently anyway), so I do then I look and I'm too fast. So I slow down a tiny bit and we go back to "SPEED UP." Speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. Hmm, this is more work than a nice easy run should be. Tempo runs have been something like this: 15 min warm up at 10:15 (riiiiight), 20 min at 9:30 (uh huh, sure), 5 min at 10:15, 20 min at 9:30, then cool down for 15 at 10:15. Okay, at least I know I need to work on holding a pace. Doing these kinds of 'drills' has given me some of the fun back in my running tho. I think because I'm not pushing, pushing, always pushing as hard as I can, I can actually enjoy it a little bit.

Swimming, well, I've just been trying not to drown. No, I've actually been doing drills: kicking, pulling, 'speed' drills, etc. I'm not *sure* but I may be getting a tiny bit better at it. T and I have even hit Quarry Lakes a couple of times to get that 'open water' feel. One day we went and it was pretty windy. In one direction it was smooth sailing, but coming back the other way some little waves were slapping us around. So good practice for the real thing, I guess. Now all we need is hands slapping us and feet kicking us and we'll get some *real* practice. Oh, throw in a little claustrophobia and panic too for good measure. Item that needs most improvement: spotting the buoys....I get off line pretty quickly and consistently.

This, by the way, just cracks me up:


Biking has been coming along as well. One bizarre note....we did a longer ride last weekend (37-ish miles or something) and my tush/crotch was NOT happy. (Too much info?!?! Sorry. :-) I was wearing my nice cushy bike shorts too, not my barely padded tri shorts. Then on Wednesday evening we go for a 27 miler and I wear my tri shorts (hey, gotta get used to wearing them on rides) and my tush doesn't complain at all! Very weird, but it seems to me that I do better with *less* padding. Hmmm. Further experimentation may be warranted. I also tried sockless biking on the 27 miler. Didn't feel any different than socked biking, except maybe that my feet were a little chillier, even with my toe covers. My thinking behind sockless biking is that my feet will have a chance to dry out after the swim, while I'm on the bike, and then I can have nice fresh socks for the run. Still debating this philosophy with myself.

Anywhoo, that's what I've been up to...same 'ol, same 'ol basically. Next Sunday (June 8th) is the San Jose International Tri. My longest tri to date ~ 1.25k swim (.78 miles), 40k bike (24.85 miles) and 10k run (6.2 miles). And lucky me, I'm at a conference all next week so my training will be limited to what the conference hotel has to offer by way of gym/pool. That *may*a be a good thing tho. Maybe my body will be more rested than if I was at home trying to do my regular training stuff. We'll see. There are quite a few of my former coworkers from various companies going as well, so the real challenge will be making sure I get plenty of sleep....oh, and not too many cosmos. :-)