I’m just in the worst mood today. It started probably yesterday afternoon and hasn’t showed any signs of getting better. I don’t want to be sitting here at work. I don’t really feel like working out tonight. I don’t feel like watching what I eat. I just sort of want to crawl in a hole away from the rest of the world and not come out until I’m ready. Bleh.

I’m finding that with long course training, my annual hours aren’t really increasing like I thought they would. I find that after my longer workouts, I need (or want?) more time to recover for the days after. So while I’m actually doing some much longer workouts than I was when I was training for my 1/2 IM, the days after I’m more sore and less motivated to get out the door an do another monster workout. I’m guessing this is probably a good thing. When I was training for my 1/2, I’d have a lot of workouts that were all moderate distance and probably “too much in the middle.” Still, I was pretty happy with my 1/2 results, so I feel like I’m ditching a plan that’s worked successfully for me in the past. Training for a full IM shouldn’t be the same as a 1/2 though, so I’ll stick with what my body is telling me and rest when I feel like I need to.

One point of uncertainty though is if I truly need the rest or if I’m just getting burned out and lazy that day and don’t feel like working out. One problem with starting my season at the end of January I’m finding out is that it’s hard to keep going with the same intensity all the way through the fall. I think I’m getting some serious mental fatique. Tuesday and Thursday, I found myself at all time lows in terms of desire to go out and workout. Then again, both Monday and Wednesday I had some pretty good volume workouts, so I don’t know? Anyway, my plan is to keep myself as fresh as possible until August where my big key workouts are going to be. I’ll do whatever hours I can until then and try and keep myself fresh with some shorter, smaller races between now and then. I have the Lake Waconia Triathlon next Sunday which should be fun.

I’m sitting here with probably the same look on my face that the Lakers had for most of this series. Just that glazed over deer-in-the-headlights sort of look. I can’t believe that Detroit just embarassed the Lakers beating them in five games. I kept thinking to myself that eventually when the Lakers decided they wanted to, they’d turn it on and light Detroit up. Tonight’s game was the only game I watched in its entirety and it was a pretty sad showing on the Lakers part. Detroit just plain wanted it more. The Lakers were out hustled and just plain out played.

I have to give credit to Detroit in this series. They were the better team. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they’re the best team in the NBA. I’d still take the Timberwolves, Spurs, or Kings over them any day of the week and twice on Sunday. Those folks that say how strong Detroit is as a team are full of it. I’d be willing to bet almost all of those folks were saying that Detroit (or anyone in the East for that matter) didn’t have a chance a month ago. But no use in debating the hypothetical. I’m happy that Larry Brown finally has an NBA ring. He definitely deserves one. And congratulations on a championship, Detroit. We’ll see you next year.

Troy Jacobson’s Tough Love is too tough for me. Three hours on the trainer at just below lactate threshold?! You’ve gotta be kidding! I managed about an hour and a half before my legs were shot. Granted, they were already a bit tired from the couple of days before, but I wouldn’t have lasted the full three hours with fresh legs anyway. I’m a long way off from being able to complete that DVD in its entirety.

So I basically cut an hour off my scheduled workout today. I probably could have sucked it up for another 30 minutes or so, but I have a long run scheduled tomorrow. That takes priority over my “maintenance” bike ride today.

My hat is off to Gordo Byrn - a professional triathlete who shares his thoughts, ideas, and his own training plan for everyone that’s interested in reading about it. I can’t think of another professional triathlete who is willing to share his training ideas and interact with the triathlete community at large by answering questions from the general public all out of the kindness of his own heart. His tips, forum, and book - Going Long - have been invaluable tools in helping me to get where I am today. There are plenty of coaches out there that expect payment for the type of information that Gordo provides for free.

I’m in no way affiliated with Gordo. I’m just a happy “customer” who is very thankful for the information that he provides to the rest of the community at large. Thanks for everything, G!

Man was I wiped yesterday. A combination of little sleep and a lot of exercise for the past couple of days had me feeling really run down. I ended up going to bed around 9 pm last night, a couple hours earlier than I normally do. I got a good eight hours of sleep, but I’m still feeling a little groggy. Maybe this is why people drink coffee?

I was going to do a semi-long ride tonight, but it looks like there are going to be strong scattered storms this afternoon. I put my CompuTrainer back upstairs in the family room where I can watch TV while I ride. It’s a nice change of space and allowed me to catch up on my TiVo. Maybe I’ll pop in a movie tonight and doing my semi-long ride on there. Or perhaps a little Tough Love Troy Jacobson style.

The first local race of the season is over and done with. All in all, it was a decent day. I didn’t feel as fresh as I thought I would considering that this race was at the end of a recovery week for me. But I guess all my training up to this point has been LSD stuff for IM Moo so I didn’t really expect to have much speed in me.

The tri itself was a 1/2 mile swim, a 13.5 mile bike, and a 3.1 mile run. These distances were almost exactly what they were at my very first triathlon that I did late last fall. I had only been training a month to that point, and it was sort of to be the benchmark of where I had come since the beginning of my training. The weather was forcasted earlier in the week to include scattered thunderstorms, but thankfully they were wrong. It was a gorgeous race day - sunny, warm, and not really windy. From what I understand, that was a very pleasant change from the previous couple of years.

My plan for the swim was to take it out reasonably hard as that’s my strongest leg of the three. I pretty much knew my performance would be all downhill from there, so I wanted to build up somewhat of a lead with a strong swim. I did swim pretty hard on the way out, perhaps a little too hard? I guess I didn’t ever feel like my arms were hitting muscle failure or anything, but I was definitely “working” and found myself wanting to breathe more often than my stroke rate was dictating. There was a small group of folks in our heat who would turn out to be the faster swimmers of the pack, and I just tried to remain with this pack of folks the whole way through. The swim felt a tad longer than 1/2 a mile. The fastest swim split of the day was barely under 11 minutes which confirms my suspisions, but no matter. These things are bound to be a little off. My overall swim time was 13:06 which put me 5th in my age group. I had a little trouble getting out of my DeSoto T1 top so I just ran with it on into T1. Once there, I finally managed to get the top off but was feeling a little light-headed and dizzy. I changed into biking gear as quickly as possible and was off again. T1 time: 1:48.

As I’m riding away from T1, I get maybe 30 feet away from the mount line and drop my chain. Grrrrr. I shift up into my big ring, get it back on, and proceed on my way. I’m now in new territory. I’ve never really ridden my bike at a hard effort before for any prolonged period of time so I didn’t really know what to expect. My heart rate was in the mid-160s which seemed to me to indicate that I was working fairly hard. My HRM is also my bike computer, so I couldn’t really see what my speed or cadence was during my ride. I could glance down every once in a while to see what my HR was, but it was at such an angle that I didn’t do it too often. It would have been nice to have that data in front of me at all times just for reference. I’m going to have to figure out a better method for that for these shorter races. The course itself had a few rolling hills, but nothing too terrible. I think I lacked concentration on my ride though. Often times, I’d sit behind someone for too long making sure I wasn’t drafting when in fact, I should have actually be looking to pass and ride on. Note to self for future races. I took in maybe 3-4 oz of sports drink for the entire ride. I didn’t want to slow down to have to reach for my water bottle, but in hindsight I probably should have. I didn’t have as good of a ride as I was hoping to have. During GCT, I pushed 20.7 for 56 miles (I think?). Today, I only managed 21.9 MPH for about 1/4 of that distance. I was a little disappointed with that number, but then again I don’t really train for speed so I guess I’ll have to take what I can get. Bike split: 37:05.

T2 went by pretty quickly. My friends were cheering for me right by me in T2, but I was pretty winded at this point and starting to cramp a little in my side so I didn’t say too much. My goal was to get in and out of T2 as quickly as possible since I’ve been known to lollygag through my transitions. I was happy with my T2 result of 56 seconds. Right out of the T2 gate though, my cramps grew worse. So, and I’m embarassed to say, I sort of gave up on “racing” at this point and slowed way down. I didn’t feel like running hard while cramping and just sort of mentally called it quits. I thought training for an IM would have given me more stamina than I had, but maybe speed stamina and long distance stamina aren’t the same thing? So I just kept putting one foot in front of the other and did what I felt like was a jog. My cramps stayed with me through the whole run and in the final stretch home, I didn’t even sprint it in because I felt like I didn’t deserve to. I thought to myself, “I didn’t run hard through that whole run why should I run hard now?” So I just let people go and pass me left and right all the way down the chute. My only peace with my run is my actual run split. It wasn’t blazing, but it turns out I was running 8:11 pace. That’s not a totally wimpy effort for me as I usually train somewhere between 9s and 10s, so I’m pretty happy with that. Had I not been cramping or been willing to suck it up and deal with the pain, I could have pushed a lot harder. Run split: 25:22.

My overall time was 1:18:14. Compared to my sprint tri last fall of 1:36:XX, I cut off about 18 minutes between the then and now. So while I didn’t have the best of races and efforts today, I’ve most definitely made progress.

So much for recovery week. Back to training for Moo…

Tomorrow is my first local tri of the season. It’s a sprint tri and I’m looking forward to exacting my revenge on my pathetic showing last fall. Muhahaha! I got my bike all cleaned up and shiny. Lets just hope its engine is ok.

The weather forecast looks good for tomorrow. Hopefully, it’ll stay that way. If it’s anything like it was today, it’ll be perfect! I’m sure I’ll have a race report for you all tomorrow or the day after.

Often times, just when I think I start to have a good handle on something, I get myself into a situation where I realize just how little I really know. That’s good though. It keeps me humble and keeps my ego in check.

The weather here has gone back into being sucky as usual. I don’t think we’re expected to see the sun anytime soon, but hopefully it’ll make a guest appearance for my sprint tri this coming Sunday.

I’ve been having some really screwed up dreams the past two nights which is odd for me considering I rarely remember my dreams. The first one involved me being in some sort of situation where I was forced to go against a mob of telekentic people from the future who’s intentions for the modern time were not yet clear. The second involved me being part of some rebellion and being on the losing end of that skirmish. At the end of my dream, I was in the middle of a public square and told the winning side’s leaders that I’d rather kill myself than be a part of their group. I then shot myself in the head and lying on the ground bleeding from my wounds, I was wondering why I hadn’t died yet, how long it was going to take and if I should take another shot. Very strange.

I didn’t think I’d be interested in watching the Lakers/Pistons finals (in fact, I did fall asleap for most of the second half tonight), but I must say that the end of the game was pretty intense. Kobe Bryant was just incredible tonight and pulled them out of an ugly situation. Unreal. I’m at a loss for words to even try and describe his performance down the stretch.