I’m guessing that most folks have some acquaintences that live in Florida and might have been affected by this hurricane. I have two friends that (that I still keep in touch with) that live down there and had to evacuate.

One lives in Melbourne and evacuated on Wednesday night. She and her fiance left a few days early to beat all the traffic leaving town. They packed up all their valuables into their car and made their way for Pensicola. Sometime later, they found that their car had been broken into and that the thieves made away with most of their CDs, a CD player, and a few other smaller items. It sucks that despite all anguish and pain of having to pack up all your belongings, that this has to come on top of it. :(

Another friend of mine I haven’t heard from other than to say that he has an oak tree on his house. I guess on the house is better than in his living room or something.

But I think I’d still choose hurricanes over winter. :P

There was a post recently on the SlowTwitch forum talking about GPS devices and Motion Based. Seeing that I already owned a Garmin Forerunner 201, I decided to dig it out of my closer and see what all the fuss was about. I was very pleasantly surprised.

Here is a link to what GPS + Motion Based can do. It requires that you use a Windows computer :( and worst yet must be viewed with IE >5.5 :cry: (yet another reason for me to think twice before getting an iMac - the Garmin software is PC only too). It’s the bike leg from my Lake Waconia Triathlon race.

Some of you are probably thinking… “Ok, great. It’s a map with some numbers.” But for the technology geek that I am, being able to generate all this data off simply off of something that you wear on your wrist had me jumping around like a six year old on Christmas eve. Maybe I’m just easily amused. In any case, my Forerunner will be seeing considerable more use in the future. Maybe I’ll bring it to Moo with me and map out the bike course there.

The past couple of days, I’ve been learning how to do some elementary bike maintenance. I’d really like to learn more about it to the point where one day I can strip everything down to the frame and build it back up again. I guess it’s my nature to like to know how exactly things work (and to be able to save money and trips to my LBS which is a good 30 miles away).

Yesterday, I replaced my own chain. I measured it using a chain checker tool and found it to be a little too stretched for my liking. I used the long formula found at the Park Tool website to find out what my proper chain link should be. I was a little surprised that my LBS had two extra links in my chain according to the formula which have now been removed. I laced the new chain through and put the new pin into it to connect the two ends, but read afterwards that there is a leading and trailing link and that the pin was supposed to go in the leading one. Luckily, I just put the pin into the leading edge by chance, so I didn’t have to take it off and remount the chain. Phew.

Today, I had to fix my cadence meter. While on my bike ride today, I noticed that my cadence was reading zero for the entire ride. I washed my bike yesterday and must not have screwed the cadence pickup together well enough because there was a little water in there when I took it apart. Oops! I dried out the water with a little canned air and the sensor started picking everything up again. Lucky for me, the water didn’t short it out or anything.

All pretty basic stuff, but I have to start somewhere.

I had a pretty short day today. An hour of swimming this morning and a short 15 mile ride and a 3 mile run. Tomorrow will be my LAST breakthrough workout of the SEASON! Woohoo! Race week should be fun!

Is the current reading on my countdown clock to IMMoo. It’s pretty crazy to be thinking that it’s coming in days and not weeks. And that it’ll be close enough soon to see the weather forecasts and what not. The whole event has really been all I’ve been able to think about for the past few week or so.

I know I keep saying this, but I did yet another last long workout today. Just under a three hour brick with 46 miles of cycling and a short 3 mile run. The bike felt really strong, but I may have brought it home a little too hard. I was trying to simulate heavy legs by pushing hard the last few miles of the bike. It did work, but my HR went sky high on my run. It didn’t feel bad or like I was going to blow up or anything. But my HR was a good 15 beats above where I usually train at. I guess it could have been cardiac drift too.

Seemingly all the pieces are falling together quite nicely. My swimming has been the best it has been all season. I almost feel as good in the water as I did in my college years. My biking and running paces are faster and more effortless than normal. Being able to rest for those breakthrough workouts definitely has its benefits. I just hope and I’ll have to trust that I’m not peaking too early.

Lastly, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who stops by and an even bigger thanks to those who take the time to leave me a message. It’s nice knowing that when I hit my publish button that someone else besides me ends up reading it. Thanks to those who stopped to share their own experiences and for the many words of encouragement thus far. See you at the races!