After an hour on the trainer and an hour run outside, I gave myself a little leeway and treated myself to something special. A cup and a half of white rice. Dieting sure sucks. :(

Ugh. My legs are shot so I’m giving myself a day off from training. Not going to be able to maintain that nice 1,000 calorie deficit today, though. :(

“Slow and steady wins the race.”

I was really hoping that Tyler was going to come up with some reasonable explanation on the inconsistencies that were found in his blood and that he’d be vindicated of the accusations against him. But it looks like his time has run out and everything points to him being guilty as charged. I’d really like to believe him since he’s another top American cyclist in a European dominated sport, but it’s not looking good for him. He’s already tested postive twice and has had ample time since then to plead his case. But if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, well… Shame, shame…

Nope, it’s nothing sexual. :P I was out on my bike this afternoon riding through a local state park when I come across some guy lying down on the grass next to the trail. I saw him from a distance wondering if he was just tired or what, but as I got closer I realized that wasn’t the case. The guy took a spill on his bike and cut his head open pretty good. It was a pretty deep cut and certainly big enough that he was going to need to be stitched up. Luckily, the guy had his helmet on or that cut could have been something a whole lot worse. Pretty scary, since I see people riding on those trails without helmets all the time. Anyway, I rode my ass off to the nearest office (it was less than a mile away) and got them to call 911 for help (I debated whether or not I should leave him there by himself, but he seemed to be lucid and was comfortable enough to wait there for me to go get help… so I did). I went back and waited with the guy until they got there which they did fairly quickly.

Nothing much else new to report. I’m still large and in charge - working out and eating little. The weight is coming off, albeit slowly. I still have shin splints, although they’re not nearly as bad as they were before. The ITB for the most part seems to be gone, but I swear I can still feel it sometimes. Maybe I’m just paranoid.

I’m still pretty anxious about whether or not I’ll be ready for IM Wisconsin on 9/11. Four months really isn’t that long to train for such an event. We’ll see how quickly it all comes back… It could be a moot point because the union that represents many of the employees at our company has its contract coming to an end at the end of the summer. Which means that they could go on strike if they can’t reach an agreement which would mean that I’d be stuck working twelve hour days seven days a week during that time. I’d rather suffer through an Ironman than have to do strike duty again. It’s way easier. :(

I submitted my federal tax return almost two months ago now, and I still haven’t received my refund. I called the IRS once already and they claimed that they were showing that they owed me more money than I thought I was going to be receiving? Ok, I thought. You want to give me more money than I thought I was getting… I can wait a little longer. But it’s been weeks since that call and I still have yet to see my money in my account. I called again today and they’ve told me they’ve released the hold on my refund and that I should be seeing it in my account in two to three weeks.

I’ve already given them an interest free loan on overpaying taxes for the year. Now they are taking almost three months to give my money back to me? Funny, we have to pay them money back plus interest if we underpay our taxes, but if they’re the ones underpaying, I doubt we see any interest on the money that they owe us? I just want my damn refund. Grrr.

I spent the majority of my afternoon and evening today watching “The Ultimate Fighter” on TV today. It’s basically a reality TV show where the winners get contracts to fight in the big ultimate fighting league. I started watching at first because my fiance and I raced to the remote control. She got control of my PVR, but I had control of the TV and was forced to watch “live” TV instead of watching what my PVR had recorded. I watched the first episode which just so happened to be part of a marathon that was going on all day, so I watched all the way through to the finale tonight. It was actually not as bad as it probably sounds on here. :P

I went for an hour ride this afternoon on my bike too. The winds were blowing around 20 MPH with 30+ MPH gusts. I was having a pretty rough time, but noticed that I was only going maybe 21 MPH with the wind. I was thinking to myself, “I can’t be that out of shape.” I toughed it out through my whole workout and when I got back home, I took a closer look at my bike. Upon spinning my rear wheel, I noticed that it came to an abrupt halt soon after spinning it. Yep, I had basically been riding with my brake partially engaged for the past week. Oh well. I suppose it was good strength training. And maybe I’m not as out of shape as I thought. :)

Yesterday, I did what was supposed to be a nice easy get back into the swing of things type ride. I pushed off and my butt wasn’t too sore from the riding that I had done previously in the week so that was a good sign. Not much wind and nice temperatures. Pretty much an ideal day.

The first half of my ride went ok, but coming home I felt awful. I couldn’t have been more than 5 miles from my house, when the wheels just fell off. I had absolutely no energy. I felt like I was trying really hard, but my speedometer told me that I was just crawling. And I had reached the point where I was unable to elevate my heart rate at all. I suppose my past week of what I like to call “brink of starvation” dieting hasn’t provided me with enough energy to do much of anything.

So, I’m committing to eating (a little) more in hopes that that’ll provide me with the energy for better workouts. I have to keep reminding myself that it’s going to take some time to get all this weight off. Consistency, as always, is key.

Today marks another year that I’ve been on the planet. I’d almost be nice to go out and celebrate, but I’ve told myself that I wasn’t going to indulge on anything good until I got back down to 160 lbs. So, it’ll probably be a movie and maybe another 6″ Subway sub tonight for dinner. Maybe in another month or two I’ll be able to celebrate appropriately.

I ran for the first time in a couple weeks yesterday. I ran reeaaallly slow, trying to keep my HR down. I’m sure I looked like I was going backwards to the cars that were passing by, but I did my best to not care what I looked like and to do what I need to be doing at this stage in the game. I’m focusing on keeping things very low in intensity and starting out very slowly. I need to have a good couple of weeks of prep and show up healthy for when my base periods start.

What is the huge deal with Google Maps? Sure, I think that their maps are prettier than some other sites, but their whole “new” satellite photo thing really isn’t that revolutionary. I’ve seen that before on various other websites? And it doesn’t even cover all regions. My fourth attempt at pulling up an image brought about the website saying that it didn’t have enough imagery detail to display that location.

I’m not saying it’s not cool, because it is. I’m just saying it’s not new and am not sure why it’s making the headlines in the news.

My hiatus from posting was not my usual hiatus caused by neglect. All last week, I spent time in the Caribbean enjoying some R&R. It’s the first cruise I’ve been on in two years, and man was it nice to get away. I had almost forgotten how nice going on cruises was and how much I enjoy it. I have some pictures of my trip up in my photo album if you’re so interested.

Alas, the vacation is over and I’m slowly getting back into the routine of things. I’m fatter than ever, topping the scales just right about where I was before I started triathlons entirely. Taking six months off and basically eating whatever you want will do that to you. It’s going to be an interesting journey over the next few months trying to get back into shape. I have a good 20 pounds to lose to get back down to my race weight, but more importantly, I need to rebuild my base if I’m going to have any chance at completing Ironman Wisconsin this year. September may seem far away, but on paper, I wonder if I’ll even have enough time to be adequately ready by then. I still can’t run entirely (I’ve got a case of shin splints now from trying to do too much to soon) and my biking fitness is in piss poor shape. Have I mentioned that I haven’t gotten in the pool yet either? This should be interesting.