Ides-ish of March

I’m working on the vacation blog – but being that work and life are cray cray and it was an epic time, I really want to get the details right – you get a brain dump of the here and now first.

Sleep Monster:

I am loving my new haircut, even though sleep sometimes does this to it…

I LOVE LOVE LOVE daylight savings time because it makes me not feel like I work until midnight.  However, the adjustment for a not-natural morning person is… an adjustment.  Couple that with vacation being not-so-restful, said work stress, and training stress, and ALL I WANT IS SLEEP.  It’s silly.  Like – 9 hours a night minimum or I’m a grumperpuss.

So, our schedule has been odd – sleep until the very very last second before work, and get our training in at lunch or after work.  This has made for some wonderful beautiful lunch runs in the sunshine, and some gorgeous sunset runs where it starts warm and gets chillier as you finish.  Delicious.  I know the time will be on us so soon where it’s temperate for me to be outside from about 5am to 8am, so I’m just loving this up right now.

Training:

It’s weird to be training this volume this early in the year.  I kind of love it, but it’s definitely *different*.  My first tri of the year is on the same day as it usually is, but this year it’s a 50 mile venture, not a super sprint.  Which is awesome, because this is the time of the year I *WANT* to be outside doing long runs and bricks and the like, but it’s just… different.

The different bad part is I just can’t bring myself to confine myself to the pool for laps and laps and laps, and wasting time pumping iron when I could be running in the perfect temps is torture.  Instead of worrying about it, I’m going for it.  All I will want to do over the summer is ride my bike and swim and running will be HARD so I may as well just accumulate that training now. In May, will I be a slower swimmer than I could be?  Probably.  However, I’m banking on the fact that I’m feeling SO STRONG with my running, espcially off the bike, and this will make up more time than I’ll lose.

Not that I have any qualms about being able to rock a one mile swim, I just think I’m going to maintain what I’ve got rather than improve.  The bike is a question mark I’ll have an answer to closer to race day.  I’m working hard on my trainer, and I’m the best biker I have been this early in the year, but I am really going to be answering the question of “how does the trainer convert to race day fitness” because I’m not going to have a lot of outdoor miles before the race.

But, the run.  All the work I’ve put into improving what has went from my strong leg years ago to my weak leg, I’m hoping to bring back to being where I’m confident and strong and passing people and feel at home.  It is still inconsistent (some days my legs/brain show up, some days they forget), but I’m seeing the light.  My best pace in an Olympic is about 10:30s, and my best pace in a 70.3 is just dismal fall-apart 12-somethings.  I’m looking to be able to crush both of those if I don’t fall apart.

Life:

I never feel like I have enough time, but it’s especially bad lately.  I have so many things I want to do, but between work (and this is working just a normal 40 hours a week) training, cooking healthy food, socializing, social media’ing and blogging, sleeping like a sleep monster, and keeping the house not being a total disaster, and having just a little bit of time to unwind, I’m tapped.

My poor sewing machine is unloved.  I’m struggling to finish up a story I’ve been working on for SIX MONTHS.  The house projects I want to do are laying undone.  It’s sad.

I’m not sure what the answer is to this, but consider this my rant.  I NEED MORE TIME IN THE DAY.  I’m just happy that triathlon is my retirement plan, in that when I finally can retire, I’ll be fit and healthy enough to actually enjoy my time.  The money?  Well, let’s just say I hope I have a rich relative I don’t know about that wants to leave me their fortune… (just kidding, I have a 401k and savings but ya know…).

Random Good Things:

The track at night is one of my favorite places.  It must be the middle school track star (hah) in me, but it makes me happy to run around that little oval, and it feels so… scandalous somehow in the dark.

New favorite running song, and love the video… (slightly NSFW)

Came up with a new bike/weights program – in 5 mile segments:

• Mile 1: pick up weights (I used 12s) and do bicep curls, tricep curls, raises, etc while pedalling
• Mile 2: ab work – lean over like you’re going to put your hands on the hoods, but don’t.  Do this until you want to cry (about 1/2 mile) and then recover
• Mile 3: one leg drills… works every muscle in your legs and improves form
• Mile 4: high cadence
• Mile 5: recovery

I did 30 miles of that with 5 miles warmup and 5 miles cooldown and it was the bomb.

We smoked all the meats on Saturday, and I’ve been enjoying smoked chicken tacos with corn/bean/avocado salsa, smoked indian chicken chana saag, turkey w/southwestern bean pasta salad, and have smoked chicken strips for a salad in the freezer.  Yeah, this week’s eats have not sucked.  No pictures because I eat too fast.

Purple plaid golf pants.  Because… why not.

On Tap:

This weekend, we’ve got the Rosedale Ride.  I’m excited to go ride Evilbike outside for 60-some miles on a supported ride.  This will be a great test of my bike fitness.  We’re riding with a friend from work who rides about our pace, we’re going to start together and see how it goes.  I want to try and race this and see if I can beat my Kerrville bike split of 3:22, usually this is so early in the year I’m DYING at 60 miles but I think I’m pretty good this year.  However, I can’t not take advantage of some aid station cookies and don’t want to bring my riding buddies down with my competitive nature, so we’ll see how it goes.

I may be bringing my running shoes and contemplating a few brick miles after, but tacos and beer might win.  We’ll see.

After, we will be grillin’ and chillin’ with a big group of our friends to belatedly celebrate our birthdays (again) (yes, March is just one big party).  Saturday looks to be epic fun.

…and, that’s all I got.  Back to producing, training, and trying not to go insane while I’m building the castle.  Thanks to bad TV, bingo, the internet, and various adult bevvies for keeping me sane.

How goes your March?