run this amazing day

It's probably fair to guess that I missed all of my May goals before I even look back... May Goals Use the time off from working wisely.  Doctor's appointments, sleep, errands, doing workouts in new places.   Actually, this happened.  Do core work more than once a week while lifting.   Ugh.  No. Learn a second way to eat quinoa.   "Learned" but did not "cook." Use the foam roller even when things aren't cranky. A little bit...maybe. Discover and keep more healthy snacks in the house to avoid the 4pm "EAT ALL THE THINGS."   Total failure. I'm three weeks out from ironman, which means I'm right where I should be: as loaded as possible, and now it's time to very slowly roll downhill towards the race.  Swimming took a bit of a backseat this month - I feel like mostly what I was doing was either maintenance, to keep up with all the good hard work I put in this winter, or recovery, to give my legs a little gift to help ease the p...

1. I've got one more ridiculous weekend of riding before my schedule downgrades to merely insane, and I'm not sure I've ever looked forward to a taper as much as I am looking forward to this one.  But being at the top of this build, I've had a few moments of, "you know, I think this is going to be okay."  Even though my legs are stripped with fatigue, I still feel like I had a pretty solid ride on Sunday - my first crack at the SkyMass loop out in the Shenandoah with my weekend smashfest buddies.  I've ridden the first 25 miles of it multiple times but this time around we white-knuckle descended through Luray, climbed the Massanutten cursing the entire way (that was me), and then rode bumpy little rollers the whole way home.   My legs weren't exactly pleased about the two miles I ran off the bike - and the five I ran later in the evening - but I've certainly felt worse after so much time in the saddle.  And this ride had not quite twice the amo...

Longest run I will do before IMCdA? Check.  And yes, I am icing my calves with "baby bud broccoli florets."

I decided to do this swim a few months ago because my love affair with open water swimming has always been a bit rocky.  I cover this distance in the pool all the time, but when you get into a lake, there are bugs and fish and branches and lake zombies to worry about.  However, I had no desire to race the distance.  I didn't do any specific race preparation, I didn't taper, and my ZOMG EXCITED race persona stayed home.  I had strict instructions to swim steady and easy, and that's what I did. It's been on the warm side in DC here for the past few weeks, and when we rolled up to the lake Saturday morning, the "official" water temperature was 76º (the guy that posted the temperature commented that he had to boat around to several places in the lake before finding a wetsuit-legal-temp-spot.  Excellent.).  In a triathlon, there is no WAY I would swim in a wetsuit for 76º, but one of the big points of doing this swim was that I wanted to spend more than 35 min...