run this amazing day

When in doubt, make a list... 1. I'm in a full-blown hatred affair with running right now.  There is absolutely nothing enjoyable about it at all, and the only reason I'm doing the teeny tiny bit of it that I am doing is because I know how completely annoying it is to start over after several weeks off.  And I try to plan my race schedule around how much it sucks so I can minimize my own complaining.  But I hate it.  I hate the weather here in DC, and I know that it's my choice to live here (despite the fact that we are trying to leave), but I still hate it with an angry fiery passion.  I hate the humidity, I hate that the dew point is consistently rated somewhere between "oppressive" and "miserable," I hate that the temperature doesn't go below 80º for weeks on end, even at 2am.  And don't even talk to me about the treadmill, the climate in my gym is worse than being outside because their a/c situation is such a disaster. 2. All of that said...

I learned a lot of important things last summer.  I don't like to run in the heat, and when I have to run and ride in it, I complain a lot get burned out a lot more quickly.  This led me to pick CdA as my first 140.6 so that peak training could be done before the weather got out of hand here in DC, but also to decide that I would recover by taking the entire month of July off. Now, by "off" I certainly don't mean OFF.  But I mean no schedule, no intervals, no anything I don't like to do.  Sonja gave me some rough parameters for the month - essentially do not exceed X time per sport and nothing hard at all - and I added some of my own.  I would not completely ignore running for the month (because that makes the comeback so much more painful), I would swim as much as I wanted and bike with friends.  I would lift a little to try and wake up my sleeping left glute and I would eat whatever I wanted and sleep as much as I could.  My only real goal for the...

The problem with life throwing massive and stressful curveballs after ironman is that you end up posting 50 race reports in a row, despite three weeks actually passing between the races.  Sorry about that.   Allison and I had talked in the spring about jumping in some swimming events post-ironman, especially since they are incredibly cheap as compared to running races.  Late last week, we both signed up for a master's swim meet up in Maryland.  Our entrance fee paid for us to swim in up to three events, so I blindly signed up for all the ones labeled "free" and hit register. I swim in a 25-yard pool (short course yards) and this meet was taking place in a 50-meter pool (long course meters).  I sort of half-heartedly thought about trying to get to Wilson to swim in a 50 meter pool before the race, but on Friday morning I was way too hungover tired from my week to make the trip.  We also had to estimate our times during registration, which resulted in the ...

The run was the biggest mystery of the day. It's so interesting to me how running is the sport I have been doing the longest and yet it is where I feel I am so weak.  I picked up swimming about 2.5 years ago and cycling the summer before last, but running I've been doing since I was a squat college sophomore.  Not a lot of it and certainly not even close to fast, but it's been a constant, the impetus behind so many decisions in my life.   And probably the most interesting thing about training for ironman (that may surprise you) is the fact that I have never run a marathon before.  I've heard it's actually kind of far.  My longest run before race day ended up being three hours and that was that.  And I feel, in this situation, the ignorance of never having run the distance - not even one time! - was total bliss. I headed out of transition and as I jogged out onto the street, the pair of feet I tried to hang onto in Knoxville was coming around for her s...