On a Roll

Thought I'd start off with this pic from September when I was visiting a friend in Vegas. Good times! I bought that swimsuit at Kohl's there for like $10. A few people at this pool told me I looked hot in it. I dunno. I think I mostly just look drunk and horny!

The tan is mostly gone, but I hope to get a bit of a refresh this Sunday in Orlando. I'm going to do a long run there, and hopefully my back will cooperate for 2 hours. I've run twice this week with no pain while running, so that's a good sign.

So far this week, I've hit pretty much everything I've had planned for training! That is such a good feeling, and now I know I'm good to go for ZebraMan the week of 12/22. I can't wait!

There have been a few more snags in the remodeling project, but for sure next week while I'm gone, both foyers will get spanking new tile (black granite upstairs and white ceramic downstairs), if Kohler actually ships the right parts I'll have a working toilet upstairs, the custom shades will be installed in my office and guest bedroom, and when I get home, we are going to lay down that zebra carpet! I'm getting custom Crackhead stickers made for Bitchie (sparkly pink, what else?), I have a solid training plan in place (subject to whimsical change, of course!), normal sleeping is coming around, I'm actually looking forward to Christmas, and I could give a crap that it's winter, cold, snowy and did I say it's fucking cold (7 degrees as I write this!)?

I've got a nice evening and Saturday morning planned before I head to Orlando (hopefully without flight delays but you never know it's supposed to snow tonight and tomorrow), and it will be nice to get away from home for a week even though it's on business. If I get there at a decent time, a friend of mine down there is going to whisk me away to some sort of triathlon gathering that should be loads of fun. I'm looking forward to meeting the crew down there as I plan on showing up regularly now that my BFF Cindy is moving down there. I'll be able to get in decent training on Monday since meetings don't begin until Tuesday. Tuesday-Thursday it will be an AM workout, most likely just running.

That's it for this week's updates until I'm in Whore-lando. I think this will be about the 12th time I've gone there?

I know it's been awhile since I've said this (what, 3 months?), but Life is Fucking Good!

Fuckin' A I FINALLY HAVE A PLAN!!!

I have finally put together a training plan for my season. Even though it officially began the week after NothingMan (9/15/2008), I've been pretty much running on whatever I can get done since then, with a sketchy plan in place in my head for the past 8 weeks or so.

After knocking out so many things on my general to do list, and registering for (hopefully) the last race I will be doing this season, I felt ready to sit down and make a plan. I have a little more checking to do, but below shows the progression of hours by sport. If you are interested in the actual workouts that I have scheduled (i.e., you want the actual plan), let me know and maybe we can work something out! Although, YOU are not ME and probably shouldn't train like me, even if you were doing the exact same races as me! But if you're a triathlon perv and want to see them anyway, let me know.

It looks good on paper, and here are some things you might notice:

• Lots of swimming in the summer. Is this because I think it will make me faster? Nope. It's because I absolutely adore swimming at the outdoor 50-meter pool. Plus, swimming is a good recovery activity for me. Plus I enjoy being tan! Plus I enjoy the scenery at the outdoor pool! But there is one good training reason--that Escape from the Rock race in September is in the San Francisco Bay, so I want to be plenty strong, in a muscular endurance sense, to conquer that beast, especially since I'll be just 2 weeks off from my second Ironman of the season!
• My actual biking numbers will be higher to the tune of 1.5-2 hours per week, since I'll once again ride Clipless Fuck to the outdoor pool whenever I go there.
  
• I'm a Crackhead!

Training through Triple T












Training after Triple T through end of 2008-2009 season

What Have I Done???

A pusher friend of mine just got me to sign up for this. It's 2 weeks after Ironman Canada.

Anyone else in???

Weekly Workout Totals 11/24/2008-11/30/2008 and Reconstruction

Lots of good things happening now...my back is getting better day by day, I got my yard all put away for the winter (just in time--we've got several inches of snow on the ground), I still have a bathroom in progress but am living with it, had a great Thanksgiving, I'm getting my training plan put together, I'm starting to sleep better, I'm headed to Orlando later this week and will have a full day in (hopefully) the sun, the remodeling has an end in sight and I'm actually looking forward to Christmas now, even though that means I need to do some gift buying.

Wow--what a change from just a week ago. Goes to show you how life can swing rapidly between the yin and yang. And as cliche as it sounds, when one door closes, another one opens. Lots of doors are opening for me now. For awhile there, I felt like they were slamming closed all around me. I was losing my ability to shake off all the small stuff--but there was just so much of it that it became difficult to do.

The grief counselor that I have worked with over the past year told me that when you lose someone, it's like when they were alive, you were like intersecting circles:


The blue piece is the combination of your lives. When you lose someone, that intersection piece becomes a void for awhile, and you have to reinvent yourself to make up for it. In the past 3 years, I have lost my Mom, my Dad, and recently (although not due to death) someone I loved. So my feelings that I have lost myself and am reconstructing myself have been right on target. At the same time, though, those big, white pieces of my circles are still present, although they have been somewhat warped.

I am not finished filling in those voids. It's interesting to me that I am adding all this black stuff into my house. I've always known that I have this deep, black core that is something I must honor and respect. But then there's the diametric opposite of it which is the person that loves all things shiny and very colorful! What I've come around to is that the black is a nice background against which to superimpose the shiny and colorful. There. That's me in a nutshell. I am OK with the blackness, and I am OK with the shiny and colorful.

This past week's totals look huge because I felt obligated to count all the hours I spent raking and bagging leaves and cutting down roses and assorted dead perennials as strength work. The actual amount of time I spent doing all that was about 7 hours; I recorded it in my training log as 3. I think that's a fair compromise! I'm very excited about getting ready for a 1/2 NothingMan in 4 weeks--I've even designed a Splish suit for it:


I think this 1/2 NothingMan will be symbolic of the process I've been going through, and so I'm planning on celebrating!

I also note that today makes 3 consecutive days that I've gotten 8 hours of sleep! Last week was also the most stretching I've done in 12 weeks. I'm coming back!

Weekly Workout Totals	11/24/2008-11/30/2008 This week's totals are sponsored by Crackhead's Den of Iniquity that is under construction
Swim:	9300 yards (5.28 miles) in 3.2 hours; 20% of weekly workout time; approx. 1120 calories burned Canadian: 8503.92 meters
Bike:	Approx. 94.33 miles in 5.25 hours; 33% of weekly workout time; approx. 2580 calories burned; Total TSS=285 Canadian: 151.81 kilometers
Run:	Approx. 28.86 miles in 4.49 hours; 28% of weekly workout time; approx. 2040 calories burned Canadian: 46.45 kilometers
Strength:	3 hours; 19% of weekly workout time; approx. 750 calories burned
All Sports:	Approx. 128.47 miles in 15.94 hours; approx. 6490 calories burned Canadian: 1.25 kilometers
Sleep:	6.86 hours avg./night
Stretching:	1.5 hours. Massage: 1.25 hours

Bike Fucking Porn!!!!

I finally put the custom stickers on LGL and my Catlike helmet!!! The front fork got black on black; the back fork got red on black and the birds (magpies) are on the top tube and the helmet. Lookie here:




Oh, and I'm back on the techno. Still rockin' NIN, but got a coupla techno CD's this weekend (yeah, I'm still not browsing and downloading mindlessly--I know what I like). The training goes well--no report until tomorrow, after I finish stretching--it's snowing and I don't fucking care!!!