Lila Says I'm the QUEEN!

Uhhhh... yeah. My daughter put this pink crown on my head yesterday morning and declared, "Daddy! You're the Triathlon QUEEN! Bah ha ha ha!!!" Eh... I've been called worse... and there could be some sort of connection related to the shaved legs. I have to admit that I would have preferred the title of "KING"... But I don't think kings are ok with pink shiny crowns. Moving on now...

Rainy and COLD this morning as I headed out the door at 5 am! That's the hardest part... actually getting up. Once I'm up and I get started I'm usually completely stoked to be there. Amazon pool was completely empty with the exception of the shivering lifeguard and I hopped in. Here's what the swim looked like:

• 300m warm-up (swim, pull, kick)
• 4 X 400m on 30 RI
• 300m cool-down (bilateral breathing drills)
• Splits: 7:01, 7:10, 7:09, 7:04
• Total Distance: 2,200m
  

Fairly consistent but not as fast as I like to think I am... apparently I need to reality check my ego. Its funny... my first interval is always my fastest and then I seem to settle in. I'm assuming that that's the way my race swims will go as well... who the heck knows. Overall I was pretty with the workout... although... like I said... I really really want to be faster than that! But at this point I'm not sure how much speed I can develop before Pacific Crest... no time to worry... just gotta move on. As I got out of the pool I ran into a fellow Collins Tri-guy Morgan and we talked a little bit about getting a nutritionist/dietitian to come in and talk to the team. That's seems like its coming together for the 30th of this month.

This afternoon I had a bike scheduled but between the howling wind, the cold rain, and the thunder I thought it might be prudent to get the ride done on the trainer. Arg... really don't like the trainer... particularly for any fast stuff. I mean, its not THAT awful if you have to put in a straight 2 1/2 hrs of LSD... but doing intervals or work at race pace kinda sucks... mostly b/c there's no real way of telling how fast you're going and how much distance you've covered... at least with my set-up there's not. Anywho... here's what I did:

• 20 min warm-up
• 40 min at 40K race pace
• 20 min cool-down (pedal drills)
• Total Distance: 1,000 miles
• Avg Speed: 132.428 mph

Bah ha! Seriously though. I kept my cadence at roughly 110 to 115 strokes/min and felt like I was just FLYING. Judging by the amount of sweat I produced I worked pretty hard and should have taken in at least two bag of normal saline via IV to replace fluid lost. My average HR during the entire workout including the warm-up and cool-down was 135 BPM. The highest HR was 155. Overall I felt pretty solid and if I had to guess... given ideal conditions at the same pace I probably would have covered roughly 12 to 14 miles (lemme know if that sounds like a load of crap!)

Good day overall! Tomorrow I head to Bend on business for the day/night and I'll be hooking up with Drew. We'll get some sort of workout in while I'm there. I've got a run scheduled but he mentioned something about an open-water river swim! Depending on the water temp... that ought to be really FUN!

Breathe...