Today's Plan Calls For...

Yesterday, I finally finished some writing that has been hounding me for five weeks (and which had a deadline of last Friday - eek.) Resurfacing after some serious writing time is a s-l-o-w process for me. I felt worn out and accomplished and a tad foggy. I wondered what my workout was supposed to be for the day. (I'd given myself permission to skip it to get the monkey off my back first.) It was a scheduled rest day. SWEET! Until I remembered that I had a scheduled rest day on Thursday instead of the normal Friday because on Friday's schedule was a mock tri. AN OLYMPIC DISTANCE mock tri. (I'm sure my brain realized that if it had let me remember that bit of info any sooner then I might have stressed about it to the point of not finishing the hell writing. Smart brain I have!)

(Don't know why workout log reversed my input order, but I couldn't be bothered to mess with it. Too tard! Please be assured that we did things in the right order.) We have just finished the 12-week training plan for "unfit beginners" from Gale Bernhardt's book. (Awesome book - see my sidebar for a link!!) Our race isn't until September 13th, so our next step is to do the "fit beginner" plan. After the first plan we are supposedly prepared to finish an oly tri. After the second plan we should be able to improve our time. I'll be sure to tell you if that theory pans out!!

Now our transitions leave MUCH to be desired. (When you're having to navigate community center locker rooms, getting bikes down from/back up onto car roof racks, and locking and unlocking (after finding the key) etc - it takes a while! Granted, we did not have to extract ourselves from wetsuits...) But even with our 22 minutes of total transition time, we would have made the 4 1/2 hour cut off! Yay us! (Can you say "confidence booster"?)

I WAS FREAKING IMPRESSED WITH US! Mostly because we finished. It's the first time we have ever (ever, ever) done that distance. And the furthest we've run so far in training is 4+ miles last week (which was the disaster run for me. Remember when I passed out in front of the police station? Yeah, that run. Can you see why I was completely wigged out about today's run?) I gave myself permission to walk as much of the "run" part as I wanted or needed to. And being self-supported we had to go back to the car in the middle of the two-loop run to get water/fuel - and still my average pace was 13:47 min/mile. Donna's run was at least 4 minutes faster and would have been faster still except she stayed with me through the first loop until I shooed her on. Her energy was flowing. She was so strong! It was inspiring. I didn't have enough fuel (in part because I was writing and forgot to eat for about 10 hours yesterday - oops!) But the parts I ran felt solid. The parts I walked were fine and at a good clip. The weather was unbelievably gorgeous. I think it was in the 70's for the bike and the low 80's for the run, but we ran almost entirely in green, leafy shade. There were several particularly cool spots - like there was a hollow or cold sink close by. I saw a rabbit, a water moccasin, a brilliant red cardinal and his fat, gray baby mama, a whole host of wildflowers, and the dregs of some honeysuckle. (Oh - and a trillion baby strollers, fellow joggers, hordes of dogs walking and sometimes running their people, and one very interesting (perhaps simple?) guy who put his fingers in his ears and looked away every time he saw us coming. We had no loud music and we didn't try to force greetings on him - so not sure why he needed to block us out, but he did.)

It was a glorious morning. I LOVE this sport. I LOVE being athletic. I LOVE eating tortellini alfredo for lunch without guilt! I'd probably keep ranting on and on (because 6 hours later I'm still bubbling happily away) but we're going to a Durham Bulls game tonight to celebrate the first day of summer! Can't wait to get a chance to come back and see what everyone has on their weekend plates! BEST, BEST, BEST of luck to the scads of bloggy peeps at IMCDA Sunday and to Steve who's throwing down at Grandma's Marathon tomorrow. (<--Although be warned, do NOT click that last link unless you are prepared to read about the end result of digestion. He is obsessed.)