Happy Halloween!

Remember back when we were kids and there was just one Halloween? That's right kids, we had one evening to canvas our entire neighborhood, uphill and in the snow for one measly bag of candy. Nowadays you can celebrate Halloween All. Week. Long. We've opted out of a lot of events, but Halloween kicked off last Saturday when Grammie took the boys to the Butterfly Pavilion for Bug-A-Boo.

The school put the kabosh on Halloween parties or costumes in school this year (I say - boo, hiss!) but they were allowed to celebrate fall. Alex's class had a harvest breakfast and Adam's class had a Pumpkin Pancake Pajamas Picnic Party on Friday. I helped out for both. Well, if by helping for Alex's breakfast I mean chatting up Andrew's dad, a fellow cyclist and chiropractor. In fact, he's my chiropractor's chiropractor, which is intriguing because his office is in South Boulder. I digress, but I could see switching doctors to save 30 minutes of driving. Anyway, in Adam's class I helped in the craft room and completely skipped out on the pumpkin pancakes, though I did see a lot of pumpkins and pajamas.

Friday afternoon I spent 4 hours carving pumpkins with the boys. I learned that Adam is completely prissy and wouldn't stick his hand in a pumpkin to gut it, but I did get Alex to poke all the tiny holes on his pre-made design choice. The carving wouldn't have been nearly as hard if those tiny plastic saws weren't so cheap and breakable. Next year I need to go the "two triangle eyes, nose and mouth" route and maybe one complex one.

Alex's Owl:



Adam's spider:



My monster (I chose it because it seemed to have the fewest tiny cuts):



During Halloween day, we went to Trick-or-Treat Street at Grandpa's high school. Now that was an experience. The high school kids decorated the school with different themes and wore costumes and then every kid handed out candy. Every kid. The efforts of an entire night canvasing the neighborhood accomplished in 10 short (indoor and warm) minutes. We caught up with Ariel and Hannah there too.

A slightly sick Princess Belle:



Ariel was Ariel. Get it? Ha ha ha!



Commander Rex checking his stash. A boy in Alex's class is sending candy to soldiers in Iraq and Alex says he'll donate half of his:



Nobody knows who Dan the Bakugan Brawler is, but Adam still had fun:





When we got home, we made roasted pumpkin seeds, which turned out better than any other year I've tried them. I soaked them in water over night and then followed this recipe for half, and then just did salt on the other half.



And finally, we went trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. It was about 45 degrees when we left and the boys were insistent that they didn't need jackets. I did make them wear a shirt and sweat shirt under the costumes:



Our snowy yard:

Eerie Erie

When I was planning my fall, the Eerie Erie fun run was not on my radar. But when my coach and I talked about assessing my lactic threshold and finding a race, I saw this one. I had originally thought of doing the 5k but then saw they had a 10k option, too. So, what the heck, I signed up the the 10k and convinced Becky to do the same.

I actually didn't sign up until yesterday. When it snows 23" inches you have to use the wait and see approach. But things melted pretty well on Friday and the sidewalk and roads cleared up. We had a cool but clear (and ice free) morning.

My one beef with this race (and all "fun" runs) are the lack of timing chips. I suppose triathlons have made me spoiled, but I hate not having an accurate time. And this run was so disorganized that we didn't even hear a count down or a gun, people just started running. I was still waiting for my Garmin to find the satellites so I waited a touch more and then decided just to go. I'm guessing my time and the official time are going to be about 45 seconds off.

I ran easy the first two miles and then there was a long hill that was impossible to do at a low heart rate. The course was hilly between miles 2.5-4 and then it was downhill or flat. I really pushed myself the last 2 miles and was happy to see my official clock time was 28:xx and my watch time was 57:25. My goal today was under an hour, though I was hoping to go faster. This race was 3 minutes faster than my Bolder Boulder this year and over 2 minutes faster than any 10k for a PR. Yay!

Becky and Me (No, we did not wear costumes, though lots of other people did. Good for them. I don't like running enough to make it even more uncomfortable.)



My fabulous running assemble. The skirt was to cover my butt in tights. I wish more people had worn skirts.



Becky (who also wore a skirt and tights). See all the snow that was still on the ground?

Snow Day

You just never can trust forecasts. But, somehow, they got this huge snowstorm right this time. I ran last night in the rain with Rachel. I planned on running with D3 but my dear sweet husband got home 10 minutes late and I missed the run by 5. But Rachel was late too and we did a short run together (short, but not easy. Rachel is much faster than me). The D3 run was short too as there was a nutrition talk at 6:15. So all and all it was not a big deal missing the run but I reserved the right to stew a bit before forgiving. *And* I made sure I was home by 7:30 so Jeremy could go to his 8:00 track workout.

Anyway, I also went to the nutrition talk which was held at Muscle Max, some supplement store that I didn't know existed prior to last night. The most interesting part of the talk came at the end when the presenter went over our coach's plan with us. In the last 2 months he lost like 10 lbs of fat and dropped his body fat from 15% to 8% AND they had to up his calories by nearly 1,000 PER day to do this. And this man is in kick-ass shape anyway, he did the Great Floridian non-trade marked Ironman this past weekend. If I had unlimited resources and money, I would check this out, but I have a feeling that, like so many things, it's just more $$$.

It was just starting to snow when I got home and it snowed all night. I was pretty surprised when BVSD called it a snow day in the morning when we only had about 4" but it snowed pretty seriously all day. But it did not snow so much that the velodrome closed (as you can imagine, they thrive on bad weather). So today at noon I took my first track class (my dear sweet husband met me there and took the kids out to lunch so I could do this, he's redeemed). It was just me and one other girl who had never been on the track. We went over basics and then the coach sent me to ride circles up high while he coaxed the other girl on the track. I don't think his approach was nearly as good as my first coach. My first time, the coach just had us all line up behind him and said, "If you go my speed and follow my line, you'll be fine." And we sure were. But this coach rode behind the other girl and she never did really get comfortable.

At the end of the class the coach took me through 3 laps of each lane (there are 8, though we didn't do the top lap near the rail, it's the most sketchy). I felt pretty comfortable and am ready to start learning some drills and how to ride with others on the track. And hopefully Michelle will sign up too, they will cancel the class if we don't have at least 3.

In the afternoon I listened to the P!nk Pandora station and got in 45 minutes of weights. My arms are tired typing this so I think I did alright.

Here's the snow around 3:30 today. AND it's supposed to snow for another 24 hours.

School Pictures

So I think I may have mentioned that even though I'm a photographer, I still get one sheet of school pictures. There's just something so timeless and classic about the school mug shot. And as you may recall, Adam had a fit about wanting the red background so I let him have it. And then I think I requested gray or blue for Alex's but I would concede that I possibly changed my mind and picked red for his too so they would match. And this is what I got back:



Alex: Child of the Devil

As far as I can tell (using my mad photography skills) there was a background light on Alex's picture but not on Adam's but I do think it is the same backdrop. And yes, I do plan on asking Lifetouch about this. Because it's kinda creepy and weird.

PS - Last week Adam told the German gym daycare worker that his grandmother was moving to Italy. Today he told them that he was allergic to wheat. Which concerned them greatly, as they have been feeding him goldfish and pretzel snacks for the last 5 months. Vivid imagination sounds much better than compulsive liar.

Fun with Art

When I was lifting weights on Sunday, I wanted to give the boys a project that would keep them occupied for 45 minutes so I told them I'd bring the paint out. I was thinking that Adam would want to do art and Alex would go in his room and play with legos, but Alex decided to paint too. And apparently, when Alex hears the word paint, he thinks of art class and they are studying Van Gogh right now and Alex wanted to paint Starry Night. Exactly. Which is hard being as the original is oil and we only have water colors. So Alex painted Starry Night. As precisely as possible:



And Adam, being Adam, had to copy Alex. But then he ended up doing his own thing too. And here is his rendition of Starry Night:



On Friday, Adam did this puffin-scape. Everyone who has seen it thought Alex had his hand it in somehow, but no, Alex was at school. This is all Adam. My favorite part? The yellow alligator in the sky because, "You know Mommy how sometimes clouds look like shapes?" Adam also figured out how to write "Wah Wah Feed Me" for the baby puffins on the cliffs.

October 19th week in review

This week, I noticed my knees were starting to get, for lack of a better word - tired. Not really sore, certainly no pain, but just not functioning at their normal 85%. For example, I found myself turning sideways to go down stairs because they just didn't want to bend that deep. Now, having had knee issues in the past, this is something I really want to nip in the bud. I mentioned it to my coach and he said we should drop one of my running days, so I only run T/Th/Sat/Sun. He also took my Bolder Boulder heart rate file and nailed down my training zones more exactly. The good news is that zone 2 goes up to 158 bpm (which is very doable). And my zone 3 is 158-165. I was going much harder than that. So hopefully running only 4 days and with a lower intensity will solve the tired knee problem before it becomes a real problem.

So the week in review. Tuesday was master's class and then the evening group run. We still ran at Wonderland lake. We did 2 x (2 x 400, 4 x 1 minute hill). It was the shortest workout yet, but really intense. At the top of the hill, I had the opportunity to rest and take a picture of this herd of deer that have been there every week:



On Wednesday I tried to go to a spin class knowing I would be 15 minutes late due to Beat Your Brother Late Start Wednesday. The room was dark and crowded and I couldn't see that there were still a few open bikes, so I went and rode a spin bike on my own while watching Good Morning America. Longest. 30 minutes. Ever. Then I did my strength workout.

I had stroke class Thursday morning, then did a zone 1/zone 2/zone 3 run afterwards. And it WAS much easier now that my zone 3 isn't all out crazy.

Friday was an off day and then Saturday was a 30 minute lactic acid (zone 4) run. Pretty much a 5k at near race pace. It wasn't as miserable as I thought it would be, but it was hard to keep my heart rate at 174. It kept wanting to creep up into the upper 170's. The interesting part about this run was I was supposed to do a 10 minute cool down. I walked the first minute, then jogged the rest as easy as I could. And my heart rate really wanted to stay around 170, even though I was running a 11:30 pace. If I was running an 11:30 pace at the beginning, I would have a heart rate in the low 140's. So I guess I don't recover very quickly once I start running that hard.

We had a Grammie in the afternoon and Jeremy and I had planned on riding but the wind was really gusting so we went to Pearl Street for lunch instead. After a giant steak and potato burrito and a beer, we decide the wind had died down enough for the ride. Jeremy took me on what he thought was an easy around Boulder ride, but I certainly could think of easier routes. Any ride that goes up the hill to 6th and 4th streets is not that easy. We really just tooled around though, it was nice to get out.

I did my Sunday run during Sunday school. It was supposed to be an easy zone 2 50 minute run. I tried to keep my heart rate under 158 and had to slow down a few times. I was therefore surprised when I downloaded my heart rate file that I had actually spent 10 minutes above 158. Whoops. I sure didn't feel like I was running hard *that* long. At home, I did weights.

Weekly Totals:
swim - 4100 yards
bike - 17.4 miles
run - 18.7 miles

Total: 9:30

Fall Conferences

We had conferences for the boys last week and they were the first that weren't completely filled with glowing (and hard-to-believe) praises.

First Alex... somehow, Alex got into a below grade level reading group this year, based on how he tested at the end of 1st grade. I realize, compared to the 7 year old Harry Potter readers that he's not *above* grade level, but I certainly think he's at grade level. The school has a reading scale where books are ranked A-Z, A being the easiest. He ended 1st grade at about a J level (and I believe that G was grade level). When I first noticed him bringing books home this year, he had F books. I emailed his teacher and we have chatted back and forth, but it comes down to that the school's evaluation shows he needs to work on fluency and comprehension. What I'm gathering is that when he was tested, he was asked questions like, "What was your favorite part?" and he said, "I didn't like the book" or "What happened next?" and he shrugged. From my reading with him, I'm pretty sure that he does understand what he reads, but I can totally see that he doesn't communicate well. So for the last month when we read at night I've been drilling him so he'll know how to answer. Don't have a favorite part? Fine, but tell the tester why you didn't like the book.

Anyway, at conferences, I was going to have to sign something to the effect that Alex isn't at grade level but the teacher and his reading group teacher have agreed to retest him soon before that happens. And, I've been volunteering in Alex's class for reading and there is no doubt in my mind he's at the same level as those kids. So hopefully Alex will test well this time and we can move beyond these too easy books he's bringing home. For goodness sakes, he's been reading to me from Bunnicula for the past week, and doing great. He reads smoothly and with inflection and stumbles over about 3 words per page, which I was told was a good indicator of a book that's challenging but appropriate. I just looked it up, and it's a Q book, reading grade 4.9.

Alex's teacher also said he was frustrated with Alex's listening skills. I refrained from telling the teacher that I live in a house filled with males lacking listening skills. I even have to make direct eye contact with my HUSBAND and have him repeat back pertinent information if I want to have a hope of being heard. So I told the teacher good luck with that one, I agree - but short of electrical shock treatment I don't have any idea how to help Alex with that one.

And while we're talking about Alex, here's some homework he did earlier this year. He had no help, I didn't even see him do this worksheet. All he had to do was draw a picture with those lines and he came up with this elaborate Wall-E scene and even colored it. Behind grade level, my ass.



And, our little Adam... Adam was evaluated twice. Once with the district's old standards and once with the revised. According to the old standards, Adam is doing great, and has met nearly all the goals for Kindergarten. Like, yeah, he might as well just stay home this year (ha ha ha, I told his teacher). But according to the new standards, he's behind grade level too. Already. Somehow, the district magically expects kindergartners to already be reading simple pattern books like, "This ball is blue. This ball is red." With a little help, Adam can get through a book like that, but he's by no means fluent yet.

With this new standard, Adam's teacher has 6 out of 38 students that are at or above grade level. What a disservice to these kids to start them right off the bat as labeled behind. Adam's teacher thinks he's close enough to grade level that she's not going to do any of the special things she's supposed to do for "behind" kids so he's not really affected, but I'm still in disbelief over the new system. For crying out loud, 1/3 of Adam's class are native Spanish speakers who barely know 5 letters of the alphabet and some still can't write their own names. How are they ever going to get caught up under the new system? Poor Alex would have really tested poorly in kindergarten. He went to a play-based preschool and had no formal reading skills. Adam at least had a foundation from the Montessori school but it's still crazy to expect kids reading before they hit the public school system.

And here's what Adam's working on. Every day the class practices their letters. As a behind grade level student, he finishes early and has the chance to play quietly or embellish his work. *All* his letter sheets come home like this. They are completely decorated, and on some of them it's more obvious that he traced the letters multiple times with different colored markers.

Week in Review

This was a fairly innocuous week. I'm plugging along with my running program and everything is going fine. My Tuesday group workout was 3 x (2 x 400 and 2 x 1 minute hill). On the 400's I tried to stick with a girl that runs just a tad above my pace and hit most of the 400's around 1:48. Considering I was running the 800's on 4:20, that's a big improvement. I was dead last on the hill climbs though. I still did my Tuesday/Thursday swim classes and the weather finally turned around enough to get a bike ride in on Friday.

This weekend turned out to be really beautiful. I had a friend who's in town for business from Alaska and I tried to give her a good 24 hour tour of Boulder. On Saturday we hiked up to Royal Arch after I did my 1 hour/8 x 2 minute hill workout. My knees did not think that was such a great idea. I'm really proud of Christina for doing that hike though, after just getting off an overnight flight from sea level. And for the record, I was just planning on taking her on the Mesa trail and she talked *me* into the harder hike.

Here's the view from the arch:



And Christina:



And on Sunday we did an easier 3 mile hike walk out at the Res after my hour long "easy" run. Actually, my easy run was going slow but fine until I ran into Alison and ran almost a mile at her pace. My heart rate went from the nice low 150's to the mid 170's. Gah! And the other hard thing about this run, I didn't take water even though it was pretty warm because I run by 3 drinking fountains. Well, the first drinking fountain turned into an orange construction cone, the second was working and fine, and the third was turned off. It was really hot enough today that I needed more water than that. What a crazy change from last week.

And this fabulous weekend was made possible by Super Grammie, who took the boys Saturday night. Christina and I hit Casa Alverez for margaritas and then Pearl Street and the Tea House today, along with all the hiking. A mini-vacation for me too :)

Totals:

Swim: 4300 yd
Bike: 19.5 miles
Run: 24 miles
Hike: 7 miles
Strength : 1:10

Total: 12 hours

Huh. Today manged to not be much better

Today's run was supposed to be an easy 45 minute run but with the two days previous of running and my half-assed strength workout, I was pretty sore. And, since it had been below freezing for 36 hours, today was actually icy and I had to watch my step. I did manage to keep my heart rate at an average of 150 bpm, which is like a new low record for me. And an aside, when my family visited the REI flagship store for the first time ever today, I was looking at a heart rate chart and saw my zone 2 shouldn't be above 133. I've actually been using a heart rate monitor for over a year now but I don't actually train with it. I just download the information along with everything else and go, "huh" when I look at it later. I think this will all change at Tuesday's run when Mike said we should really test my LT (lactate threshold). I haven't done this test before, but from my understanding it involves running really really hard until you want to barf and then analyzing the resulting heart rate. Fun!

I do have a training peaks account now so finding my stats is quick and easy now. My weekly average went down as the weather turned and I only got on my bike once. This week:

Swim Distance 4800 yd
Bike Distance 18.73 mi
Run Distance 21.2 mi
strength 1:30

Total: 8:30

This better not be a trend

I like to brag that Colorado is great for training year round. The year I trained for the marathon I always could run outside. I rode at least a few times every month last year. But... going back a few years, the winter of '06-'07. You know, when the airport was shut down a few times and we almost broke the record for the longest time of snow on the ground. And then all the elite athlete in Boulder took up skate skiing, which while interesting will not help me become a better triathlete. And would involve more equipment buying.

We had the first snow of the year today (I'm not counting Thursday because nothing stuck). And while the air temperature was 18 when I left, the ground has still not frozen so it wasn't icy. I had a nice hill workout to do, 15 minute warm-up, 6 x 2 minutes up a hill with recovering coming back down, 15 minutes cool down. I don't mind workouts like these, they tend to go faster than "just go run for 56 minutes."



And when I got home I did a half-assed strength workout. I really should have gone to the gym but it seemed like too much work. Oh, yeah, I realize I could have run on a treadmill today because yes, I DO have a gym membership but it's going to have to get much worse before I resort to that.

If every day was like yesterday...

... my training would last about a week.

Yesterday morning I had my second trainer session. We finished setting up a weight routine, which should last me about a month. I need to start doing it twice a week and I'm having trouble figuring out which days to stick it on.

I did my regular noon masters class, in which my trainer also swims. He was "joking" that he was working my upper body so that he could swim faster than me, but his evil plan didn't work. I was consistently much faster and he was eventually demoted down a lane after 45 minutes. Which begs the question, how did he swim 5 seconds faster than me at Oktoberfest? My only idea is that he was able to go way harder than I would want to in a triathlon because he's a guy with a better anaerobic threshold.

I ran with D3 in the evening again. The coach first said our workout would be 1 mile then 4 x 400, 3 times. Ok, so that is 6 miles of hard effort with a 1 mile warm up and a .75 mile cool down and with everything would have been 8 miles. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around that since my long run was only 9 miles. But after the second 4 x 400 the coach said that he realized he hadn't given more than a 4 mile work out before so we would only do 5. Plus it was getting dark. I ended up running the last mile in 8:24, which is pretty darn good for me. And we ended up at the parking lot so we didn't have to cool down .75 miles, so my total was only 6.85. I am fearful for next week.

I also am going to start the official running program next week. My trainer strongly suggested doing unstructured workouts this fall since so much of next year will be structured, but I can't see doing that. I *like* structure. He did warn me that getting injured will certainly put a damper on my season, so I do really need to watch that. I will be training for the November Panicking Poultry 5k (I need to go back and crush my, uh, 32:32 time from last year) and the Colder Boulder 5k in the first week of December. Then I'll have 6-8 weeks of unstructured training before the Iromman training begins.

This morning I went for a ride as it was a balmy 40 degs. Hey, it might SNOW tomorrow. This was more of a recovering ride and I wasn't expecting much but I kept wanted to stop and check if my brake was rubbing or my tire was low. Nope, not the bike, it was my legs that were flat. 18 miles was enough for today.

And in random kid updates, today was International Walk and Bike to school day. We had to nearly doubled our commute by walking around to the front of the school to sign in and pick up our prize - Clif Twisted Fruit.

$1.07/Mile

I really shouldn't complain because in the grand scheme of childcare, it's pretty cheap. But today Jeremy was still in Breckenridge and I had to pay for the daycare at Rally. And $10/2 kids/2 hours is a steal. But not as good as free.

I ran my standard Rally loop that I ran many Thursdays this summer. But since this was supposed to be a long slow run, I tacked on 3 miles to make it 9. I felt really good today, or at least stronger than I felt on the bike yesterday. I was able to maintain a 10:40 pace at 155 bpm and it felt nice. 9 miles seems to be a good long run distance, I definitively start feeling like I've been running a while at 7 miles and after 9 my knees get tired when I bend them and I was starting to get a hot spot on my arch.

Week in review:

Swimming - ~4500 yards
Biking - 24 miles
Running - 23.6 miles

Total: 8 hours

Fall Festivities

Last night we celebrated Sukkot at temple. First, the kids helped make decorations for the sukkah. They both enjoyed decorating these styrofoam eggs the most, I helped make paper chains:



The sukkah:



And hanging the decorations from the ceiling inside:



After the sukkah was finished, we had a short service. Except for the annoying goat puppet, Sukkot is one of my favorite holidays.

And today we went to the school's first Fall Festival.

My kids go to a hippy school. They compost and recycle over 90% of their waste. It's kinda hard to find a trash can there. I just had to take a picture of one of the many compost bins:



Our school also has a Garden to Table program. The kids help work in the garden during the year and then there's various opportunities to eat from it. There's Adam in the corner by the carrots. One of Adam's classmate's Mom made fresh salsa from this garden and others in the neighborhood and the school sold it at the festival. It was so good, too bad the kids wouldn't try it.



The crazy renaissance sword poeple were there. Adam and I dueled for a while and I learned that he can swing pretty darn hard for a 5 year old. Alex was so excited to find his friend Keegan. Oh, and they are actually playing "lightsaber."



It was a perfect day for the festival (yes, it did warm up after this morning's cold snap). There was also a bouncy tent and live music and a cake walk and games. Adam and I didn't have any luck with the cake walk so at the end I just used my tickets to buy brownies and cookies.

Hello, Fall

I've been in denial the past few week but I think it's official. Fall is here.

The temperature when I left for the ride this morning?



I'm glad it warmed up a bit from the 29 I saw when I got up at 7:00. It is supposed to get up to the mid sixties by this afternoon but I had to get my ride in so Jeremy could go work on the house in Breckenridge. I did manage to convince two other Babes to ride with me, Rachel and Namino.

We met in South Boulder (because when I plan the rides, I make it easy for ME) and first rode to Elodorado Springs (and saw Al and Marcy going for a 10 mile run) and then rode to the Flagstaff flag. Neither Rachel nor Namino had ridden up Flagstaff before but they kicked my ass never the less.

At the top, Namino and Rachel:



Proof I was there too:



My total ride time was a bit under 2 hours and only 24 miles. Flagstaff is 3 1/2 miles up and tends to slow average speeds. And then I came home and took a very hot bath until I could feel my fingers and toes again.

And on Thursday, we had our End of Season TriBabe party. I loved seeing everyone as half the girls have not been riding with the rest of us anymore.



And at the party, I was talking to Tina about the races this summer. She did the TriBabes sprint, the same course as the Oktoberfest. She was complaining about how she thought some of the girls did only 2 bike loops instead of 3. I went back to the Oktoberfest results and looked at the one girl in my age group that had beaten me on the bike. She was about 20/30 and had really slow swim and run times. The first time through I thought maybe she was just a kick ass cylcist but on second glance I'm with Tina - she only did 2 laps. Oh well, it makes no difference in anything, but it's good for my ego.

I'll be seeing a lot of this trail in the next year

I am incredibly fortunate to live within running distance of the South Boulder Creek trail. The main trail is about 3 1/2 miles long, but it also connects with trails along the foothills for, hopefully, way more trail than I'll ever need. This morning was decidedly crisp (I think it was about 35 degs when I left) but still a beautiful fall morning. Heck, all fall mornings are beautiful when it's not blowing 85 mph gusts.



And with that cold front gusting in, elevations above 9,000 ft got some snow. Here's an incredibly bad cell phone picture of Long's Peak. See that white blob above the blue foothills?



I have several different loop options with this trail and today I did my hour loop. I ran 5.7 miles in an hour, keeping my heart rate at a reasonable 155 bpm average and not turning off my watch for a couple of pictures and stop lights.

And in other random workout news:

1) I met with a trainer at my gym on Wednesday. I only did it because when I joined in May I got two "free" seasons and I hadn't used them yet. I met with Nate, a pro-cyclist turned triathlete. I had wanted to set up a winter strength program but we spent more time talking than lifting. I'm hoping this wasn't a waste of time but it didn't seem productive to add another coach/trainer/expert opinion on Ironman training. One issue with Ironman training is that it's a relatively new sport and sport science itself is constantly changing so there's no one "right" way to train for an Ironman. In fact, there are some very differing views like Endurance Nation espouses not swimming or lifting in the winter and only working on run and bike speed. Other programs suggest backing off the bike. I think Nate was a bit doubtful of my ability to do an Ironman anyway, but he did have opinions on my training.

2) Thursday workouts - stroke development with Eney in the morning. This is a much different swim class than I've ever done. Eney stresses strength and power in the water and does a lot of pulling/skulling/kicking. I'm certainly more sore when I'm done than after a regular master's class. And later in the morning I did a quick 5k run in 30:24. I'd like to consistently run these in under 30 minutes without working too hard.

3) So the 5430 series that I did this summer was sold to Ironman. I didn't think this would effect me too much as Ironman has promised to keep the races the way they were, but change is already coming. Their first order of business was to change the 5430 Long Course to the Boulder Ironman 70.3. The name change is not that big a deal, but to promote this race the way they do their other 70.3 races, they put it on sale yesterday. In the olden days, the 5430 series went on sale Jan 1st. The sprint sold out in January, the Peak in mid-February and the Long Course, I think, sold out in July. Now, who knows? The Long Course Boulder Ironman 70.3 has become a Hawaii qualifier, which will probably make it sell out quicker. And getting back to how this affects ME - I would like to do another 70.3 race next summer as part of my Ironman training. I don't think I want to do the Long Course Boulder Ironman 70.3 as it is only 5 weeks away from IMMOO. So in the next month, I'd like to nail down and register for the race I do want to do, and right now I'm looking at Kansas 70.3 or Boise 70.3, both in June. And, sooner rather than later, I will have to decide if I want to do the Peak or not as well.

I'll leave you with an Adam funny of the day. We were at the mall looking for jeans* and he saw a Bronco shirt and immediately asked for it. I asked him if he even knew what the Broncos did and he said, "Play soccer." I laughed and told him to try again. "Basketball?" Oh, my poor children.

*And my jean story... I was trying to buy new jeans for the family. My freaky husband needs 33x36, which doesn't even exist so he shoots for 34x36. And apparently 36 is very rare because I only found two pairs in Old Navy, and Gap and AEO said it had to be special ordered. I wanted to get Alex 7 slim regular cut and only found 2 in the whole store. And I wanted something in a short for me and could only fine 1 pair. Gah. Oh, and Adam found a football in ON and asked me what kind of ball it was.