Training High....

I'm sure this says something about my personality being wonky or something, but I'm a totally different person when I am training hard, with purpose. The sun shines a little brighter. The birds chirp a little more gaily. The air is crisper and I am just overall .... better. Week 2, Day 2 of real, honest to goodness tri training and I feel like $100M!!! Yesterday was a hard interval day on the bike - an oldie but a goodie, 3.0 Suffer-O-Rama (gotta love these titles!).  Even though I did this last week as well, I had blocked out how tough it is. After the warm-up, we jump right into Troy's patented "5 Killer Minutes" and killer they are! YEOUCH. Save the two time trial efforts where he mercifully lets us *sort* of catch our breath a bit, it's all 100% full out effort work. I actually love this kind of workout, because you really can just bang it out and go for it - playing little games with yourself to try to beat your wattage numbers from the last rep. The reps are short - a minute max - but by the end of that minute your legs and lungs are screaming and you are seeing heart rate numbers that begin to frighten you. I finished the workout with a 110% effort that yielded 410W, which is an all time high! Woo Hoo!!!! What a great way to start the day.

Post Run Sweaty Happiness

After a long day at work (still adjusting to being back after the holidays after a short week last week), I had a 40 minute run on the schedule. The plan is always to get home and immediately head out, but that never, ever happens. What really happens is that I get home, feed the kids, help with homework, yell at the dog for attempting to steal the aforementioned kid's dinner, empty the dishwasher, load the dishwasher, start a load of laundry, etc. It's often easy to cry uncle and just go to bed at this point, but nope, it's Game On time. So I left the house after digging out my headlamp (SO damn hot, I know....), and hit the road. I took a route I normally only take to start really long runs, and did an out and back, which I almost never do. This was a GREAT choice as there was minimal traffic, the moon was nearly full and it was a beautifully clear night. One of those nights where it feels like all is right with the world - the playlist chosen was perfect, the temperature was perfect, everything was just ... perfect. What a great way to end the day - I got home 50 minutes later feeling fantastic and crashed into bed after a quick shower and slept like the dead.

Today started with a pool workout - these are particularly rough days because I like to get to the Y *right* as it opens which means a 4:15am wake up alarm. But I was able to get up and out the door before my brain could register a complaint, and was waiting at the door for the 5am opening. By some miracle, I feel like I am swimming well after a LONG time away from the pool. Perhaps the UB strength work I did all Fall  did some good here? I don't know, but I felt great today and was banging out my workout feeling fierce. After a lot of drill work and a long pull set (I hate pull sets), the real work was 10x100 at an anaerobic pace. I typically go out too fast for my first one or two reps and then pay for that over exertion with an inevitable slowdown by the last few, but today I was a rock star. I was a solid 5 seconds FASTER than the fastest time prescribed by my coach for these reps, and I held that pace for all 10 reps, finishing with the last two reps the fastest of all, a full 8 seconds faster than specified. Niiiiiiiiiiiiice.

Tonight I again get to end cap the day with a run, and it looks to be as nice a night as last night - I can't wait!

Life is good.