A week in pictures

Going backwards, here's how it looked:

Monday - REST day, but for whatever reason, I thought that a 1h walk would do me good. I obviously don't know how to rest, but at least I was wearing my compression socks. And tri tan. And True Blood tshirt. Yep, that's me in a nutshell. I may look like a ____ (insert descriptive word here) , but I stopped having any kind of shame since I realized that I have to train myself for peeing on the bike and other stuff like that.

Sunday - Long Z2 run, 1h40 of pavement pounding under the sun. We woke up at 6:30am with a big WTF on our face and managed to get going before we changed our mind. Here I stopped to pee on a real toilet and was sweating cute little droplets.

Saturday - Bike 2h/Run 40min Brick. Woke up early as well, weather was a bit on the scary side. We ended up chasing a storm, riding on its borders with the wind picking up more and more. A few times I imagined being stricken by lighting as I was hearing thunder in the distance and was riding past trees that obviously hadn't been very lucky in that department. We caught up with it and got drenched in a minute, this definitely added to the excitement of the brick as I got to bike in a wet outfit, just like after the swim. The real deal, yo!

This is how I looked just before going into "transition".

Friday - Long bike ride Z2/3. As usual, I am very cranky on Fridays. All the stress from work is piling up and puts me into a murderous mood. Unfortunately for him, hubbs ends up being the victim of greatest convenience, so we eventually stop all conversation and the ride becomes silent, with me staring at the road ahead, and him at my butt. This one was no exception and it went from bad to worse as we decided, in our infinite wisdom, to attack a new area called Horseshoe Hill. And off we went, up and up and up - I had to make a pee stop in the ditch, then up and up and up again. I decided that we'd come back the same way so I can get redemption from those hills. At the top however, we got attacked by flies from all sides - no idea what type, but bloodthirsty for sure. I got bitten a few times and then fell under my bike because my legs were not properly connected to my brain. It hurt. It made my leg bleed. It made me even crankier going downhill.

Above is the view from the top, I could see as far as Buffalo. It was pretty and I would have enjoyed the view a lot more if I wasn't fighting with those bloodsucking horse/deer/black/shit flies. Thinking that I would stay there for a while, I had even stopped my Garmin and guess what? Of course I forgot to restart it - crankiness multiplied by 100, I hit the jackpot!

I even got a temporary tattoo:

And fell two more times before getting back home.


Thursday - Tired. Calves were not happy, so I went to the open water swim, then skipped the run. The swim was amazing, as usual, did 3 glorious loops in Professor's Lake, much straighter lines this time, and I think I managed to find out what was chaffing my neck. I was letting the lanyard from the zipper hang in the back by passing it behind and over the velcro flap. So it was constantly rubbing against the base of my skull - it took me 2 loops to realize this fact, so I still got chaffed. Better luck next time?

Here's how I ended up after the swim, icing my calves:

Wednesday and Tuesday were a blur - I had to do another 2h brick and swim speed intervals and another long bike in Z2, all this after a 2h hillfest on Monday with the local tri club.No pictures, but worth mentioning because this week was the first time ever where I didn't have any rest for 8 days in a row, not my coach's fault, but because I really wanted to attend the group cycling clinic on Monday, which made the whole schedule out of whack. I survived to tell the tale though, even after 14 hours of training for a total of 158 miles of swim/bike/run. Whooo!