Training Ride

Okay, so two weeks from today, I'm supposed to do the Seattle to Portland (STP) bicycle ride in one day. That's 200 miles of riding in one sitting (more or less). I'm not sure I'm ready for that.

I did an 80 mile ride today and my quads were killing me. I was trying to figure out why. Maybe my nutrition wasn't spot on? Possible. Then I looked at the bike profile as uploaded to my TrainingPeakstraining log. They have a beta viewer they are trying out and it's actually pretty cool. Anyway, this is what my ride profile looked like (the red line is my HR, the green is the elevation). It would seem I did a fair amount of climbing!



After the ride, I showered, went to the grocery store for dinner, cooked it, and blogged. Now I'm ready to hit the hay. I think the sun made me tired...or maybe it was just all the fresh air (which is so rural that the air was permeated with the smell of fresh manure!).

What's An Ironman Swim Look Like?

Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. I've been busy. The new puppy has kept us busy, but then I got laid off, had to find new employment and still try to keep up with my training for Ironman Canada 2007.

In the meantime, I like volunteering at Ironman Coeur d'Alene, usually because I know so many people doing it. This year, instead of having the heat of the past few years, we had wind. It made the swim portion challenging at best and, and worst, potentially dangerous. In fact, it was so bad, that the race officials offered up the option of doing a duathlon.

Anyway, I managed to snap a photo, from afar (if you are familiar with the venue, I was sitting on the steps near the Gatorade bottle) of the 2007 Ironman Coeur d'Alene swim start.

New Puppy Pics

Just because I've had people bugging me for them. :-)

Here's one that shows how much bigger than the cat she has gotten.


I caught this pose of her chillin' out on the steps leading upstairs.


Oh, and her name is Smudge (or Smudgers), for the smudge of white on her nose: