A Case of the Mondays

• I hit the snooze button about 6 times this morning but still made it to the gym for my arm-core strength training.  For some reason, it seems the New Year Resolutionists have not turned up this year (you know, the people that decide they are going to the gym every day starting Jan 1st and are usually gone by February – we’ve all been one at some point!).  I lifted weights Saturday and again today and it’s been extraordinarily quiet in there both times!  Strange, very strange.
• I am grateful that everyone else at work looked as shell-shocked as I did to be there.  My boss admitted to not getting out of bed before 11am every day of the shutdown.  No wonder she cut our meeting short and sent us all on our merry way.
• I cleaned out my swim bag yesterday and threw away 15 – FIFTEEN – nose clips.  It’s been well over a year since I was forcibly weaned off of them.  It’s so funny to me because I can’t even imagine wearing one now. 
• I swam with Jenn today.  She swam hard, I did drills.  Each workout assigned by our coaches.  But after I was done (my workout was shorter than hers and I got in the pool 20 minutes ahead of her), I jumped into Jenn’s lane.  And decided to try to flip-turn.  Please note: I tried flip turns once last year (shortly after ditching the nose clip).  I ended up with massive quantities of water in my lungs.  But I was sure that now that I’m more comfortable with water I should be able to do it.  Jenn gave pointers every time she popped back up at the wall in between her sets.  And gosh darned if I didn’t do a flip turn, swim across the pool, do another, swim back and do one more, before all was said and done.  They still need some work but suffice it to say my ability to do flip turns has gone roughly from Hot Wheels to 15-with-a-learners-permit. 
• My coach posted some exciting news today. 
• I’ve had 2 salads a day for, I think, 10 of the last 12 days.  I’m not on a diet, per se, but you know how your eating takes a turn into the calorie-heavy side at the peak of Ironman training when you need oodles and oodles of dense calorie-rich food?  I’m trying to jump-start my fruit and vegetable eating again and this seemed like a good way.  It also keeps me full enough from the salads to avoid some of the unnecessary snacking I am prone to do.
• I used to have a 2-Cokes-for-breakfast habit.  I gave up soda cold turkey 6 years ago.  I started drinking a little bit of it again last fall during Ironman training – long long bike rides and the transition off the bike to running – Coke was just made for these moments.  I even took a big swig in T2 (3:09, in case anyone had forgotten! Damn, I’m proud of the long run through transition to the changing tent, doing a full clothing change, AND chugging a bottle of Coke in an Ironman race and doing it all in 3 minutes) at IM AZ.  Anyway, I think I’m at the point in my life where I’m capable of moderating my soda habit a bit.  Here I am, admitting in public, I have had 1 Coke and 2 Mr Pibbs in the last couple weeks.  And they were darn good.  Since I seem to be incapable of drinking alcohol without a headache these days, I might as well enjoy something!
• And that’s all I have for today.  Tomorrow: the dreaded bike test.  Ooooooooo it’s gonna hurt!