The Wheels on the Bike Go Round and Round

Or, lessons in how random my brain can be.

Fear

Knoxville is 2 weeks away.  It’s “only” an Olympic distance race but it’s also only my 2nd Olympic ever.  My first was at Wildflower, with less than a year of triathlon under my belt.  Is it bad when the way I have been trying to calm my nerves lately is to say “it HAS to be better than Wildflower?” 

Last night I had a dream that I was there at the race, except for some reason it was in Mexico and my dogs were with me and chilling in the hotel room.  I got lost on the swim and when I got out of the water, I couldn’t find transition.  After running around in this town for an hour and starting to worry about my dogs, I realized the chance to PR was shot and I should give up on the race (yet somehow in my dream state I still thought “I should ask Coach if I can do the San Jose International in June as a makeup race”).  Suddenly I was dealing with the military guy from Rambo, who told me my husband was dead, Max was missing, and presented me with a hairless terrified Stanley who had been chased through brambles by people who thought it was funny.  And then the locals were chasing me and Stanley with rocket launchers.

So yes, the pre-race dreams have begun.  Lovely.

Puppies

All is well with the puppies, they appear to be growing like weeds when I check in on them on the webcam (not a public link).  Hopefully some new pictures will be taken tomorrow when they are 1 week old.

Hockey

Thursday night was a very good game.  The 1st round has been crazy across the board – no sweeps in any series and lots of ping-ponging on the series leads.

This was, I think, from goal #5 on Thursday.

Rollin Rollin Rollin…

Apparently spending the entire winter and spring on my trainer in the garage doing hard wattage intervals was worth it.  There is no doubt in my mind after today that I’m stronger on hills and in wind than I was at any point last year.

Jeff, Nigel and Val accompanied me on the bike portion of my swim-bike brick today.  They knew I had intervals to do and we decided they’d just wing it and if I broke off, we’d meet up again at the end.  As it turned out, we all stuck together fairly well.

With all the rain we’ve had, the hills are at their finest!

Egghead (forgot to take the sticker from Saturday’s race off)

Rewards

Make hard work worthwhile.

In Mah Belleh

I’m working on transitioning the beardies back to a raw diet.  I raised Max on mostly raw and fell off the wagon a few years ago just due to convenience.  I’ve recently found a local company that packages individual serving for each dog and delivers to your home so we’re going to give it a try.  In the meantime I am switching the boys over with Natures Variety raw patties until the new stuff arrives.  We’re fortunate to be friends with so many raw feeders whose dogs are in fantastic shape.  I think it will be worth the added $$ to give the boys even better food.

New Shoes

I finally got tri shoes for my bike after 3 years in road bike shoes.  It may be fairly obvious which pair is which :-)  If nothing else, the bloodstains from falling during my first clipped-in ride give it away.   I’ll be riding sockless in them and they feel great!