Spring Cleaning

With the start of racing season finally in my sights, it’s been time to do some cleaning and preparation for the work ahead.

Yesterday I went to Sports Basement to buy some new bike bottles.  We have a cabinet crammed with bike bottles, in various stages of degradation and leakiness, but only use a few of them.  Ever since Krista posted about her favorite things, I’ve wanted to address this situation.  I own one smaller bottle like the ones she mentioned and I use it for masters – I wanted nice ones for my bike.  And with that, I went in with the intent of just buying new bottles.  Several swim caps (to match my e21 suit – duh!), 2 vats of sports drink powder, and 6 bottles later…yeah, that’s what Sports Basement is like.  And I was on a conference call the whole time too!  I also bought some cute new bike socks:

I threw out a ton of old nasty bike bottles and filled the shelf with the pretty clean new ones – oh so happy!

I am loathe to throw out workout clothing in an Ironman year (I remember all the DIRTY LAUNDRY) but let’s face it, socks with holes in them aren’t doing anyone any good.  So the new socks meant…it was time to clean out my clothes drawers!

I ended up with a good pile of clothes for my sisters/mom, and I tossed the oldest bike/run socks as well as any ancient uncomfortable bike/tri shorts.  There is no time in my year for damage to my undercarriage caused by old shorts either.

And with THAT spring cleaning task done, I had time for a little decorating.  Back at the Stanford Treeathlon, I received the most awesome gift from Meredith and it took us till after our Arizona trip to finally put it up!

I have a ton of old medals but I picked the milestone races to hang on this awesome medal display. From left to right: my first 1/2 marathon (completed just 5 months after I started running), my first marathon, my let’s-run-a-notoriously-hard-and-hilly-marathon-for-my-30th-birthday-as-a-celebration marathon, my first triathlon, my first Olympic triathlon (who does Wildflower as their first Oly anyway?), and my first 1/2 Iron triathlon.

In case you were wondering where Mr Ironman went, that medal has its own special spot just next door in the frame Jenn (who *ahem* hasn’t blogged for 3 months) gave me for Christmas that year.

I wonder if I will have anything exciting to decorate with this year :-)

Training is going well…I might actually be looking forward to rest week in T minus 3 days.  I’m wrapping up my last week of base training (remember BIG BAD ASS BASE TRAINING BLOCK) and it’s been some good hard work alright.  In the first 7 days of April I’ve already ridden 100 miles.  Gee, I guess I AM doing an Ironman this year.  Thank goodness for Recovery e21 for helping me hold it all together!

Anyway, hope you all survive 1 more day of work till the weekend and then have wonderful sunny training weather (it’s currently cloudy, cold and rainy here but a girl can hope)!