Home Sweet Home

I'm back from Wisconsin. It was a business/pleasure trip. Jarrett and I stayed with his college roommate while I spent a few days visiting another one of our production facilities. It was excellent seeing old friends and catching up. The only downside is that I was VIOLENTLY ill. I seriously considered going to the hospital. The good news, I am feeling much better today and I even managed to go for a swim this evening.

Jarrett, Cyndi and I are running a 15K on Saturday and I have a riding clinic with a new instructor on Sunday. Wish us luck!

Butterflies and Backstrokes

Tonight was my last swim class at IUPUI. I have to say, even after a rough start, I actually enjoyed the class and will consider taking it again in a few months. I "mastered" (I use this term loosely) all of the strokes, including the butterfly. Butterfly actually turned out to be one of my strongest strokes! My instructor said that my form has improved on all of my strokes and that I really do have a natural inclaination towards swimming. My only problem...I go too fast. I am an excellent sprinter. I beat even the very experienced girls today in a little 50 freestyle race. So my focus is to sloooow it down. I also learned to dive! I have never dove in my life and it was very fun. My flipturns still need a ton of work. I have a depth perception issue and just never get quite close enough to the wall. I have the basic technique down, I just need to get better at spotting.

Bottom line - I can do this. I will not drown. I know how to swim. I can cut my swim time down by 5-7 minutes.

Jarrett and I managed to get a short ride in on our bikes on Monday. I love my aero bars. They do need a slight adjustment before I ride tomorrow, but it should be a quick fix.

The next big thing is nutrition. Jarrett has been really working hard on his running and has started to work nutrition into his long runs. I went to my favorite local running store, Athletic Annex and purchased a Fuel Belt. I love running with water and now I'll have a convient place to put some Gu or similar running yummies. I do tend to have some digestive issues, so I'm gong to have to practice before the half-marathon in October.

The other issue I am having is feeling constantly hungry. I modified my breakfast routine this week to have oatmeal before work instead of just eating a Fiber One Cereal Bar. It didn't help. Actually, I think I'm even more hungry and I eat twice as much food for breakfast. So far, I haven't seen a positive or negative impact on the scale. I know numbers aren't eveything, but I would LOVE to drop 10 more pounds. Sigh.

Accessories ROCK!

Jarrett brought my bike home from its 90-day tune up and I now have my own fancy-schmancy aero bars AND my bike computer I got for my b-day finally works :) I was starting to get bummed that the computer kept telling me I was only going 1 mph. I'm stoked to go on a ride tomorrow and try out my new accessories.

I made it to the barn today to visit my big furry four-legged kid. He is very fat and started out being a big lazy boy. He decided to change his mood after he figured out he was going to get to jump. The boy may be chunky, but he loves to jump! Sometime I'll post a video of us. He looks like a moose jumping. It's hilarious.

Work has been an absolutely crazy busy recently and the insanity is going to continue until after Thanksgiving. So, I scheduled some happy spa treatments over the next few months to help take away some of the stress. I've got a 60-minute massage next Thursday to look forward to!

It's only Tuesday?

Sunday I ran 8.3 miles with Jarrett and Cyndi. Monday was swim class. Class was okay. We had another new instructor. She was working with the people who don't really know how to swim so the rest of the girls in the class decided to try and learn flip turns. I was okay, but I still need a ton of practice. I missed my Tuesday riding lesson due to a late work meeting, but I did manage to reschedule for tomorrow. Instead of riding, I mowed the grass and went to the Avon pool for a nice swim. I hit the water for about 45-minutes. I've decided to stop counting distance for awhile and just swim for a set period of time. I'll work on the distance later.

I did purchase Sally Edward's book, Triathlon's for Women at Half-Price Books last weekend. I'm only part way through it and she definetly has some good tips. I guess the biggest take away is that I really should purchase a hear rate monitor. She is a huge advocate of training with them. I think I want a Polar F11, but I still cannot convince myself to drop $150.