catching up on Florida

I wrote this on the plane flying home last Friday.



I didn't put in the workouts I normally would have - but I maintained some cardiovascular activity. I ran twice, totaling 7 miles. I had a good swim in a short course meters pool - it took forever to get to the other side. The pool was very shallow at one end and was poured out of some fairly rough aggregate - it hurt to hit a flip turn at full speed, sharp little rocks. The pool was not designed by a swimmer.



What to say about Florida? It's nice. I ran in clear blue skies under palm trees, with the sound of an occasional bird and at other times classic Disney musicals piped into the surroundings by some hidden speaker. I felt some guilt being away from my family, running in shorts and a t-shirt, rather than suffering though the winter back home.



It's Friday now, I'm writing this on the plane at 31,000 feet in the air. I don't get home until 10pm tonight. The group I ride with is spinning tomorrow at 7am. I think I'm going to skip it. Some weeks of training go this way - where you can just barely maintain. January is nearly complete. I worry at times that I only have 8 months left of training before my event. I need to get my bike dialed in - the aero bars are still not right. I need to run more. Ironman training is a constant struggle thinking that you need to be doing more. I think it's due to the three events. If I haven't ridden my bike in three days it feels like a month, if I don't swim three times a week I feel like I'm slacking, even though I may have been running compulsively. Which is a joke - I never run compulsively.

Sorry to hear that J.D. Salinger passed away...he was one of my favorite authors. I've read everything he published. Maybe his unpublished work will now be discovered? He was a little mysterious huh? What a life - he realized that the world was full of phonies, wrote the Catcher, then gave up on it all. Somewhat admirable, somewhat sad. He could have been more to the world I guess. I was always freaked out by a short story I read of his from his book Nine Stories it's called Teddy. Oh, the ending.