Foxwoods: Day 3 (and the rest of the weekend)

Evidently, photos taken on a camera phone through a window facing the sun do not come out well. I guess I need to talk to my photographer friends about how best to handle a situation like this so that next years photos come out better. I'm not going to even bother posting them today because they're mostly useless.

So, the day begins at Midnight, and sadly on Saturday, that's when I started eating. We'd only had two meals on Friday as we gambled our way through the three casinos (Foxwoods, MGM, and Mohegan Sun). Unfortunately this caught up with us about midnight, and we found ourselves standing in front of the Johnny Rockets in the casino with a short line to sit, and a card full of comps to use.

I'd love to tell you that I told Dan this is a bad idea. I'd love to say that I looked at him and said "Dude, I'm doing so well today, my calories are in line, and we don't really want this greasy food at midnight." I'd like to think that I'd be strong enough in a situation like this to walk down the hall to the food court and get a generic salad and be comfortable with my choice even though I knew what I was missing out on.

Nope, not this time. Not only did we go in, but I even talked Dan into getting the double cheese with bacon, and we both got chocolate peanut butter shakes to boot. I wish I could say I'd felt sick, or that I felt like crap about the food choice afterwards, and regretted it severely. Not only did I not regret it, it was freaking tasty and absolutely hit the spot for that time and location.

I stayed up until nearly 3 AM Saturday, trying more new games I'd never played. After about 6 hours of sleep, I got up later that day to pack and hit the casino floor for a little more time before we left. Unfortunately, my luck in the casino was about as good as my willpower on Friday night, and I wound up losing money on this trip. I may need to hold a bake sale in order to raise money for a new bike this summer.

The trip home was uneventful and we relaxed most of Saturday evening. Sunday was spent doing the tourist thing, exploring historical sites in and around Boston. This led to a LOT of walking, which was just what the doctor ordered after a long trip to the casino. Sure I worked out, and the massive casinos required a lot of walking. But there were also long periods of sitting, and a few big meals along the way.

Probably the best part of Sunday as part of the getting in shape plan is that we climbed the 294 steps to the top of the Bunker Hill monument. It's a spiral staircase inside the monument itself to a viewing platform inside the top. There are some nice views of the city (which hopefully Dans camera did a nice job capturing), and it was quite the workout to get up there. I took a couple breaks on the way up, one just to make sure Dan hadn't died a little bit behind me. I now understand why people climb stairs to get in shape; my thighs were still feeling it this morning and I'm sure just that one act increased my leg strength by 5%. I'll be throwing in some more stair climbing as part of my cross training, count on it.

This morning I weighed 320. This is of course mostly salt and junk, and in a couple days I'll have a better picture of where I'm really at right now. I'm going to do my best to push through these extra pounds and head back the right direction with noticeable loss by Saturday. We're now just 3 weeks til the first race of the season, and I'm already at the lowest weight I've ever done a triathlon. But I'm going to really push these next two and a half weeks leading up the race to be leaner and stronger, without sacrificing my ability to recover prior to the race.