The weekend in review

This weekend brought some fantastic weather; summer temperatures in May. We took advantage of this by not doing an formal workouts on Friday or Saturday. Yeah, not our best decision ever. No excuse for it this close to a race. I think it was a combination of being excited that Rach had a couple days to relax from studying, it was payday, and a lot of interesting things were going on. Again, no excuse for it.

That's not to say the weekend was a complete waste. Friday night we rented Rachs wetsuit and bought a race number belt for her as well. Going to Fast Splits or any other gear shop is a love/hate thing for me. I love to go and look, but there's always at least one thing there that I want. Namely, that thing right now is a road bike. Being a triathlon specific shop, they don't have a lot of low end stuff, but there are a couple bikes in the price range I plan to look it. They also can order Fuji bikes which is a plus in my mind.

If you haven't heard yet, a 10 foot wide water main broke in Boston on Saturday, leaving most of the greater Boston area without drinkable water. I went golfing out by Rhode Island with a friend from work, and we heard about the boil order as we got back into town. We were fortunate to get a couple of gallons Saturday because everyone was out enjoying the gorgeous weather. Stores have been selling out or are sold out. We have plenty of water for a few days, which we need for working out if nothing else. I also got a little sunburn on the golf course, but at least it came with swinging the clubs. It's not the hardest workout unless you're walking (we rode), but it was better than nothing.

Sunday, I was determined to get back on track so we got out early and ran a little. My allergies are the worst they've ever been, and I haven't remembered to take a pill every day. I wound up doing 1.75 miles in the morning, and had a pretty good effort. I'm still not ready for the race in this respect, but I knew that my running would just have to progress throughout the season. The good news is that it's starting to come together. The bad news is that my stamina isn't very good yet, and I'm expecting to have to fight for the last half of the 5k.

In the afternoon, we headed up to Walden Pond for Rach to test swim in her wetsuit. Walden is one of the closer open water swims available to us, and over the years it's become a bit of a triathlete mecca. Surrounded by a mix of rolling and challenging hills (they're all challenging for me), as well as a path around the water that a lot of folks run. That path is currently flooded because of the amount of precipitation we got this spring, so a few folks went away disappointed.

We didn't get disappointed, we got cold! The weather was in the 80's and our wetsuits heated up quick getting ready, but that doesn't stop you hands and feet from getting cold. The water temperature was about 55 by my guess, and you went from cold to numb after about 10 minutes. Thankfully, that's about the longest the swim should take next week, and hopefully the water will be warmer.

Last night, I still felt like I wanted to do a little more, so I went out and did another run. My mile in the morning was 12:45. My mile last night was 13:10. Slower but still not terrible. I'm still doing run/walk intervals, but I've been able to move up to 3 and 5 minute runs. I'm thinking that in the next few weeks that I'll be able to run a full mile, and beyond. My swimming and biking aren't in midseason form, but good enough to get me through this first sprint in pretty good time. It's all going to come down to the run.