togetherness, rain, and baseball cards

When you live in a one bedroom apartment, it might seem small, but there are different rooms and you can have your own space. Now that we're in a hotel room the size of a large efficiency, there isn't a lot of space, but with all the moving, packing, and training it just hasn't felt like we've had a lot of time to just be together and have fun without worrying about anything. Saturday we decided was that day for us, and we took heavy advantage of it. Shopping, walking, and dining plus just hanging out made it a pretty great day, one of the best we've had in a while. Not that we're having bad days, but there just hasn't been the time we want to have.

Unfortunately, it came with a bit of a cost; the 85 mile ride we had pushed to Sunday got rained out.With the trainer packed away, and the weather not cooperating, we're making other plans now, and will get the ride in this week and not affect next weekends training. When the weather broke late in the afternoon I got in a nice hard 21 mile ride at race pace with a good amount of climbing in just over 1:20. Tonight we spent some time at the gym as the weather continued to be uncooperative.

On the plus side, or rather the minus I guess depending on how you look at it, is that I've now LOST 11 POUNDS in the past 30 days. I'm now within 4 pounds of my lowest ever triathlon racing weight (315) with a little over a month yet before the race. I still have a lot of training to do, and there's the dreaded taper period, but I'm going to come through strong and try to be as light as I can by race day. The change has come about through healthier eating, portion control, eating til I'm satisfied, not til I'm stuffed (I have all sorts of good leftovers in our mini-fridge right now), and no late night snacking. Some nights after hard workouts at home, I would raid the fridge when the hunger got to me. Now, the options and opportunities for that are far less, because the items we keep in the hotel room are mostly very healthy.

Being in the hotel has limited my other hobbies because there's no room for a train set, an XBox, or Legos. But I do still have room for a few baseball cards. Topps, the name synonymous with sports cards has a unique set that they've named Allen & Ginter. It's a baseball card product that ties into some of the distinct aspects of turn of the 20th century trading cards (unannounced additions, unique card shapes, etc) along with some of the more modern additions to the hobby (autographs, pieces of uniforms, etc.). One of the things that makes this set unique is the inclusion of superstars in other sports as well as some celebrities and other oddball mix ins (circus freaks, plants, historical figures, and battleships). I bring this up because a fun crossover between my hobbies occurred when my wife opened a pack of cards and out popped a Chrissie Wellington autograph.