Look what I got in the mail, a mere 2 months late!

That's one happy guy right there!

That's right, my Timberman medal finally came! I opened it and carried it around with me until Rach got home, but I refused to put it on until she put it on me as she would have on race day. She was less than thrilled to play along with my homemade ceremony, but she was more than willing to take pictures of me acting like a fool. (She seems very excited whenever this happens).

Now that I'm officially a 70.3 finisher, I've obviously become far more distinguished, and therefore, going forward will only been seen in photos that reflect that change in status.

Winston, my good man, bring me my Chinchilla skin workout shorts

Finally, after wearing it around for a while, speaking in a British accent and making my wife roll her eyes at me multiple times, I hung that sucker up on the wall.

The nail is no longer empty

So knowing me and how fired up I get by this kind of stuff, you can only imagine how hyper I was to go work out. I went out and did the 3rd day of week 5 of my Couch ot 5k. It called for a five minute warm-up followed 20 minutes of consecutive running. 

I did a 1/2 mile in 6 minutes and had to take a short break to catch my breath. I rested for about a minute before I ran the remaining 14 minutes. The fact that I could do so much with just a little rest is a good sign, and it's clearly progress over what I've done before. But it wasn't what was called for, so I'm going to repeat week 5 of the plan. I don't consider it a failure in any way, just that I need to keep working. I wound up doing about 1 1/2 miles in 20 minutes which isnt to shabby for me. 

Rach had her spin class last night, and instead of staying home, I drove her to FitRec and got in the pool. My first "Chlorination" as a reader referred to it the other day, since the day before Club Nationals. It's amazing how fast it feels like swim fitness goes away. I didn't have nearly the stamina I did just a few weeks ago, but my speed was actually a bit better. I wound up doing around 1200 yards over an hours time, taking it real easy with breaks and building up to 250 yards in a row. A couple of weeks worth of work ought to get me back to where I was.