A VERY Happy Birthday to me!

Sorry for the prolonged absence (and the abbreviated mispost earlier); the end of last week was very busy at work and then we went straight into full on birthday/memorial day celebration weekend. Then I had access problems using Blogger in Chrome, so assumed it was down on all browsers. I guess the fact that Google makes Chrome doesn't matter when it comes to which browsers it works on.

Anyways, so Friday, Rach and I met our team captain at the bike store to thank the owner for supporting us once again in putting on our Tri Night. Then I got down to the real business of my trip: Shopping! My work let everyone off early, and after a hard week, this was appreciated. My friends at work took me to lunch for a cheeseburger and gave me a nice gift card, which I promptly put to use at the bike shop. After an hour or so of looking, I came out of there with new gloves and a new saddle, one far more suited to racing than comfort style riding.

Saturday, I turned 37.

Thankfully I haven't been mistaken for a woman (at least recently).

Saturday, We went for a 42 mile bike ride, and saw that our fitness is really coming along. We had to take shelter from the rain for a while, but it was a nice warm sunny day otherwise. We spent the rest of the day eating (I had a slice of cheesecake!), drinking (I had a beer!), and shopping (I bought some stuff!)

Sunday was more shopping and a nice easy relaxed off day from training to recover from the hard ride the day before. And Monday, I put the new saddle on the bike and we did a bike/swim/bike workout with the triathlon team, totally 20+ miles on the bike and a 1/2 mile in the lake. The new saddle and gloves are working out nicely.

Finally, we spent some time at the ocean. As our time in New England might be coming to an end sometime later this summer, we're starting to take in all of the sites and sounds we haven't done yet, or won't be able to if we move more inland. The beach on yesterday afternoon let Rach work on her tan and me work on my fear of sharks. Heck, I even swam very briefly in the frigid waters.

This week I have a race I completely forgot about until last week; The Chase Corporate Challenge. 3.5 miles out and back on Commonwealth Ave, turning around right near my house. Last year, it was humid and had just stormed and I walked almost the entire thing because it was so hot and there were so many people. This year, I think I'll be able to do significantly better than my 52:05 from last year (especially because I still dispute that time).