1 month til Rev 3 Cedar Point

Yesterday was 1 month from Cedar Point. 1 month. With taper, that means really about 2 more weeks of hard training and then two weeks of taper. We still have some work left to do, but we're getting through it, and in the final home stretch. I keep my Timberman medal at my desk as motivation through the rough days at work, and it also serves as a reminder that I can do anything I put my mind to.

While hotel living is an interesting experience, Rachelle in particular always seems to find ways to make things enjoyable. There's just something in my wife that looks at every new experience as an opportunity for adventure, and for that I am eternally grateful. One of the best things we've done is look into gyms in the area, and as a response to the utter lack of indoor swimming (seriously, both the Y and the closest gym chain location with lap pools have them torn up at the same FREAKING time for service), we've taken to swimming in Dug Pond in Natick a few evenings a week. It's a small pond, a little narrower than Walden, and not quite as clear, but cleaner than Upper Mystic. We supplement with Friday afternoon swims in Walden to get in our long swim each week.

The best part of swimming at Dug Pond is the fact that if you go to swim outside the roped in area, it's entirely free to do. The bad part is that weather has played a role in spoiling or cutting short our swim several days this week. Swimming in the rain is fine, swimming in thunderstorms is not. With that said, I think we got in enough mileage these past few weeks that I'm ready for Sundays 2 mile swim race.... so long as I can stop thinking about sharks long enough to finish. The race adrenaline got it out of my mind when I did the Fantastic Nantasket tri a couple years ago, so I'm hoping for the same on Sunday.

The big news (here I am burying the lead again) is that Rach and I celebrated having only one month of time left until the race by doing an 80 mile ride yesterday. it was our first at that distance, and frankly, it went pretty well. The time was about what I expected for 2 people who hadn't previously done that distance but had trained well enough to do it. We took mostly roads that comprise the Pan Mass Challenge 1 day route (an excellent idea that Rach gets all the credit for) meaning the quality of the road surface was mostly very good. We did struggle to navigate our way back home a little as the PMC course is a one way course and is marked as such. It added some time to our ride with some extra stops, but we got to see a different ride for much of the way back which gave us a chance to see some new sights. We ended the ride with a little 5 mile mini-criterium in the small business loop behind the hotel, which Rach won. Damn her aerobars.

I still need to reach my fundraising goal as well, but thankfully the due date is not until the day of the race.