Alpe D'Huez or Working Out? Let me see...

So things have been relatively slow at work...actually painfully slow to the point where I jumped online to watch "The Office" online for a little while to burn some time. I surely couldn't watch the Tour since that was reserved for wednesday night "Guys Night". But time went by SO SLOW Wednesday that I thought the world was stuck in molasses. Monday through Tuesday were pretty uneventful.

Kirsten and I went to the DC Tri Club Masters swim practice on Monday night and got in about 2900 yards. I felt pretty good but not as strong as I had a couple months ago before the summer chaos started up again. It was the first time swimming in the indoor pool in a long time as well. After about 1800 yds I could feel my breathing become labored and getting a full breath was pretty hard. I am allergic to chlorine for sure since if i don't wear the nose plug I get pretty stuffed up for 24 hours afterwards, so swimming indoors probably has the same effect on my lungs. If you don't believe me even the CDC says that it is plausible and a FACT! I managed to finish the swim though and even lost track of the yardage and wanted to swim more...so I guess that is a good sign!

Tuesday morning was the usual ride down at HP and again we didn't feel like riding with the group so I suggested riding some tempo efforts to get used to the sustained stuff Ironman training requires. Kirsten was in a pretty bad mood again when I picked it up slightly but we talked it out and she seemed to leave the workout in a better place than she started (hence her posting below!) She ended up going to dinner with a bunch of her girlfriends that night so I got to make dinner for myself. Burritos...oh wait...aren't we running tomorrow...oh well given the time I had it was the easiest thing to make. But the next morning, same result as before! A DC Tri Club couple came over to take a look at my old wetsuit and they ended up buying it for the guy for 100 bucks! Woo hoo...selling old gear is awesome!

We were both tired when we woke up on Wednesday morning and we still managed to get our butts out of bed but not until 7 am and then decided only to run for 30 minutes. It is funny how the more entrenched into endurance sports you get the more a 30 minute run seems like a waste of time. But we still got out there and got it done, plus I had to get back to the house...I won't say why but you can probably guess... So Kirsten had her Dining for Women group that night and we had planned a "Guys Night" watching Stage 17 of the Tour which was the infamous L'Alpe D'Huez stage. I left work a little late since I had nowhere to be and when I got home I saw Eric standing there with a 12 pack of guiness, chips, and a confused look as he rang the doorbell and squinted to see if anyone was home...looks like I left work a little TOO Late!

The guys trickled in slowly and we finally got the tour started around 7 or so (thank goodness for DVR) but the recording alone was 5.5 hours long!!!! Kip came and went quickly since the massive storm that opened up while we were watching the tour started flooding his basement and a couple guys came late. The pizza, beer, and chatter about pro cyclists and what was going on that stage was nice to have. Male bonding is always good, we just need to make sure when they have the ladies nights we have the guys nights from now on. The stage drug on and we finally finished it at 11:15pm or so. Everyone was beat since we all get up at 5 am to workout. It was funny to see everyone fade around 10pm and I thought at one point I heard snoring...it could have been me for all I know!

After cleaning up I got to bed around midnight and was totally wiped out. Woke up in the morning and did not even want to get out of bed and in fact...didn't. Figured I would try to run at lunch and then we would bike Friday morning and we would swim that night. Well none of that happened. I lost all motivation to run at lunch and I picked Kirsten up to swim but we decided we needed to run but then once we got home with our new Framed Pictures (Pictures coming soon!) that I picked up at lunch, instead of running, we decided not to do that either. Oh well...we ended up hanging around for a bit and then went over to Christopher and Rachel's to have some awesome tiramisu from Cafe Roma for Rachel's birthday. It was a quiet evening with them and Jake and Shelly and was fun. We were still beat though and headed home and to bed.

I woke up around midnight or so to total silence and darkness...oh yeah...I forgot they were doing electrical work in our neighborhood and notified us that the power would be off from midnight until around 6am. What I forgot about is that without electricity we don't have a ceiling fan or A/C!!! It got a bit hot but not unbearable in our room, but just hot enough to make me uncomfortable and not be able to sleep. I was tossing and turning, nodding in and out of sleep for about 5+ hours until the power came on...right in time for my cell phone alarm to go off...DOH! Again it was a struggle to get up but we did and got on the bikes around 6:30am or so.

The workout was pretty hard and it was my first workout back with my power meter (I loaned the computer to a friend for his run at Ironman Lake Placid) and I found myself trying to hit high numbers and in fact didn't have the workout right at all. What I thought it was and what it was were completely different and I wondered why I felt pretty toasted ;) It was a tough workout but confirmed to me that I need to test my power pretty soon as I am sure it has gone up a lot since last August when I tested last (and had a properly working power meter!).

Kirsten was riding into work so we parted ways, both with the full intention of doing our first "brick" of the year, well my first brick anyway. Kirsten ended up on the treadmill at work for 20 minutes, of which I am proud of her because I can't get myself to run on a treadmill to save my life! I got home, made a pit stop and went out wit the intention of going about 30 minutes around the Capitol and back. Once I got to the Capitol I felt so good I just kept going...I literally had to talk myself out of running to the Washington Monument (which is 6 miles round trip) and ended up running for about 40 minutes or so total and felt GREAT!

So it was a good workout this morning and I got into work late because of it, but it was totally worth it. Got in late and found out my boss isn't here so I could have come in even later...but I wouldn't have done that ;) Now we get to fly to Boston for my Cousin's wedding on the Cape of MA. Should be a good time but with all the traveling etc. a tad stressful as well. More to report after the weekend and hopefully will have some pictures as well!

Chad