Almost There . . .

My "official" training plan starts next week. I've been spending most of January getting back into the mindset of training everyday, not just working out every day. I'm so excited to have an official plan to follow. Most days, if I'm feeling lazy, its just not going to happen.

I did my first swim time trial yesterday. 1000 yards in 14:30, average time: 1:27. Not too shabby, but I was gunning for sub-1:25. I'm a little bummed, but considering I haven't really put in dedicated training time in the pool, not too bad. My current plan has testing scheduled every 3-4 weeks during the prep and build phase.

The tickets have been bought and the condo has been rented! We're going to Colorado! I'm so excited to get some snowboarding in this season. I can't wait to see all the snow in the mountains. Mmmm . . . 4 days in snow-filled bliss with a hot tub!

Playing the Blame Game

I spent a lot of time this week thinking about BLAME and the energy that we spend on blame. Think about all the time you spend blaming traffic, work, weather, god, family, food or anything else that regularly crosses your mind. And the mental drain that all that causes. I can feel myself sometimes just giving up because its easier to just say "I can't do this because of this roadblock."

One of the things that I would like to change about my way of thinking is to stop focusing on blame and spend more time focusing on the solution. This is so much easier when it comes to work. Some of the things that I've come up with so far . . . instead of griping about weak ankles and leg pain, I spent the money to get orthotics. I think $200 is worth it. Instead of bitching about having no energy when I get home, I'm going to try and bring my own lunch and snacks. So, that's the new change in my outlook.

Its a little late to be posting my weekly update from last week, but here it is:

Swim: 2:30, 4.5 miles
Bike: 5:30, 95.8 miles
Run: 2:00, 15 miles
Weights: 1:00
Total Time: 11:00

Not bad for week 2. This week has been a bit of a rest week. I'm trying to finish some things that I promised for other people before "real" training kicks in, then there's the projects around the house. I love completing projects, then taking a step back. I'm still amazed sometimes that I own a house!

Lonely weekend for me - Ryan is back in Ohio. I'm catching up with Mark and Kristin tonight. I'm so happy she's going to be part of the family. I still feel so intimidated by them sometimes. She's one of those people that you want to be - friendly, outgoing, good listener, energetic, and just cool. Two girls from the bike team are going to be in town for a photo shoot and I'll try and meet up with them Saturday for some girl-time.

More On the Trip

Okay, continuing on the earlier thread.

Crazy Transformer sculpture in the middle of Rotterdam:

After Rotterdam, I also got to see The Hague (or, Den Hague as its known in the Netherlands). The best part of The Hague is that it is the seat of the government and a major tourist town. There's this incredible old building where the Dutch congress meets right next a street mall. You can see where the Queen sleeps, then go get Subway, all in a few minutes. Cracks me up to see that sort of thing. Makes me wonder if people could even fathon this 500 years ago when they were building these palaces.

I had all these great pictures from The Hague, and none of them turned out because of the weather (rainy, overcast). For whatever reason all the pictures came out with a blue tint.

Okay, quick trip to Nerefco, then it was off to France. We went to Nancy first for two nights. Nancy is the capital of the Alsace-Lorraine region and very pretty. It strikes me as being very much the heart of wine country, although I'm starting to think that all of France is the "heart of wine county." We traveled to Lucey, Bruley and a few other towns in search of a vineyard. Turns out, we were actually looking for a vineyard, and we should have been looking for a house. We found two different wine-tasting places that were very much held in someone's living room. So random! Good wine though, but we only brought back half a dozen bottles. Better memories of trying to pretend we understood French while these people were babbling to us about how their wine was made - or so we assume. Again, Blogger is doing weird things with my pictures, so I'll post those separately.

From Nancy, we were off to Lyon. I was not such a big fan of Lyon - mostly because we got lost each and everytime we drove in or around the city. But, it was close to the French Alps and since we were there to go hiking, I could forgive a city for being hopelessly confusing. So, every day we were there we drove out to the Alps for hiking. There were some truly incredible sights (and all of them on Ryan's camera), but the French need to learn how to label trails. In addition to being lost while we were driving, we got lost a whole bunch of times on every trail. There were no trail markers! Or, worse, if there were trail markers they would just sort of die out and we'd be lost again.

One really cool thing we got to see was this monastery that was built in 1050 and is still operating. We were hiking past as the bells rang out through the forest, it was eerie. If I think hard enough, I'm sure I'll remember the name of the monastery, but I'm drawing a blank at this point.

It was really good to get away for a while. Only two days at work, then it was vacation time again!

I'm going to skip over most of the Christmas update. It was fun to see the family and really good to get away.

Okay, New Year's. I generally make some sort of "resolution" around New Year's. This year, I had already accomplished the big one in December. I wanted to get rid of my caffeine addiction. This was actually a Diet Coke addiction, but I hate the way that sounds. So, I quit (mostly) cold-turkey. I cut out the Diet Coke cold-turkey, but the caffeine found its way into my diet by way of Chai. I'm slowly getting rid of that, but I figure Chai has to be better for you than pop.

My next big resolution is to learn how to build a bike. I'm working with Paul on that one soon. I have the frame picked out, the saddle is ordered, wheels are on order soon. I'm going to see what I can buy off of Paul before I purchase anything else. Anyone who does that much wrenching has to have pieces that they want to get rid of.

And the last resolution is to do a better job of keeping track of my workouts. Ryan got me a workout diary that has been a big help. I never realized how many daily hours are actually involved in 10+ hours/week in the gym. It also helps to keep me honest. So, for the first week of training I got in 9:10. Not too shabby. The breakdown looks like this . . .

Swim: 1:10/2 miles
Bike: 5:30/105 miles
Run: 1:00/7.25 miles
Strength: 1:00
Other: 0:30

Okay, random thoughts for the night. First off, at the pool there was the dad coaching his two kids and he was riding them like crazy! The kids were maybe 8 and 10 and he was making them do sprints on no rest interval, then yelling when they missed out. The 10 year-old was training with paddles (my pet peeve!), and being made to do excessive amounts of fly. The little girl couldn't get her backstroke technically correct, so dad made her stand on the deck while he yelled at her about the correct form. I wanted to scream! It was like soccer parents, only worse. Athletics are supposed to be fun when you're that young. The dad should have just been happy that his kids were out and moving. They probably aren't going to make the Olympics anyways, so why get them bummed out on the sport?!? Ugh.

I had my Michigan swim suit on in the pool, and this guy came up to me and said "go bucks." I smiled and said something about liking to see the Big 10 do well in post-season play. Then the guy starts making fun of me for going to Michigan. So I asked him where he went, and he said "Ohio." I HATE it when people do this. You can't pretend to have a rivalry with my school when you didn't go the school you're a fan of! Go ahead, be a fan, but shut up about beating Michigan. If you're going to rub it in you better have the degree on your wall! I swear, no fan from Ohio State actually went to the school. Okay, done with that rant.

A Long Overdue Post

I can't believe that it has been over a month since my last post. So, first things first. Our trip to Europe was very cool. We stayed in Amsterdam for two nights and took the train into the city. Amsterdam is an incredible city. We spent most of the time just wandering around, taking in the sights. I love that the city is so quiet and peaceful - and the bikes! I couldn't believe the number of people that biked in and around the city. No cars driving on the street, everyone biking or on the train, this was my kind of town.

The city has the "small-town" Europe feel to it, no buildings were more than three stories, the occasional cobblestone street, open-air markets, and cafes everywhere. The buildings in Amsterdam are too small to bring furniture up and down the stairs, so most of the homes in town have these giant cables and pulleys on the roof to hoist furniture up to the third floor, as show here.

We left Amsterdam to stay in Brille, this cute little city about an hour south of Amsterdam. Brille is a small shopping, touristy town, but very cute. The first day that we were there they had this open-air market that was selling just about everything. I LOVE open-air markets, wish there were more of them, and not just in the summer. It was cool to just wander around and pick up veggies, fruit, fresh bread, cheese, and just about anything else I could have wanted.

Brille is home to this really old church that has been around forever. I think it is also the first place that the Dutch took from the Spanish in their first of many wars. Sort of incredible to walk around and think about the history of a place that has been around long enough to have had multiple wars fought over it. The church made me laugh because it was this OLD ancient building all done in brick, with this goofy red door.

From Brille, I got to keep sightseeing while Ryan was at work. I spent a day in Rotterdam and a day in The Hague. The weather was kind of crummy for the week and the days are only about 6 hours long, so the sight-seeing had to be kept to a minimum, but I did get to see some of the sights. Rotterdam, being totally destroyed during WWII was rebuilt recently and is ugly. They didn't seem to worry too much about city planning, so these really architechturally innovative buildings are tucked in with these ugly 1950's concrete block boring buildings, and some bad attempts at making some 1970's buildings look like 500 year old buildings. UGLY. But, the theme in all of the Netherlands seems to be random artwork everywhere. Hence, the random transformer sculptures.

More pictures and updates later, as soon as I can figure out why blogger only lets me publish two pictures today.