wedding attire

leifsdottir dress from tjmaxx $119.99 (orig. 398.00)

revlon lipstick: violet frenzy $7.99, bow tie from UO $2.49

last night, two of our greatest friends from college got married. we had a blast at the wedding and were so excited to be a part of such a beautiful night. i went with a classic black strapless dress with a corset-like top and midi length. i will definitely get so much use out of this one.

btw: these are the waves i created with the magic wand.

thought i was worst off

I made the journey into the pool again a couple days back, and it went much better than I expected. I would like to start off by stating that I hate swimming. I do like the idea that one can gradually progess in even increments without having to result to counting quarter miles. Meters is much easier to keep track of, calculate, and improve. With that being said, you can only imagine how hesitant I was to jump back in. To top it all off the heater in my local gym was broken. Ok, so I don't train in denver, but I am accustomed to a "semi" warm pool. So I jump in, literally like a 6 year old trying to trick my body into not caring about the temperature, and quickly i'm brought back to the reality that my balls might just fall off tonight. I do a couple laps to warm up, didn't help much, then I buckle down to the task at hand. What goal to accomplish? Distance goal, (double what I trained for in september) or time goal? (much more than I have ever done on my own continously). The result was core strengthening, toe cramping, water swallowing, full week planning, shoulder burning, ball freezing perfect combination of both goals. Somewhere between eating more veggies, and training more often my inner merman has developed. I was able to swim faster and for longer than ever, and keeping how much I hate swimming in mind, there us a lil triathalete in me that cannot wait to go back.

I woke this morning with a little crick( not sure what that means but the genie in Aladdin uses it, why can't I) in my right knee. Not sure what it could be but I plan to use that as my excuse to hang out with my, newly arrived girlfriend, for the day.

If u read this and still have not gotten ur rookie in training fix, check out my training partner's struggles and succeses at trirook.blogspot.com

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So Far so good

At the beginning of the week i told all 5 of you about my reduction in... uh oh... sodium. Yes, sodium, the water retaining monster that makes all your processed foods taste better than they really do! I must say that limiting my sodium intake for the week, i have seen oretty promising results. with in the last three days i have shed 4 lb's and shaved a minute of my run time. ok ok, so i cant say that taking out some table salt did all that, but it sure as hell didnt hurt.

I have noticed that every time i go running, and the run is successful, i look forward to my next run more and more. once upon a time i hated to take my fat ass out there and plow the pavement, but nowadays i enjoy how good it feels to accomplish a short term goal. Pretty much instant gratification. It is funny, and please let me know if its just me, how about 30 seconds after you finish your run, once all the blood goes to where it belongs, once your knees forget what you just put them through, once that stupid cramp goes away... you feel that you can do it all over again. I find this feeling coming sooner and sooner every time. I hope this means that i will be doing double the distance some time soon.

Kick ass in chile babe! We miss you!

good week to come... hopefully

At the beginning of every week i like to try to add or remove something from my diet, this makes it more rigorous, but keeps a transitional aspect. a few weeks ago, for example, i added half a can of any kind of vegetable to just about all my main meals. while this was great, it did add a great amount of sodium to my diet. Consequently, the main idea this week is to eliminate the amount of sodium, by any means necessary. I bought a few cans of vegetables with "no salt added" labels and some cans with salt added( so it doesn't taste like arse) and I plan to mix them together. The idea, with respect to sodium, according to a good friend of mine: Google, is to keep your daily intake somewhere below 1500mg. sounds like a lot at first glance, but one serving of ramen noodles has about 1000mg's. I have also changed my breakfast. I have been alternating between oatmeal and cereal. this week i will take a page from my manager's book and eat oats and yogurt.

This past week has also helped me realize that I am over programming my days and hours. Trying to juggle full time work, school, girlfriend( with added overtime), and now training has left me with hardly any time for things like the bathroom. I will be changing my workout from a 3x to a 2x. the 2x will be a schedule that includes doing every sport twice a week, instead of 3. We will have to see how this week plays out.

For those of you that were wondering, I never, ever woke up to work out in the  morning...

To be honest i think i was wired in a way that i cannot do it...Let the rewiring begin!

It was their "chill" day

Not only was yesterday my dads bday it was also the official first day of the 20 week program for the Olympic tri in march. This meant that I needed to at least log some miles on the bike. I called a slower friend of mine( no offense) and asked if he was down. Sure enough, within the hour of me getting off of work I was on my saddle. We made our way to the golf course, where a lot of local riders do laps and began our Monday journey. About 30 minutes into our workout, an approaching clicking of many gears forced us all the way to to the right. As soon as the last one passed us we came across an old friend who was struggling to keep up. He told us it was the group's chill day. I figured having eaten a great lunch and pretty good snack choices through out the day I should be able to keep up with this group of old guys in their super hero spandex. I tucked my keys in my back pocket and proceeded to shift up and catch up. I caught up, staying with them was a different story. I wad able to keep up for a little under half the course until I was out of gas. Even though I was not able to stay with them it made me excited for next week. I plan to make out again for their chill day, this time I plan to be well stretched because it will serve as my hard day.

As for the rest of the week, I have set my alarm for really early in the morning and plan to do half of my daily workouts before work. Not sure how productive ill be from 9-5 but I have to add in the morning if i want to accomplish my goals for March.

On a less painful note, the new Leader shirt I ordered from bikeage came in. They were nice enough to include a really dope sticker and pin with the package. Ty!

Running man

Today I finally decided to put my running shoes on for the first time in a long time. It had been raining all evening but i sure as hell did not want to run on the treadmill facing a bare wall. As soon as I walked outside, even before I walked a yard, I was drenched in sweat. The humidity was incredible, but that didn't stop me from running further and faster than I ever have before.

I don't think that there are any good runners in the world, just more tolerant ones. And my tolerance gets tested every time the nikes hit the pavement. I don't run with any music, just a rubber wrist watch (which I try not to look at) and this forces me to focus on things like: my breathing, the amount of my foot that touches the ground on every step... But how can anyone not let all that focus fade away with the constant reminder of how much the knees ache, or that stupid cramp that creeps up right under the ribs. Running has, and will continue to be, the hardest stage, physically, of my training... But the reward of axing my old distance and cutting my previous time takes all the aches away!

Change of plans

Last night was supposed to be a run and swim day but instead became a fun day on my cannondale. My friend, raul, got his new tri bike from the shop yesterday and could not wait to take it out for a ride. He, unfortunately, was not able to be fitted properly but that didn't stop him and it sure as hell did not stop me from going out for a ride as well.

When I was heading home the weather looked miserable, but as I got closer, the sky cleared up. The ground was wet but it was not raining so we decided to head out. Because I didn't have a bike rack I was able to warm up on the way to the golf course, and upon arriving I was"carried" along half of the course by a cycling group. I have never really ridden in an organized group so the only turn I did with them was an interesting experience. Finally I was able to make it to the, already awaiting, friends of mine. (robert on his fixed gear and raul on his tri bike). Needless to say we did not fit in with all those cyclist traning on the golf coarse. We did a few looser laps and the went home, where I had the movie Office Space and some humus waiting for me.

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