Just A Bunch Of Dribble

This is my favorite time of the day... mid- morning home from swim w/o sitting at my computer with a good cup of coffee... checking out FB and Twitter and thinking I should be writing schedules but then come up with an idea for a blog instead... By the way, good coffee is totally worth the extra couple of bucks. Grind it yourself and make it in a french press. Funny how that is something I truly look forward to.

So in reality I don't have a good idea for a blog post this morning I was just thinking that it's been a while since I've updated and for whatever reason I feel compelled to share what is going on in my world sometimes... this one will probably be all over the place so bear with me... or just close this tab and don't read it if you don't want to read a bunch of dribble coming off the top of my head. ;)

Holy cow there's a lot of racing going on this weekend! Lots of big races and little local ones too... not here in Hawaii but across the mainland (world actually). If I could pick one to be at it would be Wildflower... hands down... Man I would love to go do that race again. One of these years I will... when Moana is a bit older I can totally picture Scott and I taking her and camping out there all weekend... One of my athletes is racing there on Saturday so GOOD LUCK KELLY!

I've actually spent a good bit of time the last few days reading through and commenting on race plans for this weekend. I haven't write a ton about my coaching business on here but I just have to say... I am loving it more and more as the years go by. This year it seems I have a particularly awesome group of athletes (near and far) and we are meshing well even if some of us have never met. I was telling Scott the other day, I now have athletes in Hawaii (of course), California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Virginia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Illinois, and Kentucky! Most are experienced and focusing on Ironman but I do have a few newbies too and it has been fun to show them the ropes. One of these days I'll have to write a blog post about all the funny post-workout notes I read in Training Peaks... Guess I should ask permission before I make some of that stuff public but just last weekend I got a movie recommendation, read all about what several people ate for breakfast, heard a serious saddle sore woe, screaming toddlers, and even read a story involving a stuffed rooster. I cannot make this stuff up. Anyway, sometimes I have to pinch myself when I take a step back and see how awesome this life is that I have created for myself. I get to work from home in my pajamas drinking coffee... I don't worry about commuting or showering... and I train pretty much whenever I want. I do work a lot of off hours and am pretty much a slave to email and Training Peaks even on nights and weekends... so I guess that's sort of the downside of the job (there's really no vacation at all b/c pretty much 100% of the time I have schedules to write and emails to respond to) but thinking about an alternative career that would involve getting dressed and putting on make-up and a commute to an office, well, there's no comparison in my mind. I will happily work nights and weekends so I can ride my bike during the day. :) Plus, it's super cool when you get feedback from your athletes who are so stoked b/c they are reaching new levels and hitting paces and watts they didn't think they could. I love that and it gets me all pumped up.

What else? Training is humming along nicely. I am motivated and feeling super and nailing workouts across the board. Here's the swim set we did this morning (some of my athletes have seen a version of this as well- I thought it was an awesome main set!)
4 x 200's fast @ 3:20
100 easy
3 x 200's fast @ 3:15
100 easy
2 x 200's fast @ 3:10
100 easy
200 FAST.
Of course you change up the intervals according to your own t-pace (this was LCM) but the key is you should have no more than ~20" rest (max) and ideally holding about the same pace throughout the set... I was stoked b/c I actually started at a solid pace and then got faster as I went so that's a satisfying sign of some deep swim fitness. Seems like lately I have not had super swims on Wednesdays but today I felt good... I'm guessing that's b/c we swam super easy on Monday. Easy swims are boring as all get out but if that's what I have to do in order to swim like I did today, well, easy/boring every once in a while is worth it. :)

OK well looks like the sun has finally come out (and my coffee is gone) so I'm off to go ride my bike... Not a long one today but I am going to try to put some pressure on my pedals (and hold it!) so we'll see how that goes. Funny now that I have a power meter and can quantify how hard I'm actually working, I get way more nervous for hard bike workouts. Because with the objective data there's no fudging it and being all subjective thinking 'Ya I worked that one hard' when really you were only giving 80%...