New Year, No Excuses

Well it is officially 2009 so the countdown is on to IM Louisville! The good thing is that I have a much better base going into January than I have ever had before. The early work in the pool is paying off I believe on all three sports as well as the Computrainer classes.

This past week was a great week, not only was it New Years but it has been relatively warm in Chicago (30's) so I was able to get out and do a 12 mile run and man did it feel good to not be on a treadmill. I also was able to get out and test out my new Garmin Forerunner 305, the Garmin is essential running gear now that I have used it. The 12 mile run felt great and today the legs felt relatively fresh so once again proof that the fitness is where I want it to be.

This week is a recovery week, kind of, we have our second time trial on the Computrainer so we will see if there is improvement from last month and I am going to continue the swim workouts as if it is was a normal week. The main difference is the 3 rest days this week.

The downside of the recovery week is next week the tempo should pick up, but it still January so it can't be that bad now if it was July it would be a different story.

The Kuwahara...Pimpin

I found this picture online the other day, not sure how I got started searching for it but I did. Anyways this is a picture of the bike I had from second grade until I could drive, didn't get a new bike until college it was like a Japanese car lasted forever. Yes the color was hot pink and it was sweet, even though it drastically faded over the years no one else had a bike like it.

It was the bomb, if I could find one for sale I would buy it in a heartbeat!

Swimming....finally some improvement.

Let me start off by saying, I use to dread the swim. The only reason I swam was to make it to the bike without drowning. Man things have changed! Last year I would have to say my experience changed; the longer I went on the swim, the more relaxed I got, I am sure there is a point where this is not true but I have not found it yet during a race. I am guessing I will in Louisville.

So back to the point, I started up Masters class after taking off most of September and October from swimming. This is the earliest in the off season I have ever started swimming and I am already starting to see major improvements over last year. Last night we did our second time trial and for the first time that I can remember I was able to see improvement in my time and felt stronger as the length progressed, this is definitely a good sign.

Goal now is to not digress next month and hopefully take the time down some more. We will see. Hopefully we will see improvements in the cycling time trials come January as well?

My X-Mas Present

I admit it I would rather just go buy myself what I want rather than tell people what to get me for X-Mas. This is a trait I know I get entirely from my Dad. Growing up he would rather go out and buy whatever he wanted and would be nearly impossible to shop for, this is not something that is exclusive to just X-Mas time either.

Well I decided to go ahead and get myself a little X-Mas present as the deal was just to good to pass up. The other day my new Zipp 808's showed up! I opened them up, checked them out made sure everything was good and put them back in the box as they won't see the road until probably May. They will be put to the test come Galena and maybe a couple of training rides before that to verify everything checks out. So until than I still need to get the tires glued on and the casette put on and still deciding on the old school glue or the tape to attach the tires.