Taking Care of Business: 8 weeks until blastoff

Bachman Turner Overdrive (BTO) was a sort of bubble gummish rock group that had a couple of hits, and IMO if they had found a better lead guitarist, they would have been a much better band. But you can't deny the fact that their song "Taking Care of Business" has a pretty strong backbeat and thus it has made my iPod jogging songs list. You just gotta get past the cheesy words.

I'm less than 8 weeks out from my 70.3. This means my workouts are getting longer, harder and there is, yes, some suffering involved (Chrissy Wellington, a Kona champion and one of my idols, said in an interview once that yes, training for winning does involve some suffering. Well, yes).

Saturday was a delightful brick, not because of the brick itself (2 hour bike followed by 30 min run) was delightful, but because for the first time in weeks the weather let me get outside. A bit on the breezy side, but sunny and warmish. I was pleased to notice my bike speed for the 2 hours was 15.1 average and I was trying hard to go slowly. Followed this up Sunday with a 7 mile easy run (note to self: now matter how hard you try, 7 miles is never gonna be totally easy. There was some suffering involved) that pushed me a bit since I was tired from the day before, and a delightful southwest wind was knocking me around a lot during the entire run. Then after I caught my breath, I went to the pool for 20 50 yard sprints. Yes, I am doing this for fun. I remember that.

I feel quite confident that I am going to finish this race, although the cutoff times still worry me inside that head space labeled 'worry about these things.' If there is a strong strong wind on race day (in Galveston, chances are about 93.43 percent there will be a strong strong wind from the southeast, unless it's a strong strong wind from the southwest) I worry that biking into it will fatigue me to a point that I can't recover sufficiently to go hard enough to make time. But I will worry about that tomorrow.

I'm starting to try to plan a bit in detail for the race; I've made hotel reservations, my bike gear is in good order, I've planned nutrition (mostly) for race day, and I've visualized the race in my mind several times. I've seen the run course so I know what to expect there; I've also seen a small part of the bike course. The swim still concerns me --not the swim itself, but the beginning of it as I'm very fuzzy on the details about the swim start (I know it's a deep water start, and I've seen photos of the start areas, but I'm not sure how you GET to the start line since I hear that the bottom of the bay is full of oyster shells that will cut your feet so no wading out--I think you enter the water from the pier, but I don't know if you climb down ladders or dive in, and if so, how and where do you warm up and get back out afterwards--or is that not permitted? These kind of little things can drive me nuts not knowing about them).

Patient Spouse was kind enough to buy me a gel squeeze bottle this weekend (Valentine's Day gifts for athletes are soooo romantic. OK, he did get me flowers, too). I managed to shoot gel into my hair, my bike and my sunglasses this weekend by squeezing a gel pack a bit too hard and the remainder of the bike plus the follow up run was a bit, well, sticky. If I can find ROOM for the gel bottle in the back of my jersey (it won't fit in my fuel belt which carries a water bottle, phone, and gummies, and has always been able to carry 2 flat gel packs), it looks like it might be less messy than gels, and it keeps me from having to carry a used gel pack around until I find a trash station. I plan to try it out on my 3 hour bike this weekend (please let the weather cooperate!).

Tonight's a spin class with Barbarian Bob, who will fill me in on all the Grammy award details that as an old rock n roller, I happened to miss....