Getting Carried Away

Possibly. Or possibly, keeping a continued (if tenuous) hold on my sanity.

Another horrible professional, familial and existential day yesterday that's just too horrible to blog about. I ran my 5K and didn't have time for anything else. Managed to more or less keep from giving into my worst dietary impulses.

Breakfast: 1 Nature Valley vanilla yogurt granola bar
Lunch: Omelet with habanero cheese
2 slices toast
Snack: 1 c dried apples
Dinner: Low-carb bagel with light cream cheese

Slightly better day so far today. The boys continue to amaze and please by waking up early, in time for breakfast and decent conversation. (It's just dad who's a tad on the slow side.) Dropped them off at the bus stop around 6:30 a.m. -- damn! forgot it was backwards day for their Spirit Week! -- and did my 5K.

Where something strange happened. I averaged less than 9 minutes per mile. When I first started running, around 2000, I generally had a training pace of 8 minutes. Maybe 8:30 if I was really tired. Since then, though, I've slowed to something closer to 9:30. No breakthrough, no eureka! moment, just a startled look at the Garmin after I finished running.

Drove to the gym and did 13.6 miles on the bike in about 65 minutes while reading a book on training for first triathlons. It's dedicated to the author's granddaughter, who is training for one. She is 3 years old. And will require therapy. By the time she is 5 years old.

I've come to the conclusion that biking is going to be my weak event. If I've got to go 112 miles, I need to be biking about twice as fast as I am now. And that's not real good. I can't spend 10 hours on a bike. So I'll be working on that a bit harder.

My swimming is coming along. I did my usual 0.3 miles in something south of 15 minutes, but I wasn't hugely worried about the time. More than anything, it's becoming a wind-down exercise on most days.

Took a shower and came home to work. It's just lovely right now outside the window -- mud season is in full bloom. It's been raining the better part of two days (think east Seattle) and will continue until the weekend, when everything turns to snow again.

On the minus side of today's ledger: My laptop hard drive died. And a software program that I use daily wouldn't start because nobody paid the annual license. Sigh.

On the plus side: I am getting faster. And I feel like I might even be getting a bit stronger. I'm eating pretty well.

Breakfast: 1 c blueberry yogurt
1 banana
Lunch: 4 oz stuffed salmon
Maple cheese omelet
Toasted bagel
Afternoon snack: Homemade chocolate chip granola
1/2 c blueberries
Dinner: 8 c mixed greens

For some reason, this site entertained me. It's a list of UN World Heritage Organization sites, grouped by country:

http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/

Outrages, we got outrages. Can't deal today, though. Too much on my own plate.

I'm bikin' long tomorrow.