Freedom isn't free

Freedom is glorious.  Most of us take for granted our freedoms.  No, I don't mean our Amurrican freedoms we usually take for granted (except for on Veteran's day and another couple of days a year), I mean our freedom from constant training stress as endurance athletes.  January through October or November is a constant battle with warring emotions.  The desire to complete every workout as written, the desire to eat as much as possible, the fatigue that sets in and remains a constant presence, the desire to weigh as little as your body deems healthy, trying to be social and having a "life," eating, sleeping; I could go on and on I feel like.

Then comes something amazing.  Something every year brings with awesome anticipation.  The off-season.  I've surprised many a triathulete with how little I workout in November.  Not by choice, mind you.  My mind is always aghast at the amount of time I take off once racing is over, but luckily I have a coach that slaps me in the face (you know, metaphorically) and tells me to relax.  Once October 28th came and went (Rev3 FL) it was two weeks completely off from working out (no I do not count Shipwreck as "working out").  Then it was three weeks of next to nothing.  In those 5 weeks I ran 5 times, I biked 11 times, and swam 7 times.  That means in 35 days I worked out 23 times.  Pretty, effing, awesome.

What that means though is that as I write this I am drastically out of shape.  Riding the Tour de el Amigo was an incredibly shock to the system this past Sunday.  And by incredible, I mean it was horrible.  Amazing, but horrible.  Luckily, however, I was able to wrap up the sprint and KOM competition early on in the ride so I could completely fall apart on the back half.  Next week begins anew a regular training regime! I'm excited in some ways and scared in others.  It's gonna be a bit of a struggle at first but hopefully my swim, bike, and run comes along quickly.

I also recently ordered a waterproof case for my Contour camera, so hopefully I'll get to experiment with that in the future.  My first attempt was this morning; I wanted to put it on the ledge at the wall (under water) but the case floats! So I compromised and put it in the gutter just to see what it looked like. The set we were doing was 8x100 on 1:10, 50 on 1:10...so I was a bit tired haha.  Haven't swam that pace in a while!!