Friday, July 31, 2009

The Countdown

As usual it's been along time since I made a post to the blog.  It's almost August....2009 so I need to get my act together and change the actual blog title and layout.  My Ironman 08 statue of limitations is up in a few weeks.  I'll forever be an Ironman but I won't be able to flaunt it like before which is a bummer but I'll take it over having to actually complete another one this year.  It seems all my fellow Ironmen and Ironwomen signed up for an IM this year and even already signed up for one next year.  Crazy...I think their addicted to being in shape.

My next attempt at a Ironman or marathon will be when I turn 40 in 2011.  I think that would be a good final Ironman or maybe just do one every decade if possible.  Although if my knee doesn't heal, I'm not sure I can run that far again.  It's still messed up but I will head back to the PT folks and probably an orthopedic doctor after my last race of the season on August 15th.

I'm doing my first running only race tomorrow.  It's my first 10K in over 7 years.  How wild is that!  I'm thinking I might have a good race because it starts at 6:30pm.  It will be hot and I execute better in the heat than the cold of a typical morning start.  I had a good interval workout last week and my times actually compare quite well to my times in 2000 when I was under 30.  Another a benefit of this race is they will have shoe recycling.  Sweet.  Time to unload of 10 pairs of old running shoes just taking up space in my closet.  And the last and greatest benefit of this race is it's location.  It's only a couple of blocks away from a Dairy Queen.  DQ has put me into a trance with all their blizzard of the month commercials over the last weeks.  I have blizzarditis and there's no DQ near my condo.  ARGH!!  It's probably good though as I'd be having a weekly blizzard and those 1000 plus empty calories wouldn't help my weight one bit.

Summer has finally arrived in DC.  It's been pretty warm the last few days plus a decent amount of humidity.  Overall, I've only had to turn on my A/C a few times so far.  I'm saving a ton of money this summer.  If you close your eyes, you should be able to hear Geico commercial music in the background. As part of summer, we see lots of road work around the area.  They are paving my road this week and causing all kinds of trouble for me on the bike.  I have to weave around all the construction and of course the fresh new black top.  New black top and bikes don't go well together with all the little pebbles sticking to the tires and scratching your frame.  The problem out here is the road construction crews are horrible.  They always screw up and the finished job is usually worse than the original.  On my bike route, there are two locations where the road crew has paved this certain section 4 times and finally it's right.  On top of that roads in general out here just suck.

So I'll be thinking about the new title for the blog over the next couple of weeks but suggestions are welcome..