2 months til the taper

Yep, I'm already counting down the days til the taper starts and I've just started putting in some hard workouts.

Elena and I had a great time at Universal Studios with Orion in late August for 3 fun filled days.  Elena absolutely loved the The Forbidden Journey ride in Hogwarts Castle.  We rode that 8 times over the 3 days.  Thank god for the single rider line as that's how we got to ride it so many times.  The castle was totally cool and ride was just great with the interactive screen and real castle stuff.  We had numerous butter beers with the frozen butter beer being the best.  Think vanilla cream soda slushy.

My favorite ride was The Simpsons ride.  It was awesome starting with the queue to the actual ride.  Elena absolutely loved it even though she has never seen a Simpsons episode.  This says something about how great the ride was.   Of course now she's on me to let her watch Simpsons episodes.   I might have to start renting the old seasons and have a go although it still might invoke more questions from her than laughs.  Overall, we went on the ride 5 times for the 2nd most of the weekend.

The weather is shifting from super hot summer to more mild days with even some rain here and there.  This makes it a little more difficult but not impossible. Just 2 weeks ago, I ran 12 miles in absolutely pouring storm rain prior to Hurricane Irene. The only positive was it was over 70 during the run. I successfully missed Irene by riding my miles early the day it arrived and then flying to Oregon for work.
And of course 12 miler today in the mist of another massive downpour.  Ugh.

The diet is going well even though it seems more and more difficult to stay away from the chips. I'm dropping pounds and streamlining. I finally got a digital scale with body fat measurement based on reviews by blogger, DCrainmaker. The best tri-runner geek equipment blog I've ever read.  Anyway, I had planned to spend big bucks but after reading his review of all types of scales, I went with the mid-level one from Target. This scale will come in handy post Ironman to track how many pounds I'll be packing on for the winter.

Speaking of gadgets, I'm still trying to find a triathlon watch that does GPS pacing that's not as large as Flavor Flav's clock. It will just take another season before we get a normal size watch I guess. Quick side typing note.  The whole just "one space" after ends of sentences is almost impossible to get used to. I guess it shows my age since I learned to type on an actual typewriter where the rule was two spaces. Now with the computer it's not needed.

My last tune up race that just happened by luck is coming up next weekend.  Savageman 70.0. It's an epic event with some serious climbing especially on the bike highlighted by Westernport Wall.


It's really gonna bring all the diet sacrifices to the forefront with all the climbing.  I'm in better shape than the July Rev3 Half but with the hills who knows how the time will compare.  In preparation for the event, I hit the hills as hard as possible in Oregon.  I didn't think about doing it until late July but it was full.  All of sudden, they opened up some more transition space and voila I had to sign up.  I think the biggest takeaway will be the suffering for my race preparation.

Football starts for real on Sunday but I'll be in a hotel in Oregon so I won't get to take advantage of the best channel ever the NFL RedZone.  That channel is the only way to watch Sunday football especially when your team stinks aka my pathetic Raiders.  I guess the bonus of being on the West Coast is I'll actually get to see the Sunday night game as well as the Monday night game.

Counting the days...