Another 4:45am shuttle to the airport awaits me in the morning! Have I mentioned that I’m flying from COS to ATL tomorrow? It’s IRONKIDS time!
Since I’m going to be at the Atlanta IronKids race all weekend…today I had a lot of things to-do before departure.
This morning I had a hard run workout on the treadmill…yeah, I know, that sounds boring and typical. But today I ran on the treadmill in the sports-med center and was hooked up to ‘supplemental O2’ via a mask on my face! It was CRAZY…but really easy to run fast when I’m breathing a mixture of 60% oxygen instead of the normal 21% of planet Earth. The mask was a bit hard to get used to but once I was running fast (and I really was running fast:) it was not what I was thinking about. The workout with O2 was 5 x 1K at race pace with 90 seconds between each. We’ll be doing more workouts with extra O¬2 in the future because it simulates running at sea level (which is where most of our races are located).
After the run I grabbed a quick bite to eat before heading out for a long spin on my bike. I had to increase the length of today’s bike ride because I’m going to be without my bike for the whole weekend. No worries…I’ll be doing all my swim and running workouts in the Atlanta heat:)
I was soaked when I got off my bike…not because it rained…but because I thought it might rain so I dressed for that kind of weather and then it DIDN’T rain, instead it got really warm out so I was sweating like crazy! I’ve been here for a year and a half and I still can’t remember that Colorado Springs weather is one of the most unpredictable things in the world!!
As soon as I was off my bike I was taking parts off it and putting them onto my Kuota frame…first the seat, then the pedals, and the wheels. If you’ve read the ‘last minute’ post below you will know that I’ve got a really important non-drafting race coming up. So I took my old road frame…and lots of time-trial parts that I’ve gotten over time…down to one of the local bike shops for them to re-cable into a TT bike. It’s not going to be cheap when I pick up my bike on Monday…I had to purchase bar-end-shifters but at least I had all the other parts already, I’ll just have to swallow the mechanic’s charges with a grain of salt.
At 5:15 I went to the OTC yoga class for a bit of relaxation and stretching…since one of the Syncro Swimming teams was also at yoga, it wasn’t as easy as I hoped it would be. Those girls are VERY flexible which made the yoga teacher go into all the complicated moves to challenge them…and left me struggling to just attempt some of the poses!
After a quick dinner I went over to the pool building to lecture at the USAT Level 1 coaching clinic. I gave the same lecture as the June clinic and then went up to the pool to practice drills and open water techniques. Its pretty cool to be asked to share my open water knowledge with the future coaches of this sport!
Now I’ve finally got a few minutes to chill in front of the computer and catch up on emails, blogs, and e-bay items before leaving for the weekend. Maybe the hotel will have internet connection (and maybe the moon is made of cheese) and I’ll be able to post some photos from IronKids!