Climbing the Wall

Happy Canada Day, everyone!

I know people here are more focused on the Fourth of July, but on behalf of my dear friends who happen to be Canadian, I want to also celebrate with them. I very nearly went to Canadia with two of my dear Canadian friends, in order to celebrate this grand holiday in person, but instead I stayed here and went for a run. Lucky me.

It was a pretty great run, though--I'm glad I did it. I've been having trouble getting the miles in that I should; I've been hitting some sort of wall around 2 or 2 1/2 miles (usually... earlier this week I totally called it quits after half a mile. I blame the 105-degree heat. Never mind that I was inside on a treadmill...); since my triathlon ends with a 3.1-mile (5k) run, I was starting to think I was in trouble!

Today, however, I did it! I ran 3.1 miles over my lunch break (again, inside on the treadmill). How in the world I managed to muster the motivation (mmmmm... alliteration) is beyond me. Hot weather totally drains me. Case in point: Yesterday, one of my (Canadian!) friends and I were supposed to go to the beach, but we couldn't even summon the energy to do that and instead she took a 3-hour nap while I laid on the couch and watched a movie and dozed. Heh. Well, anyhow, when I got to the gym today, they had the semifinals at Wimbledon playing. What can I say? It was exactly what I needed. There's nothing like superb athletes playing tennis to keep me going on that treadmill. Also, I happened to catch the Nadal-Murray match, which was fabulous. As a tennis player and in fact a left-handed tennis player, I really appreciate watching Rafael Nadal. He is incredible. Go Southpaws.

Back to the topic at hand: triathlons. Mine is coming up one week from tomorrow--eek! I'm feeling pretty good about it. My triathlon buddy KC and I did another great lake swim (felt so much better than the last one, plus we avoided most of the seaweed-y areas so I didn't even scream once) and followed it up with a bike ride, to get the feel of moving from one activity to the other. It was a little unrealistic because our transition time was pushing ten minutes--no good for race day! We did happen to run into someone else who's doing the Graniteman, though; how random is that?! It was fun. I doubt that I'll even recognize her on race day, though, oops. Anyhow, I think I'll try to get a long bike ride in tomorrow or Sunday, and then early next week KC and I will practice the transitions: swim to bike and bike to run. I hear the bike to run transition is actually harder. We'll see how it goes! I can't believe how close this thing is.