Some Days Are Easier Than Others. Today Is Not Some Days.

Training for Ironman is the easy part.  The hard part is all the other unrelated stuff that is part of a normal life.  Last night, I went to bed by 10 because I had a long workout day/week planned.  At 2am, Fairfax County started grinding off the road surface 150 meters from our house.  Between 2-3am, I was wide awake, listening to the grinding noise.  Then Genevieve couldn't sleep either, and kept coming into our room to complain about the noise.  Finally, at 4:30am, 2.5 hours after the noise started, Genevieve was sound asleep, the sounds stopped, and I had a restless 60 minutes of sleep until my alarm.

This week is the first of 3 weeks where I'm "maxing out" my mileage and workout time.  No excuses allowed.  My plan for Monday was to ride to the office in time for a 7am weights session with a personal trainer.  I felt awful this morning, but because I was the only person scheduled for the workout, I couldn't back out. 

So I rode my bike to the office.  Halfway there, my rear shifter cable broke, and I was forced to ride in my toughest gear the rest of the way to the office.  That includes the hills in Rosslyn.

Yep, that's the 11-tooth cog that carried me to work.  Note the loose cable hanging off the right side of the photo.  The good news is that this didn't happen during a race.  However, I was exhausted by the time I got to the office.  My legs felt like they were on fire, and I already felt like garbage from last night's lack of sleep.  And of course, the personal trainer started right away with jump squats.

All the Coke in the world can't fix a day like today.