Going long...

Today was a blur. Luckily I got up at 7:50 am and saw Mikes email that he was going to be waiting for me at Tim Horton's at 8:10 am for a morning ride.

Had I not by chance woke up early enough, he would have been stood up. I wouldn't have made a good first impression, we just met yesterday at the pool and have never ridden together before. I scrambled, and somehow got out the door in time to meet up with him.

When I got to Tim Hortons, I saw a little dog with "bootees" on. I can only imagine the relationship this dog has with it's owner. Of course it was one of those "yappy" little things. Barking at me like it was big and tough.

It was a beautiful morning, 16 C, sunny and little wind. The best way to describe it is "perfect fall riding weather". Mike and I rode a total of 4 hours and 118 km's together and around 87 km's we met up with his wife Leyland and one of her work buddies Steve.

Leyland is also triathlete and won the Subaru point series for her age group. It also turns out she also worked with Carlos at Hewlett Packard. Small world. She was giving me "the script" to try and convince him to return to HP.

Some days time flies and today was one of those days. The 4 hours with Mike flew by. After we parted, I made a lunch stop at home, made a sandwich, posted my blog and got back out on the road for the final 3 hours, which flew by as well.

Last weeks ride was a 6 on 10 for strength, today was a 7.5 on 10. I still felt weak, but it was an improvement. Mentally I felt great, no burnout feelings whatsoever and no core-body "semi-bonk" feelings either.

When I returned home, I enjoyed a strong brick run. It was easy and afterwards I finally had a good stretching session. It didn't even feel like I worked out and I had a great range of motion. Other than my ankle still feeling "slightly sprained", my sore butt cheek from Matty O's "people's elbow" is completely gone.

Today was the first day of Kona training that I felt back to my Ironman strong self. When I have a 7.5 hour training day and it feels like I did an hour workout, it's a great confidence booster. I've come to believe that last weeks swims have been the key to muscle healing and recovery. The cool water works magic on the muscles.

For dinner, I barbecued steaks and decided to reward myself with beers. However, the plan was not to go overboard. At 9 pm John and Heather Barclay showed up and the Kegerator started flowing. John has since realized that the Kegerator is dangerous, "it's so easy to keep pouring".

By 1 pm everyone was really loose, a tell tale sign is when I start dancing. Heather was into it and I couldn't get Sir John off his stool. I wanted the two of them to dance and "show off". They've been Ball Room dancing for years at Arthur Murray. Next time they have one of there "recital thing-a-ma-gigs", I'm going to show up with the video camera and post it on the blog.

I felt so bad for Heather last night, I forget what the lead up was, but I grabbed her foot and gave her a toe cracking. I didn't realize she had foot problems and it broke my heart to see her massaging her foot in pain afterwards.

It seemed like Heather was massaging forever. The upside was at least I didn't burn her face with my cigar when I was dancing with her. Alice suggested I shouldn't dance with the cigar and I took her advice.

One of the highlights of the night was me beating John at pool. In a best out of 5 series, I handed him a 3 game to 1 thrashing. John is so competitive, I know as he reads this he's not happy about it. All I have to say is "na, na, nana, na,". AND somewhere along the line, Heather grabbed my arm and was "surprised and impressed with it's firmness", she said she's not used to that, "na, na, nana, na".

As the beer was flowing, I came up with a what I think is a great idea. I'm thinking of doing Ironman Syracuse "old school". The plan is to use my 25 year old "Dave Scott" Centurion bike and wear 80's triathlon gear with a fake hair "mullet". I pulled out one of my short tri-tops, but couldn't find my old padded Speedos, I may have thrown them out.

My thought it to do the race with the old bike, the long hair of the mullet flowing "Kenny Souza style", running with a sweat band on head and wrists, and a half tri-top with my full glory belly hanging out.

My only concern is I haven't put in any time on the Centurion. I have two more bike workouts before Syracuse, I may use it for my training and see how it feels. I think it would be great for this "old school" freak to be kicking ass on the bike and run.

John and Heather left sometime after 1 pm and Alice went to bed. I stayed up a little longer and did a little "drunk twittering" and ended up eating all of Reid's lunch meat and a FULL box of Apple Cinnamon Cheerios and Cinnamon danish. After 7.5 hours of training, it is one guilt free pig out session.

I was emailing at 2:30 am with Jamie to see if he wanted to come by for a beer. He was awake and usually goes into work at 4 am everyday. Beer wise, I didn't drink too much, I can tell, I didn't got to bed with my clothes on.

Long Bike - 7:03:05 / 204.38 km / 28.9 km per avg / 121 avg heart rate

Brick Run - 30.06 / 5.95 km / 5:03 per km avg pace / 143 avg heart rate

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