Monkey Business

Today was sooo fun down at Oceanside for the Surf Monkey. I did the 1mi swim/ 5km run and had a blast! It was good to get in a short hard workout amidst all the volume that's been hitting me the past couple of weeks in lieu of IM. So I drove down to Honey's Bakery at 5am, as they're the only place I know of that opens at 5:30am every day, and asked the guy to please sell me some coffee slightly before they opened. I then met up with Kristin, Colleen, and Rhae to ride up to the race site. Once there, we got our registration stuff and did a short warm up, quickly put on our wetsuits and got in the water. I realized this was going to be a surf entry/exit worth praying for- as in I hope I make it through OK. The entrance wasn't so bad, for a bit it seemed like I would never make it past the break, but finally I did and latched onto some guy's feet who beautifully led the way. At most I think I sighted 3 times :) I felt pretty good in the water and was just waiting to catch a wave in a cool fashion and smooth my way to shore. Not so, BOOM! Down, around, up, down, around again I went until somehow I came up, gasped for air, and a couple minutes later was alas on land! Onto the run- I can totally see how this race was named the Surf Monkey, I felt like a monkey running...the soft "hard packed" sand (yes, oxy moron) with rocks and then some pier uneven wood made for a very intersting yet very fun and painful 5k. On the first out-and-back I realized I was ahead of Kate Major, my first thought was "what the hell?!" I later learned it was because she ran the flat out 5km before the swim/run and was thus late to the swim start of our event. Hmmm, darn :( hehe. Anyway, I ended up catching two girls in front and then Kate passed me right at mile 2 and just when I thought I had 3rd lovely little Katya Meyers come whizzing by me with like 100m to go. So I settled for 4th. All I can really say about the whole event though is- it was sooo fun :D
So we hung out for awards for a while and then rode back. I went home, showered, ate and enjoyed an awesome massage!
I was supposed to top this wk off with 5ish hrs in the saddle tomorrow but for proper recovery and preventing another knee flare-up, I shot coach an email and the plan is to swim masters, do an ez spin and light upper gym sesh tomorrow and hold off riding long for Mon.
I love the way my weeks are unfolding right now because they're all summing up a great deal of mileage/volume with fair bits of intensity and proper recovery thrown in......uhhhm yea kinda sounds like the perfect plan huh? :) Yet again, this coming week will see some long rides, a long run, and a finish on Sunday with another aquathon just to get the legs a bit more speedy for Santa Barbara.

Enough about me- on the super-fast-Daniel front, the dude got 5th at Junior Elite Nationals today in CO Springs!!!! I'm soooooo proud of him! He deserves it for all the hard work and how maturely he handles his training/racing at the ripe age of 15.

That's it- more lounging around for me the next couple of hours and counting down the days (64) to IM Hawaii!!!!