It is a beautiful Monday morning. The sun is out and the temperature is in the upper 70s. I can't help but think back to the great weekend that just was and how I now have four days of work ahead of me. I am not complaining, four days is much better than five days and the fact that I have to work from home tomorrow is a plus as well. The past four days were a blast, great weather and a lot of fun. Let me do some summing up of the weekend before I get into the Spring Lake 5.
Me and the family headed to the shore on Thursday after work; the girls didn't have school on Friday so I took the day off. It was great to beat the inevitable Friday traffic and just be there. Friday was a good day, I managed to get in a nice 45 minute ride along Bay Blvd in Lavallette (site of the LavaMan Triathlon), keeping my cadence up around 100 RPMs. I spend the rest of the day with my girls, playing down at the bay, and yes, the did go into the freezing water. We had a really good time.
Early Friday night we headed up to Spring Lake for the Spring Lake 5 Kids Race, both of my girls were going to run. It was a mad house, hundreds of kids, parents, grandparents, etc....basically organized chaos to the extreme. My wife took the girls up to the starting area while I hung out at the finish to take pictures of them. All I can say is that I did manage to see both of my girls run the last part of the race, and they were psyched to have finished and gotten a medal. I was proud of my four year old who ran it for the first time and who I feared might back out at the last second; and of course I was proud of my seven year old who had to run 200 yds (a long way for such a little girl) and ran it hard. Great job for my girls!
Saturday was kind of a crappy day to start, so crappy that I considered not running the Spring Lake 5. My brother-in-law Rick and I did end up making the trek up to run it and it ended up being a great day for a race (more to follow)....
Following the race, I still had to get in a bike ride, a scheduled 1:45 ride, but being I just went all out for 5 miles I ended up cutting it short by about 20 minutes. I was fortunate that the weather made a turn for the better as I rode father and farther south, the sun emerged from behind the gray clouds and the temperatures started to rise. The one negative to this change was that the wind started to pick up ever so slightly from the south, thus slowing my progress ever so slightly. I pressed on and manged to get to my 'rents house in Lavallette in about 50 minutes. I still had another 30 minutes left to ride, so I continuted farther south all the way to the end of the Seaside Park boardwalk, most of which was slow going as I struggled to keep my speed above 17 MPH. At the turn I picked up the pace significantly and my speed jumped jumped up to around 24 MPH and I was flying home. Ah, I love riding my bike when I can ride so fast.
The rest of Saturday was spend hanging out at the beach with the kids and my my wife's sisters family. We had a good time just chilling out watching the kids play in the sand and jump around in the water. After the beach we headed down to Seaside Heights to get some dinner and take the girls on some rides. FYI, dinner for the night, pizza from the Sawmill (third night in a row where we had pizza).
Sunday I was up and out of the house by 7:30AM to get my one hour run in. I was a bit sore from the prior day but all in all not too bad. I ran 7.25 miles at 8:16/mile pace, with the last mile being my fastest at 8:03. The rest of Sunday was spent on the beach just spending it with my family. It was literally one of the nicest Memorial Day weekend days ever. The sun was out, 85F, slight west wind, just perfect. The only thing that could have made it nicer would have been if the water temperature wasn't so damn cold....58F!!!
We headed home on Monday later morning after we cleaned my parents house. I think we arrived home in Doylestown around 12:30PM or so. The traffic getting off of the island was a nightmare, but we managed and frankly at that point we were happy to be back at our own home. My wife had to go to the food store and do some other things, and she suggested I take the girls over to the pool....she didn't have to ask me twice. Off we went to the crowded beyond belief Fanny Chapman pool. I had never seen it so packed. We did find a parking space after about five minutes of driving around. We made out way in and the girls were happy to be splashing around for a bit...that is until the thunder happened and the had everyone leave the pool complex. This was actually a good thing, because within minutes we were caught in a downpour. Bummer!
So ended our wonderfull weekend, lots of things to do and I managed to keep up with my training....YEAH!!! Ciao!
My NEW journey to compete in Ironman Arizona...and hopefully KONA!
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