The In-Between State

I can officially start planning for Ironman Coeur d'Alene now. Why?

Because now I can actually get there.

Last night I booked my (expensive) airfare into and out of Spokane, Washington.  I'm arriving mid-day Thursday, June 23 and leaving on Monday following the race.  A few weeks ago I booked my hotel, the Ameritell Inn,  after realizing that all the "good" locations were rapidly vanishing.  Same goes for the airfare.  If you're registered for or volunteering at IM CdA and haven't booked your travel, I strongly recommend making those arrangements now.  I was planning to confirm flight arrangements a week ago and since then, airfare has gone up around $80 for roundtrip between Los Angeles and Spokane.

Day 3 of IM CdA training featured my first swim in a few weeks.  And you could barely call it a swim since I was only in the water for around 30 minutes.  Though I enjoyed those 30 minutes even more than I expected.  It felt great to get back in the water, although I swam so slow that I'm sure the senior citizens in the lanes at the pool's far end could have throttled me in a race. But, my training instructions indicate to swim for as long as I want while staying within heart-rate zone 1.

Based on all the holiday junk food I'm eating, I should be training harder.  I'm not sure about you, but training during the holidays is almost a lose-lose situation.  No matter how much (or in this case how little) training I do, I'm going to be packing on the pounds from all the cookies, cakes and muffins floating around the office or at the various parties that come up throughout the next several days.  Then again, I could use the extra weight.  I'm beginning to feel "normal looking" after shedding what seemed like an unhealthy amount of weight over the last six months.  I haven't really liked how I've looked in photos, especially in my face where I truly seemed emaciated.  So if I indulge (err gorge) myself with a few extra cookies, now you know why.

I think I'll be taking training a lot more seriously starting next week, and hopefully I can control my appetite a little more then.

For now, I'm in that weird in-between state of enjoying the holidays and trying to live a healthy lifestyle.

The holidays are winning so far.

196 days and counting.