4900 by 6:30am

This morning was tons of fun. I got to get up at 4:20 to drive my parents to the airport. The Manchester airport is about a 10-minute drive, but their flight was at 6. My mother loses her mind when it comes to traveling, so she absolutely must be one of the first people at the airport for a flight, so we had to leave extra early. If we hadn't already learned on a different flight that the check-in counter doesn't open until 4:30 and security doesn't open until 5, I'm sure I probably would've had to have brought them at like 4. It's not like I've never gotten up that early before, and normally I'm up between 5 and 5:30, but I was just plain tired this morning. I got up at 4:30 yesterday as well, and then last night one of my cousins was in town just for one night on business and I hadn't seen him for over a year and a half, so I had to go see him for a bit. That got me in bed around 9:45, which really isn't that late under most circumstances...

The convenient thing though is that my gym opens at 5 (although you can usually get in a little before that) and you can probably walk to the terminal from the gym in about three minutes, so it just meant that I got to get in the water for my long swim workout super early. In the pool at 5am with my choice of lanes and ready for a nice 4900-yard workout. This was a tough one, and I was more tired than I should've been, but it was kind of nice to be done with such a long workout by 6:30 in the morning. That left me plenty of time for my favorite post-swim treat: sitting in the sauna. It's such a nice way to wind down after a tough swim and maybe sweat out some of that chlorine so I don't have that super-dry feeling the rest of the day. I also recently read that it helps your metabolism and can lower blood pressure. Not sure I believe that, but luckily my blood pressure doesn't need to be any lower anyway.

As for the other workouts of the day, the bike ride involved something I haven't experiences recently: I got too warm. Not that it was really incredibly warm out - although relatively speaking it was tropical - but I was just a tad over-dressed for the temperatures in the mid 40's. I even decided to live dangerously and skip wearing the shoe covers, and luckily I didn't wind up with frozen toes as a result. But I did have to take off my gloves and my skull cap I had on under my helmet. A nice transition run in shorts after that and that took care of another day of training. Four more days until it's time to taper!