Recovering and dealing with less-than-SoCal weather

I've been back home since just after midnight on Monday night/Tuesday morning. The return flights were pretty painless, including an hour in Vegas where I resisted the slots at the airport (my first time there) and a nearly full flight from Vegas to Manchester where the only empty seat was the one next to me. Sweet. Luckily on Tuesday my only priority was to get some of the sleep I'd been missing out of, and I got off to a good start by awakening at 9:30. Seriously, to me that might as well be 1:00 in the afternoon. In the summer I can be on mile 70 of a bike ride by then. But on Tuesday, I was perfectly content to stay in bed.

On Wednesday morning the plan was to meet my friend Kevin to swim at 6am. I wasn't so excited about getting up that early, but I figured I might as well try to get back on my normal schedule as soon as possible, and I did have to get in 4900 yards. So I set my alarm for 5:30, and by being in bed and asleep at about 8:30, I thought I'd be ok. Except the next morning I woke up and thought to myself, is it normally so light out at this hour? Oh, guess not, because it's 6:45. Oops. A couple of days before I left for California the power went out, and apparently when I reset the clock I was off by 12 hours. So my alarm had been set correctly, it's just that my clock thought it was 6:45 at night. Luckily, meeting someone to swim isn't like meeting someone to play tennis. They can still do it if you're not there. I still felt bad showing up an hour late, but we did get to swim about 1000 yards next to each other.

That day was also my first bike ride outside since I'd been back. Nothing special, just an easy 90 minutes. I put it off quite a bit while I waited for it to get warmer outside since it was only in the low 40's. Well, I could've waited all day, it still wouldn't have gotten any better. I did not enjoy riding in such cold weather after being teased with the warmth and sun of Oceanside. No sun, a little breeze, just not that much fun. Oh well, April doesn't tend to be the best month around here, either. But at least the snow has almost completely disappeared.

That night I was so tired I went to bed at 7:30... and slept until 7:30. Nice. 12 hours of sleep sure feels good when you need it. Yesterday was another bike ride, although this one I got to do in shorts because it was sunny and in the 50's. I was a tad chilly at times, but it still felt pretty good to be out there in shorts. Later in the afternoon was my first run since the race. In my race report I think I left out the part about my left knee bothering me. It didn't happen often, usually only on the steep downhills of which there aren't many, but it did bother me some. It was sore and a little swollen in the days following the race, but I hoped that it wouldn't bother me once I started to run. Well, it did. I made it through, but the knee wasn't happy much of the time. Hopefully nothing major, but it certainly isn't going to make the training any easier for now. I'm sitting here typing with ice on it. I'm not incredibly worried about it, as this knee has given me trouble off and on for the past year or so, but has never stopped me from running, just been more of an annoyance, and always goes away.

I actually managed to get up at 5:45 this morning for my swim, which was a good start. My swim, however, did not go so well. It might have something to do with the fact that last night after my run, I got in my Endurox recovery drink, took a shower and then fell asleep and forgot to eat dinner. I realize that being as light as possible for St. Croix is going to be a key factor in my race performance, but not eating dinner is probably not the best for my training. Also likely explains why post-swim I had to sit down for a few minutes before I could muster up the strength to stand up and take a shower. Went on another bike ride and another short run that didn't make my knee feel good, and that was the training for the day.

I am now up in Holderness at my parents lake house, getting ready for another long ride tomorrow. The weather isn't looking so good, but it seemed as though the further north you go, the less it might rain, so I am 70 miles north. Of course, now I run a bigger risk of running into possible snow, but I'm taking my chances. Needless to say, I am concerned tomorrow I might have trouble blogging about my ride because my fingers are likely to be numb for an extended period of time. But the other good thing about being here is that there is a hot tub, so that should help in the event of my near freezing to death. But hey, the good news is that the ice is melting off the lake, and this time last year I am pretty sure the ground was still 100% snow-covered due to a record-breaking winter, and certainly the lake was still solid ice. I actually saw a couple of people out in kayaks hugging the shore line... because everything else was ice. I am not that hard-core, but it should be fairly soon that I can take out a kayak. I'll wait until there is zero chance of running into ice burgs though.