Overdue post

It's been too long since I've blogged, and there's much to discuss. Most good, some not so good, but all worthy of being spoken of.

I started writing a paragraph about how shitty this hotel is, but I realized I already did that earlier. And if I know you, my readers, you're all probably tired of hearing me whine about the living conditions here. But too bad, you're getting another dose.

Over the weekend, my lungs got a taste of fresh mountain air. Ahh, 6,000 feet. How I miss you. But it made me realize what filth I'm living in when it comes to the Peartree Inn. And that filth became fully realized when I coughed up blood. That's right. I was literally coughing up blood. Thankfully, it only happened once all weekend, but still. Cause for concern, obviously.

This further was a concern on Saturday when T and I went for a run. Earlier that morning, I accomplished a milestone in swimming 1600 meters. For those of you counting, that is 1 mile. Woohoo, swam a mile! The night before, I only swam 800 meters due to T having to play a double header in softball. So that was 2400 meters swam in less then 10 hours. Good for me, sure. But later on our planned run of 7 miles, I wasn't able to continue. I was having a pain in my chest that was brutal and quite frankly, unbearable. I chocked it up to three things: running at altitude for the first time since I had left for training, the problems I'm having with the hotel, and having run after working out pretty hard in the previous 24 hours. Oh, and winds at 40 mph don't help the things either.

Sunday though. My goodness. Where do I begin? The weather in St. Louis has been unbearable. Humid. Hot. Stormy. Sucky. Denver on Sunday. High of 78. Minimal wind. Humidity of 16%. A dewpoint of 28. So you can probably guess what we did that day.

It was time to get in a long ride. I've made it no secret how much I've missed my bike, and I'm realizing the triathlons are getting closer and closer. So it was a great day to get some serious mileage in. And we did just that. We rode the Platte River Trail from C-470 all the way to REI in Denver. The ride out was just amazing. I was really settling into a nice groove, averaging close to 19 miles an hour the whole ride. Both T and I were passing cyclist after cyclist, and my lord in heaven there were a lot of them out there that day. Not that I blame them.

At REI, I called it the cyclist's Mecca. Good god there were a lot of bikes out there. I'd estimate at any given time, there were 60 cyclists enjoying the patio and Starbucks that REI offers. T and I of course partook in Starbucks and made some small talk with another cyclist.

On the ride back, it was definitely getting windier, and battling that wasn't great. Also, my body isn't used to riding that far yet this year, so it needed more breaks then I would have liked, but overall, it wasn't too shabby. In fact, it was just a nice refreshing ride that just felt good. Again, I thought of freedom.

Anyway, Bolder Boulder is coming up this weekend, and I am just pumped! First 10K of the season and it's time to kick some butt! Kind of like our friend Kris did in the TC One mile run. Also, a special shoutout to our friend over at Run, Lindsey Ann, Run for finding a possible half-marathon in her living place of Marquette. I'm rooting for all my fellow bloggers to do well in their upcoming races. Let's do it, athletes!