Early Season "Brick" ... and Swim Woes

So this is the blog post alluded to on Friday.

Friday ... a day that seems so far away now. It was 65 degrees and GORGEOUS. Today? 10 and snowing. Tomorrow? A whole ZERO degrees. Oh Colorado ... I love you and your 60 degree weather swings in four days. Really. Really I do. I promise. (and it'll be 50 again by the weekend. figures.)

ANYWAY, even though Friday was a crazy busy day for me - up at 5am, work at 6am, working hockey later that night (thought 7:30p; ended up being 8pm which meant I didn't get HOME until 12:20am), I wanted to take advantage of the gorgeous weather. Luckily, I got out of work a little early so I was able to do so.

So, as soon as I got home, I quickly snarfed a quick snack and then got my cycling stuff on.


Oh unflattering cycling shorts.

I put on a lightweight jacket because I didn't know if the ambient air would be cold or not. When we did our first outdoor ride last year in March, even though it was sunny, the air was still coooold and hurt our lungs. Not so on Friday.

I was ready to hop on my bike, but I did feel bad for Brandon's bike still stuck on Skippy.


Doesn't it look so sad? :(

I didn't have too much time to feel bad for his bike though, because I had to get a-ridin'!


Happy bike in the sunshine!

I hopped on and went for a ride. I decided to go explore a bit on where the county/city expanded the road off my preferred highway exit and, in turn, found a safe back way to cycle to the gym (if we ever really wanted to) that wouldn't involve us most likely getting killed by going on the bridge over the highway with all the crazy people trying to get on I-25.

(Seriously. I've ridden that way before ... illegally on the sidewalk so I wouldn't get killed. SCARY scary stuff.)

Of course, a ride around here wouldn't be complete with a couple nasty hills. Here's one of them.


Ugh. The road does keep following that curve in the landscape at the top of the pic, in case you were wondering.

The good thing was that the ride didn't even seem that bad. Yes, the hills sucked, but they didn't seem to suck as much as I remember them sucking last year. It was a relatively short ride (10.21 mi in 39:44) and slow (well, for most of you; decently quick for me - avg mph of 15.42). However, it felt fast. I thought it was faster than most of my rides last year ... which was actually inaccurate. However, the faster rides were on a flat path (Platte trail). This was faster than anything else I had done with major hills, so obviously I'll take it.

I got home, took the world's longest transition (about half an hour, in which I hopped on facebook, changed and ate some cereal) before going out for a run.


I think I took this picture to prove that I'm still in my cycling shorts ...

... Which also means I forgot what it was like to run in a diaper. Okay, so running in cycling shorts isn't running in a diaper, but it kinda feels like it.

I ideally wanted to go at least three miles, but I got out there and my legs told me, "yeah, pffft whatever woman." So instead of running up the usual stupid hill, I ran down to do what is essentially a two mile loop ... and extended it.

Final stats? 2.53 miles in 25:30.95 for a 10:05.12/mi. For what was essentially an early season brick, I am HAPPY with that. I was also kind of surprised that the run ended up being that fast (shut up, i'm slow) even though my legs felt like lead.

It was a really motivating moment, especially since I went swimming the night before. I know I took the stupid SwimLabs lesson to improve my form and really, it did work. The problem is ... I can't freaking breathe.

Background: I am incapable of breathing through my nose without it sounding all nasally. I cannot take in a nice, deep, soothing relaxing breath through my nose. There is nothing physically wrong with me (they've done x-rays/MRIs/CT scans); I just can't do it. This is a problem when I'm swimming and the damn nose still decides to somehow inhale water into my sinuses when I'm trying to take in air instead. To get in air without rinsing out my sinuses in the process, I almost have to rotate to the point of compromising my form.

Pretty? No. Efficient? No. Frustrating. YES. It's making me feel that I'll never be able to make it through a sprint swim, much less a half-Iron swim. I'm calling SwimLabs this week for another lesson to try and focus on this crap before I relegate myself to a life of dus.