Wednesday a.m.

Good morning! I made a private vow quite some time ago to not complain about the weather. So I won't. Ha ha. I think, within the confines of my vow, I can say: man, I wish it would warm up! I still have my eye on a Friday afternoon ride, but it may take a few more clothes than normal.

I have no idea why, but I woke up at 3.30 this morning. I was ready to get up. I fought it but lost, so up I got. It's going to be a long day on my long day. I'll take it one hour at a time and see how it turns out.

Last night was Tempo Tuesday, but I didn't tempo. I've had some niggling pain from pushing my limits over the weekend. It was getting better, but on the warm up last night, I just didn't feel quite right. I did the stride outs--short surges of speed--on the way to our stretching place. While I was doing them, I was having doubts about 3 hard miles.

Once we reached the stretching place, we began the usual talk of "What are you going to do tonight?" My main tempo man, John H., said, "I'm just running the course - no tempo for me." That's all I needed. Iron Bill joined us, so we just ran. Only 5 tempoed (pretty sure that's not a word, simply because it is very ugly looking) and did well. Some of our new guys have made dramatic, impressive improvements. That's really neat to see. Their confidence is soaring and their times are lowering.

Today is going to present lots of things to do. One neat thing is that I am going to do today is meet a couple of guys, and we are going to "steal" someone's riding lawn mower. It belongs to a lady who has had to use her push mower for a year or two because her rider doesn't work. She doesn't know why and doesn't want to spend the money to get it fixed. (She is very generous toward others.) We're going to get it fixed for her and present it to her as a surprise. Hopefully. So don't tell anyone. OK?

Over the weekend, four of us signed up to work Ironman Florida in November. We are going to volunteer in 2013 and then participate in 2014. That's the plan. We'll see. We volunteered for the second shift of bike transition. We'll be receiving bikes after the athletes have completed their 112 mile ride, placing them back in the racks. Our shift will allow us to watch the 2.4 mile swim and then T1 - transition from the swim to the bike. We'll be completed with our shift in time to watch a lot of the athletes finish the marathon.

OK, off I go...