Welcome Back NFL ...

- What a great day to watch football!  The Steelers played Steelers Football today and pulled out an OT win against the Falcons.  In case you are wondering what is Steelers Football the definition is: physical, violent, enforce your will, pound your opponent until they break, win ugly.   Gawd, I love football!

- I have two Fantasy Football teams this year.  Looks like I am going to finish 1-1 to start the season and of course the better of the two teams is the one that is going to lose?

-  My long run was brutal!  At 6:30am it was already in the mid-80's with humidity near 100%.  I am really, really tired of the heat and humidity.  It is the middle of September and it should be gone by now?

- My long bike was only 1h 30m this week with a 40min brick after.  The plan called for both to be done in Zone 2. I went out alone instead of with a group.  I set my Garmin by time and HR and tried to keep the HR under 140 BPM. Usually I have the Speed and Mileage as well but I wanted to focus on staying in Zone 2 so these two stats were hidden.  Well, my average HR at the end was 136 BPM and when I checked my average speed later it was 20.2 MPH.  I am very please I was able to maintain that type of pace in Zone 2.  If you would have asked me to guess my average speed I would have said maybe 18.5 MPH  -- all this time in the saddle is definitely paying off!

- This whole week was very hard on me both physically and mentally.  This was week 12 of the training plan and it was an extremely well timed recovery week.  My motivation was lacking and my legs did not want to play the game anymore.  Each and every workout was a battle and toss in the little stomach bug  that was with me most of the week (at least I lost that last 5lbs) and I am extremely happy week 12 is in the books.

- Here are the Week 12 numbers:
Swim: 3 workouts - 3h 40m - 8100yds
Bike:  3 workouts -  4h 20m - 81.30mi
Run:   4 workouts -  3h 31m - 24.07mi
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   Totals:  10 workouts - 11h 31m 


- I missed 1hr 30m of Speed Intervals on the bike on Tuesday evening due to my stomach and then decided to skip this evenings swim due to overall fatigue.  Good call because I already feel 10x better and tomorrow is a rest day so 40+ hours of being off should do wonders.  I think the stomach bug is done so hopefully by Tuesday morning things will be back to normal and I can give it hell!

- I have been wearing CEP Compression Sleeves for the last few days for recovery and I gotta say that I am impressed!  Even though my legs are beat up overall because of the Build Phase of my training the soreness that usually comes after a run or long bike has been missing!  In fact, I am thinking I might need to buy the full tights!

-  Early this morning I dropped my iPhone on the concrete and cracked the screen.  Really it is impossible for me to have nice things (SEE - Garmin 305).  I am a klutz with electronics. Now the upper left hand corner has a nice big spiderweb looking crack ... lovely!

-  Also early this morning something shocking happened!  Yep, it is bad - I noticed a substantial amount of grey hair in my beard!  I haven't shaved since Thursday and the beard is pretty thick and as I was washing my hands over the sink I looked up in the mirror and noticed all the grey.  It was bound to happen but I just am not ready to be grey.

- Okay, so the upcoming training week is going to be around 20 hours - I actually am excited to try and climb this mountain.  The most I have ever done is 18.5 hours so this will be an all-time high.  Hopefully my body used this recovery week well and is ready to excel.

Thanks for Reading and I hope everyone has a great week,

Jeff