Stocking the wood

The long weekend did bring some good training opportunities - I got my trail run on, and thoroughly enjoyed the monstrous explosion of life that has happened in the last couple of weeks. It's green! There are flowers! It no longer looks like a post-apocalyptic world of beige and grey!

Trilliums in bloom.

I also don't need a parka!

I finally got in a ride to Paris for a Brown Dog coffee with my sweetheart, with the cool shade of the trees taking the edge off what was a truly sweltering day. On our return, there were friends in our driveway to share a bonfire and fireworks!

From toe covers to sleeveless jerseys in 6 days.

I took my tri bike out for a sweatfest on Monday, then climbed on my motorcycle and finally got in the last thing I wanted to do before the start of tri season.

Not pictured: 800 million mosquitoes the size of small aircraft.

While I only had enough time to thrash out about 300m before the fading daylight kicked me out of the water, at least I know my goggles and wetsuit are in good repair, and I can even manage to stuff myself into them. I must say I wasn't much inclined to spend any more than a few minutes in the pond anyway - the water is still bloody freezing!

It wasn't difficult to believe it had snowed the previous weekend.

It was a wonderful weekend despite massive sunburn, nearly being carried off by mosquitoes and then the raging thunderstorm that broke out during my run on Monday evening. Having put in a bunch of training, it was probably time to wind down and taper a bit for the Woodstock Sprint tri on Sunday.

Except I didn't. Training has continued as usual, only with less sleep.

Awesome.

Fortunately this race is really just a means of prepping for the Welland Half Iron - the last time I did it, it was my first race of the year and I wasn't happy about that. I like to be able to get in a swim-bike-run in anger prior to the "A" race of the year, so I'm not stressing about the fact it was tough just to push myself through a 5k run and 1,700m swim last night.

Really. Not at all. Not with less than a month until Welland and 3 more races in the next 3 weeks.

On the bright side, I'm finally getting somewhere in the neighbourhood of race weight. Better late than never, right?

They've been hiding.

So off I go on Sunday to see which is stronger - fitness or fatigue. At least I've never actually raced a standard sprint distance (750m swim, 20k bike & 5k run) before, so whatever time I straggle in with will be an automatic PR.

Setting the bar low since 2009.

Really, the mercy is that the shorter distances than my usual 750m-30k-7.5k sprints mean the gong show will be over in 90mins or so, leaving me plenty of time to shake my head over why I thought this was a good idea in the first place and get back to training.

Or beer drinking. You know, whichever.