One of Those Rare Days...

Today was one of those rare days when everything went right...almost [will explain further down].  It was like 80 degrees in the Bay Area and I seemed to have endless power during my 80 mile ride.  The morning did not start off promising at all as I awoke pretty tired from only getting 6 hours of sleep and my pent-ultimate sleep was equally crappy averaging about 5 hours of unsettling sleep.  Also, my allergies were pretty bad and all this resulted in me not really wanting to get out of bed and ride.  But I knew the weather was going to be awesome, sunny and hot, and it would be the perfect day to ride.  Also, I told Scott, one of my training partners that I would go out and push him on a long ride in his preparation for the Wildflower half.  As I started the ride, my attitude was not great, I was congested, I had a slight headache and I was dreading being out there for 5+ hours.  But I also knew that I owed it to myself to have a hard effort, quality training day.  I had a great week and wanted to top if off with an even better training weekend.  In fact, I scheduled a massage for Monday in anticipation of a hard weekend and I had to earn the massage.  During the first climb, I decided to test both my legs and my attitude by attacking and going hard.  By all indications from the climb, I knew my legs were on.  Sure enough, all day long, I could depend on my legs to grind out the big gears and my power seemed limitless.  Also, I really did a good job with my nutrition.  All those years of ironman racing and training really paid off as I nailed my nutrition given the extreme heat and hard efforts.  Basically, I'm just happy that I didn't screw today up.  I paced myself well and was able to get off the bike alert, and mentally ready for an hour run.  Unfortunately, I only got 45 minutes in for the run but it was hilly. The heat was just too oppressive and I was really starting to feel the bonk come on.  A couple of times, I was pretty nauseous, a good sign of heat exhaustion setting in.  I decided to call it a day and end 15 minutes early.  But this isn't what made today less than perfect as I eluded to earlier.  Coming into one of the stops on the bike ride, I was blocked by a sea of corvettes.  Turns out that every corvette owner in the bay area decided to converge in Nicasio for a little rally.  Definitely not my type of crowd as I was overwhelmed with revving engines, idling cars spewing noxious fumes, big egos, and lots of women with really big bleached hair.  On schedule for tomorrow is a 75-80 minute run and 4000 yard swim.  I'm looking forward to that massage on Monday.