Saturday, January 3, 2009

Getting The Work In Amidst Adversity And A Rant


There is not much to say about Saturday. I was working. From the moment I walked through the door until the moment I left which was about 20 minutes late because my relief in Bangalore was late. As usual.

So I was content to just get the workouts in and call it a day. A day which started at 5:30 in the morning I might add. I have a fairly long commute to work - almost 35 minutes with no traffic. And with no more working from home when I feel like it, this has me thinking I've got to do something else to support my training.

The picture on this post is of me outside just so I could say I at least got to "see" the sunshine and experience the warm weather -- for all of ten minutes. I wanted to ride my bike. I am not liking the new schedule that has me working on weekend days at all. Especially when they turn out like this in January. It is becoming more and more apparent that I'm not going to be able to sustain this type of work and the commute and meet my more personal life and triathlon goals. Yeah, it is going to by a real stretch for me to put up with this type of "professional nonsense" in 2009. I hate to say it but I for one wasn't too upset by $4.00 per gallon gasoline. It gave my argument to work from home a lot more weight and kept me from having to talk to people I wouldn't drive across the street to speak to let alone listen to them yell at me on the phone when their networks go down. And now there is the email support we manage... I hate email. When you are responsible for someone's email in "ANY" way, your life loses all meaning. Problems you don't deal with are yours anyway because you are the person they have on the phone. Did I mention I hate email?

But I digress.

Today I swam before work for about 30 min and I ran after work for 30 min. Nothing too hard either way. I was just interested in the time and the consistency of effort. Especially since it was warm out and I didn't get to ride. All I know is it better be warm on Monday when I'm off or I'm going to be really, really unhappy...

Thursday, January 1, 2009

New Year, New Resolve...


So from the picture here, you might think I started out my year with a prayer to the triathlon gods (such as they are), asking for favorable conditions for training, or someone to prepare my food for me (hey it isn't like you haven't thought of it either), or just a higher VO2 Max. But nope I'm just waiting on my ride for the day to begin and hoping that after pretty much not riding any climbs during 2008, 2009 would be way different. Way, way different. So here I am at the start of my ride praying that I will be able to deliver my body into the hills surrounding West Austin and get it back in one piece.

The ride actually wasn't all that bad. Right at 2 hours, with about 60 percent of that being spent going up, and into the wind. Oddly enough toward the end I felt really strong so, I opted not to wimp out of the last climb up Robert E. Lee as I rolled back to the house for some food. Sweet.

Only 364 more days to go. And a lot more hills where those came from...