Apparently a Triathlon Tires You Out

Hey everyone! As promised, I uploaded some pictures to my flickr account so I can slowly start using them in my recollections of my goings-ons. This particular post is going to be short, as I am nap prone today.

Let me back up my tiredness story to Thursday night when I joined up with the crew for the Thursday Night Run. I was so tired that day, but went anyway partly because my horoscope said I should, and partly because the scenery can be nice at times. The run was good and it felt really good to get out and burn off some of my porch aggression. About halfway through the run, one of the guys invited me to join him and his wife kayaking in the morning. You've heard about this, so I won't bore you.

To keep you all interested, here is my favorite picture from that trip. It's a nice shot, so click on it to get the full experience.



After that trip and the few hours I worked, I went out for a bike ride. What felt like dozens of miles turned out to be merely a dozen (actually, it was more like a baker's dozen, but who's counting). I was fairly beat after that, and headed to the 'COW's house for dinner. Funny story about the ride:

After turning a corner and heading up a hill, I felt like I was really doing well. Yes, I was going slowly, but it was a long steep hill so I wasn't getting down on myself. At one point, I hear someone ride up behind me and the guy yells out a "Hey I saw your bike as you rode by". Note that cyclist know eachother by their bikes, or so I'm told. He was riding a very similar bike to mine and was looking for someone who might be interested in buying it. But that's not what's important. What was important was the fact that while I was dressed for the ride, warmed up and feeling good, this guy not only had time to see me ride by and run me down, but he did so in jeans, a polo shirt, sandals and was barely even winded. Dag.

It turned out he is one of the people who run Berkshire Cycling so I felt a little better.

The next day I awoke bright and early to do a training run for the 4th of July race downtown. We went out to run the route and get a feel for the terrain (it's flat). That was an easy 6 mile run (we did the second 5k loop in 23 minutes at an easy pace, what!) preceded and followed by half-mile runs to and from the house where we met. 7 miles by 9 o'clock is nothing to shake a stick at. Correction: it's nothing at which to shake a stick. You happy, dad?

After our run, I went home and had my Saturday morning pancakes. I usually get all set to make them only to realize I have no milk. Yesterday was different, yet the same. I checked on the milk and found that there would be plenty. I put in some laundry and washed up a little, then had a nice tall glass of chocolate milk. Moments later, as I stood there enjoying my frosty beverage, I reached into the fridge for the milk only to realize that I had finished it when I made the chocolate milk.

DUMB ASS!

So I ran to Palmer's for a fresh gallon and I was back in business.

After pancakes, I loaded the old A-kayak onto the car and headed over to Laurel Lake in Lee, MA. It's about a 12 minute drive to the lake and it proved to be a wonderful paddle. I didn't put many pictures of this trip on flickr, but below is a shot of the mountains above the lake. The small one does this shot zero justice, so click the picture for the full view.



After paddling around the lake a couple of times for a couple of hours, I went home to have lunch. No sooner that I started a-munching on some chips that I got a phone call about a bike ride later in the afternoon. I agreed to it, knowing full well I was tired and shouldn't. The weather's finally turned nice so I can't waste any of it.

At 4:30 I showed up at the prescribed meeting place to find nobody there. Eventually the woman who had called me showed up and giggled as she described stopping at a store for a Pepsi. Buying the Pepsi wasn't funny in itself, but she stopped at a friend's liquor store only to be tempted by a wine tasting. Four "tastes" later and she was out the door for our ride. Since you don't know this woman, let it suffice to say that she's a LIGHTWEIGHT!

The next person to show hopped out and stated bluntly "I am so freaking tired". I was happy to hear this, as I had already run and paddled. Minutes later the last guy showed up and proceded to tip over in the parking lot. Ha ha, silly clipless pedals. I felt good knowing that even seasoned riders fall victim to those things every once in a while. You may recall my problems with them...

After the ride, I picked some strawberries and lettuce (an unlikely combo), headed home, had some dinner and just SAT. JC stopped over to borrow some bandwidth from me. We bullshat for a few hours and ate vanilla ice cream with fresh picked strawberries.

Mmm, MMMM bitch! Those are my strawberries, picked painstakingly by me: Old L Coot.

THERE, now you know why I was tired this morning when my alarm went off at 6:30.

I had a run scheduled for 8:00 this morning in Richmond; a 7.5 miler complete with some mega hills. About a mile into the run I started seeing spots, which turned into one big spot. I stopped, rested and continued on with a woman who is new to running and always lags behind. We finished the 5.7-mile loop (a shortened version of the original path) in something like an hour and twenty minutes. MUCH slower than usual, but at least I didn't die. And she's really quite interesting so we had a nice chat.

After the run, I kicked back some more pancakes and got to work uploading, organizing and touching up some pictures (not in that order). At this very moment I'm blogging about blogging, so I'll end it here and take my ass a nap. So long, players.

Over and Out,
Old Coot