Back in the pool, Transition Practice, and a Bunny!

A lot of people ask The Boss “how do you and your Fiancée balance ‘life’ with all of your training?” (to which I think they should also include “blogging” as part of the question but that is just my opinion), anyways to answer that bluntly, we haven’t exactly mastered that yet! But we have done a better job of having more fun together when we are training, traveling to training, or cooling down. This weekend I think gives several examples of just how much fun we can have… okay it wasn’t that exciting, but we enjoyed ourselves.

First, I’m going to skip ahead to the transition practice, and I’ll get back to the pool stuff in a little bit. With our season opener coming up this weekend (Rumpass in Bumpass) I really wanted to spend a little time refreshing my transition skills! I usually have pretty good times in T1 and T2 but when you think about it, transition splits are the easiest way in a race for a new comer to improve their times. If you could shave 30’s off of each transition that gives you an extra minute off your time; if you shaved an extra minute off of your 10k PR I think you would be pretty stoked AND pretty tired. It takes a lot of hard work to shave seconds and minutes off of your race time, and yet just a little bit of organization and confidence to take minutes off of your transition times! So needless to say it was time to give my flying mount a little love!

So pump up your tires and go to a parking lot that doesn’t have too much traffic and set up a little T1 and T2 for yourself (unless your in my age group; if this is the case you’re best bet is to stay home and eat a lot of potato chips… I hear that’s the best for race week nutrition and carb-load!)

Then grab your handy-dandy Crayola Sidewalk Chalk and draw your mount line and dismount line; give it about 25m between the two.

Now just simply practice getting on and off the bike in one swift motion!

Getting on…

Getting off…

Why is this fun? Well, honestly if you actually do talk someone into doing this practice with you it really is a lot of fun. He and I make it even funner (yes, “funner”) by heckling each other with camera in hand and this way it dually acts as “concentration” practice as fans might be saying silly things on your way in or out of transition. If you’re not a NASCAR fan you will totally understand when I say that the real highlights to the races are the crashes! So, we keep our camera handy just incase one of these days one of us gets to create our own highlight reel!!

Moving on to the pool portion of the weekend. I’m sure you might remember from before my National Half Marathon that I was struggling with a flu bug of some sort (again), and because of this I hadn’t been in the pool much over the past 2 weeks. Well Finally I have returned to the pool! With high hopes of cutting off some serious time from my past Rumpass in Bumpass swim times this coming weekend, it was time to get serious!

Okay maybe not. I am still hoping to do some serious swim PR damage, but I try not to take myself too seriously! And for that reason the Boss often gets away with taking ridiculous pictures like this…

Lastly. I’d like to state for the record that I want a BUNNY! Yup. I want a bunny rabbit for a pet! I figure they are small and cuddly, super cute, their poop comes in round easy to clean little packages, and we don’t have to walk it! This weekend I brought this idea to the Boss’s attention and he said “no”. That was it. No explanation, no negotiation, no nothing! Just NO! Hmmmm so what can I do about this? Basically for the last 72 hours I’ve been sending him picture texts of bunny rabbits in hopes to win his heart over!

Do you know what he sent me back???

He was at the Bass Pro Shop with my Dad! … I guess enough said. We ain’t getting a bunny.

Well that’s all folks. Hope you were as entertained as I was; that’s really as exciting as it gets around here!

Stay tuned, I have some really good Easter treats coming up!

Posted in: Shenanigans, Triathlon