Birthday weekend

I definitely got a good dose of my favorite things this weekend: good friends, laughter, good wine, good books, and of course tri training! Coach kicked my weekend off on Friday with 42 my top-secret age x 50s in the pool, then 42 my top-secret age minute run. I somehow managed to squeeze my workouts into a pretty packed day at work, then cut out early to clean and cook as I had some friends over for dinner.

Look, I'm 1! (very happy about the cupcakes that my friend Alisa brought).

Me at 7:30 pm: "Girls, only 2 glasses of wine MAX for me because I have a big training day tomorrow." Me at 11 pm after 4 glasses of wine: "Hey, who wants to go out to a bar??" Lordy. I got home at 1:30 am, woke up at 8, ate breakfast, and then went back to bed. Surprisingly, I felt ok - no big hangover - but just felt off kilter. I've gotten on such a good schedule and rarely drink much anymore so this really messed me up.

I finally rallied around noon for my mock duathlon (to prepare for my first race next weekend.) Clearly I wasn't thinking straight because I decided to eat a big piece of leftover lasagna for lunch first. After realizing my mistake, I dawdled around for an hour so that I could digest my food, but I still felt gross on my first run... trotted along slow enough to stay under the "I wanna hurl" mark. Then it was on the bike for 28 miles (felt much better) and wrapped up with another short run. Phew! My legs were totally trashed but it felt good. Still trying to work on my nutrition; I have no idea how people drink a lot of fluid on the bike. It seemed like I was drinking constantly but I ended up half a bottle and @ 200 cals short on the bike, and I definitely felt the loss of energy on the last run.

After that it was nap-time! I love naps. Then browsed my favorite bookstore on Fillmore St. (aptly named Browser Books) where I picked up The Paris Wife, a historical fiction book written through the eyes of Ernest Hemingway's first wife. It's a beautifully written book, very well done. I couldn't be more different from the main character who is so domestic and traditional, but she's so immensely likeable and I'll be sad when Ernest leaves her. (See, that's the problem with historical fiction; we already know the end.)

This morning brought several hours of work (alas) but it was a rainy day and the outdoors was definitely not calling. I had another ride on the schedule so I popped in a movie -- Leon: The Professional -- and struggled to make it through an hour on the trainer. My legs were wrecked from yesterday! The movie was actually sorta good; filmed in 1994, it was one of Natalie Portman's first movies. Funny to see her as a pre-adolescent girl who wants to be a hit man.

Overall the weekend was a great combo of friends, training, and total laziness with a book. Which was much needed, as this next week is going to be super-busy with work, plus more intense workouts. I can tell we're starting to move out of base HR training and into more of a build phase. Yay! Ready to start pushing it a bit.

Happy training!