Back to Work after the Race

  I took Monday off after the race to rest and recover. Now it's time to keep preparing for the rest of racing season. The main goal of all of this is Ironman 70.3 Austin. I just found out recently they changed the name from Longhorn to Ironman Austin. It is a half-iron distance but at this stage in my triathlon experience a half-iron is plenty.
  Tuesday was a run day. I know it is time to start ramping up the distances for my training so now 7 miles is my easy run, which is what I ran yesterday around Town Lake. It was a little warm but it felt really good to go a couple of extra miles. I got home and tried to schedule some swim time in but cleaning the a/c coils and mowing the lawn took precedence. Also Oskar was heading down to the beach for a couple of weeks with Lucy so I needed to have some quality dog time before he left.
  Today was a good old fashioned hard bike ride. Nothing too fancy just a hilly 24 mile ride in North West Austin. I rode out Shoal Creek to Far West, down and up Mesa, then down and up Far West where it dead ends into Ladera Norte. I thought about doing a couple of trips up Mesa but I felt fortunate enough just getting up it once without stopping so I kept going up back to Far West. Once there I decided at the last moment to go down the Western slope for another hill repeat and began regretting this decision about halfway down. Far West is a tough ride especially after just climbing Mesa. But I was locked in and I either had to climb Ladera Norte (not interested in that) or go back up Far West. Here is the elevation profile from Mapmytri:

 I took the last 10 miles home easy to recover. Speaking of going home there is an absence of a little Oskar. I miss that little bastard. He and Lucy are down in Galveston at a beach house. Yep, my dog is on vacation but not me. So right now he is either                                                                                            

                                                 A: Swimming in the Gulf
                                                 B: Working on his tan
                                                 C: Diving and rolling in dead fish on the beach
                                             or D: All of the above

  I'll get down there next week to hang out too for a few days.