Tired of the heat

     I am ready for fall. I cannot wait to wake up early one morning to go on a run and it be a little bit chilly. I long for a time when I need to swim in a heated pool again. Too long it has been that I did not have to ride the bike on the trainer, and I say to you that there will be a time when I can workout outside and not feel like crawling in a deep dark hole and pray for the quick release of death to avoid the pain of sunburn, dehydration and overall extreme discomfort from the heat index.
  Tuesday morning I drove down to the Veloway for a nice 20 mile ride. A few laps around the track, a loop on South Mopac and a couple more loops around the Veloway. Mark is letting me borrow his pointy time trial helmet. It is supposed to cut down on wind resistance and improve your time by 1 minute for every 10K you ride. I can definitely use some time shaved off especially as the races get longer. I liked the helmet. It fit comfortably and I didn't really notice any adverse affects like I thought I might. The only downside is that it is not as ventilated as more other helmet so on really hot days it won't be very pleasant.
  After my ride I went home for lunch and headed out to Mabel Davis for some swim work. I did about a 1000M total. Mostly I worked on pulling and kicking drills to help with my stroke. I remember as a kid on swim team 1000M used to be just the warm up, now it's the whole workout. Yikes. I was pretty drained by the end of the day and I took Wednesday completely off.
   Thursday I got up and since my normal Thursday meet up was canceled I took Oskar for a nice run around Town Lake for some fartleks. I did about a mile easy run follwed by about 21/2 miles of 30 seconds fast followed by 1 minute recovery. I was feeling it and so was Oskar but it felt great as well. We finished at Barkin' Springs for a nice cool down. I got to soak the legs in the cold water for about 15 minutes while I threw rocks at my dog. Well not at my dog, more like near my dog. He likes to chase them and dive under water to look for them. On our way home I realized that it has been several weeks since I had felt that good after a workout. Usually the heat creeps in or I went to hard and all I want to do is usually go home an take a nap.This time that speed workout felt like it energized me. Mentally I was stoked to keep on training all the way through till the end. I felt like I rounded some corner and just felt good again.
  Today I woke up and was at Barton Springs by 7 am for a 1 mile swim with my friend Craig. It has been a couple of months since we swam together and all of his swim practice has paid off because he looked a lot more relaxed and comfortable in the water. We swam 4 laps at a 1/4 mile a lap for a total of 1 mile. Actually he started a lap ahead of me so when I still had one more lap to go he was technically finished but I casually asked him to do one more lap. He immediately acquiesced and turned around for an extra lap. I was quite impressed with his enthusiasm and I hope some of that spills over this way.
  That's it for now. I still have a 10 mile run on Saturday with Rogue and a 60-70 mile ride on Sunday. Any takers for Sunday?