Life's a beach

Well, after a tough couple weeks of training Murphy and I thought we would treat ourselves to a little R&R today. We woke up this morning and decided to take a little impromptu trip to the beach. We loaded up and headed out. We ended up at Delray Beach just north of Seaside. One of the few beaches in Oregon that you can still drive on. After much ball playing and hole digging we made a quick stop in Cannon Beach for salt water taffy and caramel corn before making the quick trip home. There are times when I am driving to work and I think to myself "I would sure love to pass the exit off hwy 26 to work and keep on going to the beach". Today was that day. These are the types of things I wanted to do on Sabbatical. So far so good!

Like I said, the last few weeks have been pretty good training. Last week was the last "big" one. A few notable highlights were my long run. It was 2 laps around Hagg Lake (~21 miles) after a 2800-ish yard open water swim with Christian. What a great place to run in the early morning during the week. Lots of hills and wildlife (4 deer and a coyote), and very few cars. The day before that was another 5 hour ride. I went into this ride with tired legs, but ended feeling pretty good. Then on Sunday morning bright and early I had an 11 mile run with 3x10min threshold intervals. I hate running early in the morning, then to have to do threshold repeats?!? I had been dreading this workout but it ended up going very well. I managed to finish up in time to make it to Salem for my Niece's 3 year old birthday party!

This week is still some good volume, but a little lighter on the interval side. I still have some threshold stuff and 5 swims scheduled though. Next week we head north! I am really looking forward to toeing the line for IMC! I don't think I have ever felt this prepared both mentally and physically. Now if I could just figure out how to not go back to work...