Getting caught up!

It has been a whirlwind last few days and I have to say, not posting to my blog has added to my stress!  I look forward to the opportunity to dump my thoughts, successes and challenges here each day.  Not getting to it seems like a part of the day missed!  Since last week I have been running around sharing some awesome training with friends as well as looking at getting back to work reality at some point.
On the work front I have had a couple of opportunities come by me and I am studying them to determine the best long term fit for me.  I also have some irons in the fire to make sure that I am going to get the mortgage paid i the short term.  I am moving along and will hopefully have some concrete direction before too long.  I must admit, this interim time has been great allowing me to get a lot of things done and a lot of training in without cramming to do it!
On the training front, don't know where to start it seems like it has been weeks not days since my last post.
Last week was one of the longer non race runs I have done through training.  A 2.5 hour run in the crazy heat of the day!  I will say that it was an awesome training run with things falling in place well.  As I am doing the longer runs and rides I am gaining great insight into nutrition and hydration.  For 2 hours of my run on Friday I felt like a champ, moving along at a reasonable pace(likely within IM pace).  I was drinking and making sure to fuel along the way.  As I got towards the end of the run, I forgot to fuel for the last 45 minutes.  As I approached home, I started to feel heavy and my HR started to climb without reason.  After looking for answers I remembered the lack of nutrition.  It was a great thing to experience as it reaffirmed to me the importance of ongoing nutrition during longer events.  I am generally quite good about it, forgetting about it reminded once again why I always keep it in mind.
Saturday was a great ride day.  As I was visiting a friend in cottage country, I took advantage of the famous Muskoka 70.3 bike course.  Everyone talks about the course being a challenging one, so I took the time to check it out.    The temperature was about perfect for it, about 27-28C, I guess the wind was a little much with a 30-40k wind at our face for a large part of the ride.  Oh well, mother nature is always going to be there, so I enjoyed the challenge!  The course is an awesome riding course, super wide shoulders, smooth pavement for nearly the whole ride.  Over the course we never had one irate driver beep at us.  I was well fuelled and ready for the ride!  I had my gels, water and magic mix for to be prepared to mimic as feeding during IM.  Can't say the same for the guy I was riding with!!  As we got to about 95k in the ride he started to fade!  WHY?  he asked?  well, when you have only had 1.5L of water for a 3+ hour ride time it is not rocket science!  He was dehydrated big time.  Another 25k up the road we stopped at a local feeding hole to see if we could get him back to speed.  He could not eat thing, for the 30 minuted we were stopped he was going to be sick the entire time.  He did manage to get some water in and I also ed him some salt tabs to help the game.  As we were another 2 hours from our start spot I took the liberty of calling for a pick up knowing he would not make it to the end.  As we headed out on your bikes to meet our pick up, it turned out to be a good thing that the call was made.  As I was rolling down a hill at 60k + per hour my pedals started to free wheel, I figured I had dropped my chain.  I collected my balance and looked down and had not dropped it??  So, I figured I better pull over to see what was going on??  My cassette had totally blown up, all of the rings were spinning and it was totally loose with very little ability for it to catch so that I could pedal productively.  Damn!  My ride had kicked butt on the first 125k with an average speed of 31.5kmh into the wind and up and down the hills.  I truly enjoyed the course and the got an awesome training session out of it.  With that many hills you better learn to be efficient otherwise you will get eaten by the end.  My average HR was 142 for the ride which was great as well.  So although I had to bail on the bike I did get a good T-run done.  My focus on the T-runs is slowly shifting to pacing rather than speed.  Although I left my HR monitor off, I felt a decent pace relative to my perceived effort.  Overall a satisfying day and some good lessons learned by both me and my pal Hugh that i was training with!  Drinking and eating is not a choice!!!!!!!  It is a necessity!
Sunday was a day of recovery and one of the last that I plan to take before now and go time!  I had a wine therapy session with great friends on the end of the dock at the cottage to finish the day, a late night and a restful morning was in order!
Monday was pool time again!  Yes, time to refine the advice given to me to see if I can make it mine!  YES, we have success!  after 3000m it finally seemed to be doable with a degree of comfort and no feeling like I was going to die at the end of each length!  Wahoo!  Now another few 1000 lengths and ideally I can make it better!  I will say that it feels great to make the change and it does feel more efficient as it is starting to pattern.
Tuesday was a short run day with little else going on.  Although only a 7.5k run it was fast and HR was in a good zone.  Felt like a comfortable run and enjoyed the progress shown by the group that was out with me.
And that brings us back around to today!  I started my morning bright and early and enjoyed time with Lululemon staff leading a morning run with them.  They are awesome, so eager to participate and so easy to be around.  A great way to start the day, with a lot of smiles and happy people!  The day then progressed to a great swim!  ONe of those days where it was working!  What I felt on Monday got even smoother.  I have been doing 1:40 x 100m for a short while, but when I was done I would not be up for a chat to quick. Today I was able to do them and felt great when I was finished!
So, after a great week of training, having fun and getting closer to the start line I am caught up on blogging!  Tomorrow I will post photo's from the weekend, the scenery is awesome!