I made it through February!

Friday: Running - sprint descents -6,4,2,1 at 5.6 pace with 90 seconds rests at 5.0
Saturday: Spin class 1.5 hours; 10 min transition run
Sunday: Bike, Hains Point, 30 minutes, 6.5 miles - easy pace.

What a weekend. Seriously - I need to back off or I'm going to make myself sick. After my swim on Thursday I was trying to figure out how I could fit everything in so I decided to try doing my faster run on Friday and then getting up early for spin class on Saturday morning. The run on friday went fantastically. I tried doing decending intervals - which I read about in my tri book. You do a ladder down - so you run 5 minutes hard, then rest for two, then run four minutes hard, rest for two and so on. If you want then you can build back up again. It works like a charm - I shot my heart rate right up and then got to test my recovery. It's actually pretty good. I was really pleased. The problem was that then I went home to have dinner with my cousins and because I was at the gym late, I was rushing and didn't have time to eat... and then we drank three bottles of wine. I spent all night having dream arguments with myself about why I couldn't get up to go to spin class. But, shockingly, when 8:00 am came, I woke up like a lamb and got in the car.

Spin class, however, was another beast all together. I accidently wandered in to Cycle Challenge, which not only is 45 minutes longer then my usual class (bring it to a whopping 90 minutes of pain and agony), but also happened to be a day when they were testing recovery... by not giving you any. Between the intensity and the better part of the bottle of wine I had drunk the night before, I thought I was going to throw up. I crawled out of there at 11:00 am and because I knew I had to work it in somewhere, managed to limp through a transition run. I was so foggy after class that I'm not totally sure how I got home. I was inhaling calories too - a banana, an apple, a muffin - and then, when I made it home, immediately made myself an enormous egg, cheese and avocado sandwich and fell asleep for an hour. Crazy tired.

Saturday night I went to a party and could barely even stand to be in the same room as alcohol. I drank seltzer water and went to bed by one in the morning - which is practically saint-like. I was trying to take today (Sunday) easy, so I went to the paint store, but on my way home, I had this idea that I should go check out the race course for the DC triathlon because I had been telling people about it in the bar the night before. So I drove downtown to try to figure out exactly how we were all going to get in the water by the Memorial Bridge (I still don't get it - and I still don't want to get in the Potomac River *at* all).

While I was down there I ended up driving down the river to Haines Point - which is this huge amazing park right in DC that I never knew about. It's totally owned by cyclists - there were tons of people down there on super swanky bikes doing laps. The roads aren't closed, but the traffic is so light that they might as well be. The loop I rode - which will eventually be about half of the running race course for the DC tri, circles the golf course with great views of DC, the river and Reagan Airport. The problem was that it was a beautiful day... and the roads were so pretty... and my bike was in the car... so I went for a little ride. My legs were exhausted, but it was so nice to be outside. I miss outside. I really long for spring - more this year then I can remember before. Maybe because it's so much more fun to train outside so I notice it more this year? I don't know. But I feel impatient with the weather and totally sick of being cold. Actually - no - it's not even the cold. It's the damn freezing wind that keeps happening. It makes me irrationally mad at everything and seems to cut right through whatever I'm wearing, which just seems unfair. I mean, I feel that the whole purpose of sythetic fiber is to prove that man has mastered the elements. But I still feel like they're bitch-slapping me through $250 of goose down when I go to take out the garbage. REI! What the hell are you doing?! Get on it!

In other unrelated news I think I now have (finally) picked colors for the living room. Thank god (and my cousins). The guy who lived here before was meticulous in his taste and design, but was either color blind or aspired to live in a monastic cell. He painted everything white - trim, walls, shelves. Everything. I just can't take it anymore. I just want to take the entire apartment and dip it in red paint - so it's good my cousins gently made some less radical suggestions before I got completely fed up. I also realized (indecently early on Saturday morning) that I have officially made it through my least favorite month - extra day and all. I have always reserved a special place of quiet dread for February - which is normally the month I spend alone in my house baking muffins and writing long dreary journal entries about how it's cold and dark. Strangely enough, I saw the ex-girl's car on Friday night - the last day of that dreaded month - and had this moment of pure anger about the entire thing. And I decided, after slamming around my house for a very satisfying fifteen minutes, that that was a very good, healthy and justified reaction. I never really got anger before - I was like "eh. circumstances. it happens. whatever" (and believe me if I told you the circumstances you would ask me why *I* hadn't left) - but here's what I just realized: I am pissed off. Not only did she break up with me for mostly incoherent and inexplicable reasons - not to mention almost completely without warning - but she did it (are you sitting down?) ON THE PHONE (who DOES that to someone they've been dating for seven months??!!!). And she did it - fully and completely aware of my feelings about February - at the very end of January. May I just say, (HCBB - cover your ears!) "fuck that."

Anyway, once the anger simmered down (ie, eight minutes later), I also realized that if I hadn't put so much energy and time into that person then I wouldn't have been so upset when she left, and if I hadn't been so upset, I wouldn't have resolved to do something about it - and long story short - I wouldn't have signed up to do these triathlons. Some people might say that that was all to the good - but I think, given that I always knew that relationship wasn't going to work out, all in all, getting the kick to actually start training for a triathlon, which I've wanted to do for years, is not such a raw deal. I also think, looking at it from the other side, if I put so much time and energy into someone when I *knew* it wasn't going to work out, then I definitely need a hobby :) So - there you go: Triathlons - the best medicine when you really want to kick someone's ass, but prefer the more non-violent forms of communication :)