What I've Been Up To

The other day I realized that, other than a few race reports, I haven't posted on my blog much.  Blasphemy!  So in a nutshell, here is what I've been up to this winter:

Training

Well duh!  Nothing crazy, nothing special, nothing outrageous, just some good old fashioned hard work day in and day out.  Unlike last winter where I spent half of the cold, nasty months away at camps or in sunny SC, this year I choose to stay at home the entire winter (save a 4 day get away for the Coast Ride which was more for fun that for fitness).  And it's been great.  Camps are fun (and riding my bike outside is even MORE fun) but staying at home has allowed me to stick to my routine and this is where I thrive.  The biggest differences between my training this winter vs last include a rather sizable increase in swim volume, more intensity in my running miles and a slight decrease in bike volume.  You can't even begin to imagine how excited I am about the fact that Friday is March and March means the start of the racing season!!!!!!!!

Recovery

I've never slept so much at night, took so many naps, or spent so much time in my recovery boots as I have this past winter.  It's been divine.  I've stepped back a bit from some of my nutrition work duties and this has given me the time to rest up and relax more than ever.  Oh, and Dirk started making me do my recovery runs at 8:30-9:00 pace.  At first I hated it but now I quite like it.  That and I finally learned how to ride at 110 watts for recovery rides.  I thought this might be impossible but no really, it can be done.  My next goal might be to see if I can do a recovery ride at under 100 watts!  :)

Spending Time With Oscar

The hardest part of being away for much of the winter last year was that I *really* missed Oscar.  This winter has been the exact opposite!  It's awesome and it makes me so happy.  We (in no particular order):

1) Have taken advantage of the $4 movie nights on Wednesdays at the movie theater close to our house, on multiple occasions.  And you get free popcorn too!  We've seen 3 or 4 movies in the past couple weeks which has to be some kind of record for us.  In our previous 10 years of marriage, we didn't see that many movies in the theater in an entire year!

2) Made doughnuts!

They were tasty!

3) Are going to start a class (tonight actually) at our church called Origins.  Some of the world's experts on intelligent design will be speaking and we are both pretty excited to learn!

Reading

I got some sort of reading bug in me and have now read more books these first 2 months of 2013 than I read in all of 2012!  Or 2011, or...um...2010...or...

Drug Testing

This past Sunday I had my very first out of competition testing with USADA!  Kind of a funny story, the drug testers came just as Oscar and I got ourselves all tucked in to watch a movie on tv (with our eyes closed).  We heard the knock on the door but since we weren't expecting anyone, and we never answer the door, we ignored it.  But the knock kept coming.  I finally sent Oscar to peek out the window (without being seen!) to see if he could figure out who it was.  He reported back that it was a man and woman, nobody he had ever seen before, and they were still standing at the door.  We ignored them for a bit longer before we both realized they weren't going away (and Roxy was going absolutely nuts of course!).  Oscar went down to open the door and then I hear "it's USADA!".  OH!  I guess we have to answer our door now!  :)  

It's a pretty neat process.  The DCOs (doping control officers) that did my testing were a married couple that had to drive quite a distance to get to me.  They were so nice and while I was drinking, drinking, drinking so that I could produce a sample, we had time to chat and get to know them a little bit.  They complimented me on the thoroughness of my whereabouts forms at which point I realized that these people sitting our living room have known my every move for the past 2 months.  Kind of weird!  Oscar has determined that after he and I retire from our jobs, we are going to become USADA testing officials so we can travel around and collect urine and blood from athletes.  :)  

Anyway, I got lots of good practice with the process because my first urine sample was too dilute (they check the specific gravity) so I had to do it all over again!  No blood this time.  

I now know all about the USADA "A" and "B" samples.

And I think that about sums it up.  Winter has been good to me (and I haven't pulled out my hair quite yet because of the cold, snowy weather!) and spring is just around the corner.  Right?!  :)