I couldn't ask for a better set up.

Last night i was talking with a personal trainer named Dan. He's been a personal trainer for 10 years and has agreed to take me in and set up my nutritional and weight lifting routines. This guy seems really excited to do his best to get the most out of my potential. Thing is, i joined my gym 4 years ago, and he's the first person i've asked for help, and the only reason i asked him is becuase he's the only personal trainer that was there when i signed up, and is still there now. He's also a great and friendly guy.

SOOOOO, living with a coach, having a PT to go to to set up nutrition and weights...looks like next year i could make some incredible gains, so long as i stay focused!

As for last night, i swam for 45 minutes, (only did 1400m but i was helping a guy with his stroke for a little while) and lifted, then talked to Dan.

For the next 3-4 weeks he told me to increase my reps to 15-25 and lower my weights, so that's what i'm gonna do. Some 'base strengthening' for when i go see him about some serious workouts.

Got home and wasn't hungry (hadn't eaten anything since lunch, but lunch i had All you can eat Chicken!) but i ate a piece of chicken and some veggies anyway. I've been getting to bed a little later then usual lately but thats only because i rented a fun game for my Xbox, after i return it on sunday things'll be back to normal.

Plan for the Holiday:
Ride today indoors using a spinerval tape.
Ride tomorrow morning at 8am with Diane
Eat like a mofo
Drink like a lush
Friday: Go to Henry's wedding
Saturday: Mid afternoon ride
Sunday : Run maybe.

This foot thing: it's really beginning to eat at me because i can't really consider it an injury. It sort of developed, and as far as i know no amount of rest will 'heal' it. It's just a mechanical thing. Why didn't it happen last year? Looks like i have to try on a new pair of sneakers. : sigh : I'll be happy when i find the perfect sneaker. I just don't haev the money to go buying another pair of sneaks. I really thought these Brooks Beasts were the godsend. In terms of my achilles they were...I'm just not convinced an orthotic will work, i think i'd be better off getting sneakers. I may just go up to gainseville and do the track test and video gait test to make sure i get into the right sneaker. I'll have to talk to Carl about that, he said there's a great runnign shoe store up there. Maybe i'll do that around Xmas, or just after. For now i'm going to have to use the eliptical. i can't imagine using the eliptical for 2 plus hours....but i do what i have to do.

Since i'm still in my 'fitness' stage, (Base building begins at the end of Jan) i guess it's not that big of a deal. I still may do the OUC Half marathon in 2 weeks, then again, i may be just asking for trouble. We'll see.

Last night i had chicken and veggies, and today for lunch the same thing. I mixed up broccoli, asparagus, carrots and green beans in a pot and steamed the crap out of em till they were mushy...mmm mmm good!

I'm actually thinking about going out with the roadies at 8 am on Thursday for a pre dinner ride, then going directly to rex's house to drink and have a good time.

Tonight, SWIM LIFT! i'm really beginning to enjoy this day (swim lift days). I forgot my HR monitor but that's ok, i'll do my workout then lift, then chicken and veggies!

One thing i wanted to mention about friday...I did swim and lift. :) Then i ate chinese :( This was just a chinese weekend for me i guess.

Oh yeah, and about my ride yesterday..earlier last week i made a small (2 degree) adjustment to my aerobars which seemed to really help. My neck wasn't stiff barely at all after my ride and i just felt more comfortable while riding.

Goals for teh day are to eat right. No workouts on monday.

What a beautiful ride today...yep, i rode today instead of yesterday. Yesterday was just a lazy day for me...: shrug : nothing i can do about it now.

Today though, i woke up at noon (!) and immedietely left the house to go for a ride. I planned on 3 hours but only ended up with 2.5...more on that later.

The one thing i want to point out today is as i was riding back, hte sun was going down and the shadows were growing long...and the tempereture was perfect...i started to day dream back to my childhood...when it wwas near dinenr time and i was riding my bmx,scooter,rollerblades home to eat. The sun'd be going down, i'd be dirty as hell from playing with friends all day...it was just a great feeling. Made me smile.

Now for the temperature. When i got up i remembered it had gotten to 40 last night so i put on my desoto trisuit, and zipped on my sleeves onto my sleeveless jersey and put that over the suit. When i walked outside it was pretty warm and i debated on whether or not to leave the jersey at home, but i kept it on becuase i was out of sunscreen and 2.5 hours in the sun is just looking for a burn.

Good thing i kept them on. Even though i was sweating a bit at the start of the ride, it didn't take long for that sweat to start getting cooler with the cool wind and my speed. I ended up at 34 miles at 15.1 mph. One thing that sucks is the trail only goes 15 miles...at mile 14.5 it splits off onto another trail, and as i found out today, there's a reason no one goes passed that part. GHETTO city! I literally turned around after a couple miles and rode the ROAD back to the fork because there were a lotta shady people on the trail and i didn't want them screwing with me. Not fun.

The bad thing today is i couldn't make up my mind what to eat and ended up eating chinese :S fuck i'm an idiot, but it could have been worse....somehow right?

Overall i'm happy i rode, and even really enjoyed the time of day i rode...coming back with the sun going down. Cleaned my room and now i'm going to go see Bond!

Well last night just plain sucked. TOTALLY sucked. Here's why.

I left work at 5 pm and forgot to transfer money between two of my accounts (just something i needed to do), got to the gym, put the pad in my sneaker that the podiatrist gave me to help with my foot problem, started running and within 5 minutes the burning and numbness was back so i ended at 30 minutes, then on the way home i was supposed to pick up dinner for my roomates and drove passed the place, turned around, didn't have enough money for what they ordered so i had to remove stuff, then got home and just vegged, pissed off.

To make matters worse, i slept wrong last night and my neck is KILLING me. I'm looking VERY forward to my swim tonight and lift. I hope my neck crink goes away.

Tomorrow i'm going to ride with Diane and talk more about living together and stuff out at the Trail.

First of all, holy crap am i hungry! I miscalculated my snack portions today and i'm starving! Luckily Michelle had some rice cakes for me to spread a little peanutbutter on. So i'm content now, and i can have a shake later...for dinner though, not sure what i'm going to do.

Another thing...i'm feeling a bit sad right now too and thought i'd share my thoughts.
Michelle (For those of you who don't know was my girlfriend for a few years, we broke up, got back together, and are now broken up again...for the final time) is now seeing someone else after a few weeks of being broken up. This didn't really bother me that much, but deep down i was feeling something i just couldn't figure it out.

Well i've figured it out. While going to lunch yesterday (i work with her) we were in the car together and it was just weird. She hasn't really talked to me or confided anything to me, and generally been shady about her dealings (feeling guilty? Who knows, who cares) with me. I asked her opinion on a few subjects as i expressed mine and she didn't really have an answer. Basically i figured it out. Someone who i confided every thought to, every idea or dilemma, someone i talked to and at everytime something crossed my mind is now gone. She won't confide in me anymore so i'll not confide in her. She doesn't care about my life anymore.

Thats fine and dandy, but it sorta sucks because i'm always happier when i can express myself ALL THE TIME (hence this journal) but i'm happIEST when i get expression back. Writing on blog is like talking to a brick wall, i don't get feedback, which is also important to me.

I think the suddeness of it all sorta is what is making me sad, but i'll get over it and find another confidant...unfortunately with my time restrictions it'll probably have to be someone online or something, i don't have time for girls! :)

Wow, i sure am sore today. Thats good but i gotta lift again tomorrow...heh. Tonight i have all my stuff for running, i just havn't picked a place to run yet. It does get dark quickly and there's not a whole lot of lit places to run. It's definitely safer to run in Metrowest, so it'll be around there somewhere. I also forgot my fuel belt, but it's so cool out, a 60 minute run shouldn't require too much hydration, i might just make a store stop.

So my goals for the day were met for the most part. Yesterday I:

Ate well
Rode on my trainer for 45 minutes
Went to bed at exactly 11:10.

Today's goals are:
Eat well
Run for SIXTY minutes
Go to bed before 11

I added a new link to the left, to my coolrunning exercise log. Just enter tburt75 as the username, and triathlete as the password. Then you can view what i've been doing!

Man, I'm SO glad i trained last night. I can't believe how good i feel after each workout and the morning after, yet i still can make excuses. :( Regardless i'm nice and sore today, i'm going to ride for an hour on my trainer tonight. Since i bought groceries i will EAT RIGHT today. ;) Wish i had gotten just another hour of sleep, been going to bed around 10 each night but last night i didn't get to bed till midnight.

GOALS:
Eat well
Ride for an hour on my trainer
Go to bed before 11

The water...its quite an enigma for me. Some days it just comes together, i flow through the water, feeling the water just flow over me, into the crevice of my shoulder and over my back. I swam for a half hour and only took in water 3 times witha misbreath. I've gotten my rotation back and now i breathe evenly on both sides. I guess i just can't swim slow. The slower i swim the more i break down and more pissed off i get. Today my avg heart rate over that half hour was 14 beats higher then my running and cycling avg HR. It was 149 with a max of 174.
Weight lifting after swimming as hard as i did was tough. Once i got ot shoulders i was tiring quickly. Something to note: I won't be doing anymore squats, and while in the pool i noticed my lower back aches...so i added some lower back weight training to my routine.

One more note: I saw the most beautiful girl i've ever witnessed at the gym today. Her stomach was so perfect, her form so incredibly balanced, and a beautiful face to go with it...it was hard not to stare. I was in awe. And to top it all off she had a friendly demeanor, not a haughty one. What would i do with a girl that beautiful? Totally make a fool of myself i suppose. It's dangerous to be in a relationship with a girl that beautiful...god the power she'd have over me; it'd be frightening. It's nice to dream though.

My good deed for the day: A guy was complaining about his goggles leaking so i gave him one of a few spare pair i had in my bag. He was quite thankful and they didn't leak (of course, they're speedo!) and he was able to finish his set.

Did groceries today...finally. And made some plans with Diane to move in together. What could be better? She a coach, me a triathlete....who wants to be a coach. So that should happen December 25th or so.


It's almost 10..i got home tonight at 9:30. Pleasantly exhausted. I like working my ass off...it really lets me sit down and think of the finer things in life...think deeply. I'm exhausted physically but not mentally and being in that state generates more ideas and creativisms then any other time in my life. I think of most of my stories and grand plans right after a workout where i'm just vegging. Good stuff.

While i was in Wal*Mart doing groceries i kept thinking of how a relationship would work. I simply can't come up with a solution that would be fair for both sides. I work out so much, and when i'm not working out i'm planning my future and doing things towards that end. From now on i have to approach a girl like this, 'Hi, i'd like to date you but we can only see each other on saturdays and sundays, just during hte afternoons because i have to go to bed early for my monster workouts..." Who the fuck would agree to that?? Looks like i'm going to be single for awhile. and as it always is...it sucks and is good. Good because less complication, less reasons to skip workouts. Bad because for christs sake i'm a 23 year old male who can't get any punanie!

Why are people so stupid! After two years of telling him how to lose weight, keep it off and be healthy the rest of his life, he tells me today he's going on Atkins. NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! God damn son of a bitch motherless goat herder! Gaw...some people never learn.

Supposed to swim tonight, but instead gonna hop on my trusty trainer for 45 minutes....hmmm after i weight lift. Yeah. Or shit...maybe i'll just go swim and lift. I can ride tomorrow when i'm SUPPOSED to.

Well it certainly has been awhile hasn't it? Quite a lot has happened since Friday and here's a short retelling of it.

Friday i didn't make it to the gym. I was thinking about my first century on Sunday and didn't want to be overly sore like i was last sunday. I had forgotten all about the wedding i needed to go to on Saturday....

Saturday rolled around and i went to the wedding. The guy at the bar was pouring em like he owned the place and i promptly got trashed with a camera in hand. I had the greatest fun taking all 308 pictures with the $1000 digicam i got from a friend. ANd those pics were the best of the reception. Soooo...we went to a bar afterwards where i had another drink and saw Lisa (girl i dated awhile ago). She gave me her number (i called and left a message tonight, i won't hold my breath) and later on i dropped Michelle off at the Ale House. Went home and crashed at about 1:30.

Woke up at 7 am and puked up about 3 full drinks worth of undigested alcohol in my stomach. After that i felt pretty good and was going to get ready to ride when my left hamstring just siezed. I had to spend the next 20 minutes stretching it so i could walk on it. It was so tight you'd think....i took pictures while crouching for say...4 hours? Shit. Not only that but the wind outside was blowing 30mph and making my blinds go crazy.

Hurt hamstring
30mph winds
HILLY 102 MILES

I don't want to DNF my first century, so i went back to bed. Later that day i watched Harry Pothead 2 which was decent.

Today i got my CycleOps Fluid2 trainer! YAY! All i need now is a VCR and i can start watching tapes. I put the trainer together and rode it for a few minutes, it's pretty cool, works nice. Interestingly enough they give you a skewer to use for the trainer. When i took off my Dura Ace skewer and picked up the factory one they give you, i noticed a SIGNIFICANT difference in weight. WOW! i didn't know skewers could weigh that much! heheh. But thats the one i'll use for awhile.

Today i'm back on the horse, and tomorrow i'm going to swim maybe...definitely ride if i dont' swim...and lift.

I'm starting to lose my motivation for swimming...and thats a bad thing considering all my tri's next year will be about 1 mile swims. I'm not sure why, i used to love the water. Something i'll have to ponder for awhile.

Two days till my 102 mile trek accross clermont. I can't say that i'm nervous, but i'd be lying if i told you i wasn't the least bit worried. The roadies gave me some encouragement. I'm getting a new bottom bracket next week because mine won't stop squeeking, but other then that i should get my trainer and be happy next week.

Tomorrow i'm going riding with diane for about 20 easy miles as a warmup to sunday. Also to talk about coaching.
GOALS:
EAT GOOD
SWIM/LIFT
Get decent sleep

Oh yeah, got back from the ortho today and the doc will make me an orthotic to help, but it'll cost me $275. as if i need any more things to spend money on. :rolls eyes: Just one more thing to add to the list. He gave me some pads to put in my sneakers that should help for now...

Did 45 minutes on the elipse, and ate well today.

Well i'm a slacker, yesterday i didn't workout and i ate semi crappy because iw as at a convention all day. Tonight i'm going to bike for 45 minutes and elipse for 45 minutes. I've eaten well today, but not much. Check out my fitday results, so far at 1pm i'm only just over 1000 calories. :( i'll see if i can't get that up a bit.

GOALS:
Eat right
WORKOUT

Well i tried to complete my last goal of yesterday...get decent sleep by going to bed at 10, but the phone rang 4 times till midnight and i couldn't get to sleep after that. last time i looked at the clock it was a few minutes to 1. I'm not tired today but i am a little sore from lifting.

Something to mention about my lifting session last night, i was pretty focused. Some of my old 'beastly focus' came back from my earlier days of lifting and i started concentrating on the muscle groups and squeezing the shit out of them. It definitely worked on my shoulders because they're pretty tight today.

Today during work i gotta go to a Photoshop convention so i'm not sure what i'm gonna be able to eat. Also, i'm supposed to bike today and i'll go to Bally's and do the stationary for 45 minutes or so. I may even do an additional 1/2 hour on the elipse. I'm pretty stoked about losing 4 pounds last week. It's a lot of weight, but i'm not concerned about it since it's my first week of weight loss. If i drop 4 this week i won't be overly concerned, but if i drop another 3-4 the week after i'll start looking into why i'm losing so fast.

Ok i did all my goals so far, the pool was closed so i did 45 minutes on the elipse, then lifted. It was cool to see 2 of my old lifting buddies from when i was a hardcore super duper uber lifter. My knees hurt from doing squats though, not sure if i'm gonna keep up with that one.


ALso: Jumped on the scale before my workout...234...down 4 pounds from last week. thats good. funny thing is when i got on the scale after it said 230...? i'll go with the 234.

My trainer shipped today, hoping to get it next monday. I feel much better today. I'm going to swim and lift today at the gym.

I'm about to go to Moe's for lunch because i didn't cook lunch last night. I'm gonna get a chicken burrito with no sour or guac. I'll try and estimate my calories and crap on my fitday site, but it won't be ALL that accurate. I brought some shakes into work so i'll drink one down at around 5 for pre workout build up.

Cyberswimclub ends at the end of this week and i think i'm going to just take the last 5 weeks and repeat them. I've spent enough money on traithlon for this year, i can't afford to renew.

I'm gonna do a 20 mile ride this saturday in preperation for the century ride this sunday. I've come to the conclusion that i MUST NOT worry about the century and just do it. Worrying about it will put me in a bad mindset and that'll doom me.

Goals for the day:
Good diet the rest of the day!
SWIM AND FRIGGIN LIFT DAMNIT!
Get decent sleep.

Oh and here's the trainer i got.

CycleOps Fluid2

I'm in a really pissy mood today, can't quite figure it out. I can't satisfy myself it seems. Ideas, hunger, awakedness....nothing is satisfying today. Can't seem to smile. Hoping tomorrow i'll be over this. The weather is good, friends are good...just...not happy in the place i am right now. I am a little tired but-

So last week was good...i had a good diet, exercised every day except sunday...first week down. Now not to screw up this week. ;)

I went to see Bowling for Columbine...go see this movie. It's amazing.

I have a lot more to say but deadlines at work are screaming...