let the taper tantrums begin

let me start off by apologizing in advance to anyone who gets their head bitten off by me in the next 16 days. i'm already kind of a moody soul but this tapering down is going to test my patience like nothing ever has before. i'm used to a week and a half taper for a marathon but nothing like this. i know i can do it but it won't be easy.

i finally got to test out the new aerobag this weekend on my last long ride (100 miler) before the big race. thanks to Shannon at iron texas mommy for the heads up about being careful with bumps in the road. i can totally see how that could happen. she had the stuff in her bag fly out during a race after hitting a bump in the road. yikes! the bag worked very well and although i did hit some bumps, nothing flew out (this time). i did come up with an idea using safety pins to secure the top a little better, yet still be able to get my little fingers in there to grab a bar or gu. my cell phone fits quite nicely in the separate zippered side pocket also.

another thing i got to finally test out on a long ride was my new seat. the original, very comfy seat that came on my QROO had a big chunk missing from my little mishap with the owl watchers a little over a month ago. here is a picture of Mandy's new seat:

feels just like the old one and looks almost identical in its shape and lines, except this new one has a tad bit longer nose which is great because i do like tipping the saddle anyways, so more space to do that. Mandy's heart blew out over the weekend so she is currently in ICU awaiting a transplant...a new bottom bracket, which should be at my doorstep this afternoon for the very skilled surgeon/bike mechanic to replace asap.

in other news, i've been keeping a training log since july 2, 2007. every now and then, i run a little report via the buckeye outdoors training log to see various stats such as total mileage on the bike year to date or how many miles i've run one month compared to the last month, etc...so the other day, i did a year to date comparison between this year and last year and here they are:

JANUARY 1 - OCTOBER 6 (2009)                             JANUARY 1 - OCTOBER 6 (2010)    
ran - 1068.0 mi.                                                               1077.95 mi.
biked - 9179.65 mi.                                                          8195.84 mi.
swam - 0 mi.                                                                    107.76 mi.
wt trained - 71 times                                                         71 times

amazing how close some of the numbers are especially the weight training! i was surprised to see that i've been able to keep up with that as well this year. i knew my biking miles would be a little less. i ended up with over 11,500 miles of biking last year but i knew going into this year and training for an ironman distance race that my time would have to be divided up differently especially with the addition of the swimming. so far, it has been a really good year with lots of great stuff yet to come.

**a few side note: this blog post took me 3 days to finish. i will be so happy to get my life back soon. also, a big happy birthday to Jeff at dangle the carrot! go check out his blog so you can see what he got for his birthday.

is it friday yet?? much love and peace out!