Time Trialing It

Swim
1.2mi (2100yd)- 33:18
average pace- 1:35/100yd

Ride
time- 1:59
distance- 34mi

I had a whole workout planned for Monday morning's swim. I'll still get to it, probably Wednesday. But I ended up running behind and needed something a little quicker. Rather than cut it to pieces I decided to test-swim the HalfIron race distance, 1.2mi. 1.2mi is approximately 2100yd. 2100yd is 84 laps. That's a lot of laps to stay awake and focused during.
I didn't warm-up, I just got it and got cranking. Honestly, it wasn't so bad. Like I talked about Sunday, it's all about making short goals over a long distance. So I pretty much broke the swim up into 500s in my head and swam to the next multiple of 20. After a while the brain gets stretched and it starts thinking silly things like, "I'm at 65, that means I'm nearly to 80. Only 15 more laps!" But I was able to keep the pace cranked to a strong, maintainable rhythm and faded only a little. I don't have any way to know my splits, but if I had to guess I'd say the first 500 was the fastest and the last 500 was the second fastest, with the two in the middle having some dragging. My biggest goal was accomplished, the goal I preach all the time: My stroke at the end looked like my stroke at the beginning. You hold that, you're swimming strong.
My ride in to town last night wasn't too eventful. Got around most red lights, didn't get nearly run over but once, passed a huge group of guys on mopeds. I love the moped gangs that show up around the island. Big, smelly groups of tough guys on a herd of angry bees. I did the Lagoon Drive wind tunnel, which is a great place to ride. Fun tailwind for the nearly two miles out, strong headwind for the back, and the road is smooth and clear to whole time. Next time, when I leave a little earlier, I'll probably get two laps.
Three Non-Dirtbag News Items-
1) I ask everyone to pop over to the Swim, Bike, Mom blog and send her some power and love. She was nearly on top of her 70.3 New Orleans and she broke her foot yesterday. She handles this temporary set-back with much grace and good humor, which is not how I would be able to handle it, and very little "Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckfuckedyfuckfuckingfuckerfuckfuckfuck!" which is exactly how I would handle it. So make sure you send some positive vibes her way. Injuries mess up even the strongest of us.
2) If you're on the Twitter, I suggest you follow @Mr_Triathlon. Dude is freaking hilarious. A recent tweet read, "I practiced my my 'flying squirrel' bike mount for 3 hours today. I'm fairly confident that should shave at least 2 seconds of my next IM." Correction- Follow him after you follow @DirtbagFitness. Like you aren't already following me. 
3) Diesel took off yesterday to the island of the long white cloud and short brown bird for IMNZ. He's there with many other triathletes from da island and the will be racing this weekend. So Dirtbag Fitness waves them goodbye and calls, "Bye boys, have fun storming the castle!"

Krumping

Swim
1 x 200- Warm-up
5 x 200- (100- fist, 1, 2, 3/50- thumb drag/50-swim)
3 x 100- IM
5 x 50- Sideline kick
5 x 100- 5, 7, 9
1 x 500- 7:06
1 x 100- Cool down
total- 2850yd

Run
distance- 7.02mi
time- 1:09

Good drill day in the pool this morning. Not fast, but these aren't fast days. They are stroke days. I want to note the fist, 1, 2, 3 drill, which took the place of a 1, 2, 3, swim drill. I wanted to see how that would change things up and I like it. I normally don't do the growth drill alone, so it was good to start at zero and build to three because the next four laps are a full stroke anyway. The IMs were also pretty strong. Butterfly feels better all the time and breast feels less slow. Backstroke is still dumb. It just is. Seriously, it's the only event in any sport (aside from one of those rowing ones) where you can't see where you are going. I dislike the backstroke. This may have something to do with slamming full speed into the wall at a meet when I was younger. I can't really remember.
And the run went pretty well. I was inspired by Swim, Bike, Mom's post today. Especially this quote:

... you've done X, now do X+Y.  For some reason, that clicks with me.  Now, I try not to focus on the X+Y+Z+A+B+C+D+E required to make it to my next race... only focus on the short equations to make it through the next workout.

Made me want to run further. Well, that and having registered for the Hapalua Half Marathon on March 11th. Signing up for something like that lights a fire. It's weird, like the Honu is too far away to see clearly so I need these little steps between here and there to keep me rolling. Even though hanging over everything is the Half Ironman. To misquote an excellent book, "Summer is coming."
Before I really get in to the run I'd just like to say, don't you hate it when you fart during a run, but then the wind blows in such a manner that you can't outrun it? And you're too tired to pick up the pace so you just have to run in the cloud until you get a lucky gust?
During my run the sun decided to make an appearance from behind the clouds. I run mostly north-to-south, so I'm rarely running directly into the sun. But as it drops in the sky it gets beneath my visor as I wear it normally and right into my face. Which leads to this:

The hat angle keeps the sun off my face better. And my tongue is, umm, aero...

Which makes me feel like a Dirtbag ThugLife. Which, in my nerdtastic stream-of-consciousness running daze, lead me finally to this:

As far as you know, no krumping happened on the side of the road. But I do reach the point during runs where I'll do pretty much anything to make it home still running.
Also, if you've never seen Community you fail. Go to Hulu, go to amazon.com, find it, watch it, catch up. Right now you are streets behind. Abed for Grand High Media Czar!