What a weekend

Well this was definitely a weekend worth remembering. Let's go back to Friday night. As I'm sitting on the couch watching 30 Rock (which I taped from earlier in the week), my comcast cable box got possessed, and started doing very strange things. I wouldn't be very concerned, but Saturday was the big "Ironman" party at my house, and the HDTV box was crucial! :)

After spending close to an hour on the phone with Comcast's useless tech support, it was determined that I needed a new cable box. This means that the Lake Placid & Kentucky IM video's that I taped earlier this month were gone. I had to come up with other footage A-SAP!

I planned on getting in my bike workout first thing Saturday morning, but instead was found driving the X-terra to Greensburg to get the box swapped out. Luckily it went smooth and I was on my way home before you knew it.

On my way home I ran into another obstacle. There must have been a pretty bad wreck on Route 30, and traffic was backed up for miles. Just what I needed right? Well if that was the least of my worries, I got a call from Jen saying that there was something going on in our front yard. There was brown area spouting up from the ground with a mysterious smell.....after she saw the toilet paper, she knew something was up. Apparently the main sewage line on our road clogged up, and was coming out of our sewage trap. So now I have 20+ people coming over, and my yard smells like crap! The pipes were cleared just before our first guests go here, and I was able to at least rope off the nasty area.

As for the 1st annual Ironman party, I feel it was a success. We had a total of 25 people show up including all our good friends and family members! It was awesome reliving the Kona experience one last time. It was sort of a closure to my best year ever as an athlete. Not only did I have my best race year, but I got married the best girl too in September. Now it's time to look towards next season and the good fortunes to come. As you might already know, I'm going to be working with a coach which will provide me with structure, balance, and will hopefully help me excel in 2008.

As for 08, I finally firmed out my schedule adding one more big race in April. Jen and I will be heading to the West Coast to our favorite city, San Francisco, for the Big Sur Marathon. The Big Sur area is by far the nicest areas on the entire west coast. We didn't sign up yet because both of us need to make sure it won't interfere with work, but we did however use our frequent flyer miles to book the flights and hotels, so it's pretty much a go.

Our schedule thru July will look something like this:

BIG SUR MARATHON - SUNDAY APRIL 27 (Goal to run sub 3:00 hour)
EAGLEMAN - SUNDAY JUNE 8 (Qualifier for Half Ironman Worlds in Clearwater, FL)
LAKE PLACID - SUNDAY JULY 20 (Qualifier for Ironman Worlds in Kona, Hawaii)

I'm keeping my fall race season wide open for obvious reasons.......(Kona & Clearwater) Hopefully all the moons align in June and July and I find myself just north of the equator in October once again, and cooling off in the Gulf of Mexico come November.

As for my training, I had a so-so weekend. Yesterday I biked on the trainer for 2 hours and felt decent except for my butt. I still have some lingering sores that are making it tough on the long rides......I know....way more info than you care to read. Moving on...the run went good this morning but about 7 miles in to our 8 1/2 miler, my hip flexor started acting up and I also go a slight pain in my left knee. Coming down the stretch towards Kona, I had the same issues.

I'm going to go back to John's (my PT / Chiropractor) and hit it with some ultrasound, and some laser treatments tomorrow so let's hope that helps. After the run today I headed over to the gym for some weights and had all intentions on heading to the pool afterwards. As we were getting ready I told Jen I had better call the YMCA just to make sure they're open. And guess what....they were closed. Do people not workout on Sundays after 3PM??? Upset that I missed my swim workout, coach re-insured me that it was no big deal, but said if I had time tomorrow that it wouldn't hurt either if I got in some pool time.

On another note, Jen starts her new job tomorrow. It's only 5-10 minutes away, and has set hours. She might actually beat me home from work..... :) wish her luck!!!

Now the best way to finish out the weekend would be a Steelers win!!! Let's go black and gold.

posted by Chad Holderbaum @ 6:31 PM Comments: 1