Now that we are heavy into the high volume weeks training for IM Austria, its strange to see the change in my thinking as far as the long workouts go. I find myself looking forward to the challenge vs. the dread I initially thought I would feel towards the workouts.

Its cool to be able to get up at the crack of dawn, get on my bike and head either north, south or west (cant go east as that big pond gets in the way). I never really have a plan and that is the adventure in it. Kat is totally the opposite in that she has all the gadgets and sticks to exact wattage and effort where I kinda just hover around where I am supposed to be power- output- wise. There is no way I am going to ride for 5.5 hours glued to numbers. The reason I do all this is to get out and enjoy riding the bike. This is why I dumped my Garmin GPS device. It made running and cycling too clinical for me. In my mind, endurance sports are about freedom. A time to kick stress out of your body. Its the time new ideas and dreams are thought up. To look at my pace and think, “man, I just ran a 7:33…..I should be at 7:25….” disrupts the whole thought process. What it comes down to is I guess I would rather sacrifice a bit of race day speed, for more enjoyment in the entire training process.
So far so good.