a successful and productive day

A year ago, a successful and productive day would consist of 7 hours of training, eating "well" (which meant not much...), and capping off the day with a blog post.

The breakdown of the day would be:

• morning snack (this and all my meals were made at home)
• 90min swim (40x100m with paddles, pull buoy and band for 5km total)
• breakfast
• 4hr bike on a rolling course (with lunch en route in the form of training food)
• 90min track workout straight off the bike (perhaps 21x800's)
• post-workout snack
• dinner
• blogging
• dessert

I'd give myself bonus points for hitting my swimming 100's and running 800's under specific times, and eating well under 4,000 calories.

Today I was pretty proud of myself for having a successful and productive day. It consisted of:

• sleeping in until 6:45am (8 hours of sleep for once!)
• feeding puppy breakfast and taking her for a 15min walk
• showering, scarfing down breakfast while packing a lunch and getting into work clothes
• 8am staff meeting at main office
• 9am-12pm run to another office location to see patients, fitting custom ankle braces and evaluating new patients
• 12pm-1pm grabbing some groceries at Trader Joe's, scarfing down lunch while driving home, dropping off groceries at home while taking puppy out and giving her a snack, and driving back to the main office
• 1pm-5pm seeing the second half of my full day patient load while putting in work orders for new orthoses, ordering some parts we've run out of, and catching up on almost all patient chart notes
• 5:30pm get home and have a pre-dinner snack, get changed and 
• today's workout shall be walking the puppy to the local high school (while practicing heeling and sitting en route and back home, 20mins each way), then doing 8x100m sprints in the grass while wearing my Vibrams and racing against the puppy (I know, it's so Primal Blueprint that it's cliche)
• 6:30pm make dinner for me and the Sherpa
• throw in a load of laundry
• give the stinky puppy a bath
• and at the moment (9pm)....BLOGGING.

WOW. Damn right, I'm pretty proud of myself. These days it's been a while where I've gotten a solid 8hrs of sleep and had time to get groceries, do laundry, give the puppy a bath and 2 walks (with a workout thrown in!), and make dinner (and breakfast and lunch!) AND blogged all in the same day. While working 8 hours and not being really behind on patient notes. Even if I got in one or two of those other things, like slept 8 hours AND gotten groceries, or made dinner AND did laundry, or bathed the puppy AND blogged, on a workday I'd feel super accomplished. I'm giving myself a gold star today! Major bonus points since the grocery shopping part resulted in a nice chewy snack that keeps Socks occupied, and the combination of puppy exercise and obedience training and bath = tired less rambunctious puppy.

The next thing on my agenda for another successful and productive day would be updating this darn website. Lotsa outdated information, and even though threaded comments have fixed themselves (huzzah! I pledge to respond to each and ever comment from now on!), my stupid header fonts are in freakin' COMIC SANS. It's atrocious!

"Operation T-NET" is under way

After a decade of triathlon, 21 ironmans and many more shorter tris, the whole swim/bike/run thing is not very new or exciting for me any more.

One of my favorite greetings whenever I see a friend is to ask them "soooo, what's new and exciting?"

Sooooo I asked myself the same question and came to the conclusion I needed to inject a gigantic dose of "new and exciting" into my own life. Enter Operation T-NET: Try New & Exciting Things!

The first thing I did was head to Zeke and Tory's store, Out There Outfitters, in Wayne, PA and buy my first pair of toe shoes. (Uh oh, I said "first pair"! That means I might get another!!!)

I couldn't decide between the red or white. In the end I went with the white...because the tie-up laces felt nicer and snugglier than the elastic laces (silly enough after the whole triathlon E-Z laces thingy). Also Zeke told me that I can just throw them in the washing machine (but air dry) if they get dirty or stinky...so I felt all right going with the white pair!

Zeke and Tory both train with Mac (coach and owner of the Bike Boutique here) and I used to swim with them all the time up at Mac's pool. Zeke just did his first IM at Lake Placid in July, and I hadn't seen them in a while! I made sure to bring them an autographed magazine of course. ;)

Obviously (or maybe not obviously), I'm not planning to actually RUN in these. I just wanted some because they look cool, in a creepy Ninja Turtle kinda way, and I like the idea that they will strengthen the instrinsic muscles in my feet. Walking has gotten boring (since that's one of the activities I can do now) so I thought I'd throw in the barefoot element to it, and hit the trails.

I also plan to do other new & exciting things while wearing my new ninja toe shoes! Stay tuned for the next phase of Operation T-NET!