Spring Fever or an Ode to Summer.

It's weeks like this that I wish I already had my college degree in hand so I could enjoy this absolutely gorgeous weather, instead I spent yesterday typing 5 pages of my rough draft and today I'll be couped up in class until 8PM. ..soon enough the semester will be over, it's just getting through these last 3 weeks then I'll be free, until summer session starts, (hopefully, if I have the money.) Right now I'm in burnout mode with school, I just want to have my afternoons back, not have to worry about papers and deadlines, ride my bike to work, without having to worry about how much time I'll waste riding home to grab my car. To spend time researching road surfaces and bike routes, instead of religion, politics, and scholastics. To worry about the conflict between Australia and Germany, instead of Israel and Palestine. To run without the weight of my full backpack, a cup of coffee in one hand and my head staring at my watch as I go anaerobic trying to make it to class on time. To compete, to relax, to actually eat dinner with other people and before 11PM. To watch the tour and learn how to climb like a mountain goat..and descend with very little fear. This seasons is one of my more ambitious, with a small tour of New England built into it, a rest day working as a volunteer at Lake Placid ( hopefully), and possibly a trip to FLA this November or the Lava Fields in October. Quite frankly I can't wait..I want to spend my afternoons training..I want my speed sessions by the lake, I want my town loops from Hell, I want my 4000 yard pool practices after a long day in the saddle. I want to spend my weekends in towns I wouldn't have even thought existed except for the fact I raced there or rode my bike through there once or twice. My head is starting to focus on the beautiful scenes out the window, rather than the lecture that could make or break my scholastic career. I want to unleash that carefree side hardly anyone sees instead of the uptight stressed out, business man/ scholastic everyone sees. I often joke that if anoyne from the Ironman had seen me two days before I flew down it would have been like watching two completely different people. So here's to the summer when my life will not be dictated to me by papers, research and study..but rather how much training I can take and racing my purse strings will allow.

Counting down the days.
R.D.

Saying I'm going to stop training means what exactly....

Well 48 Hours after stressing out, flipping out and vowing I was going to become a fat, researching, library troll, not letting the words swim, bike, or run permeate my vocabulary. Not let any thoughts other than what was currently being discussed in class or what I will be throwing on the printed page. I had the fat pants ready, my nook picked out, and was stressing out over all the research and papers that need to be done. I was going to cut myself off from the world and become a hermit with books under my arm and a long scraggily white beard. So last night after my last class what did I do? Although knowing I should be devoting my whole being to academics, I jumped in the pool and cranked out 3100 yds, and shot the shit with Bjoern and company, and proceeded to get home and collapse. I just can't seem to help myself, My name is Bob and I addcited to exercise. Try as I might I just cannot rid myself of the fact that I am an athlete. That training and racing for me are part of my being, alright maybe not that far, but then again if I were paralyzed or lost a leg I could see myself racing as a PC guy ( hopefully (knock on wood) that won't happen.) It just seems for me that I stress out about everything, except when I train. At work: I stress. At School: I stress, mainly because I committed the 12th deadly sin of academa I didn't do work when I had a break from classes ( both NZ and Spring Break), and the sort of old school guilty Catholic guy in me constantly plays the record of " you have to suffer and pay 10 fold for every mistake you make." or " not do work, you had a golden opportunity to get ahead and what did you do, you de-stressed, slept, and trained, how dare you." Maybe it comes from growng up believing "life is not supposed to be enjoyable", and then over the past 5 years trying to purge that idea from my system, that it's ok to accel at something other than school work, that I'm a descent athlete, not everything wrong with the world is my fault, a lousy grade does not mean you are a lousy student, and above all it's alright to be stress free and happy....it's still a work in progress and occasionally I sprial into the old attitude, that my job, my salary, my GPA, my major, my splits, my income to debt ratio, my credit score, my professors' lesson plans, my customer's opinons define me, that everyone's else's goal for me should be my goal for myself, that I should be hard on myself and forget about what makes me happy and devote myself solely to what needs to be done. I realized that to live like that quite frakly makes life tedious, robs the individual of passion, and quite frankly is not how I want to live.

All right, that was way too deep, but I needed to say it.
R.D.

Back in the fast lane......

Well last night was the first day back to training since , well one small race in the Southern Hemisphere. I got in a nice 3000 yard workout from Stef "dominmatrix of the lane lines" Karas Splitting the lane with Cervelo chick (seriously this girl is going to be ITU champion in 2012, she's heading off to college in Cali to train. Plus when you're 17 and beating some of the regional elites in the sprints its a good sign.) It wasn't too hard of a night, granted doing it on only 3 hours sleep took its toll. the main set
3x100 on 1:30
200 kick
3x100 on 1:25
200 pull
3x100 on 1:25
200 kick
3x100 on 1:20

I managed to hold between 1:15 and 1:20 on all of them.
Last night I passed out at 11:00 woke up and went to bed at 11:30 woke up at 3:00 then was back to bed at 4:00 then up for the day at 7:00 altogether it it was the most normal my sleep pattern has been since I got back. I sent a couple of my New Zealand contacts emails, I thinked I talked poor Simon's ear off whan I was down there ( Sadly I tend to talk too much when I'm nervous. Normally I'm usually pretty quiet and try to keep to myself, because I know if I start talking I won't shut up. So Simon I apologize.)
Well not much is new here, classwork is piled up and now I have to get it done. I've got a book review and outline due on the 24th, a midterm due on the 25th, another book review on the 26th and a 12 page research paper to start from said outline. So in essence, my spring break won't really be much of a break, it'll be more of a ok I'm going to spend the time I normally spend in class doing work. I just got back from vacation and already I'm burned out with school work. So all in all I am truly back to the grind.

Would you like your burned out academic in orginal recipe or extra crispy.
R.D.