Double Lake, Lake Livingston, et al.

Well its about time I caught up again. The last couple weeks were pretty good, training-wise...they were exeptional Cus, XBOX 360 and Wii-wise as well, but I digress. I made it to both HART training sesssions a couple of weeks ago, but last week I had skipped both. Tuesday was skipped due to my doctors appointment (more on that later) and Thursday due to an art exhibit at which Weihan was to be the photographer. We didn't make it to the exhibit because Audi decided to lose another ignition coil--she's falling apart. I love Audi, but I think its time for her to move on and "explore other opportunities."

Swimming has been a once a week affair. Since I haven't been going as frequently as before, I've been trying to go for longer sets. That's when I realized my endurance is a bit better than I thought it was...but not by much. I'm not setting any speed records (e.g., the olympians are done with their 100m by the time I make it half way!), but I'm feeling a lot more comfortable going longer distances. I took Rockne on another run. Since it wasn't as hot, we went a little further, about 3 miles. Again, he would plop down as soon as we stopped for a break, but when we got back to the house he was still full of energy--bastard! Apparently he's sandbagging while running with me.

This past Sunday was HART training at Double Lake. It was in preparation for No Sweat, and boy conditions were just right--heat index was over 100 degrees! I trained with my team: Rick, Lisa, and Raymund. We started out with a short orienteering section inside of Double Lake Rec Area and then a hike over to the Ferley's lakehouse. Once we got out of the park and on the bare roads of Coldspring, the tarmac was just blazing! We kept an honest pace and we at the Ferleys in about 2hrs. Next was paddling Lake Livingston to the island and back. This lake is always choppy and yesterday was no different. Of course no one brought a bilge in their boat. It was a pretty good paddle despite taking on some water on the way back into the wind.

Finally, it was on the bike back to Double Lake. Once we got to Lake Lake, we hit the trails. They had added on a few more miles, so I was a bit disoriented at times. Still, the trails were perfect and we did one loop and decided to end training there since it was about 8hrs at that point. Jackie's team had made the smart move of heading to the lake to take a little swim and cool off, so we rode over to join them. So that was pretty much it--we headed back to the Ferleys to pack up and we were outta there--I was sooo hungry! After experiencing that furnace, I'm not looking forward to midday during No Sweat. Hopefully we visit the water holes frequently!

So, for those who don't know yet, I'm planning to have neck surgery...the Monday after No Sweat, nonetheless. Apparently I have some kind of "lymphatic malformation" that is causing lyphatic fluid to build in my neck and I have to get it excised. As you can guess, I'm not too excited about going under the knife, but after draining it a couple times now, it keeps coming back. I've actually been dealing with it since before Primal Quest because I didn't want it to affect the race, but now its just getting huge. On a lighter note, I just got an email from Phil saying that our GoPro video is on YouTube! Okay, so its not so exciting unless you enjoy staring at the back of Wendy's head, but if you guys watch it enough times we can win something from GoPro, so check it out!