A Week in the Life

The last week has been exciting and tiring...with an emphasis on tiring.  The week started with the final xcountry race of the season, the upstate championships.  Historically this race brings out the best of the best and this was definitely the case on Sunday.  This is the best picture of me that I could find:

The rest of the pictures look much like I felt, like I was being run over by a bus.  A hard day.  Soft grass, gradual hills, except for the wonderfully flat, packed dirt 4th kilometer, and a steep hill right before the finish.  2 kilometers from the finish I imagined my teammate Mary and I crossing the line together and holding our hands up in triumph for finishing another season..instead we sort of collapsed on each other and then tried to get out of the way of the people behind us.  I ended up 17th overall, 4th for the open women.  This may perhaps sound slower than my norm, but relative to the competition I'm really really happy with how I did. Plus, I was feeling extra perky thanks to cheering from Melo and my guy, Jerille, who decided to surprise me/give me a heart attack by showing up randomly last week.

Tuesday I woke up at 4:30 am to do an FTP on my bike.  There is no workout that gives me more anxiety than this.  I have no idea why, but when I do that test I just want to kill it, and if it doesn't go well, I'm cranky for the rest of the week.  Thankfully, this FTP was not awful.  I put on some Jay-Z and didn't think about anything besides that and killing it.

Average Wattage:  212
Average HR:  170

BOOYA!

The same day I boarded a plane for the University of Kentucky to give a talk.  I feel like I've always harbored some animosity towards UK as a die hard Cuse basketball fan, but Kentucky was actually overwhelmingly nice.  Very beautiful for running/cycling (as determined by my 11 mi run on Wednesday), friendly people. However, I firmly believe that having biscuits and gravy for breakfast, the Kentucky norm, is mildly repulsive. 

I'm back in Cuse for the weekend and excited to cheer for my friend Terri during IM Arizona on Sunday!!!