Feb 21, 2017 4:55 a.m.

Good morning,

Another brilliant Feb morning out there. Just got back from taking my puppy out for a quick morning walk. Can’t believe how fortunate we have been with the weather. I know February isn’t over yet, we still have winter for a few more weeks but it feels nice. Slippery though, very slippery.

So yes I did get out my yoga mat and did some yoga yesterday. The body always feels great after a yoga session. My dog Harley came and thought he was helping me with my yoga but he wasn’t. He just laid on the mat and I had to work around him. Lucky he is cute or I might have had to kick him out of the room😃

Today’s workout schedule consists of a 2000 m swim this morning and then a 40 min bike ride indoors tonight when I get home from work. The main set of the swim will be 10 x 100 and 6 x 50s. My goal is to go at about 80% max effort and then take 15 second rest between each 100 and 10 second rest between each 50. With warm up and cool down, 2000 m.

Tonight’s bike ride will be keeping the RPMs up while shifting into harder gears. 1 minute in each gear, shifting to harder gear. 4 minutes of that, repeat 5 times. A few sets of that while having some music playing in my headphones. I downloaded 2 albums from Courtney Barnett to listen to. If you haven’t heard of her, you should. Great lyrics and great songs. Check her out. Elevator Operator and Avant Gardner are two songs to check out of hers. Good music helps pass the time on the bike.

The are many nice things about riding indoors now compared to 2008 or 2004. Netflix for one. Netflix didn’t exist back then. What a great gift for the indoor ride. Also, wireless headphones are new. Those two inventions have made indoor riding a bit more enjoyable.

187

187? That is not my weight, not yet. 187 is how many days are left until race day. 187! WTF!!!!!!! When I signed up I had over 365 days until the race. I signed up on Aug 21, 2016. The race last year was on Aug 20, 2016. Lots of time to train right? Now we are at 187 in a flash😩

The reason I know there are 187 days left is not because I can read a calendar and do simple math. I can do neither. It is because every day someone out of the 4 of us doing IRONMAN CDA sends an email with the days remaining in the subject line and what they are doing today. This morning at some point I will receive an email that says 187 and in the body of the email will be what that person is doing. Then the replies start. Tomorrow…186, and so on and so on. You get the picture.

I believe it started around the 280 days mark. Someone sent that email out and I commented that we should keep this countdown going. Never mention a challenge or a dare to these guys. Laz, RV and Joe will take it upon themselves to make sure no date will go missed. You know these guys. If we were throwing a ball around and said “the ball cannot touch the floor, let’s see how long we can keep it going”, these guys are the guys that will dive to keep the ball from touching the floor and will not quit until they have a world record. Needless to say, they have run with this countdown. Daily, never missed.

The nice thing about the emails is that I do get to see what everyone is doing. When I see the emails and what each guy is doing it becomes very clear why they are faster than me. Besides being really talented👍 They are all training really hard. I am excited for all of them. Laz is competing in his 3rd IRONMAN but this time in front of his daughter who is 6 years old ( I hope I got that age right ). RV and Joe are competing in their first IRONMAN. You don’t forget that feeling of the first IRONMAN. My first one was 13 years ago and I remember everything about it. I remember more about 2004 than I do about the 2008 race.

When I wake up tomorrow we will have 186 days to go and before we all know it, it will be Aug 27, 2017. There is no time to waste. See ya, gotta go swim🏊🏻

Scott