Squeezing Every Drop

It seems like any one who trains a lot tends to live life all the way to the hilt. They train hard, they party hard and just get every little bit out of life that they can. A huge difference from your average wage-slave. I felt like that this past week trying to get finals done, work enough to pay bills and still get all the training in that I planned.

Last week I broke my der hanger on my road bike and ordered one through the shop. I hoped it would show up in time for me to fix my bike and still ride this weekend, but it didn't happen. Luckily, I have the coolest manager on the face of the planet and he let me borrow one of the rental bikes.
It's not a carbon Orca or anything, but it gets the job done better than my current rig: Ultegra wheels and components all the way around and the shorter stem was nice to my shoulder, which normally bugs me after a few hours on my Giant. The position still needs tweaking, but I'm keeping this baby until my der hanger comes in. Cross your fingers for "back order" =)

Naturally, "The Monster" has to inspect every new arrival into the house. Saturday, Holly and I went for an easy ride down to Fiesta Island and back. Her shoulder started bugging her, so she bailed out after one loop. I headed back out for some more miles. It was cold and windy the whole ride and I caught a few sprinkles her and there, but the inclement weather kept most other riders and cars inside for change. Nice. Though we both blanked and got the time of the Ironman broadcast wrong. Stupid East Coast time schedule. Any one else get burned by that?

Once done with my ride, I went out for a short transition run. Oh yeah...ran all this week and the leg is holding up. SWEET!

Saturday night Holly and I headed to her holiday party for work since we went to mine Thursday night. They did a "White Elephant" gift exchange and Holly picked the highest number meaning she had the chance to see all the gifts opened before deciding if she wanted to steal one already opened or open the last gift. I was pushing for the Guiness 6-pack of bottles or the bottle of Kahlua, but she went right for the last gift, opened it up and pulled this sucker out... It even comes with drink recipes. Sweet.I'll never doubt her gift-picking prowess again.

Sunday I got the message that Holly's parents bought us a Christmas tree. A nice gesture, but we'll be spending Christmas with both our folks. The logic escapes me. Nevertheless, we drove up to Whittier Sunday to pick it up. They were kind enough to take us to dinner (tasy Mexican food) and went so far as to buy lights and ornaments for the tree as well: really cool of them and I hope I said "Thank you" enough times.

Holly started decorating as soon as we got home. I had some workouts to send off to people.

The Girl decorating. "Don't take a picture of my butt!"The finished product.

So far "The Monster" insists on drinking the tree water and consumed about a half-dozen pine needles: moron. You can see him slinking away in the bottom right corner of the above photo.

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As I write this, it's raining pretty hard outside and the forecast for the week calls for some COLD and wet weather. Those of you in places where it snows are in for much worse than we are in San Diego, but 49 feels cold when you're used to 72. It's not like I'm going to drown in the rain, but the local trails close, riding on the roads at night is practically suicidal and riding the trainer is miserable. Time to "Man up" and deal with it.

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E.