How paper plates kicked my ass

As you can tell, my posts have been a bit lacking lately. Why? Well first of all I have done zero training--ZERO--since Ironman Florida. And I've been loving every minute of it.  Every other day I think "hmm, maybe I should run today..." but that thought is quickly extinguished as I think about the promise I made to myself: after Ironman Florida, until the start of the New Year, I will only work out if I WANT to. Never because I feel like I HAVE to. It's been a long, long time since I had a real break.  Last year (2010) I started training in January, trained straight till IMFL in November, then jumped right into HURT 100 training. After only two weeks "off" (and really, after running 100 miles it took 2 weeks for my body to de-swell) I jumped right back into my 20 hour a week triathlon training. So "offseason"? Hasn't been in my vocabulary for awhile. Maybe, never. So for now I'm totally okay with doing absolutely nothing (except for the paper plate thing...keep on reading).

Okay, well doing absolutely nothing isn't true. I've been frantically getting ready for my upcoming research trip. In less than two weeks I travel to Europe for a solo research trip in Denmark. It's a huge deal for me--I applied for a grant, got the funding, established the connection with a host laboratory, and will be building/traveling with all of my equipment. No advisor to travel with. No coworkers to turn to. One month of complete responsibility working with some big name people in my field. No stress here, right? Right.

In the midst of my frantic equipment build this weekend, I did manage to sneak off with Tara to the beach. We dognapped our neighbor's dog Buddy and took him for his very first beach trip! (Our neighbors NEVER take the dog anywhere, including walks. It's really sad). Buddy was so excited as we packed him up in the car.

In just a few minutes he was acting like the king of the doggy castle.

And when we got him to the beach, we had to videotape his first ocean encounter. Needless to say, he's never gonna be an ocean dog (tilt your head. I can't figure out how to rotate this):

Although I did make the promise to myself about the offseason, I would like to do some things to avoid turning into a complete lard-ass between now and New Years.  The raw diet is still going strong (with a few hiccups) so I'm keeping control of my diet.  I also decided to play around with some of those "at home 20 minute workouts!" that you see online. I found a funny workout from self.com that involved using gliders (paper plates make a good substitute) and I decided to give it a go. I didn't have high expectations, but man did it kick my butt! Within 5 minutes I was breaking a sweat and by the end my arms were quivering. Some of the moves were ridiculously easy, but some were insanely hard. It made it quite easy to see my weaknesses! You can bet your bottom dollar that I'm packing some paper plates for my Europe trip. Maybe I, too can get "Hollywood abs in 4 weeks!" Yeah, right....