SBR

(sbr stands for swim bike run. I am that creative...)

Lot of things going on right now.

Chicago trip was great. I need to go back because we did not have time to see everything we wanted (read: I was not able to read every single info  in every museum in Chicago. Yes, I do that and my sister was desperate because what takes a normal person 10min took me an hour and I had to comment on everything...)

I bought running shoes for my sister. Not that I think that she will run in them, but when we went to Vegas together two years ago I made her walk so much that her shoes literally felt apart. I was planning on walking a lot in Chicago as well so I wanted her to have good shoes. But it was really cold and she persuaded me to take bus everywhere. Little wimp!

I took an advantage of Black Friday deals and bough 96 gels and 12 chews packets. Michelle is very proud of me for that one. 48 chocolate and 48 strawberry/banana, yummy!

I also bough racing wheels. Easton 90TT. Call me a hypocrite (yes, I admit, I am) because I judge people who buy expensive gear that is above their "level" and now I did the same thing. But it was a great deal (70% off) and I hope that I will eventually get the engine (me) to the chassis (bike, including wheels) level. Meanwhile, they stay by my bed and I will try to figure out how tubulars work. Michelle said that now everyone will expect me to win when they look at my wheels, and that's ok because until now I was the only one who was expecting me to win thus it might be a good thing if there are also some other people who think that I can win:)

I tried to do running intervals on Tuesday before 6am. It was a disaster. It was dark and temps in low 20s to start with. I was half asleep and fully frozen. I do not think that I will attempt that any time soon.

I had a swim lesson on Tuesday. I figured that it is time to start taking this seriously (now that I have those gels and wheels). I know that I need help with my swimming form because you cannot learn to swim properly no matter how many times you watch swimming youtube videos. The coach told me that my pulls is quite bad, I am not catching enough water, I do not finish the stroke, I enter water not the right way, my flip turns are not as good as they should be and we will work on my kick once I master my upper body. I wonder whether she will yell at me as CH used to when I swam with his group in February. I am going to work with her 1x/week until I reach perfection.

Today in a pool I tried to do what I learnt on Tuesday and it was not fun. It is f*** tiring and I have to concentrate all the time. It was awkward and felt unnatural. But it got better as I swam more. Although honestly, I do not know whether it was because my body got the hang of new movements or because I went more and more back to my old way. I was tempted to just swim like I am used to hit my prescribed paces but do not worry, I am smart enough to realize that that would lead to no improvement so I kept cursing the whole swim, trying to remember what I should be doing (enter the water with all you fingers at once, nice, crap, now I forgot about keeping the elbow high, crap, I entered the water with my thumb, nice I finished the stroke all the way to my hip, crap I again forgot to keep high elbow, do not enter with your thumb!, shoot I did not finish this stroke... and it went like this the whole swim. My brain needs a break now.) barely hitting my paces.

My sister got a dog. I am scared of dogs. (And cats, and guinea pigs, and turtles, and rabbits, and deer and so on.) I am going to spend Xmas with her and I am already dreading it.

Saturday is a race day! This whole year has been very strange because I have been expecting my ITB to flare up any moment and I was not able to get excited for races. I have had no fire in me and I still do not. I am still mostly scared that my ITB will start bothering me again. My attitude keeps going back and forth between being terrified and curious. I really have no idea what to expect and thus I am curious to see what I can do. But I am also scared because I am not confident I am fit enough to run 19:15. I still think that I will try to shoot for 19:15ish. But I am not 100% confident I can do it. Which is not a good thing because when I say I want to run 19:15 and I do not believe that I can do it, that 19:15 is just an arbitrary number and I will not work hard to actually run it. I need to start thinking about the race and hopefully then I will get fired up a little bit more.

I bought a slow cooker because it is probably the only way how I am going to eat real food. I have decided today that I was going to make chilli in it tomorrow. I do not know how you make chilli but you probably need beans and tomatoes. I have some beans and so I went to store to buy diced tomatoes. But when I was there I realized that I do not have a can opener so cannot buy those tomatoes (yes I know. I can buy a can opener. But I only had four dollars with me so could not but it). And you probably cannot put whole fresh tomatoes because you need more liquid than fresh tomatoes have to be able to make chilli. So I bought cottage cheese instead. So no chilli tomorrow. Although I should probably look up a recipe before I try to make it.
(No wonder I am single...My German biking buddy has always been on my case regarding men. He keeps telling me that I will never find and keep a husband if I do not become more "domestic":) I think that he is right because who will want to live in an unfurnished apartment with me and eat bread with cheese for every meal?)