The last couple days of training have been awesome. The weather has been perfect here in Denver, warm, but not hot. The last two days of training have made me feel like a bad a$$ girl. I love training hard and we've put in a few days of hard work. Steve is so cautious with my training, I really appreciate his judgement in that regard. He doesn't pound me every day, and I have found that the gradual schedule he has me on is really conditioning me to absorb what he throws at me.

Yesterday was a jaunt up Highgrade and then City View with a tempo hard honest effort up Highgrade. I was begging for mercy, but Steve had his iPod in so he couldn't hear me beg. I was left with no other choice but to stick to his wheel like glue. Can we say above LT on the bike? I thought I was going to actually fall off my bike when we got to the top. I have never really understood when people said they went so hard on the bike they wanted to puke, but now I am starting to understand just what that entails. The sad thing is, I loved it. I wanted more (okay only after I recovered at the top did I want more).

Today was equally as Epic. Steve and I ran the 4 miles over to Chattfield SP from his house, met Andrea, John and Jewles and did hill repeats. We ran up the grassy side of the dam. Dam! It was a Dam good time! We did two repeats up the Dam, then we got scared b/c we though a guy in a truck was coming to kick us off. So we did a repeat up the road which isn't as steep, but is a more prolonged effort. Then we realized the guy in the truck didn't give a rat's tail that crazy people were running up the Dam, so we did three more repeats up. Then Steve and I ran back to his house. It was somewhere around a 12-13 mile day, so I was pretty pooped when I got home. But again, pooped in a "happy" "i love this stuff" kind of way.

I think I have taken this year in a much different direction than most starting triathletes. I think a lot of people get some early success and just push hard hard hard the next couple years to see how good they can get. Steve and I have taken the approach that learning the sport, learning technique, and being "raised" is a more appropriate direction. What comes will come from sound knowledge and sound technique. I am proud that I have stayed patient and I can tell that things will pay off when I have earned it.

Boy do I love training though. Training with friends is absolutely the best thing out there. You just can't beat it!