Work, Hard Labor, Manual Labor

So this week proved to be pretty interesting.  To start. I had a terrible training week last week, due to business travel, and my penchant for good beer, and bad food at Jack Astors on Blvd Sources in Montreal.  BTW the only Jack Astor's worth a damn in the whole world, but I digress... 

Week in Review.

M - Run 6 miles

T - Cycle to Work, Run 4 miles .5 miles at 7 - 8 min pace, rest 1 min

W- Return to Blog-o-sphere, 25 mile crank, 2000 yard swim

Th- 2100 M swim with Masters Coach

F- 5 mile pitiful run / walk in an attempt to get 7 miles in.

So after a week of trying to get back in shape, I think I finally bonked out today.  The disappointing thing is that I really didn't work that hard in the previous workouts.   Anyway, chalk it up to experience, quit taking 4 days off in a row, followed by 2 more, and move on with the plan!

After my amazing display of mediocre athleticism, I had a happy hour meeting.  I previously commited to helping the family of one of my son Liam's schoolmates' parents rehab their backyard deck.   So I grabbed my leather work gloves, sledge hammer, hammer and shitty attitude and proceeded over to their house to demo the spalted and splintered deck boards.  The family had quoted the job with a local contractor to simply tear up and replace deck boards for a 24' X 18' deck for over $4000.  (Shitty contractors taking advantage pisses me off!)  When we measured up what was needed, it turns out to be <$500.  So after tearing off the old, tonight in about 2 hours time, we'll redeck the sucker 1st thing in the AM.   I told the Dad, we can get it done in <>

So, after a shitty week of work (I'm trying to avoid ranting about work, and cubicle ridden drone coworkers in this blog, so we'll leave it at that), a so-so week of training apexed with a terrible bonk in my 7 miler; I found my nirvana in destroying a backyard deck.  

There are a number to times in an athlete's career where the get into the "zone!"  Mine are so few, I remember most all of them.  The county championship swim meet my high school junior year where I won the 200 IM, and the 100 breaststroke.  A dual meet at Hobart  when i was in college and did a personal best in the 200 breaststroke.  A set of 3 X 5 X 200 meters free training in Florida long course where I was beating the distance freestylers.  And a couple more times.  

I hit the "Zone"  tearing up the floorboards of my son's friend's parent's backyard deck. (That's a lot of possessive participles in one sentence).  I was ripping that shit up like it wasn't there.  Hammer and tool placement was spot on, and even throwing the boards into the scrap pile was really accurate.  I hardly spoke, but I was a crowbarring, board bending, ripping machine.  I think I tore up a good 3/4 of the deck.  I felt great when we were done.  It was the type of experience Robert Pirsig writes about in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance."  Hopefully I didn't waste a "zone" and will beable to get there for the triangle triathlon on July 12, 2009!

That's all for now!

~DAVE