June...bring it on

June is nearly upon us. With the weather changes here in Cincy of late, I’d say were definitely into summer weather as well with higher heat and humidity, and scattered t-storms basically every day.

As June approaches, I’m tentatively excited. It’s going to be a crazy busy month. According to my overarching annual training plan, it’s scheduled to be my highest intensity month. As far as specific events go, I have the following:
Olympic tri on June 7th near Cincy (B race)
Sprint (500m/21mi/4.8mi) on June 21st in St. Louis (C race)
First ever crit on June 27th (hoping to survive unscathed)

To go along with that, my training schedule will be further restricted since my first term of grad school classes (MBA program) will be in full swing. As of right now, I have an online class that runs at lunch 2x/week which hasn’t effected my schedule too much other than cutting back on lunch workouts. However, starting next week I will have a 3 hour evening class meeting 2x/week as well. Both classes are complete by the end of June, so there will be a lot of work crammed into the month. I’m not too concerned about not doing well in the classes since I tend to handle school pretty well (I’m a nerd and like to learn), I’m just hoping I’ll be able to manage my work, school, and training schedule. Oh yeah, and I’d like to be able to see my wife occasionally as well. Of course, she’s in a very similar situation being a full time grad student with ~30 hours of practicum work required.

On the upside, I certainly feel like I’ll be getting a lot accomplished, and working toward my MBA has me excited about opening up doors for future possibilities. Also, once my wife and I have survived June, we plan on thoroughly enjoying July and August. While we both will still have work, neither of us will have classes again until end of August. We have a long July 4th weekend to spend at her parents’ lake house, a vacation to Yellowstone in mid-July with my family, an extended weekend for Steelhead 70.3 combined with our first anniversary celebration, a Jimmy Buffett concert (5th annual) the week following Steelhead, and volunteering at IM Louisville at the end of August.
It’s amazing how quickly summers fill themselves up.

In more recent news, I accomplished my highest bike volume week ever this past weekend covering about 137 miles (I know, not that impressive), but this week I will blow that number away since I already 101.5 miles on my legs with 120 more scheduled for the weekend (doing a century on Sunday). I’m seeing some big jumps in my comfort and speed on the bike, so hopefully it will show at the Olympic tri I have next weekend. I will cover that race in more detail next week when I layout my race plan. Until then, stay injury free and enjoy the weekend.