Vegas

Ok - so last week was officialy 18 weeks til the towpath marathon - aka my first attempt at a bq. which means - i have a ton of work to do in the next 18 - scratch that 17 weeks. I know i can do it - if i put the time and work into it - which means going above and beyond just getting enough long runs in to just complete a marathon. So i followed amie's lead and decided to go with a modified version of the FIRST program for "those who have completed their first marathon but want to finish faster" Keep in mind i'm also still toying with the idea of greater cleveland half im - as long as training for that doesn't take away from running. So far it's been ok - and i've been able to squeeze both in.
So last week - was week 18 - official first week of training. Also the week that I was going to Vegas for four days. I should have just waited for today to start. But oh well - between monday and wednesday I was able to get in a couple of runs, two swims and a shortened awful bike ride. Why awful you ask?
Well here was my idea - fleet feet was having a wetsuit demo day out in westlake - so I thought - i'll have steve meet me down near edgewater - we'll ride out to westlake - it's about 13 miles - try on the wetsuits and head back. Good idea in theory - bad idea when played out. First of all Lake road near downtown is in pretty bad shape - which is a problem for two reasons - i don't know about you - but i'm not riding at 18 mph over potholes, manhole covers, potholes and more potholes - so you end up going really slow - in certain stretches which makes the ride take a really long time. Number 2 - you end up riding further into the street to avoid the really rough part - which you know makes cars angry - which in turn makes me quite upset and nervous - and then you add on to it my fear of my new clip shoes still - and it was not a very pleasant experience thus far. Well bad idea number 2 - don't go for a ride if you don't know how to get to the place you are going to. I thought we had gone too far - and we ended up spending a half an hour or so turning around and then turning around the other way. Well we finally stopped to ask directions again and I popped out my left foot and decided to lean to the right instead so i fell flat over on to someone's lawn in bay village. I layed there for awhile - I was upset and the grass was very soft. As steve said - i picked a great place for my first clip related crash!
Well eventually we find our way to the five seasons. Jody tries to give me a small wet suit to try on - and after my last experience i opted for the medium. This went much better than the last time - and it was awesome having that on in the pool - i can't wait to get my suit and try it out in the lake. So Jody says that suit is big on you - you have too much room in it still. So i say fine - i'll try on the small. I think it probably took jody and heather a half an hour to get this suit on me - and quite awhile to get it off - i couldn't even get my hands out of it - let alone my big old feet - so i guess i need a small and a half. which isn't going to happen. Meanwhile while i was wrestling with the wetsuits - steve had tried his on - and was calling his mom to come pick us up. It took us so long to get there and to try on the suits that we didn't have enough day light to get back. So... my mother in law dropped us off at our cars and we went home - it was 10:30 by the time we got home! So we finished packing for vegas and had a couple of beers to celebrate being on vacation. I'll leave my vegas stories for another post - but we were able to get out for one run while we were there - we ran from our hotel to the las vegas sign which was about four miles - we added another mile to that and called it a day - because by that time in the morning it was already pushing 100 degrees -- which is just too hot!!
So where does that leave me? I guess today is my official first week of training (which is good since i'm actually falling a 16 week plan!)