Ah, got to love when a plan starts coming together (knock on wood ).

Sitting in the yard on this warm, sunny morning, dog to my left tearing apart a stick, bird to my right churping and celebrating the sunshine. Now bird to my left and Streatley is keen to it’s existence. He’s getting ampted trying to pinpoint where it is. Streatley isn’t one to sit still, approaching five years of age and he still acts like a puppy bouncing around constantly trying to get someone, anyone’s attention.

Week’s like this confirm my decision to move to Bend and live a different lifestyle. This certainly beats my counterpart existence of a year and a half ago (wow, that long ago) where by 10 a.m. I’d have spent 60-90 minutes commuting in my car and now sitting behind a desk in a building full of cubicle mazes, coming up with excuses to get out of my chair and wander around the innards to get a glimpse of the outside world. Wishing I could get on the bike. Now I sit here debating whether today will be a long slow ride or a easy 90 minute spin.

The Plan -> To move away from the rate race and live on my own terms has begun to make the progress recently that makes the sacrifices all worth while. I talk about this often but it is my blog and the main driving force that keeps me doing what I do, the training, Trifuel, creating stuff. My finances are getting in better shape, though the recent check to Taxes hurts, I’m getting in better shape, my mom moved up here a couple months ago, grandma is here for the summer. I moved up here knowing noone and now half my family is here. Pretty cool!

This weeks workouts have been good. The new pool is awesome, huge Olympic size meter pool with like 8 lanes, so that’s 16 when they cut it to the 25 meter version. I always have a lane to myself. Eventually I’ll join in with the Master group, but still working on my own for now. I’ve been trying to run like a Kenyan since reading that article last week. Well, only in the sense of running early before breakfast. It was tough the first couple times, but now I like it. Takes a little while to get warmed up but it keeps me focused on low heart rate effort to conserve the fuel I have in the system. Rides have been good as well, the weather has been good and I think I finally have my foot/cleat position dialed in. Though the creaking is driving me crazy . But 2 hour rides that used to be a good workout now are fairly easy and I feel really fresh coming off the bike.

Well I should get some work done before heading out on the bike. It’s getting hot out here. Says it’s only 60 but feels like 80 already.

btw: Got my phone with the camera as seen in the Streatley pic above. Pretty cool, I just take shots and send them to my email. I wonder if they charge me extra for that? I’ll have to double check before getting too crazy.