I awoke at 4:40 a.m. today rearing to go for my first day back in training after my 4 week off-season.  Although I am still somewhat congested from chest cold I got from my triplets, feeling a lot better.  I promised myself today I would not sit on the edge of the pool and socialize for 20 minutes!  Well, I did pretty well today, only talked for 10 minutes and in I jumped!  Long sets: 5 x 200 and 5 x 500, it was fun giving the other swimmers in my lane trouble by grabbing their feet if I caught up to them.

I decided to quickly grab a grande coffee from Starbucks after swim practice as my therapy to handle 3 over-excited 6 year olds on our 30 minutes drive to school for Kindergarten.  Woah!  No sooner had I parked and stepped off the 2 foot ledge from the upper parking lot at Starbucks, my feet touched what I thought was wet ground and I went flying like superman in the air!  First landing on my bum and then flying forward on to my hands.  Several bystanders drinking their coffee inside came running out to check on me to try and help me in the store - I even got a nice round of applause from other caffeinated drinkers! Luckily, the Starbucks employees decided that I should receive in return a TONIC for all the excitement I caused, handing immediately over to me not a bandaid or bag of ice but a free drink!  Although a nice consolation prize, I do not think I will repeat this death-defying act again!

 70.3 World report to come............

 For now, if someone were to do a biography of my life the last 3 1/2 weeks it would be something like:  sleep, eat, drink, eat junk food, kid/family duties; more junk food, sleep.  It has certainly caught up with me!  The bonus at the end of multiple nights out and consuming more than one alcoholic beverage a night is a horrible cold.  I think everyone I know is sick now!  Goals for this week are to get better with no antibiotics and resume structured training next week.  I am also in the process of identifying my key races and goals for next year - how fun!  There is nothing quite like having a chance to start over and try to identify what you would like to improve on and achieve in the coming year... stay tuned.