This past training week was hampered by late afternoon lightning and thunderstorms. Got caught two days in a row while both swimming and biking. Nonetheless, I managed to get in most of my scheduled workouts. We also had a group training day with the Fab 5 on Saturday. We met at Lake Minneola for a group swim working on entrance and exit drills, sighting, and in-water starts. We swam and drilled for about 1500 yrds and then went for a group bike around the lake, through the Palisades, down Cherry Lake road to Wilson Lake Road where we did two 6 mile time trial sprints before returning for a group pancake breakfast. Ya gotta try Hammer Gel (Rasberry) on your pancakes instead of syrup...delicious..and the complex maltodextrins are much better for you than the simple sugars in the syrup..really..it's also good on cottage cheese....I'm not kidding.

Late Saturday afternoon several members of the Fab 5 went to Epic Cycles for our bike fit. The bike fit entailed being measured...arms, torso, inseam, etc., on a bike fit apparatus and weighed....and...of course, the consumption of several glasses of Spanish vino tinto. A bike fit just isn't a bike fit without some wine! They also took foot measurements and plugged all that into a computer program that will assist they guys at Epic to make changes, if necessary, to our bikes to better utilize the proper muscles to get the most power to the cranks and drive the bike more efficiently. Because I was racing the next day, my actual bike fit will take place at a later time. We were concerned that if significant changes were made to my positioning on the bike I would feel uncomfortable during the race. The old adage not to make any significant changes right before a race applies here.

On Sunday, I did the UCF Sprint Triathlon. 1/4 mile swim, 8 mile bike and 3 mile run. I awoke at 4:45 am, checked my glucose and it was 40...very low. Ate some Go Lean Kashi granola with soy milk and left for the race. On the way, I ate one Publix mini cream cake with coffee...yummy. Unfortunately, it was a bit too much...when I checked my glucose 15 min. before the race it had climbed to 303...ouch..a bit high. I normally like to start a race with a blood sugar somewhere close to 230. I had prepared a bottle of Cytomax for the bike but due to high blood glucose...was afraid to drink it. I didn't want my glucose climbing higher and was not really confident that the race would bring my BS down to a reasonable level. So...I drank nothing on the bike and grabbed some water at the first and second water stations on the run. I finished in 56:08, good enough to take 2nd place in my age group. Checked my BS after the race and it had dropped down to 101. My race effort was enough to lower my BS by over 200 points without the need for insulin in less than one hour. Now....where is that food tent? Nothing like ice cold sweet and ripe watermelon after a race. I had a couple of slices and a small bag of potato chips while waiting for the award ceremony. By the time I returned home my BS was 78...and I still had not taken an insulin injection...Ahhh, the benefit of exercise.