Internal Mono(b)log

Today was my 1st day of training in Panama. Oh my it was wonderful!

The focus today was really to just burn off yesterday’s travel and to start, for real, my heat/humidity acclimatization.   I have been doing regular steam bath sessions in Toronto, but being surrounded by, and exercising in, inescapable heat/humidity is pretty different.  Fortunately we are very adaptable creatures and I have 9 more days to get my body primed for the 12th.

Today’s shakeout was an easy swim for 45 minutes and an easy ride for ah hour.

Did the swim in the Playa Coronado pool, a 32 meter pool that was completely empty except for Richard and I (awesome!)

Did the bike ride, starting about 4pm, on a nice quiet country road not far from their place with quiet rolling hills, a few chickens, and some dogs. Fortunately most of the dogs weren’t interested in lending chase, but of course there were 2 that decided chasing a bike would be fun.  I barked at them and they gave up though, so it was ok.  Having real road under my wheels and the tropical breeze in my face today was absolutely amazing.  After months on the computrainer in my pain-cave with fans blowing on me, it was just so nice to be in a real™ environment. 🙂

The weather here is roughly the same as Toronto in August.  Yea it’s warm, and humid, but there seems to be a persistent breeze and it’s all pretty easy to take. I have to tell you, I’ll take this over February in Toronto ANY DAY!

The only glitch today was that my Garmin910xt just shut itself off about 60% of the way through my ride and then couldn’t re-establish GPS lock… it was odd.  Gonna have to keep an eye on that over the next few days.  Brought my 310 as a backup (yea I know – freaking boy scout), but hopefully I won’t need it.

Tomorrow’s a 1:20 ride.  Gonna try to do it during a little warmer part of the day and also going to try to use the sportiiiis  to give them a shakeout ride.  Should be fun.  Stay tuned 🙂