tucson 2012

i have been slack about writing on this blog. I have been in Tucson for the past 5 days, cycling. the weather has been great; it is cool in the morning and warms up to about 75 degrees in the afternoon. I have cycled everyday for the last five days; i have run a couple of times and swam once. I plan to cycle again tomorrow. I have been doing around 80k per day, a little more or less. I am finding my way around better this year.

I am staying at a very nice hotel called "Lodge on the Desert." I have a suite with a king size bed, fireplace and jucuzzi tub (which i haven't used) There is not much to do here in the evening. Aside from the weather and beautiful scenery, I don't really think one would come here for culture. there are some museums and art galleries but they are not a focal point. The city itself is not that attractive; it suffers from bad urban sprawl for miles. It is not walkable at all. There are strip malls everywhere and the city is very spread out. New York City probably has 10 times as many people and you could walk from one end of Manhattan to another. I went to go to a bar the other night and it was a $25 cab ride each way. It is crazy.

Fitness wise, I am not sure if I am more or less fit than this time last year. My opinion on that varies depending on the day. In some ways, I feel like it takes a bit more out of me to train like I do. On the other hand, I run on the treadmill right now at faster speeds than I did 10 years ago. My swimming and cycling continue to be quite strong. I am planning on doing fewer races this summer and more running races. I find I only have so much competitive spirit to last one season and if I do too many races, I tend to losse it by the end of the summer. By the time I got to the world age group championships last year in September, I was mentally done. This year, my biggest race will be Ironman Tremblant so I am going to try to focus more on that.