Here comes the bride!

As many of you know, my sister-in-law is getting married this weekend.  Other than finding this picture of a running shoe wedding cake, what does that have to do with triathlon training you ask?  Let me tell you.

First of all, my wife is the Matron of Honor.  In other words, she has to do nearly everything the bride does while trying to keep the bride from flipping out because the bride is getting married in a few days.  Until the last week, I always through the maid/matron of honor didn't do much more than the best man (a role I've served in on several occasions).  As best man, you throw a bachelor party, help get everyone squared away with their tuxes, and make sure the groom gets to the wedding reasonably sober on the big day.  So naturally, I assumed that a maid/matron of honor would do the same sorts of things.  Holy crap was I wrong!  Apparently the maid/matron of honor is involved in many of the smallest details of the wedding.  Now maybe this is function of the fact that my wife is also the bride's sister and is almost as excited as the actual bride.  But either way, it means that training has to now be squeezed in between my work my wife's work, kid's schedules, my wife's training schedule for her half marathon, and whatever else comes up (like the state fair being this week).  Now I'm not only running to train, but also to work off the fried smores and oreos.  So, I ran on Monday night after the kids were in bed and clocked somewhere between 3 and 4 miles from 9:30 to 10-ish at night.  To make tonight's workout work, I went with the entire family up to my in-laws and then ran home (a little over 6 miles).  It pays to be flexible with all this other stuff going on.  Hmmm, maybe that's a theme we'll see throughout this little blog.

The second issue that a wedding introduces is that it literally removes days from your training schedule.  If I were a professional athlete this excuse probably would go over about as well as "the dog ate my homework."  Just look here at what Michael Phelps coach has said about his training discipline over the past year or so.  Apparently all of those celebrity appearances, parties, and whatnot led to him blowing off a few training sessions.  But I'm not a pro and I don't intend to give up some of the fun things in life just because I'm training.  I've hung out with those guys who say "I can't have a beer tonight, I'm training." and it's a bit of a buzz kill.  Well, I'm no buzz kill!  So the Friday morning golf, beer and cigars, Friday night rehearsal dinner, Saturday reception, and Sunday hangover/brunch all needed to be factored in to my training.  In other words, from Friday at 8 am until Monday morning, it's unlikely that I'll be running (unless I'm trying to get to the bar before last call), biking (unless it's the only way to get from one party to the next) or swimming (unless I fall in the inner harbor during the festivities).  This means that it looks like I'll be switching ends of the day for Friday's run.  I'll try to get 4 miles in before the golf/beer/cigars.  At least I'll be warmed up and loose by the time I get to the golf course.