Fun. Pain. I can't tell the difference.

So I did exactly jack in the week after Pac Grove, but here we are spitting distance from Longhorn and I'm alternating between cranked about my first half-iron and scared off my head.

I didn't mean to take a full week off. I really intended to sit out Monday and maybe Tuesday, then get on the horse and hit the gym Wednesday night, maybe a run on Thursday...none of that happened. Come Friday, I had done nothing except pick up my bike from Jason after he tuned it.

So Friday rolled around and I joined the gang out at the Cove with the intention of cranking out a quick mile. Well, by the time we all got there and got going, the sun was sinking inexorably lower on the horizon and the swells were climbing higher and higher above it. I got to the quarter in 0:7:30, the floated there for almost 15 minutes jabbering with folks. Finally, we decided to just bag it and head in. Most of us headed to dinner, though there was a bit of a schism over who was eating Mexican and who was eating with who. It wasn't exactly East and West Germany, but there was a little drama, nothing some clever text messages couldn't cure.

Leaving dinner, I had to jam home and shower off the wetsuit smell to go meet the volleyball kids at the Carriage House for some karaoke and booze in honor of Daniel's birthday. I was the latecomer to the party and they already pretty far gone, which was good since it meant I didn't have to catch up. I didn't emerge totally unscathed though. Drinking beer may be carb-loading, but Alabama Slammers don't qualify I guess. I had the sense to pull the ripcord at about midnight.

5AM Saturday and the phone goes off. It was a text from Mark bailing out of the day's ride. (You're gonna have to explain your later explanation dude, I'm still puzzling over it.) Ultimately not a huge problem, but I got up and started to get ready for the ride, only to realize that wait, it's five in the damn morning. I don't have to be up until 6. I went back to bed.

Dana and I caught the train up to Capistrano at 7:40 after an impromptu sprint through the Solana Beach Amtrak station in bike shoes, toting helmets and bikes. Thankfully someone was running even later than us and they held the train. I can't help but think though, about the helpful lady who sold me my ticket. The conversation, which began at about 7:35, went somthing like this:

Ryan: One for Capistrano.
Lady: I need your ID. Will this be cash or charge?
Ryan: How much is it?
Lady: I hope you make your train. Cash or charge?
Ryan: How much is the ticket? I don't know if I have enough cash.
Lady: Twelve dollars.
Ryan: Cash. (hands over twelve bucks)
Lady: Thank you. (begins typing on the computer, presumably ordering East European porn or something, but very slowly) I hope you make your train. All the way across on track 2. (hands ryan the ticket)
Ryan: Me too. (sprints out the door, clacking in bike shoes)

Once in Capistrano, we had a pretty uneventful time of things, except for the bike shoe shuffle across the slick tile and hardwood floors of the station cafe to find a bathroom, and hit the road.

If you haven't cycled this route, you have to go through Camp Pendleton, which is cool. We had a hard time keeping ourselves from pulling over to climb on the decorative tanks and play on the obstacle courses, some of which looked way fun. Then we rode past a Carnival at Oceanside harbor. Somewhere between oceanside and Carlsbad, we made the decision to bag the transition run portion of the day's program and turned inland at Palomar Airport Road to get in some hill time.

By the end of the 60 miles, I was well and truly sick of my bike chain clicking and we stopped at B&L, where we ran into Jeanie and Rolf. Turns out Jeanie's racing IM Cozumel in 2009, just like our good friend Katie. Oh, and I think I got pulled into being in town for the race. Guess I should make sure my passport's current. Oy.

A little while in B&L and Dana and I realized that we were about to pass out from hunger. We'd been on the road for four hours in the sun. So a quick stop at the cars and we were into Chief's for what might have been the best frings and burgers ever.

Saturday night was Paul's birthday party and I'll gloss over that lest I think too long about BG modeling the bikini.

Today was supposed to be a 13 mile run with Katie, her coach, BG and Rita, but two miles in I knew there was no way I was gonna be able to handle race pace and interval training. I dropped back and let them pull ahead and pulled into my head to just muscle through it. Around mile 5, my foot was partly throbbing and partly numb ans wasn't bending right, so I stopped, stretched and turned back. I ultimately did 10-point-something miles in just over two hours. It could have been faster except that around the Children's pool, my knee and foot stopped working and I had to limp back to the cove.

Not my best performance and it's got me a little rattled about the half-marathon at the end of Longhorn, but I also know that I can just suck it up and muscle through if I have to. I really don't want to, but if I have to, it's there. I'm expecting to hurt for about two weeks after the race, but thankfully I'm going down for post-surgical rehab just about then and I have six weeks to recover from all of it.

How do I get into this stuff?