Fragments of My Week

I started several good posts in the last week, and successful finished none of them. Now they've all become fragmented bits of old news, so I'm scrapping all of them and serving up some bits and pieces of what's come to pass in the last week in my world:

I just wrapped up a serious week of training that included several high intensity bricks, back to back rides of 4 hours and 3 hours, a 4km swim continuous pool swim, a few open water swims, a 2 hour trail run, and an unscheduled 1.5 hour mountain bike ride that I threw in while trying to catch a stunning sunset over the Mediterranean on Sunday night. While I was doing that, Chrissie Wellington smashed the previous female Ironman world record at Challenge Roth, Germany, with a time of 8.31.59, and she did it all with her usual enigmatic smile that belies any pain or suffering. Up in Saint-Fargeau, Mark Cavendish won his fourth Tour stage with the grimace of an athlete giving everything he's got to the finish line. I lost three kilos and gained one back, then took a break from my no alcohol rule to celebrate my first Fête Nationale July 14th in a flurry of champagne accompanied by red, white and blue fireworks. I discovered that heritage tomatoes (in season right now) can be very neatly scooped out with a melon baller and stuffed with all sorts of things that are good sources of plant-based proteins, like lentils, quinoa, garbanzo beans or amaranth, along with a medley of fresh herbs from my terrace (or mixed with my homemade vegan pesto sauce - currently in the lead and a definite favourite for recipe of the month), before baking to aromatic perfection. I bought an electric fly swatter and can't remember the last time I had so much fun with a purchase under $5. The heat carefully built to what even the locals called opressive levels until last night, when the heavens opened and the rain came down so hard that the shutters on my windows shook to wake me from a deep sleep at 3am. Yes, sleep returned to me this week and I'm clocking a good six hours at a time, torrential downpours notwithstanding. In the slippery aftermath of the storm, I crashed on my road bike on a lonely stretch of road in the early morning and am now having trouble lifting my right arm over my shoulder. It doesn't seem to be anything more than bruising and I expect it to pass in a few days, although I'll be sporting a nice road rash at the pool for the next few weeks and will then have to work hard to re-tan some of the surface on the right side of my body. I learned how to say 'what an idiot I am' (je peux être bête!) and how to conjugate the verb 'souffrir' (to suffer, or to be in pain). I'm working on finishing one of the three books I'm reading and expect the lack of shoulder mobility, combined with the otherwise low-volume training week coming up, might help with that. Maybe I'll also do a better job of finishing my blog posts in a timely manner.