Tri-ing to sleep

• 8.5 hours until I have to be up for my second race of the season, I am struggling to sleep so I thought I would blog for a few minutes since I haven't been able to much this week.

• Monday and Tuesday I spent training with the NC Prison Emergency Response Team. Once a year we go away as a team for a two days of 12 hours training plus after hours team building. No drinking allowed, so by this I mean fishing, campfire, and hanging out talking shit. I usually dread it, because although I like the time to be out of the office and have a physical components to my duties I generally don't like my team mates. With exception of me and one female office it is a group of type A, egotistical, hillbilly tough guys.
• We had three classes total. The first class was search and rescue techniques for when we assist other agencies. This wasn't horrible but I have 13 years of being the other agency. Next we worked on slow and deliberate room clearing with our new Bushmaster M-4 assault rifles. The next day they set up a shoot house/course and we worked through in pairs with both out pistols and shotguns.
• The situational shooting course consisted of a 200m run to get our heart rates up. Then we loaded into a van for our safety briefing. Once complete the whistle sounded and we dismounted the van and got our long guns. I was point and had to clear three targets 50m down and alley and then provide cover as my partner had to pull a downed officer (dummy) to the van. Once he was back, we proceeded down the alley, and then cleared the corner were two there were two more targets. We then moved to a close building for cover, the building had no door, just a door way and there were two targets when we got to it. Once go to the edge of the building we had to cover each other as we ran to the next building, on the way the instructors had a target wielding a knife rigged to charge you from around a corner. Once to the next building we had to breach it and clear two room before ending the scenario. Much better and more realistic course than last year.
• Ever since I worked with our new assault rifle I have been very excited. I was loving practicing moving, room clearing, and transitioning between hands.
• For the first time we are moving away from dynamic entry. Dynamic entry is the shock and awe way of entering a building in a stack as you see on TV. This is a very good method, but requires a lot of practice and requires working with the same people regularly so you can learn their rhythms. This method is silent, slow, and deliberate. This method makes it easier to work with different teams (as we often do) since it only requires that the individuals have their own competency. We did about a dozen scenarios and I was one of the rifleman as well as pointman/breacher/ team leader. i loved every second of it.
• After training the first day I went for a 4x400m run with 1 mile warm and 1 mile cool. The run was tough, we were much higher up in the mountains than I am usually and the terrain was steep. I had to work hard to finish this one, it turned more to hill work than speed work. It was a nice gut check.
• Many of my platoon mates said they would run with me, none of then did. Pussies.
• When I got back to the office Wednesday my boss told me to take half the day Thursday and all of Friday off due to having too much overtime for the week already. This worked out well since I was taking Thursday morning off for Community service leave. In other words, Two days off and only having to spend 1 out of 5 days in the office.
• Thursday I taught stranger avoidance to all the kindergarten classes in CB's school. I have refused to do this year for years, but am much less terrified of kids now.
• Speaking of kids and karate, I am thinking of changing my race schedule to substitute Sunday races where I can. This way I don't have to take off from my part time job as it where i get my racing money. Once morning of teaching equals sprint/olympic race entry fees. Taking more Sunday races will mean dropping some easy, short, flat races and picking up some longer sprints with open water swims, and one more Oly.
• My new tri shoes did not get here in time for tomorrow's race.
• I hit everyone of my workouts this week, but not in the prescribed order. I even got in two extras.
• I am trying a new method of mounting my bike. I have rubber banded my shoes on, but will slow down, place one foot on a shoe, push off and swing my leg over. I found this on an instructional video on youtube. I am working on the flying squirrel mount, but lose one of my shoes about half the time.
• Tomorrow race is .15 miles from my house. After I get up I plan to put my toast int he toaster, walked my bag and bike to the rack, and then come back home to eat, poop, and shower. This way I get the spot I want since racks are assigned, but not spots.
• We are in the middle of thunderstorm right now and it is called to keep going through the morning. The race plan is to change to a duathalon if the thunder keeps going. I feel if the swim is eliminated I have the upper hand with my increases in running and overfamiliarity with the bike course.