There aren’t many jobs that measure success by failing 70% of the time; baseball players who put a ball in play and reach base 3 out of 10 at bats have something to be proud of.  Where does that leave meteorologists?  As a former east coast dweller who missed out on more than my fair share of snow days due to inaccurate forecasts, my confidence in their predictions is not high.  30% accuracy seems generous, and I’m admittedly skeptical when I see 100% chance of anything in the forecast.  Against all odds, the meteorologists somehow managed to have a career weekend – they hit for the cycle and predicted not one, but four consecutive days of heavy rain known as the Atmospheric River.  Fortunately, Taylor and I planned for the worst and had an amazing weekend indoors (well, mostly indoors).

As we mentioned last week, Taylor and I both started long course training this week.  Taylor’s prepping for Vineman 70.3, and I’ve recently elected to swap my Wildflower Olympic registration for Wildflower Long Course – the first of my two 70.3 races this year leading up to Ironman Lake Tahoe.  Both of our plans call for long bike rides on Saturday and long runs on Sunday, and we were determined to complete both workouts in their entirety.

We went our separate ways to our gyms of choice and both planned to do some solo cycling tacked onto a spin class.  I finished most of Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol – an acceptably bad flick that almost made me forget that I was on the human hamster wheel for almost two hours.  To top it off, I finished an hour-long spin class, logging just under three hours of cycling for the weekend.  Taylor also broke the two hour mark, but bowed out of spin class round two early when the class transformed into a dance club.  Not to worry – SF Beer Week was there to quench our thirst.

La Trappe – a local Belgian bar hosted one of the first events of beer week: beer tasting with the De Brabandere brewery hosted by a fifth-generation master brewer.  We tasted almost the entire line of their beers, both standard (pilsner is their most famous) and speciality including “1894” – a barrel aged pilsner mixed with sour ale hand delivered from the brewery; we tasted the first batch on US-soil.  Needless to say, we were thrilled to try this very special beer and hear from the brewer firsthand; La Trappe did very well to put this event together.

After caving and activating TV for the first time in over four years for the sake of watching the Olympics, Taylor and I braved the intermittent downpours for our long run.  Although it wasn’t quite as “eventful” as our 25/50 mile jaunts through the Headlands in December 2012, it was too wet to snap pictures of our exploits.  One week and 12 workouts later, I’m feeling strong and energized going into week two of Ironman training.  Taylor and I will be spending this week on base work ahead of our trip to Houston for a wedding on Saturday; here’s to hoping that the rain doesn’t follow us to Texas!