Do you think I can go 52 miles today?

Last month I covered 134.85 miles in my workouts. This month I'm only at 82.03 miles. I should be increasing mileage at this point! This is all because of those two weeks at the start of the month with just two workouts per week, then the third week with four workouts but no time on the bike. The bike really adds mileage quickly, and last month I had four straight weeks of consistent run/swim/run/swim workouts and one day of biking each week. I wonder if I should take the afternoon off and go ride 40 miles? I don't even know if I'm physically capable of doing that--it would mean I'd do nearly a metric century today (I already put on 14 miles with my commute this morning) and the last time I did that (the 100 Miles of Nowhere last year, where I did a metric century on a high school track) I was complete toast by the end, even though I think I was in better shape at that point than I am now. So doing a metric century at this point and on roads that have hills and stuff? I don't think I'd make it. OTOH, while 52 miles seems like a lot of riding at my current fitness level, 40 miles doesn't seem that bad. I could do 33 miles on the nice flat Baltimore-Annapolis trail and then one loop around the airport. Or I could stop thinking about this since I have a ton of work to do and can't take the afternoon off anyway and just admit that I need to get in more training in July.

So it looks like I'm going to end this month with 40 fewer miles logged than last month, which essentially is an entire week of workouts that I missed. Maybe I can pretend I took a vacation?

Yesterday's swim was slow and awful. Actually it wasn't any more awful than usual. I just hate swimming and really didn't want to do it yesterday. My ability to make excuses is amazing--the pool is open from 12 to 2 and I was at an off site meeting that ended around 11:45, so first I told myself that I had to run some errands on the way back to work - which I didn't - so I wouldn't make it to the open pool hours, then I said that I had to eat lunch before swimming - which I did - and it wouldn't be safe to go swimming so soon afterwards (which is b.s.), and then I told myself that I could swim after work instead when I wouldn't be in such a rush. Then I realized that I was just trying to put off something I didn't want to do and wouldn't want to do any more at 5:00 than I did at 1:00 and I knew I'd be irritated with myself if I didn't go swim, so I sucked it up and went. It was no fun. I was glad when it was over.