When the Spirit Moves You

I've tried to write this post several times, but it never comes out right. Trying to describe an incredible, larger-than-life experience is always difficult. The moment is so meaningful, so vivid, but when I try to capture it in words, it turns to cardboard and sawdust on my fingertips. If I try to transcribe it directly out of my journal, it sounds hokey and overblown, yet those were my exact emotions at the time. But at the same time, it was so important to me in the moment that I grabbed my journal the second I got back from a run and wrote furiously until it was all there on paper. And try as I might, I can't turn my back on it so here I am trying to put it into words once more.

It helps to understand that I'm not a very religious person. Spiritual, yes, deeply so. But the insides of churches have very rarely felt to me to be full of the spirit of God. Instead, God seems to descend on me at odd moments and I can feel as full of spirit on a sidewalk bandaging my child's skinned knee and wiping tears as I can in the most glorious cathedral with choirs singing like angels. God always seems to take me unawares, like he's sneaking up on me as an ambushing cat, ready to take my feet out from under me and my breath away. That's certainly how it felt this last week when I was camping with some friends. My kids hung out at the campsite with them and I decided to take a little run up a trail that ran along the river. The elevation was over 3,500 feet, and the trail went uphill first before I'd turn around and come back. So I anticipated that the run might be difficult (as a lifelong anemic, elevation is particularly taxing for me)

I wasn't really prepared for a God Moment as I started out. True, the river is beautiful. Perhaps one of the most beautiful in the world. And as the trail wound beside it, the sparkling white of the foaming rapids and the ice-cold blue that lay just under the surface began to take me out of my body to a wondrous place. Here is what I wrote when I tore back into our campsite:

The trail is downhill in both directions. It's not rational, but it's the only explanation for how fast my feet are flying along. I'm not normally a runner but a plodder, a mid-pack shuffler whose all-out sprints don't approach a true marathoner's average mile pace. But today I am flying down the trail like a wild galloping mustang, like a cheetah in full stretch, like Jackie Joyner-Kersee pounding down the track, my feet flying behind me in giant fluid strides. The path winds over roots and rocks, twists and turns, ascends and descends, but my feet never falter. They are as sticky as the pads of mountain goats' hooves, as sure, as steady. On my left is the Mackenzie river, a fern-wrapped flow of turquise-iced water of such astonishing beauty and power that we named our firstborn child after it.
















At the start of my little jog, I stopped to gaze at the roar of a falls, the water foaming away beneath me into dells so greened with moss that you couldn't paint such a scene without it looking unbelievably garish. My heart was struck with a joy so overwhelming that tears sprang outwards from my eyes. I am sobbing. "My God, my God, my God", the only words my lips could form. And then, as if called, the Spirit infused my body and I began to truly run. Run in a way I have never run in my life. So fast, so fluidly, as if the rules of gravity and motion no longer applied to my body. Thogh I had been panting as I jogged along before in the thin air of 3,500' of elevation, now my lungs fill easily and completely with no audible sound. My feet effortlessy form to the rocky contours of the trail. A hymn flows full-force into my ears: "And he will lift you up on eagle's wings" and the words make total and complete sense. I am being lifted, borne on a tide of spirit I have only rarely experienced. I close my eyes and continue to run, down the rock-tumbled trail, and I know I will not fall. I cannot explain it in any other way: I am surrounded and filled and borne up by God.

I've meant to go for a short run on this trail. I have meant to turn around at twenty minutes and head back to camp. On an impulse, I open my eyes and look at my watch: forty-three minutes have passed. I realize I have no idea if I have been running this whole time, or whether I stood sobbing by the waterfall for longer than I thought, or whether the entire space-time continuum has ceased to apply to me. All of a sudden, I worry that my friends will wonder where I am - I will be gone double the amount of time I told them if it takes me the same amount of time to get back. Reluctantly, afraid that the feeling will stop, I turn around and head back the way I came. But I am still this amazing spirit-person hybrid. I fly back down the trail, remembering that many times running in my hometown (otherwise known as Track Town USA) I have watched Olympic hopefulls and record-setters blast by me on the trail and wish that just for a moment I could know what it feels like to run like them. To run as if running is what your body is meant to do. It's how I feel when I swim at times, as if I was especially designed to do this one perfect action. And now I do know. Now my body is the best running machine in the world. I'm all legs and stride and rhythm and it's simply beautiful.

I slow as I approach camp. For once in my life, I know I could keep on running for hours. I would never tire, I could keep this feeling going, prolong the moment. But I veer off of the trail toward our campsite. Above all else, I am a mother, and worrying my kids is not worth even a moment of utter perfection such as this. Once I see them playing happily in the forest, I grab my journal and begin to write. I don't want to forget any of this, how it felt in the moment. I am afraid it will fade away from me and I will even begin to doubt its truth.

So that is what I wrote. I would have doubted that I had run so fast but for the fact that the next day I had incredible soreness in all-new muscles in my legs. The backs of my hamstrings were very tight as if I had been running with a full-stride like after a day of sprints. So I have no doubts that for that hour or more on the trail, I was for once a runner in every sense of the word. For a few days afterwards, my legs retained some of the memory of that run. I was faster, more fluid, running came easier. But it has faded away, and I have returned to what I always am: a middle-pack shuffler doing my best out there. Like Charlie in the book Flowers for Algernon, I have only vague memories of what it felt like.

Just for a moment though, my legs were filled with spirit and I ran in the most magical place in earth.

It's About Time: Faves and Raves

Been meaning to post these for awhile, but summer ramps up and things get busy. Here's a few for now...

















Favorite Food for Fueling a Workout: "Special Eggs" - that's what my kids call this dish. Believe it or not, the kids will choose this over a PB&J any day! I think the Trader Joe's sample lady for introducing us to this one. Whip up some eggs and milk in a bowl and add a spoon or two of sun-dried tomato pesto and throw it into a cast-iron skillet. When the eggs are done, add fresh feta (I like sheep's milk feta best, the cow's milk stuff tastes like it went through the washer with my cool-max shirts after a hard run. gag.) Top with chives. For us, this recipe is almost a 100-mile meal.














We've been getting raw goat's milk from a local couple who keep exceptionally good dairy goats, and we have our own chickens for eggs. The chives are growing in our garden, and the feta comes from the farmer's market. Only the pesto came from the store, and after this year's tomato crop we'll be able to make that at home too, I hope.

Least Favorite Food: Anything that takes time to cook. I hate cooking in the summer. Our conversations go like this: "What do you want for dinner?" "I dunno. I don't feel like cooking." "Me neither. Let's snack." "okay"

Favorite Music to Run To: Black Horse & the Cherry Tree by KT Tunstall. It's definitely got the beat and the tune for an iPod perennial fave, and the rhythm for good running company.

Quote of the Week: I saw this little gem from Walt Whitman and it just stuck in my head:

And your very flesh shall be a great poem.

Isn't that exactly what it feels like when you have one of those days when your body feels at one with the universe - your feet feel like they're flying, not pounding, and everything just flows?? A great poem. On other days, my very flesh feels like something written by a bad grammar school student, but that's another issue...

Workout of the Week: Running: 3 x 1 Mile Repeats with 1/4 recovery jog in between. This one comes from a thread on running at the Trifuel forums. I tried to do them at my target race pace, with each one just a little faster than the last one. I am happy to say that all three came in under 8 minutes per mile for the first time ever!! That's a big deal for me.

Pushing Pills

I'm not normally a supplement kind of person. In fact, I'm the person who normally forgets to take a multi-vitamin for days on end, so I'm the least likely athlete to be taking lots of L-Whatevertine and D-Ribowhatsis. I have to take iron daily for my pernicious anemia, but that's about all I can manage. With one exception.

On the recommendation of my chiropractor, who I see at least a few times a year when everything starts getting all out-of-whacky in my neck, back, shoulders, or wherever, I started taking this enzyme supplement stuff called Wobenzym, especially at times when I my muscles were more sore than usual. I was amazed at how much better I felt, especially after hard workouts. But I really didn't know how much of a difference it was making until I ran out. Within a couple of days I literally felt like I had aged ten years. I woke up stiff and it took a couple of hours to shake out. By the time I had gotten around to picking up another bottle a week later, I was sold, an enzyme junkie.

Then one day I stepped off of our deck and my ankle turned underneath me. Coming off of a higher plane, it really turned my ankle hard. I was sure I'd be out of training for a week, maybe several weeks, it hurt so badly. By coincidence, I had a chiro appointment that morning and I asked him what he recommended besides the usual ice, elevation, rest. He said to start taking several Wobenzyms every three hours. By evening time, my ankle felt remarkably good. By the next morning there was no swelling or noticeable pain or stiffness whatsoever. By the next day, I was running six miles. I've since recommended this stuff to people I know who have had muscle injuries and everyone has sworn by it. I have no connection to the Wobenzym people whatsoever, just passing on something that really works well for me, especially for injuries.

Do We Ever Wear Regular Clothes?

So I'm hanging out my laundry and realizing that the line is full of four karate gis, along with obis and karate t-shirts, plus five pairs of biking shorts (his-n-hers), running shorts, Miss A's dance leotards, camis, tights and "dancer pants" (in case you wouldn't know they are "dancer pants", they say "Dance!" in big pink letters down the legs), six technical t-shirts, three running bras, and eighty-five million mismatched socks. Oh, and one pair of capris, two non-workout t-shirts and a few pairs of underwear (which Miss A. and Mr. M. both insist I hang in the middle of the laundry so that they won't be "humiliated" by anyone walking through our backyard who might happen to glance up and see them.)

I think this family only wears real clothing on a semi-regular basis. Well, my hubby does have to don suits and/or business casual when he flies, but he washes and irons that stuff himself, thank god. One nice thing about marrying a former military man is at least he can iron, since I never learned how. And why bother, when I never wear real clothes anyhow?

A Little Blue (ICE)

I have been told that Mercury is in retrograde. I have no idea what that means, but it's supposedly bad juju for all of us until Mercury turns around and starts heading through the zodiac the right direction. Supposedly, this retrograde business screws up all kinds of things like, say, hard drives (Mercury especially relates to all things regarding communication, like computers and such). So now I know why my hard drive went kaput, I blame Mercury. And since today pretty much went down the toilet at 10:49 am, I think I'll blame Mercury for that one, too.

In karate class today we were doing flag sparring as our game at the end of class. This involves everyone sticking a small flag in their belt and then you run around trying to steal everyone else's flag before they can get yours. Apparently, I am getting somewhat of a reputation in class for being, well shall we say just a wee bit competitive at this sort of thing. You know you're trouble when the teenage boys start cheering when you are selected to be on their team. So I can't help it, I'm a gigantic kid at heart. A gigantic kid with an even larger competitive streak (my previous post about taking the easy road with Coach Joy notwithstanding). So there I was running around like a crazy fool trying to grab other people's flags when this guy and I face off. He lunges for my flag, I lunge for his (remember they are tucked into belts at waist level). My right eyeball comes directly into contact with his lunging hand, it's shiner time for me.

Luckily I managed to get some ice on it quickly, head for home (with my head feeling like it was splitting in two the whole way) and down some arnica to help with the bruising. A friend came and took my kids over to their house to play and I lay down on the couch and promptly went to sleep! This is a very unusual occurrence. Aside from my pregnancy-induced narcolepsy years ago in which I famously fell asleep in meetings at work, I can count on my fingertips the number of times I have slept in the middle of the day. Even Ironman training could hardly induce my body to take a much-needed nap. Now my husband can and will fall asleep the second he sits down and stops moving (probably a holdover from his Army days, that), but me? No way. Sometimes I think though when your body goes through some kind of shock or brief trauma, it lets you check out for awhile and so I didn't wake up for over two hours. I'll probably be up until 3:00 am but for the first time in ages we have absolutely nothing to do tomorrow. Nothing! So I will sleep in, and hope my eye doesn't look too Rocky Balboa on me.

Meet Coach Joy

When I was in Florida during the week preceding Ironman Florida, I had several conversations with other athletes (regular ol' age-groupy type athletes like me, not like Elite, headed-for-Kona-podium types) where they made pronouncements like "Oh, my coach says I have to do a 20 minute run today." or "My coach says I'm not supposed to swim until tomorrow." and sometimes even followed up by the question: "What does your coach have you doing this week?"

My answer: "Whatever the hell I want to!" If the water is blue and perfect and flat and the sun is shining, she wants me to go for a swim. If I feel like I really need to see the first part of the bike course in order to feel good coming out of T1, she wants me to bike. If my legs feel like they need a little shaking out, she wants me to run. See, my coach is Coach Joy, and she wants me to train in a way that brings me...well...Joy!

Really, I got to feeling like I must be the only person doing an Ironman without a personal coach. And the only person not consulting my charts, heartrate monitors, glucose levels, anaerobic thresholds, and god knows what other things they've come up to measure on triathletes. Now don't get me wrong, if these things really float your boat, if it keeps you motivated and totally happy to consult the numbers, the graphs, the periodization bibles, etc. then I think that's all good and fine. But it seems like for so many people, it just looks like it stresses them out. They worry too much, and some of the joy leaches away from what is really an amazing thing - the ability to move your body through space under your own power with grace and speed.

I admit it, I've been thinking about getting a coach this year. It seems like kind of a strange thing to do after 21 years in the sport, but I've come to recognize that I've still got some speed left and could be faster if I actually maybe say planned my workouts with some sort of organization and goal in mind. But my fear is that if I hire Coach Jim with all of his numbers and tables, Coach Joy might just abandon me. If I start focusing on just becoming faster, I'm not sure if I'll get as much out of it as I do right now.



















Last night I took a wonderful bike ride. I had gone out to the river with my kids and a friend and her kids and she agreed to drive them all home while I took my bike. So I got to ride on roads I'd never been on, and since the bicycling map I just bought to replace my old one turned out to be blank on the actual map side (I need a refund on that one), I just had to go by instinct and hope that the roads would connect where I thought they would and I'd be able to find a route home (I did). It was 7:30 and the sun was slanting in from the West across the fields and everything looked golden and lovely. It took me an hour and 15 minutes to get home in which time I consulted not a watch nor a monitor, but just how my body felt and how hard I wanted to push myself up and over the big hill between the river and town. If, instead of enjoying this lovely ride, I was stressing over the fact that I was supposed to be doing sprints on a flat course or hill repeats or a long slow run or something, I'm not sure if I would've enjoyed it as much as I did.

And that brings me to my theory: Anything done with joy gives you 200% of the benefits of the same action done without joy. Two people could consume the same meal, say a gorgeous Italian dinner with sausage and pasta and a garden salad. One person is savoring every bite, tasting the sun and the soil from the grove that grew the olive oil that they dip their bread in. The other person is worrying about how many carbs are in the pasta. I think the food nourishes the first person's body twice as much as it nourishes the second, even though it has exactly the same nutrients, calories, vitamins, and minerals. I believe exercise is the same. A workout done with joy gives you twice (or more) of the benefit of one done with stress. A workout you want to do can double the results of a workout you feel you have to do. So there may come a time when I'll hire Coach Jim with his times and tables. If I want to qualify for Kona in a few years, I might just give him a ring. But for now, I'm sticking with Coach Joy. Let's see.... what do I feel like doing for a workout today???? The sun is shining and the outdoor pool just opened. I think I'll swim!

Requiem For A Hard Drive

Alas poor hard drive, I knew him well. But he's dead and gone and a new one has (thankfully) taken his place. It'll be awhile before I have even half of the stuff uploaded that I need to, but at least I am up and running and it's a start.

Last weekend was crazy-busy with all of the end-of-term recitals and programs (though we are homeschoolers, everything seems to go with the school calendar for some reason). So I missed the first group open-water swim at the lake last Saturday (funny thing, I couldn't squeeze it in between our karate belt tests, a birthday party, and a my daughter's huge dance performance), but I did manage to make it to my Master's swim group this morning. That ended up being a good thing as I have been in the workout doldrums for more than a week. Everything feels wrong, everything's sore, I'm not working out with enough volume or intensity for it to be overtraining, but it's probably related to overall life intensity and not getting enough sleep to really recuperate. So today's swim was a breath of fresh air. Finally it felt like my body was working right again. All last week it felt like I'd been taken apart by some crazed factory worker and put back together all wrong. Now at least my arms and legs are working in the right directions.

I also took the liberty of ordering myself some new running shoes this week after realizing that the last time I ordered them was early last fall! I usually don't let my shoes get this bad, and I think that's been responsible for much of my leg, hip, knee, and back pains this week. A new swimming suit was also in order as all of the elasticity suddenly failed in my old one, resulting in the straps rubbing my neck raw while the other end of the suit continually trying to crawl upwards in a most uncomfortable manner. And goggles as well, so maybe next week I can actually see something. So hopefully next week, having outfitted myself appropriately and maybe even gotten some rest, I can feel like the athlete I used to be (at least a week or so ago).

Bugger Bugger Bugger

Actual cut and paste from my call to Product Support yesterday:


1:15:11 PM Me: My desktop computer has a corrupt system file and can no longer boot even to Windows. The file is c:\windows\system32\config\system

1:16:26 PM Useless Support Person: I understand your concern, not to worry, I will be glad to help you.

(endless rehashing of things I had already tried deleted here...)

...one hour later...

2:14:50 PM Useless Support Person: The system files are corrupted.We are trying to access them, however, it is not going through.
2:15:23 PM Me: yes, that is what I know. That is what I told you *an hour ago*


Arrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. And you know it is a bad sign when, after an hour, Useless Support Person says "Do you any data on this computer that is important to you??"

Needless to say, my computer is toast. I'm posting this from my hubby's computer but I may not be around online much until I (hopefully, without undue loss of life, limb, or data) recover my computer. I probably shouldn't have laughed so hard at J's posts about customer service. I'm singing the same sad tune now....

And Then Solitude...

It was a beautifully sunny day on Thursday, supposed to hit 90 degrees here, and I realized that school gets out next week, which means the beaches will all get crowded. Time to take advantage of that homeschoolers' free time thing and get the kids to the beach. Actually, we ended up going to this lake right next to the beach with lots of sand dunes around, a favorite place for them to play. We piled the van full of them and their friends, a bunch of sand and water toys and headed for the coast. It was cooler than here, and strands of mist alternately covered the sun and revealed it. The wind picked up and died down so we were freezing one minute and warm the next, but of course the kids jumped right into the lake and swam endlessly, not to mention having sand-mud fights, burying themselves in sand, and finding all sorts of other ways to get sand in every conceivable part of their bodies.

Usually when we go there, I manage to sneak in an open water swim while a friend watches the kids, and this time was no exception. It was a little bit like jumping rope. Your friends are twirling the rope and you're watching it go by, looking for just the right time to jump in. I watched the fog swirl in and retreat, felt the chilly wind blow and abide, and looked for just the right time to jump in that slightly-too-cold (and I didn't bring my wetsuit!) water. Finally it was calm and sunny and I went for it and swam a mile or so around the edges of the lake.

At the start of every open-water swimming season, I somehow manage to forget just exactly how wonderful it is. So every time it surprises me just a little, how the water looks like champagne when the sunlight hits the small bubbles rising off of my hands entering the water, how the splashes sparkle in the air, how smooth it feels to just keep on swimming with no turns and no walls. And then again, how absolutely freaky it is when you run into The Dreaded Lakeweed for the first time each year. I try not to panic and thrash about and get dragged down to the depths by the creeping tentacles of lakeweed, but I swim away quickly nonetheless. Other than the lakeweed though, it's just me out there, in the silence and the sunshine, with the osprey swooping overhead and the tatters of mist blowing by. I felt like I could swim forever, but eventually reluctantly head back to shore. I had a small twinge of sadness when I reached the shore and my Sabre wasn't waiting anxiously there for me. You see, although he was half Labrador, he never liked to swim, and he always felt that I was in imminent danger when I went into the water, so he would hover along the shoreline, fretting and whining the entire time I was swimming. My friends got used to this and I came to just expect it - my furry sentinel watching over me. So it was hard when, for the first time, he wasn't there. I'd like to think that somewhere in the sunbeams hitting the lake, his protective and loving spirit was standing guard still.

After everyone was good and tired out, we piled back in the troop-hauler and headed wearily for home. The kids almost fell asleep in their plates of pasta, and they left a small sandbar in the bottom of the bathtub, but the inaugural beach day was as wondrous as it has always been. Here's to more yards in the great blue solitude.

Chitter Chatter

I usually bike alone. I have lots of friends who ride, but for many of them their schedules are reasonably predictable - they work, they go for a lunchtime ride, or a 5:30 ride, or a Saturday morning ride. Me, I go for the spontaneous ride, the scrounge-a-babysitter ride, the hubby's-home-early ride, the whenever-it-works ride. So I put 95% of my miles on my wheels keeping myself company. Not that I mind. I'm an introvert in a family of extroverts. An experience that is summed up extraordinarily well by this article, pointed out by blogger, writer, and introvert extraordinaire Dorcas. Time alone is precious, silence golden, the miles spin by and I utter a small sigh of relief at being able to recharge long enough to be swept up by the energy of my hubby and kids again.

But today our neighbor Richard called. I think he was actually calling to see if hubby wanted to go riding, but hubby wisely and happily asked if I wanted to go with him instead (wisely because hubby has been out of town for a week and I'm itching to go ride!) This turned out to be a great thing. For one thing, Richard is one of those most marvelous of riders. Someone who is faster than you, and so pushes your envelope, but doesn't rub it in or make you pay for it. He dropped me on a hill or two, but hovered patiently at the top until I caught up. He's also one of the great conversationalists of the world. Walk by his house and you might not get home for an hour. On top of that, we have a ton of things in common: we're both pilots, WWII history buffs (recently ran into him touring a B-17 at the airport, not surprisingly!), both own Triumph motorcycles, are passionate photographers, have skydived, travelled, scuba dived on WWII wrecks in the South Pacific. He's also had a lot of experiences that I've never had, he's been in the Navy, and has been an antique dealer and expert. He's got a thousand stories.

I couldn't believe how fast a two and a half hour ride flew by. It felt like an hour, maybe less. And we had these unreal winds to boot. I mean it's always windy around here, but these were great gusting blasts (most of my laundry was blown off of my line when I got home). A solo ride in such conditions would've been a tough slog. So today I'm grateful for the good luck that landed us two houses down from a fellow cyclist and generally cool person, and for the opportunity to be out in the sunshine, the fresh air, with good strong legs propelling me along, and the bonus of a friend.

Thanks For Making Me Think

A friend of mine who is a writer, Dorcas tagged me from her blog Life in the Shoe. The challenge was to list five blogs that make me think. In trying to decide which of the many blogs I love to include, it made me realize how much the words that others write out here do make me think. Especially the posts that are not so much about heartrates, repeats, tempos, and such but about their lives and how training for triathlons intersects the essential components of existence: family, friends, jobs, the environment. So here's my post on Blogs That Make Me Think, and I wanted to take a moment to thank all the bloggers out there whose words help me see my world in new and different ways, and offer a window into their own unique perspective on the world.

If all electricity suddenly went out and the internet disappeared with a *poof*, I would miss some of these perspectives. I would wonder about you all, think about the challenges you've written about and there would be a void where your stories now are. When blogging, it sometimes feels like your words are just going out into the air like dandelion seeds blowing in the wind. The thing is, you never know when a new weed is going to spring up (I'm the queen of bad analogies this morning, apparently).

Missed, By An Arm Warmer

So I was standing on the lakeshore yesterday morning in about 41 degrees of horribly damp cold, with rain streaming down my ears and saying to myself "This is why I never do early season triathlons in the Northwest. Sorry, make that the NorthWet." It didn't help that I'm still trying to shake this chest cold (so why am I out in the freezing drizzle doing a triathlon? I have no answer for that one.) And it doubly-didn't help that the long-sleeved wetsuit I had rented for the occasion (see previous comment about never doing early season tri's, I've never needed a long-sleeved wetsuit before...) didn't work. As in leaked water like a sieve. As in didn't fit right or something (good thing I tried it out before the race). So I'm standing there on the lakeshore in my sleeveless warm-weather-wimpy-triathlete farmer john style wetsuit getting ready to go into the water. In the words of Han Solo, I had a bad feeling about this.

That bad feeling was one of my intuitions, those things I've learned to listen to now that I'm old enough to believe I'm more or less mortal. And it was based on the fact that this is a pretty hilly, curvy bike course with many of those curves coming sharply at the bottom of those hills. I'm not the world's best technical cyclist on a good day, and this was not looking to be a good day. So I told myself (again, and again, and again) that I was not going to try to qualify for Nationals in this race, and therefore I did not need to kill myself on a slick wet corner going hell bent for leather on my bike. Having decided that one up front, I also decided to put on some arm warmers when I got to T1, judging (quite rightly) that my arms would be nearly frozen coming out of the lake and riding through the biting wind would be unpleasant at best. If I wanted to qualify, of course I would've never taken the time to pull arm warmers onto wet arms with nearly-numb fingers, but I was not going to worry about it this time.

Out onto the bike course, I played it safe. Using my patented Hill Weenie steering techniques, I probably frustrated the hell out of the riders around me, three guys I kept passing on the uphills who then usually passed me on the downhills. But, given my cornering history (remember my day with Billy Blaze?) and the steep dropoffs to the lake on the side of this road, I didn't really want to go riding off into the puckerbrush again, so I didn't have a very fast bike time, in fact I think it was the worst I've posted on this course, ever. But, I was alive and not covered in road rash, and given that the race organizers said that there would be absolutely no pickup of cyclists on the course ("you'll just have to walk" was the answer one gave to the question of whether or not cyclists with injuries or technical problems would be assisted back to the transition area), I was doing good as I rolled into T2.

Well, good until I put my running shoes onto my frozen slabs of meat...er....feet. And then tried to run on said slabs, which I pounded senselessly into the pavement over and over thinking some blood might start flowing to them eventually. All that run training I've been doing to get faster and I was looking like a Frankenstein monster on crack out there. Thud thud thud. At this point, I was apparently in the lead, however. No one bothered to tell me this (usually a race official or kind spectator will at least mention it!) so I didn't know until I was getting close to the run turn-around, which was also when another woman passed me. Still, first off the swim and bike, and a good mile into the run course is not a bad day under such conditions. Another gal caught me, and then one more just before the finisher's chute (grrrrrr) but my legs weren't going to go any faster, so I just kept chugging along as best as I could. Very very surprisingly, I turned in a PR for the run on this course for me, at 25 minutes for the 5k. Don't know how I managed to do that, except that maybe that run training and all of those hill repeats did actually pay off on this hilly course. That's pretty exciting for me, and gives me some hope for later in the season with non-frozen feet.

I ended up 2nd in my age group, 4th overall (though I'm listed in the race results as being male, the final indignity of the day I suppose), and there was only a minute and a half separating those fisrt 4 places, probably about the time it took me to screw around with my arm warmers in my slow T1, so the joke's on me there. In a way, it was a cool race though because it was different for me (early season, very indecisive about how to approach it and what to wear). I felt like a bit of a rookie, and sometimes it's good to push your own personal envelope a bit. I'm encouraged by my running, and not too discouraged by my slow bike time because I hope that these road conditions won't be repeating themselves in any further races this season!

Faves and Raves

I guess I can't call these "weekly faves and raves" because I always forget to post them, so it's more like "whenever I feel like it and get around to it faves and raves." In no particular order, here's a few:

Favorite Activity of the Week: This one's a no brainer: Mother's Day. And not just because the kids brought me breakfast in bed (cooked by the ever-fabulous hubby), flowers, chocolate, my Sudoku book, stuffed animals to snuggle, etc. but because it's always a reminder of how grateful I am for my own mother (who met us in Disneyland and is now off on a solo adventure around the country) but also how grateful I am to be a mom to my two awesome kids. The entire day on Sunday was just so perfect. I got the royal treatment, got to go on my long run in the sunshine (which felt just great after a spurt of cold weather), got surprised by my dad and step-mom who came to visit in the afternoon, got to take the tandem bikes down to the park by the river with the kids, and went out for some late Thai food on the way home. Nothing could've been better.

Kid Quote of the Week: This one's from my son, who was trying to convince my hubby to violate the "no food upstairs" rule in order to bring me breakfast in bed. I overheard this from down below: "Dad, it'c called Breakfast in Bed. The operative words here are In Bed, otherwise it's just called Breakfast."

Quote of the Week: "Happy people plan actions, they don't plan results." - Denis Waitley. This one is particularly appropriate for me this week. I've been waffling off and on about trying to qualify for Nationals this year, since they're in Oregon for once (which I didn't know last summer, or I would've done a race then to qualify.) The last qualifying race that I can get to is this coming weekend, and I originally registered for the sprint (I don't usually race this early at all in the season, wimp that I am!), but then found out that only the Olympic was an official qualifier. To complicate matters, I've been sick with the remainders of a chest cold. Could I do the Olympic? Should I? Today my hubby looked at me and said "You know, you could just find a nice race later in the summer and qualify for next year and just stop worrying about it right now. What a wise guy (and I mean that in a good way). So yes, I'm going to do the sprint tri this weekend. No, I'm not worried about qualifying, if I do that would be icing, but I'm going to plan my actions and not worry about the results, and most of all enjoy it!

Favorite food: Always a hard one to decide, but I do try to keep this relevant to training for triathlons, so the chocolate souffle is pretty much out. I'd say now that we're reliably into the warm weather, it's smoothie time. Today's offering includes blackberries we picked last summer and froze, eggs from our very own lady chickens, and goat's milk from a nearby farmer (don't wrinkle your nose, when you get fresh goat's milk from someone who knows how to keep dairy goats, it's very good stuff). A dash of vanilla and it's perfect on a warm spring afternoon before or after a ride.

Workout of the Week: Over-under intervals on the bike. 1 minute max effort, 2 minutes just under the anaerobic threshold, repeat 10x. I actually did 5, took a break, then did 5 more. Wonder how the legs will feel tomorrow!

Music to Run By: I have none for this week. I loaded up my iPod with a Learning Italian CD and buon giorno'd my way down the trail. We are now definitely planning on a multi-week family tandem biking excursion in Italy for '08, and as I'm the family linguist I figured on getting a jump on Italian. So far I've managed to amaze the kids with how much I can pick up just from knowing French and some Spanish (as well as a smattering of Latin and a musical background). I also made an interesting discovery about myself. I'm such a completely visual (and completely non-auditory) learner that I can repeat out loud any word or phrase on the Italian CD that I can visualize in my head. If I can't visualize it, I can't say it. I remember this from learning French in college. We would watch movies in French and my comprehension dropped from 95% to about 10% if a character turned their back to the screen. I was actually lip-reading in French, not hearing it. Isn't that weird? It may explain why I can never remember anyone's name... unless I write it down or see it on a nametag.

Chapter Seven, In Which Robin Meets Badmouth Bob, Billy Blaze, and Takes an Excursion Into the Puckerbrush

While not quite as frightening as J's encounter with bicyclist Bob (scroll down to March 15, but I warn you may pee your pants laughing, this is the funniest blog in tri-town), I had some very interesting run-ins with the local two-wheeled loonies this week.

First, there was Badmouth Bob (or BB for short). I was cycling to work and only a block from the club when I pull up next to another cyclist on a commuter bike at a stop light, an act I would soon come to regret. We're right near the downtown bus depot, and a bus turns right on a red light directly in front of us (though not close enough to put us in any danger). Badmouth Bob, who up until this point looked relatively sane, takes a deep breath and yells at the top of his lungs "The Transit District can lick my hairy nutsack!". All eyes from pedestrians, car drivers, people waiting for busses, and the usual crowd in front of the library are now focused our way. Did I mention I'm a block from where I work, and am sitting right next to Bobby Boy, as if we're cycling together? As the light turns green and he moves off, I decide to put as much distance between us as possible, which is a good thing because he repeats his little proclamation (in a voice loud enough to carry a good half mile) over and over again as he pedals away. When I've finished racking my bike, I can still here him shouting his displeasure with the transit district into the sunset.

So that was day one of my cycling week. On day two, I've dropped my daughter off at her play rehearsal and headed off down the nearby bike path en route to a nice 90 minute ride along the rolling hills by the river. It's a gorgeous early evening, and I'm enjoying just cruising along. I'm coming up on a cyclist in front of me, decked out in long cycling tights and riding a mountain bike with knobby tires for all he's worth. Seriously, the dude is doing almost 19 mph on this mountain bike, and he's standing up and pumping every minute or so, going hell bent for leather. Still, heroic though his efforts might be, I was gaining on him steadily over the course of a mile or two, if for no other reason than I'm on aerobars and skinny tires. So I'm doing about 22 when I pull out, give him an "on your left" and pass him, not thinking anything of it.

The river looks gorgeous to my right and I'm enjoying the light breeze and sunny weather as I cruise along when I notice this weird sound, kinda like heavy breathing off of my left shoulder. A sunny patch of ground reveals his shadow, still pumping legs like crazy, right on my rear tire. So that's a little strange, but maybe he's on testosterone overload or doesn't like being passed by chicks (quite unfortunately, that's not an infrequent occurrence if you're a female cyclist). As I brake to make a turn off of the path, he whizzes past me and resumes manic pumping action. Of course, he also drops back down to 19 mph, now that he's lost my draft. I'll take a second just to point out here that this little event happens in races all the time, which is really hard on those female cyclists near the front of the pack. Some guys (no matter how much slower they're going) will just not be passed by a woman. It's downright maddening in a race (where it's costing me time), but is merely irritating on the bike path.

So I slow down for a little bit until there's another straight section and it's safe to pass again. A little bit more curt with the "on your left" and I'm past. Now we've gone up and over a bridge and are coming down the other side, picking up speed. My bike computer reads 24, then 26mph. At 28 we come out from behind some trees and I get another shadow glance, the dude is still glued onto my back wheel. At 28.5 on a mountain bike! Ordinarily, my hat would be off to him, but at this point it's starting to feel downright creepy. Interestingly, my girlfriends I've told this story to have nodded their heads - scary stuff. Guys look at me oblivious: what's the problem, other than a dude in need of an attitude adjustment? So here's a Public Service Announcement: Guys, girls can get a bit freaked out when they're being chased. Many of us have had unsavory, dangerous, or downright victimizing experiences with men in our lives, and while it doesn't make us walking paranoids, it's just not nice to chase us around (when you don't know us of course, if you happen to be my husband, go right ahead!)

So I did what seemed to be the best thing to my rabbit-being-chased-by-fox brain at the time: accelerated. I poured on the gas and took the speed up a few more notches. Dude is still there, ragged breathing and all. I'm so focused on getting away from this guy, I forget that the bike path is almost ending and there's a big sweeping curve coming up. I'm sure you know where this is going. I realize about 1/8th of the way into the curve that there's no way in hell I'm going to make it without completely dumping my bike over at a speed that will ensure most of my skin gets left on the pavement. So I straighten up and ride right off the path into the weeds.

Now I'm hurtling along over the rocky ground, thigh-high weeds and thorns whipping past my legs, and, as if in slow motion, the guy goes past me on my right on the bike path, his mouth in an "O", and all he says is "Wow". I manage to yell something like "wild ride" as I hold tight to the handlebars with both hands in a death grip. I manage to brake to a stop about fifty yards off the path, just before I would've hurtled off an embankment into a gigantic blackberry thicket. After checking my tires for thorns, and letting all of the blood drain back out of my cheeks, I head back onto the path. There at the end is Blazin' Billy, turning around to speed back into town. After all, he appears to be a pretty normal guy out for a power ride after work, not some kind of freaky demon. He looks as if he is going to say something to me but I just keep pedaling, hoping futilely that he will forget what color jersey I'm wearing (orange with flowers and purple shorts, what are the odds??) or maybe that he ever saw any of this (where's that Jedi mind-control thing when you need it: "You didn't see anything. You can go about your business now.")

I'm a little nervous about what tomorrow's bike ride might bring, I could use a more normal ending to my week. I just hope that Badmouth Bob and Blazin' Billy don't have a cousin or something. Maybe this guy...

Jumping Back In To Life

It's funny how time flies by during the weeks here, but one week of vacation can simultaneously seem very fast and also very long. It seems like forever since I've been home, but the days went by quickly. I had planned on running a few times on vacation but that only materialized once. There's also not many good places to run around Mouseland, a lot of cars and traffic, long lights and freeway intersections make it more of an exercise in frustration than anything. I think I'll write to the Disney people and suggest that they open up the park in the early mornings for us running folk who need a place to stretch out our legs, that would be fun.
This is my favorite photo from Disney, I went on Autopia with Miss A., a ride that lets the kids drive. Made me wonder what I'll be going through in seven or eight years when she wants to drive for real!

Now I'm back and staring at a race in less than two weeks, that's about 10 days of workouts, taper, and boom it's here. I did get out on my bike yesterday for a brick of 1.5 hours, and then 45 minute run. Strangely enough, though I felt like I was sluggish my biking speed was quite fast. I guess a week of rest after four weeks of time trials left me with some oomph in my biking, that's nice! But running was dreadful and I've got just a few days to try and get some speed back into my legs or I'll be toast. And this tri has a hilly run, so I'm off tomorrow to start hitting the hills again.

Dispatch From Disney #1

So far it's Vacation 4, Workouts 0 (unless you count hoofing around Disneyland for 8 hours with two kids a workout, and judging by how tired I am at the end of the day, I guess I can!), but we're having a good time here. I've blasted the Evil Emporer Zurg numerous times on our journeys through the new Buzz Lightyear ride, and managed to convince my less-than-thrillseeking kids (don't ask me how mine and my husband's genetics combined to produce that) to try out the Matterhorn and the Haunted House. I haven't left the park with kids in tears, and my usual tactics (get there when the park opens, stay 'til 2:00, go back to the hotel to swim and lounge, return for evening and stay until park closes) are working well. We've done just about everything in two days and are off to SeaWorld and the San Diego Zoo, then back for one more day of Disney and then home. Whew!

I packed my running shoes but they haven't been out of the suitcase yet. I didn't even take this big of a break from my workouts after Ironman, so it feels very weird to be doing absolutely nothing at all. But sometimes I think maybe that's not such a bad thing, and regardless of the fact that I've got my first tri of the season in just a few weeks, it will probably be just fine. Call it a pre-taper maybe. Now I'm off to read the kids some Harry Potter and then to bed....

Woooofreakinhoooooo

When you do triathlons, there's usually a nice little grace period in between races that lets you more or less forget about the pain you were in during the race, and remember the nice afterglowy feeling of having completed it successfully. This is more or less the same mechanism that allows humans to have more than one child, because if we didn't forget a lot of childbirth it probably just wouldn't happen.

So all of that is different when you step out of the triathlon world and into a race series like the cycling time trials I've been doing. There's one of them a week, and that's just not enough time to forget how bad it hurt last time. It's also a little strange doing the same course over and over, although I guess the upside is that you get to know it a bit better over the course of time.

This Tuesday was the last race of the time trial series, and to tell the truth I wasn't really looking forward to it. By the time my busy Monday and Tuesday is almost done, it just seemed like one more thing I had to do. Get all the gear together, slog out to the countryside and ride fifteen miles as fast as I could, then check it off the Palm pilot for another day. Fortunately, my hubby and the kids came along this time and that always makes it more fun. Also fortunately I had taken a peek at the rankings going into the last race and knew how close it was, so that was a bit more encouragement to get out there and go hard. The weather cooperated this time and it was balmy and lovely as the sun faded toward the horizon. I got a slot close to the start along with a couple of teammates, so I could look forward to chasing them and being done early.

Although it was a bit windy and I didn't post my fastest time on the course (and in fact, missed 1st place in Cat4 for that race by a measly 4 seconds), I held on enough to get the overall series win in the Cat4 Women's division. Woooofreakinhoooooo! There was only a minute between myself and the next gal over four races, so that was very close. I'm pretty excited, and my hubby has been nodding knowingly because he's been saying for a long time I should try my hand at just cycle racing. It does make me wonder what I could do if I actually got on my bike more than twice a week (I'm sure I will once the weather gets warmer, I don't usually ride this much so early in the year!) I don't know though, it was a cool experience and all but I really discovered something about why I love triathlons so much. It's that you're always doing something different. Every race is different, each course, each transition, even the water in the same lake is never the same twice. This was fun, but my true love remains triathlon.

Birthday Week Ups and Downs

So last Thursday was my birthday, I turned 41 at eight-something in the evening as my mom likes to say. It's been a bit of a rollercoaster week including the birthday. My husband was out of town (hazards of marrying a pilot) but my son brought me a birthday card as soon as I opened my eyes, and my daughter went downstairs and came back up with breakfast in bed (toast, well buttered) which was very sweet. By the afternoon however, I was feeling really miserably sick. The sore lungs from last Tuesday's Time Trial in the freezing rain were turning into a hacking painful chest and I started to run a fever. It's pretty rare that I get sick, so it always throws me for a loop not to be feeling good. I didn't even exercise for two days in a row, so I knew I was really down with something.

Other than the cold though, many quietly good things happened in my birthday week. My mom and sister called, my friend K. wrote me a card about friendship that really touched my heart. Her daughter C. made my day by writing "No matter how old you get, I know you are a wild teenager at heart" in a card. High praise indeed from a teenager herself! And they gave me a copy of the comic book Zits, which has been cracking me up regularly. I guess it's good reading for a few short years when I'll have a teenager myself.

My hubby made my day by drawing an almost indecipherable wetsuit in his card to me. Luckily, he wrote the word "Aqua" on the leg of it, or I might've really wondered. So wheeeee! I get to get a full-sleeved wetsuit! My old farmer john style is on its last legs, so this is really exciting for me. Other women may want flowers, wine, and diamonds, but this man knows what really makes me happy: neoprene.

Other exciting things happened this week. I got my first photo into Flickr's Explore section (where they showcase interesting and enticing photos), which is a pretty big honor. It was this photo I took of the kids in the Sacramento River at sunset, one of my favorites. I also discovered that so far I am leading the Cat4 women in the Time Trial series I've been doing. Given that it's my first year taking a stab at bike racing, and I get on my bike maybe twice a week right now, I'm pretty pleased with that. We'll have to see how this last week goes though to see where I end up.

So all in all, not a bad way to get another year older. No big parties, no hoopla, just some quiet moments, cards, conversations with those who are closest to me. As I get older, I am happier with presence than presents. I'm thinking a lot about getting older this year, partly because 40 was a milestone year but 41 is now into the 40s. It's also partly because I can feel my body pushing back a little on me, resisting getting faster, getting a little more sore than it used to when I ask it to go hard. And partly because of this 365 Days of self portraits project on Flickr. Ever try to look at a hundred photos of yourself? It really makes you look at the person that you are right now, not the person you think you'd look like if you took the time to get all glammed up and take a studio portrait with nice lighting and all, but the person with spriggy grey hairs and a wrinkle or three or four. It's been an interesting experience since I'm usually the one taking photos of everyone else in my life, now suddenly I have all these photos of myself and it's kind of strange.

So I'll probably muse more on aging some other time, but for now it's nice to feel healthier again, and I'm grateful to be forty-one years old on this earth today and feeling the sun on my face.

The Swim Coach Writes...

I got to coach the Master's morning workout today and thought I'd share this fun set. This distance swim workout is a great one if you're either trying to work your way up to a specific distance, or improve your time at a particular distance: take the distance and break it down into an increasing set. This is how it works.

Say your distance is 750 yards (or meters), it can be broken down into this increasing set:

50
100
150
200
250

Now give yourself a little bit of rest in between each of those components, like 10 seconds after the 50, 20 after the 100, and 30 after each of the others (I don't like to go more than 30 or your heart rate comes down too much). By the end of the set, you've done the distance with some breaks to make it easier on you. You can repeat the set as many times as you want.

If you're going for a time, set an interval instead of a specific number of seconds. So, if you were hoping to hit a 1:30 interval per 100 in your 750, you could swim the 50 on :55, the 100 on 1:50, the 150 on 2:45 and so on. Then try to hit your interval for each component (swim the 50 in :45, the 100 in 1:30, the 150 in 2:15, etc.)

This set looked deceptively easy when I wrote it up, but we repeated it four times on a pretty quick interval and it got tough fast! Give it a try if you're looking for something to spice up those boring long swims.

Cycling Event to Honor Cyclists Killed by Motor Vehicles

On May 16 at 7:00 pm in locations all over the United States (48 states) and in several other countries, a Ride of Silence will be held in honor of those who have been injured or killed while cycling on public roadways. There's seven or eight locations to participate in my state alone, so it looks like it will be a pretty big event.

I am planning to do this ride, probably with the kids. I think it's a good idea to bring attention to this issue during Bike Safety Month (May). Being out on the roads on a bike all the time, the issue of cyclist safety is never far from my mind, especially after the death of a fellow triathlete (seven-time Ironman and an amazing woman) in May of last year in a collision with a truck on a route I was biking earlier that day. For those concerned with our safety as cyclists and interested in participating, more information is available at http://www.rideofsilence.org/

Addendum to Faves

Favorite Kid Quotes:
From Miss A. (7): Mom, can you hand me my Lip Chap?
Me: What's Lip Chap?
Her: Well, there's Lip Gloss, Lipstick, and Lip Chap! (in tones of "everyone knows that" LOL)

I figured out it was the chapstick she wanted...

And from Mr. M. (10), overheard when he was upstairs playing with Miss. A.:

"Cry havoc and let loose the squids of war!"
(I have no idea what he was referring to but it cracked me up)


Favorite Weeknight Activity:
We invited several couples over and watched the British comedy Coupling. If you're not familiar with it, it's like Friends meets Sex & the City meets Seinfield and then some. Pretty damned explicit (with episodes like Size Matters and Lesbian Spank Inferno) and blisteringly funny like split-your-sides, laugh-until-ya-puke kind of funny.


Favorite Weekend Warriorism:
Watching (from the comfort of a computer monitor) BlueBirdBiker, and several other people from the Trifuel forums complete Ironman Arizona. It was a tough and windy day on the course and as always I am inspired by what people face and overcome in this difficult endeavor.

Weekly Faves n Raves

Favorite Food This Week: Leftover Easter crepes with yogurt and blueberries. I always make crepes for Easter and I'm in the habit of putting almond meal and flax seed meal in the crepe batter so they're full of protein and kind of nutty tasting. For Easter we had them with strawberries and whipped cream, of course! But they make a great lunch with fruit and yogurt on other days.

Favorite Workout This Week: That one's easy, the time trial on Tuesday, if for no other reason than it's the only workout I haven't done in the rain or cold. But today is sunny and I'm looking forward to a much warmer long run this afternoon.

Favorite Song to Run To: Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race. Thankfully someone I know posted the lyrics online because it's dang hard to figure out what he's saying. Then again, I'm the queen of misheard lyrics, and by the way if you are too, check out The Archive of Misheard Lyrics for some good laughs.

Rave for the Week: Someone keeps stealing my favorite pull buoys from the pool. We're down to one of them left now. Who on earth has a membership at a private club and then can't go buy themselves a pull buoy?? Did they actually "accidentally" just carry one home with them? They're a bit bulky for that. All the other ones are slick, which might work fine for the furry-legged men, but for those of us with smooth thighs, they just slip around annoyingly. I know it's a petty rant, but that's mine for the week.

Saddest Thing That's Happened This Week: Kurt Vonnegut's leaving this earth. At one time, I read every book he wrote over the course of a year or two. Might be time to go and re-read some. It would be impossible to find a favorite quote because there are so many, and I can't seem to dig up (even on Google) the quote he had about swimming (half of it was about writing: "When I write, I feel like an armless, legless man with a crayon in his mouth." but the other half was about swimming and I can't find it anywhere!) If anyone has this quote and can help me out, I'd be ever so grateful.

But this is one of my faves that seems appropriate to this blog and will stand as my weekly favorite quote: "I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

RIP Kurt Vonnegut, who once said about death:

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

Note to Self: Buy Booties

It would seem rather late in the year to be buying cold weather gear, but it doesn't seem to be warming up at all around here. And having a race in May, which I usually don't do, is making me ride outside in all of this cold and rainy weather. My previous MO has been to not even think about biking outside until all the rain disappears, so I don't have a lot of the rain riding essentials (except my big flapping rain jackets and pants for around town riding.) I think from the state of my toes after today's ride, I might invest in some booties at the very least.
I came home frozen to my bike like a popsicle only to find that my hubby had been on the phone for awhile and predictably the kids had gotten up to mischief. Big bro' M. (trying to look innocent here) had devised an alien costume for his little sis from crepe paper and bags. The entire dining room looked like a bomb had gone off in a craft store, and I no longer have any tape in the house. But at least they were having fun, and I have to give them full marks for creativity!

At least it wasn't as bad as last week's ride, where I got a panic-stricken voicemail from my daughter that went something like "Mom, you've got to come home Now! The baby chickens are all bleeding from their noses!" When was the last time you got a phone call like that? And being twenty miles from home on a bicycle, there's not much you can do about "come home quick". As it turns out, the chickies got in a bit of a panic and a couple of them banged up their beaks on the cage wire. They weren't actually hemorrhaging out their noses as I was picturing as I listened to this message, just a couple of tiny scabs is all. We don't call Miss A. the Drama Queen for nothing.

Here's hoping next week brings warm weather, and bike rides without frostbitten toes, craft bombs, or chickens knocking on death's door.

Now That's Better!

It's TT time again and let's see, what was improved from last week.... rest, nutrition, hydration, warmup, organization, gear... yep, this time I was prepared. And had a terrific ride and if I'm not mistaken a PR on the course. I don't have my official time yet, and as I rode past the timekeeper's stand they called out "Race Number!" - I guess my number wasn't pinned visibly enough - so I didn't get my exact time off of my bike computer in all the confusion. I think it was around 40:40 though (at least that's my hope), which would be a minute and a half better than last time if so.

I do know that I got passed by three people on the course (all men), and I passed three people (two women and a man), so I was even in the count (keeping track of that helps me pass the miles as I push my quadriceps to the bursting point and try to blow up my heart - did I forget to mention that time trials hurt. A lot.) The women were both from the local women's team and they both had disc wheels (which I envied) and both of them had to be at least 1:30 or more ahead of me at the start because the three riders in front of me were all male. So that was pretty cool!

It was a gorgeous evening (sorry, I didn't take time to snap photos with my phone camera) with shining sun, only a light breeze, and enough warmth to go in just jersey and shorts. If I hadn't been busy exploding my heart and quads, it might have been pretty enjoyable out there. We had another nice little brick to cool down (and as much as I'm not really a runner, I do enjoy these because they feel nice after all that hard work on the bike.) All in all a good night for some hard work, and I did my best out there. I'll be curious to see where my time falls, but doing my personal best is what really matters so I'm a happy gal tonight!

Thug Mama Cyclist Meets the Yodeling Mountain Goat

Have you seen that movie Hoodwinked? Well, if you're not a parent, probably not. It's actually pretty damned cute for a kid's movie, but the part that seems relevant today is a song yodeled by a banjo-playing mountain goat with removable horns whom a witch has cursed to only be able to sing, not talk (yeah, the movie's strange.) The chorus goes something like:

Be prepared, be prepared,
This lesson must be shared,
Be prepared, be prepared,
And unless you got a spare,
You got one life, so handle it with care!

I obviously forgot this lesson this week. You see, there was this cycling time trial Tuesday night. And though I would've liked to have been prepared, I really wasn't (see previous post about three-ring circus, I was still making pizzas ten minutes before throwing my bike in the car to head out to the course.) But life lessons have a great way of coming around to kick you in the arse when you're not paying attention.

With triathlons, I'm almost always prepared these days. First of all, I've been doing them for over twenty years now, so I sort of know what I'm doing. Secondly, my uber-geek nature took over years ago and created spreadsheets for every conceivable aspect of triathlon racing, from what to buy in the week before the race to what to pack for each aspect of the transition area. I print out my sheets, check the little boxes, and I'm squared away. When it comes to TTs though, I'm not nearly that organized. On the surface it seems much simpler: one sport, one bicycle, some shoes, a helmet, show up and ride. No wetsuit, no changing, running shoes. Easy, right?

It started earlier in the day when I realized I forgot to change the battery in my bike computer. Took care of that, but it put my whole day behind schedule. By the time I was throwing the bike in the car, I realized I didn't change my wheels, so I threw those in too. Got to the registration just slightly late, but got signed up and got my start time. Set to work changing wheels. It's damned cold outside. Realized I forgot to throw in the bag with my warmup clothes, but an old black hoodie sweatshirt of hubby's takes most of the chill off even if I look like a thug. Get my wheels on and take 'em for a little test spin. Damn, it seems like I'm going really fast but I chalk that up to a little pre-race adrenaline and forget about it. Don't have time to throw the bike on the trainer and also realize my pre-ride nutrition was in the bag with my warmup clothes - at home. Eat Trader Joe's gingersnaps by the handful from a bucket in the car (sometimes it's useful being a mom, there's always food in the minivan if you look hard enough.)

Looking around, there's lots of really serious and professional-looking cyclists warming up on their fluid trainers, in with nice long-sleeved skin-tight thermal jerseys, disk wheels and those funky aero-helmets that look like something a Sith Lord might don for a night out on the town. Meanwhile, here I am, gangster-mama eating her kids' gingersnaps on the tailgate of her minivan. But no time to worry about my public image, they're calling my number.

Now comes the part I've really been fearing: the standing start. You might think that someone with a background in skydiving, motorcycle riding, and other assorted dangerous occupations would not be as big of a chickenshit as I am, but you'd be wrong. The one and only other time I've done a TT, I backed out of the standing start at the last second and took off by pushing myself with one foot repeatedly like a total idiot. This time though, I got tough and went through with it, and I was off. But my complete and total lack of preparation made this race a very long and hard one.

Mentally, I was off of my game from the first mile. I wasn't warmed up enough, hadn't had time to jump on my trainer, had gotten chilled from the breeze blowing through the cotton sweatshirt, and the gingersnaps were sitting a bit hard in the ol' stomach. Still, I was making some really good time, or so I thought. My speedometer was going crazy: 24 mph in the first few miles alone. But then I looked at the mileage and knew something was wrong. I was in the wrong place to have put so many miles on already. Eventually it hit me: I changed the battery in my bike computer, and that wiped out my settings. The computer is automatically set for 700 wheels and I ride 650s. Crap. So much for my blistering speed.

Now let me explain something. For the kind of geeky brain I've got, numbers are everything. I can't live without my numbers. I dream in Sudoku. I was a Vulcan in a former life. So I'm out on the course without Any Meaningful Numbers. Except for my total time. If I hadn't had that, I might've really gone crazy. From there on out, time just spiraled out into the long kind of misery that every athlete has endured sooner or later. Nothing feels right, the universe is pissing on you, and you just have to gut it out. I eventually crossed the finish line 30 seconds slower than the last time I did this (and I definitely should be faster).

So I felt kinda demoralized by the whole thing, and not even my nutty tri friends suggesting a brick run after the TT could cheer me up. I ran in my thug sweatshirt and a black watch cap of my hubby's that was in the back of the van, while the cyclists heading home goggled at us setting out on a run. Since that evening, I've been really dwelling on how much of a mental difference it made to be completely unprepared to race. And that mental difference carried itself over into my athletic performance, making me slower than I knew I could go.

Today I looked up my time on the results page on the web and was moping about how bad it was when my hubby pointed out that really, I came in 2nd in the Cat4 Women, and I was only about 30 seconds behind the woman who finished 1st in the Cat1/2s. Even with the Thug Mama duds, the lack of aero anything (except bars), no coach, and no warmup, I didn't do as badly as I thought. My friend and teammate Megan really rocked and rolled, beating all the other women entirely. And she did it all without even a disc wheel or Sith Lord helmet. She is really inspiring.

So next week, the hubby has offered to come chair my pit crew. Get me warmed up, set up, nutritioned up, and see what I can do when I'm feeling more like my usual self. Next time I'm going to listen to that damned yodeling mountain goat, next time I'm going to Be Prepared.

Welcome To My Three-Ring Circus

In ring #1, we have Robin the triathlete. She did a time trial last night with some of her teammates and they did a brick run afterwards (while cyclists going home looked at them like they were nuts), and then she gave them a ride home. The back of her minivan looks like a bomb went off in a bike store: wheels, trainers, shoes, helmets (some of which are not hers). Although she brought her bike in when she got home last night at 9:00 pm, it's now 9:30 in the morning and she's just realized that she has to put up the backseat in order to carpool everyone to Karate class by 10:00 am. She is frantically carrying biking gear into the garage and dumping it willy nilly.

In ring #2, we have Robin the homeschooling mom. Note: this is the same Robin that's in ring #1. She's busy making sure the kids are fed, they have their karate gis on, belts tied correctly, waterbottles in hand, and a bag with clothes to change into after karate. She also needs to bring along cloth grocery bags for shopping at Trader Joe's afterwards, and make sure she has playdate arrangements for the kids' afternoon, as well as time to shlep kid#2 to her horseback riding lesson shortly after lunch.

In ring#3, we have Robin yet again. This time it's Robin the urban homesteader and environmentalist. This is why she's carpooling to karate (when the weather is not so rainy, she'll be busy loading kids onto bicycles and making sure they have helmets, sunglasses, gloves, etc.). She's busy letting the adult chickens out of their coop for the morning, making sure the baby chickens have food and water. Oops, carrying all the biking gear into the garage has caused all the baby chickens (which currently live in a cage in the garage until it's warm enough for them to go outside for the day) to go nuts, so now that she's filling their feeder, they're busy popping up out of the cage and flapping around. She grabs a chicken with one hand and stuffs it back into the cage, then another, making mental note that they are now able to fly quite well, and moving cycling gear out of the way with her toes at the same time.

Usually, the three rings of my life run more or less seamlessly. I'm doing one thing or another, taking the kids someplace and then running or biking, or I'm home with the kids doing their stuff, or we're taking care of the animals together, or my hubby's home and that's when I exercise or whatever. But some days every ring has to be going at the same time, and there's just not enough of Robin to go around. This morning was just one of those times! And don't even get me going on what it felt like to have to complete dozens of punches in a torturous position known as Shiko Dachi while the sensei walked around with a bopper hitting you in the stomach and arms and shoulders to make sure everything is solid (it wasn't, my legs were quivering like jelly on a plate.)

Luckily, tomorrow is our day off from everything: all activities, places to be, things to do will cease. I will stay home, try to get the house straightened out, and dye easter eggs with the kids. Oh yeah, and bike. And run. And do it all again.

The Need For Speed

Can't help that blog title, we just watched Top Gun again, now that we've got our home projection system set up in our basement with surround sound speakers borrowed from my computer and all. That movie was my son's suggestion and it was a good one to christen the system with. You know, it doesn't matter how many times I've seen that movie, when the cheesy 80's music starts pumping and the afterburners fire up, I'm totally sucked in. And just for the record, the projector and screen are so totally cool when watched from our couch! I think I might never set foot in a movie theatre again.

But this week's been all about speed for me anyways. Not a big volume week, but I really hammered out some tough workouts (taking that meter all the way up to Agony) and I get to announce....

ta da da....

I set a PR.... in the POOL! After 20+ years of swimming, this kinda blew me away. But I think it's all those distance miles I piled on for IMFL last fall. My stroke felt so much more efficient after that and I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that once I started doing more intervals and speed work that I might end up faster. But countering that was the fact that my left shoulder has really been bugging me this week. I took a fall while running and went down pretty hard on my left wrist before I managed to pull my arms in and do a judo-style roll. The jolt traveled up through my poor wrist and up through my shoulder into my neck. All week I've been saying that I really should see my chiropractor, but just didn't manage to haul my butt down to his office, and have had shooting pains in my hand and elbow. So when Saturday's Masters workout showed up, I was feeling less than enthusiastic.

One thing I like about our new coach though is that he gives loooonnnnnggg warmups. Like a thousand yards, which is exactly my kind of warmup. By the time we get to the main set, I'm actually feeling like I can swim. This particular main set started with 800 yards freestyle, then went to 7x100 on a 1:30 interval, then 600 straight, then 5x100 and so on. The total at the end of the board was 5,000 yards! Which, if truth be told, I usually only swim once a year at our killer New Year's Day workout.

My friend The Barge was swimming over in the fast lane next to me, and he's usually just a tad faster (and he's aiming to swim the 1650 in close to a 1:21-1:22 split at a meet this month), so I figured I'd pace off of him. Unfortunately, what I didn't know when I started swimming is that he wasn't first in his lane. I was pacing off of Steve the Insanely Fast. He left me in the dust in the first 50, when I realized my mistake, and when I hit the first 100 and saw the clock read 1:16, I knew I was in big-time trouble. So I backed off and managed to come in at 10:40, which I have Never Swum in My Life. So I might not be as fast in a sprint as I was in college, but I am still picking up speed at distance and I am so excited about that!!!

In other news, I set a practice PR for a 5k run at 24:47. My run is my biggest limiter, so I've been hammering it pretty darned hard in the last two months and it looks like that's definitely paying off. I'm not setting any land speed records, but I'm hoping to get to the point where my run isn't just completely holding me back. If I can come anywhere close to this in May's sprint tri (which is debatable, because I think it's a hilly run following a hilly bike), it should really help my total time.

Best of all, that good hard swim somehow managed to fix my shoulder problem (which swimming often does for me) and I've been pain-free since Saturday now. I still might use it as an excuse to go get a good massage though.