My 4 x 9

This little quizzy thing came my way via Shane, a very cool guy who bicycled across America and stayed at our house in the process (via Warmshowers.org, which is NOT a XXX site involving bodily functions, but is a site that hooks up cyclists with places to stay). He is planning to cycle through Africa sometime soon, and has lots of cool cycling stories and photos on his blog at Shanecycles.com so check him out! 

If you want to do a 4 x 9, post the link to your list in the comments below. I want to read everyone else's!


Here's mine:

Four jobs I’ve had in my life
- Can Can Dancer
- Software Engineer
- Movie actor (educational films, but still!)
- Guitarist in a punk band (well, we got paid mostly in beer)

Four Movies I can watch over and over
- The Princess Bride
- Lord of the Rings
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Life of Brian

Four places I have lived
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Albequerque, NM
- San Francisco, CA
- Seattle, WA

Four TV programs I love to watch
- Star Trek
- Dexter
- Battlestar Galactica
- Glee

Four places I have been on holiday
- Italy
- Palau
- Tanzania
- Belize

Four websites I visit daily
- Trifuel.com
- Facebook
- Huffington Post
- Blogger

Four of my favorite foods
- Chocolate
- Steak
- Bacon
- Pomegranites

Four places I would rather be right now

- Scuba diving in the Maldives (esp. before they go underwater due to global warming)

- Biking through the rest of Italy

- Australia

- Snowboarding fresh powder in Montana

Runs With Dog

I'd like to think of myself as a Woman Who Runs with The Wolves. There's me, running naked and free through a primeval forest with my hair streaming out behind me in long golden waves and a pack of graceful beasts fanning out all around me, stopping to let out a wild high howl to the sky... Except that naked part. Okay, strike that. With forty-four years and two kids behind me, too much would jiggle. And let's face it, I got tired of my golden hair streaming right into my face when I run, so I hacked it down to a short 'do a few years ago. And well, the closest wolves in Oregon are the Wenaha pack near the Idaho border, but that's really a long ways from here.

I guess I'll have just have to settle for being a Woman Who Runs With Dog. Luckily, I can do that clothed, with short hair stuffed under my running cap, in broad daylight. For the past few weeks, I've been taking my one year old Heeler/Aussie Shepherd mix Sophie running on the Ridgeline trails with me. Unlike Evil Small Dog (my husband's Beagle/Jack Russell Terrier mix, the one who broke my arm running back in January), she is a terrific running companion. She doesn't chase squirrels or deer and she doesn't really care much for other people so she will  just skirt around them on the trail. Ditto for other dogs, she's not even into playing a game of sniffy-butt, she just keeps on truckin' down the path. If she gets too far ahead, she stops and waits for me with a very patient expression, understanding that my speed and endurance are limited compared to hers.

I know that in thirteen or fourteen years, I will repay her thoughtfulness as the tables turn and I walk with her into her old age. I may even put her into a trailer and wheel her along her favorite trails as I did with my wonderful Sabre, my best buddy and running companion of my twenties and thirties. Through the arc of our life together, we will have many adventures, but I know from painful experience that the times we can run together carefree down life's trails will be limited to about a decade. My years as a runner will far exceed hers, no matter how easily she springs ahead of me through autumn's leafy wonderland this morning. So I vow to enjoy this time we have together on the planet. She's all that I could ask for in a furry partner and more. Today we'll hit the trail together and run like we're wild and free.

An Airbag For Your Head Makes Cycling More Stylish

This goes in the "too good not to share" category. An airbag for your head, instead of a helmet. Because one of the things I really admired when we were in Italy was how glamorous everyone looked while cycling around town. There's just no way to look this stylish when you're wearing a clunky piece of polystyrene on your noggin. Plus there's that whole helmet-hair thing. So far this new technology is only available in Sweden, but we can all hope it gets to this side of the pond soon.

This video is worth watching, not only for the cool crash-sensing airbag for the head, but just for the pure geek factor of watching a crash test dummy endo a bicycle in slowmo.

Ironmom's Locavore Breakfast and the Dark Days Challenge

Locavore: yet another internet word that has popped up in the last few years. The dictionary manufacturers couldn't even keep up if they ran their presses night and day. Then again, who buys dictionaries anymore when you have Wikipedia at your fingertips? If some terrorist plot took out the entire internet, schoolchildren would fall to their knees in despair at not being able to look up words. I admit, I'm one of those moms who actually makes their kids look things up in books from time to time, just for kicks and grins. If they still kept the Dewey Decimal cards in those little wooden drawers somewhere in the library, I'd probably torture them by making them look up books that way from time to time as well.

But locavore is a good word, a word that wouldn't have a reason to exist a century or two ago, kind of like the fact that there's no word for faith in the Lakotah dialect. If everyone has something, there's no need to name it.  But now locavorism (is that a word?) is a great first step toward food security, environmental stewardship, fostering community, and most important to this Ironmom, eating healthier. Food that comes from local sources is naturally higher in important stuff like Omega-3s, vitamins, and minerals than food that is processed and shipped from far away.

For instance, eggs from chickens who free-range have 20 times more Omega-3 fatty acids than conventional eggs. They also have 10% less fat and 34% less cholesterol, they produce HDL or "good cholesterol" and help lower bad cholesterol. This helps to explain why despite eating eggs for breakfast almost every single day, my cholesterol numbers are far lower than when I was a vegetarian and even a vegan.

So here's what went into my locavore omelette today:

Eggs from our lovely lady chickens. As you can see, we treat them very well! This one, my son's chicken "Voodoo" had a foot problem, so she's getting a spa treatment.  No, I'm not kidding! We treat our chickies very well and as a results they have very few health problem. We let them out to free range around the yard and they take care of our ants and garden grubs, among other things.

Milk from a local goat farmer. We buy this on a weekly basis in 7 big glass jars. This photo is my daughter actually hand-milking one of their goats. She's pretty good at it! We have had a relationship with these folks for many years now, not only just purchasing milk but going out to their house when their goats had babies or their dog had puppies. This is not the same at all as picking up a gallon of milk in a plastic jug at the store. Building relationships within your community strengthens not just your physical health, but emotional and mental health.

Spinach and tomatoes from the garden. I wasn't much of a green thumb when I started vegetable gardening (my house plants tend to even look anemic and wilty) but I've found it's not as difficult as one might think. Even just growing a few of the things we love to eat provides a big wallop of nutritional benefit over produce picked green and shipped long distances.


There's also local pork sausage in my omelette. I don't have a photo of the pig, but we bought part of it (a third to be exact) from the contractor who helped us with our sunroom last year. He just so happened to mention he was about to slaughter his pig (doesn't that come up in everyday conversation around your house?) and we filled our freezer with  a bunch of pork chops and sausage.

The last ingredient is some chantrelle mushrooms. These grow all around the woods in our part of Oregon, and local folks harvest them and sell them by the side of the road or at farmer's markets. Luckily, these are very easy mushrooms to harvest, with no poisonous relatives that your local mushroom gatherer could get confused. They make a very tasty addition to my morning eggs and give a seasonal flair to any meal you add them to, since they're only available right now and not at other times of the year. There are very few things you can say that about any more, with produce shipped from all over the globe, so I look forward to my little seasonal treats. Some year I want to go out in the woods and actually pick some.

Last year I participated in the Dark Days Challenge, which is to cook four meals each month (1 per week) focused on SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients with only local foods. I'll be doing it again this year, and if anyone wants to join me, I'll post some updates here with links to your posts about eating local!

The Ironmom Extra Mile:   Jason from Life of an Aspiring Triathlete asks "Where are those goat farmers here in Dallas?" In answer, the website RealMilk.com is a terrific resource for connecting with local farmers wherever you live. In their "Where Can I Find Real Milk" page, I found that there is a goat dairy in the Dallas/Fort Worth area that sells goat's milk by the gallon. The dairy's page is: www.lattedadairy.com. There is also a dairy in that area that sells raw cow's milk. Additionally, this website has dozens if not hundreds of listing for raw milk (cow, goat, and sheep) for all over the U.S. and for other places in the world. It's a terrific resource. So if you want real milk with real nutrients (pastured, raw, and not full of antibiotics and other nasty crud), check out this site.

Niftiest Pacing Tool Ever!

Clif Bar has a nifty little online tool that will create a custom marathon wristband for you. If you enter your desired finish time, it will have splits calculated out for every mile of the marathon for you printed on the wristband. Of course, every 3 - 4 miles is highlighted in yellow as a good time to "eat a Clif Shot or 3 Clif Bloks" but whether you enjoy Clif products or not (I happen to, their Mocha gels are my go-to race gel), it's a good visual reminder to keep on your nutrition schedule.

You could easily use this to pace an Ironman marathon or a half-mary or half-IM as well.

The Ironmom Extra Mile: Here's a nice short-n-sweet article on marathon pacing by a 25-time marathon finisher:
And here's a great downloadable PDF of Marathon Racing Strategies by the same author, Mike Stapenhurst.

Sunday Snap

Something new in my blog starting this week. I'm going to post my favorite photo of the week as my "Sunday Snap". Happy Harvest time everyone. This little squash was just too beautiful to eat.

Toe Shoes Deserve Some Toe Socks

I remember my first pair of toe socks like it was yesterday. They were rainbow striped to match the rainbow striped handle of my big-assed comb that fit neatly in the pocket of my painter's pants. Yeah, it was 1981 baby. That comb was sorely needed so I could feather my hair back and then flip my whole head down and then up so my hair looked just like Farrah Fawcett's for at least three seconds. Once I did that hair-flippie thingie in church and almost knocked myself unconscious on the pew in front of me.

But toe socks have come a long way since then. Then, it was all about the fashion. You needed cool socks to wear with your roller skates for Saturday night when they fired up the big disco ball at the Roll-A-Rena. But now, toe socks are for wintertime running if you happen to like running in shoes that resemble your bare feet. Plus (and this is a HUGE plus in my book). They STILL come in rainbow stripes. I got myself a pair of Injinji running toe socks to go with my Vibram Fivefingers, hoping to extend the range that I can wear them into the colder months. I was a bit worried about how they would fit, since the Fivefingers are fairly snug, but these socks are thin enough to be comfortable, and not even bunchy around the toes. As someone who spends at least 10 minutes getting the bunches and seams just right on my socks as it is (can you say "sensory issues" anyone?), I appreciate this fact.

Even better, I made my daughter extremely jealous and now she wants toe socks all her own. I did have to mention that then she would be wearing fashions straight out of 1981. "Oh, but mom... Retro is in!" she replies. Sigh. I'm so retro.

When Good Veggies Go Bad

It's like a horror movie where some dumb blonde just can't resist going into the dark room even though the freaky music is playing and your fingernails are permanently glued to the arms of your seat. You KNOW what's going to happen. That's how it used to be with my refrigerator when I thought about opening the produce drawer. You know what I mean. Scary creepy moldy slimy freaky Vegetables Gone Bad. You bought them with the best of intentions. They were healthful, vibrant, full of nutrients. They started looking a little wilty and you thought "we really should have some broccoli tonight", but you didn't have the time to cut it up because Tommy's Little League uniform got muddy and Susie couldn't find her pointe shoes for ballet. So the broccoli sat another day. And got meanier and uglier and slimier. Until one day you open the drawer and scream like the dumb blonde in the movie when surprise! the guy with the hockey mask and the freaky dagger hands jumps out to kill her after all.

I used to wonder why the vegetable drawer in my refrigerator was called a "crisper" when what it seemed to do was ensure that my veggies turned into a soupy mess. But fortunately, the freaky slime-vegetable syndrome can be avoided with some proper planning and prep work.I discovered that the key to actually eating my veggies instead of feeling guilty every time I opened my fridge drawer to another slimy glop of former salad is to make them into useful meal-fodder as soon as I buy them. This takes a little bit of time when you get home from the grocery store, but saves time, money, and the disgusting chore of cleaning out the goopy vegetable drawers.

What I do now is plan to go grocery shopping when I'll have about twenty minutes afterward for food prep (no rushing home, throwing everything in the cupboards and fridge and dashing back out again. Then as soon as the vegetables come out of the grocery bags, I wash them and put them on dish towels to dry. After patting them off, I slice or dice them into whatever form I'm actually going to use them in. This means that onions, green peppers, and zucchinis get diced up for use in omelettes, stir-fries, and burritos. Red peppers are in long slices that the kids like to dip in hummus. Carrots get sliced into sticks. Yes yes, I know you can actually buy bagged baby carrots, but I think real carrots taste way better and they last a heck of a lot longer. Plus, the baby carrots only have 70% of the beta carotene of regular carrots. And just for fun every year (and because my kids will eat way more of them) I grow purple carrots in our garden. They're gorgeous!

I also discovered that container shape matters. You might think that whether a container is round or square has no bearing whatsoever on how many vegetables you'll eat out of it. But I found that round containers don't stack as well, take up more space in the fridge, and tend to get pushed toward the back of a shelf where the contents turn evil. Square containers stack nicely, and use space much more efficiently. That means they tend to stay toward the front of the shelves where I use them frequently. I really like these Snapware Glasslock containers that I just happened to pick up one day at Costco.

You still have to eat the vegetables within a reasonable time frame of course. They will eventually go bad, even in glasslock containers. But because they're already pre-prepped, you're so much likely to just throw them into breakfast, lunch or dinner when you're in a rush. You can easily build a salad, an omelette, or a skillet meal in 5 minutes or less when you have your vegetables under control. Side bonus is you actually eat better and save money by not throwing out expensive produce.

The Ironmom Extra Mile: More than you knew about baby carrots here at Wisebread.com

Em2Im: Kind of Like an Angry White Male Rapper, But Not Quite

Welcome to the new Ironmom blog. As you can see, it's now not simply all about me. No, the old self-indulgent me is gone (well, okay maybe not totally gone, maybe on temporary vacation then), and this blog is becoming about the journey, what it takes to get from where we are to our goals and dreams. I want it to be more about us than about me, so please chime in with comments, criticisms, and thoughts on your own journey.


Absolutely everything on the internet  needs a catchy acronym these days:  AFAIK, we r  LOL while we txt r BFF some TMI, IFKWIM??
So my new blog title, it just naturally lends itself to being EM2IM, no? Which sounds vaguely like this angry white guy who makes exceptionally good although horrendously misogynist rap music, whereas I'm this really non-angry white mom who never ever really looks tough like this. Well, maybe when I tell my kids they have to clean up their rooms, then maybe I do just a little. Yeah, clean 'em up. Or else Em2Im is gonna come down on you like a ton a bricks.  Damn straight.

Fly Like a G6: The Runner's High

I have to admit it: I listen to crap-filled rap songs with shitty language that are mostly about drugs and misogynistic sex and drinking and other unsavory stuff. And I like them. Even my teen and tweenaged kids are frequently horrified by what I will listen to. My son once famously went through all of my workout tunes and looked up the lyrics online, growing more and more hysterical with each obscenity and satanic-message-filled song until he was literally howling with laughter. Why is it that all the raunchiest or bad-message songs are the ones that get you going? Hey, I told him, at least it's not like what I listened to when I was a teenager (how about "I Don't Care About You, F**! You" for a song title?)

But really, deep down it disturbs me that so much good music goes to promoting such dangerous pastimes. Am I sounding like an old fuddy duddy yet? Probably so. Or as the title of this interesting documentary film that explores the Christiam music phenomenon asks "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" And I do sometimes put the radio on the Christian music station, but lets face it: most of it sucks. Yeah, send me straight down to the hot place for saying it, but there's nothing on there that will get your blood pumping like Motorhead's Ace of Spades. Nothing.

But today when I was running up our local mountain trail over and over and over just for kicks and grins, what I was thinking was how sad it is that the rappers and the rockers and the listeners of this stuff don't know just how high you can get when you push your body hard. Whether you call it a "runner's high" or an "endorphin rush", it's powerful stuff. Our body creates these amazing chemicals that act on our brain as an opiate and leave us feeling giddy and just downright blissed out. After a good set of hill repeats, I'm like Sherlock Holmes in an opium den, feeling better than any rapper "gettin slizzard" on sizzurp, whose side-effects include euphoria, lethargy and extreme drowsiness. Hmmm, sounds like me after a session at the track or at home in the gym. No thanks on the drugs please, just pass the kettlebells.

Don't Be Surprised: Changes Coming

In the next week or so, I'm going to overhaul the appearance and to a certain extent the theme of the Ironmom blog. When I started with this blog, it was more or less a journal of my Ironmom journey and took the form of whatever random thoughts entered my head about training toward that goal. Then I started trying to introduce more helpful content: swim workouts, shoe reviews, books, coaching tips, etc.into the blog Over the last few years, I've come to feel that my triathlon training made my own fitness focus too narrow. I was "fit" in one aspect, but lacking in many others. My attempts to include Crossfit and martial arts in my own training have been working toward a goal of becoming a more balanced athlete and incorporating the things I was lacking: strength, speed, dexterity, and work in more muscle groups than just the ones used in triathlon training.

So the blog has become more than just a journey to that one particular goal: the Ironman.. For me, it is now about the journey toward ultimate health and fitness, toward becoming a well-rounded athlete who is physically, mentally, and spiritually fit inside and out. I want to broaden the scope of the blog to reflect that. To share more insights into that journey, and hopefully to include more insights from other athletes as well. So you'll see a new design to the blog coming soon, and a gradually changing emphasis from just triathlon training to a lifelong fitness journey. I will also have a new URL to reference the blog, but the old "ironmom.blogspot.com" will still work as well.

As always, I welcome any thoughts and comments. Hopefully it will be a positive change!

Crazy Clown Feet

I can't help it, I love shit that looks crazy. So of course, I really want a pair of these Asics Noosa triathlon shoes. Unfortunately, with my size 11 waffle-shaped feet, I would like like I was trying out for a job as a circus clown. But still, who can resist?

Halloween-Theme Swim Workout

Here's my swim workout for the Masters this weekend, on a theme of Halloween. Fun! 

DRILL: One-arm Free, other arm trailing

Warmup:

2  X  (200 S, 100 Dr  100 K  200 P)

===========

3 x

(

100 Hard

100 Alternating stroke/Free by 25s

100 Legs: Kick

100 Light and Easy

100 Over/Under

100 Wait 10 seconds then sprint to catch the next person

100 Easy

100 Each Stroke Once (IM)

      100 Nearly All Out

      )  r. 15

200 Cool

4100 yards

Found It!

Thanks to Kristin's comment on my last post, I found the watch. Yep, it was in a small zippered compartment of my swim bag. Thanks Kristin! I don't know why I thought that would be a place I would remember I put it. All I can say is that with hubby out of town this week, my schedule (and thus brain) have been on overload. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Well Meaning, But Ultimately Flawed

I distinctly remember putting my watch somewhere. My running watch, the one with the heartrate monitor. The one I use All The Time. I remember putting the watch this someplace and thinking to myself "this is different from where I normally put it, but I'll remember this because it makes more sense to keep it here." Yes, I remember thinking how much sense it made to put it in that place. That someplace that I now don't remember. So if you were a watch, and you were someplace that made a lot of sense, and you were owned by a frazzled mom who's so busy this week her head is going to explode but that would like to find her favorite watch, where would that someplace be?

Trying to break the sugar addiction... again

How is it that a person can be in amazing shape, be eating so darned healthy, have just done a half-Ironman, take a week off afterwards (I deserve it, right?) to just slack off of training and maybe even have a piece of cake at my daughter's birthday party and BLAMMO! Within days I'm back to being addicted to sugar.

You know those freaky meth ads?

This would be me on sugar if I let it go on for a couple more weeks. My kids would find me passed out on the floor after crawling desperately toward the laundry cupboard where I've been hiding the Lindt white chocolate coconut bars... This stuff is Addictive with a capital A. No wonder we have health problems as a nation. It's everywhere, and never more so than this time of year. Just try to walk into a store without being overwhelmed by the Halloween Candy aisle. At least I don't work in an office anymore where people bring in their leftover 83 tons of the stuff and leave it in the lunchroom for other people to feed their addictions. But one of the moms of our kids' robotics team brought in caramel corn for a snack last week, and let's just say I'm glad that six teenage boys were clustered around the bowl because I seriously might've eaten the whole thing.

I'm posting this for accountability. It's been a month since the race and I need to get myself back with the right eating habits. I feel just yucky and I know if it continues it will be a downward spiral. I'd like to say I'm throwing away the rest of the Lindt white chocolate bars, but the truth is I ate them. So I guess now's as good a time as any to not buy any more, right? Right?

I'm So Zen I Can't Stand It

Those of you who have met me would probably not utter the words "zen" and "Robin" in the same sentence. I don't inspire that kind of warm, fuzzy, calm feeling. More like "zanily energetic" on a good day, and "close to psychotic" on a bad one. My former boss once confided to me that when he called on one of my references, he was told "Robin is an unstoppable force of nature. She's okay as long as you don't get in the way." I'm still not really clear on whether that was a good reference or a bad one.

I blame it all on my mother. No really. When she was pregnant with me, her doctor (in all of his 1960s doctorly wisdom) didn't want her to gain too much weight. Like no more than 15 pounds. I myself gained approximately 280 pounds when I was pregnant. Well, maybe 60 or 70, but it felt like 280. So back to this doctor. He prescribed her some appetite control pills. Which we all know back in 1966 were probably something like, oh, amphetamines. Yep, I came out looking for that energetic high. I was just lucky to get hooked on exercise, not something worse.

By the way, I don't really blame my mom. She's awesome. Really. Our kids adore her, she does cool things like kayaks and hikes, and she wears hats like this that fold out and double as a fan (really!). I totally forgive her for listening to her idiot doctor back in 1966, and also for that time she made me go to the county fair with her when she was dressed in a chicken costume (yes, I've finally worked through that one in therapy), but really I had no chance of being normal. None whatsoever.

Which is all to say that I don't usually inspire feelings of zen in people. Except that this week, I'm just all over the zen thing. First of all, okay I do use the word zen when I talk about swimming a lot. Because in order to swim well, you have to "turn the eye inward" as they say in the zen business and really notice what you're doing. Lots of people just go swim laps, go back and forth and back and forth at the same speed with the same technique and never really get any better. In order to swim better, you have to start by paying attention. So when Julie used the word Zen when she blogged about our first swim coaching session, it didn't surprise me all that much. Fortunately, she's like a zen master already or something and was able to incorporate the whole gliding and stretching thing out and decreased her swim golf score by an astonishing amount just in one pool session.

Then, just while I was basking in the whole glow of someone actually grokking what I was trying to tell them in the pool and getting all zen with it, I get an email from a Buddhist magazine asking to use one of my photographs to accompany an article. It's always exciting to me when my photos get published, and I'm honored that they think it's worthy to go with such introspective thoughts.

That all collides nicely with this week, which has already become one of the shit-craziest scheduling nightmares in my parenting life so far, and has ominously shown itself to be the harbinger of things to come. My daughter is taking seven dance classes (no that's not a typo), plus theatre, choir, horseback riding, and French. My son is taking Spanish, training at the brown belt level in karate (lots of time at the dojo) and I'm coaching his robotics team. These activities are in all sorts of different places. Throw in my coaching gigs at three different pools, taking karate myself, and teaching kickboxing, and you've got twenty-five (I counted) different places I need to be each week. Those are just the scheduled things, that doesn't account for the playdates, field trips, and unscheduled appointments that might crop up. So needless to say, if I'm going to feel any measure of zen in the coming months, I'm going to need to create it myself. So now it's after midnight, I'm done blogging for now and I'm off to meditate my way to a state of inner peace. Namaste and goodnight.

Toe Shoes: The Trend of the Year??

I admit it, I'm a numbers geek. There's no possible way I could have a blog without looking at the stats. Frequently. Who visits here, where they come from, how they got here, why the heck they're interested in what I have to say. It used to be that the biggest keyword searches from Google and Bing would be for swimming workouts, my triathlon checklist, or recipes. But those days are gone.

For now is the Time of the Toeshoes. Vibram has captured the fascination of the running community and increasingly of the occasional athletes and wannabe runners. It used to be that when I wore my Fivefingers in public, people gawked, stared, and asked me what the heck they were. Now they only ask me if I run in them, and how far, and what I think of them. Because of course they're thinking of getting some. Because apparently everyone in this universe is thinking of getting some. Maybe I exaggerate just a tad, since I live in the running capital of our galaxy. So maybe in, say, Burnt Corn Alabama or Hoople North Dakota people would still gawk and stare at my funny feet. But there's no denying, there's a trend in the making here.

Check out my list of most popular Search keywords and tell me what you think:


1. running toe shoes
2. running shoes with toes
3. toe shoes running
4. toe running shoes
5. ironmom
6. toe shoes for running
7. new toe shoes
8. sugar hangover
9. short models
10. gym shoes with toes

Yes, I too am curious about those people who found my blog via searching for "short models" or "sugar hangover". I'm not sure I have even written about short models, but maybe I should start dreaming up more posts about them. Maybe if I posted a photo of short models wearing nothing but running toe shoes, my blog would be the most popular in the universe. Or maybe I'll just keep writing about triathlon and training and stuff. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Topping the List of Cool Events I Wish I Could Do

Online friend Allison Kaplan Sommer (check out her very interesting blog on "Motherhood, the Middle East, and life on the cultural fault line between U.S. and Israel"  AN UNSEALED ROOM) just did the Sea of Galilee Swim, which is apparently in its 57th year and is the largest amateur sports event in Israel. It's either a 1.5 or 3.5 k swim in one of the most historic bodies of water in the world. Doesn't it look beautiful?? So it's definitely way up there on my list of things I'd love to do (along with visiting Israel of course). Alas, this recession thingy is disrupting all of my plans to be a world traveler and to take our kids adventuring to places like this. That and the fact that I am a couple of chapters shy of my book proposal, on my way to being a famous author, you know? Yes, I know you don't get rich by being a famous author, unless you're like JK Rowling or something. But a girl can dream...

Pushing Daisies

I love almost everything about my Vibram Fivefingers. I like to wear them for walks (just like going barefoot, but without the trips to the ER when you step on broken glass!), on the pool deck (like aqua socks, but comfortable and with toes), when I'm teaching kickboxing (keeps my feet from getting roughed up every time I pivot on the floor, yet flexible and thin enough to feel like I'm kicking in bare feet), and of course running. I've worn them so long now that if I wear my old Asics running shoes, I can literally feel how they're trying to make my running form go all wonky.

The only thing I really don't like about the Five Fingers is how whenever I run on grass, I get flowers stuck between my toes. No really! I'm not kidding. Okay, so maybe it doesn't look quite like this, but I regularly have to stop and pick daisies and dandelions out from between the tootsies. As it turns out, when you run barefoot your toes actually kind of spread out just before you make contact with your midfoot/forefoot (as opposed to the heel-striking style of running that's more typical in cushioned running shoes). And when your toes spread out, they collect some flora along the way. I guess if that's my only complaint, it's not so bad. On fields that have been recently mowed or dirt or bark paths, I don't really have too many problems with the flowers. Only on the weedier patches is it an issue.

Check out this interesting video on the science and history of barefoot running. In the last part of the video (about 4:30 in), you can see the slow-mo on a treadmill of a barefoot runner. You can easily see the daisy-plucking part of the stride when you watch how the toes operate. It's fascinating to think how differently even your toes react when you run barefoot.



And by the way, if you are going to buy some Vibram Fivefingers shoes, make sure you get them from a reputable dealer. There are all kinds of ads going around on the internet for counterfeit varieties. A friend of mine bought some on a "great bargain" and the seams were so poorly sown, he got really bad blisters. Clearly counterfeits. Also, if you're converting to barefoot running, be sure to take it reaaaaallllllly slow. I've heard of more than a couple people giving themselves bad running injuries from too much barefoot mileage too soon. If you're not used to barefooting it, your feet need time to build up the muscles and ligaments that would be stronger if you spent your life barefoot as our ancestors had.

Punching Things, With Julie

So Julie, from Chubby Mommy Running Club came over to my garage/gym yesterday for some coaching - ostensibly aiming to do a triathlon in the spring. But somehow one thing led to another and we ended up punching things (well, things like my punching bag at least) and maybe kicking a little bit too. The great thing about spontaneous fitness is you never know what you'll end up doing. A few laps around a track or a session with the boxing gloves. Having fun with exercise is the single most important thing in my book. If you can't have fun and play like a kid, why bother?

Well, let's just say that Julie knows how to play, and brings a lot of enthusiasm to the table. You can see our adventures and misadventures with our impromptu kickboxing lesson in this hysterical video on her blog.

Speaking of spontaneous fitness, this is a topic that's been on my mind a lot lately, what with the winding down of my triathlon season, thinking about what fun things I might do next year (a swim of Crater Lake with our Master's team might just be in the works, wheee!), and of what, really, I want out of my personal fitness goals. Are they serving me? Or am I serving them? What do I want to be able to really do with my body and why? How do other people approach their goals? What things work and don't in order for people to stay motivated? Stay tuned for more aimless ramblings on this subject at some unspecified time in the future.

Precious Precious Days

In October, sunshine is precious. It poured grey rain all weekend. The outdoor pool is only open for 20 more days (but hey, who's counting?) and with Pool Perv gone for good I am pinning my hopes on at least 20 days of mild weather. There's nothing as dear to the heart of an athlete as those last few good weather outdoor workouts in the fall before the rain, the sleet, the hail, the frost, cold, and snow make outdoor runs a test of will and fortitude.

Luckily, I get to go run with @juliejulie tomorrow and the prediction is sunny and 73 for our inaugural run together. Sounds auspicious, no?

I hope you all are enjoying the precious days of fall!

Focus Shift: Black Belt

The triathlon calendar has come to a close. Even with the inauspicious beginning, starting off with a broken arm, it's been a good triathlon season for me. Three top-5 women's finishes in Sprint and Olympic distance and one top-12 in the half-Ironman distance has made it one of my better seasons. Which is good, because next year I'm not sure if I'll have a season at all. Which is kind of weird to say because Robin with triathlons is kind of like pancakes without syrup: you have to wonder what the heck is it good for at all? Luckily, I frequently eat pancakes without syrup, so I can envision that I might also be able to exist without triathlons in my life for a season. It's also highly unlikely that I won't do any tri's next year. There will most likely be a sprint or two at the very least.

But for many reasons (not the least of them financial), my focus needs to shift. And right now, there's only one direction that what remains of my scattered ability to focus on anything will be. I'm this close to getting my black belt in karate. I'm actually about one broken arm away, since I should already have been able to test for my belt this year, if it wasn't for that fateful dog tripping incident. The arm is now healed about 90% for karate purposes, which means I can do most of the necessary training, with the exception of any serious contact on the left arm. I'm hoping to test in March, with a fall-back to June if that doesn't work out. My son Mackenzie is now a brown belt as well and training seriously for his black, so we can do a lot of training together at home. So I will be shifting to at least four days a week of training at the dojo, and more here in our garage at home. Swimming, biking, and running will take a back seat for the foreseeable future, though I can't really see giving any of those up completely.

I will still be coaching my Master's swimmers, so you can expect to see more swim workouts and swim tips here, but I hope no one will mind if I hang up my lycra in exchange for some white cotton pajama-y things for awhile. I'll be following the rest of you triathlete, swimmer, biker, and runner friends vicariously though!

Oooooh, Icky, Icky, Icky

I had to deal with a Perv in the Pool today. Had to report said Perv to the pool manager. Turns out I'm not the first one, there have been several complaints about this guy in the last couple of weeks. The pool manager was thankfully very responsive:  this man will not be back. Sometimes it's hard to be a woman. I hate looking over my shoulder as I bike home, wondering if anyone is following me, especially the creepy guy in lane five.

It's a good reminder to follow our intuition, to be assertive, to take the time to make the complaint. It's one reason that I love the book The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, as well as Protecting the Gift, his companion book for keeping your kids and teens safe. I like to re-read these books every couple of years. I like to remind myself that it's better to be rude than to be wrong about a dangerous predator. It's better to be the complainer than to be the victim. It's better to be alert than to be lulled into a false sense of security. I don't like to feel paranoid, and I'm not normally the type to worry unnecessarily. But when something or someone feels really really wrong and creepy, it's time to take action.

Saturday Swim Workout: Mind Games

I have to admit, I like tricking my brain. I like playing little mind games that make my workouts go by easier or quicker, even if they're not really easy or quick. That's one reason I like to throw in sets with odd numbers of yards, so that we end up on the other end of the pool frequently. For some reason, it's easier to swim a 225 than a 250, even if it's all just mental.

So with that in mind, here' the swim workout I gave my Saturday Masters this week:

Drill of the Day: 10-stroke catchup. Take exactly 10 strokes of catch-up per 25 yard length. This translates to a actual stroke count of about 13 - 16. If you're under 5'4", you can extend this to 11 - 12 strokes of catch-up and 16 - 19 strokes per length.

Warmup:

300 Swim
100 10-stroke catch-up
100 Swim
6 x 50:  25 10-stroke catch-up, 25 of 13 - 16 stroke freestyle
6 x 50 kick

==========

Main Set:

4 x (125 Distance Pace, rest. 5 sec; 25 EZ, rest 20 sec)
4 x (25 Hard rest 20 sec.;  25 EZ rest 5 sec)
Rounder (rest until the clock reaches the top again)

3 x (225 Distance Pace r. 5; 25 EZ r. 20)
3 x (25 Hard rest 20 sec.;  25 EZ rest 5 sec)

Rounder

2 x (325 Distance Pace r. 5; 25 EZ r. 20)

2 x (25 Hard rest 20 sec.;  25 EZ rest 5 sec)

Rounder

3 x 100 IM kick

150 Cool down

==========

4100 yards

Swimming in Sunshine

For those of you in southern climates, you might not understand how precious our last few outdoor swims are to us northwesterners. At any moment, the clouds could roll in and we won't see the sun for oh, five months or so. So it's imperative that when we have a sunny day in October, we head to the pool. Yesterday I got a wonderful 3000 yards in for no reason whatsoever. I didn't do any drills, any sprints, just some distance sets, some strokes, and whatever else I felt like doing. Like my run this week, it was a swim for the heck of it. Can you tell I'm enjoying my unstructured training time?

Best of all? I'm still getting a tan.

My Run For the Heck of It

When you're training for a big event, every workout has a purpose. It's a tempo run or a hill run or a long bike or an interval swim. Today I ran just for the heck of it. I have no goals in the immediate future, I can just enjoy going out for a run or a bike or a swim just because I want to.

So today, I slung on my Five Finger toe shoes and headed down to the park. I decided instead of running in boring straight lines, I would play slalom with the trees in the park. I ran around one tree and accelerated toward the next, then jogged for a ways then slalomed around the next tree, probably looking like a crazed skier with no snow. But it was fun, and served no purpose whatsoever. Which made it perfect for today.

Race Report: Black Diamond Long Course Triathlon

Wayne and the kids decided not to come with me this time, the weather looked too dicey for camping and we've had a really busy few weeks. So it was just me, myself, and NPR toodling up the freeway. Getting to listen to several hours of uninterrupted NPR and music is a joy in and of itself:  an open treasury, from programs on the Nile river to interviews with Wall Street tycoons, it's like an Ironman for your mind.

Arriving in Washington, I was struck by the fact that it was Fall with a capital "F". Back home in Orygun, there's a few leaves drifting off of the trees and temperatures are still in the 80's. But here there were great drifts of leaves on the ground, crunching piles underfoot. All was gold and red in the hills and the evening air had a serious briskness about it. Luckily, the forecast for race day was clear skies and a high of 72.

The transition area was open for check-in in the afternoon/evening, so I unloaded my bike and covered it against the dew with my handy trash bags (if you've ever wondered why they're on my triathlon checklist, this is only one of many reasons!). All around me, triathletes were debating the possible weather combinations for race morning, and what to wear. In some areas of the country and at some times of the year, that's not really much of an issue. But fall in Western Washington for a race as long as a half-Iron distance, and you really have to think about how cold, wet, or overheated you want to be. I've worn a rainjacket in this race before, and I've gone without. This time I brought arm warmers and a waterproof vest, just to cover all of my bases, but I wasn't sure yet what I would be putting on in the race.

Race morning dawned very chilly, so I laid out the transition area with my arm warmers as an option. I met Teresa, a fellow Eugenean there, someone I had just talked with in the pool the other day and started getting to know. She's such a positive person, it was great fun to see her there. She had a Queen Jane water bottle, and I commented on it, which sent us both into a round of tears and hugs. Although it's been almost five years since we lost friend, mentor, and uber-triathlete Jane Higdon from our midst, sometimes it feels like yesterday. Sometimes I still can't believe she's gone. She would be just there (probably telling us to stop whining about the weather and get going already), racking up her bike and getting ready to put some serious speed onto the course. Theresa and I headed out on our bikes to warm up together (warm up being the operative word, it was very very chilly!), and then crawled into wetsuits and headed toward the water.

SWIM: 29:57  (Goal: under :30)

Brrrrrrrrr! The water felt chilly. Much colder than last year. My thermometer the evening before the race said 59 degrees. But the small lake was beautiful in the morning sunlight with all of the fall colors in the trees around. Soon enough the waves of men were launched and we women were swimming for the first buoy. I set in a steady pace and enjoyed the swim. Caught up to the first of the men at the 2nd buoy and from there on out it was a bit of dodge'em but otherwise uneventful. I think this swim is always a bit longer than others, but that's okay by me. I was happy to come in under 30 minutes.

T1: 2:34  (-21 seconds from last year)


In T1 I decided I didn't need the arm warmers after all, just put on my helmet and biking shoes and off I went. I had hoped to shave some time off of my transitions this year, and ended up shaving off about 20 seconds from T1, so that's a good start!

BIKE: 2:50:12  (Goal: 2:51 or better)

This is such a nice bike course, you really can't help but enjoy yourself. The hills are mostly rolling, the fall foliage is lovely, and in the bottom part of the course you are treated to some really stupendous views of Mt. Rainier. Still, my first loop on the course, my muscles felt tight and sore. I think because it was just so damned cold. Coming out wet from a 59 degree lake into 40-something degree air and adding in the wind chill of the bike, I felt like it took my legs a long time to get warm. It wasn't until the second loop that I really started to feel like I was in my groove.  The other monkeywrench in the day was that I had to stop and use the porta-potty for some womanly issues. Bad timing of the month! I've never had that coincide on a half-Iron before, so that kinda sucked. Still, I knew I was the second woman out onto the bike course from the swim, and only one woman passed me in the 56 miles (and she rocketed on to a 4:54 finish time), so I was feeling pretty good about my bike split overall. My split was over 3 minutes faster than last year. Not bad! I felt really good about staying on my nutrition plan too, checking my watch to take in a gel or part of  a bar every 20 minutes. I went into the run feeling like I had plenty of energy.

T2: 1:55 (+5 seconds from last year)

I have no idea how my T2 managed to actually be slower than last year. I didn't even change socks this time! This one's a mystery.

RUN: 2:12:12 (Goal: 2:05)

The run felt pretty good. I hit my goal paces for most of the first 8 miles (9:15 - 9:45). It did start to get pretty hot (comparatively) on the run. Not a lot of shade and although it only topped out at 78 degrees, that felt unusually warm after the cold morning. I definitely regretted wearing a black shirt!! I kept up with my nutrition plan though, and felt really good energy-wise through the run course. I had to use the porta-potty again and this time I had to wait for someone else to get out (it was either that or wait another 2 miles to use the next one: Not An Option). The run time on my watch says 2:09:47 (I paused it during the stop), so although I didn't hit my goal of 2:05, that's the fastest HIM run I've done in the last 15 years. At the end of the run my legs started cramping up somewhat. I was not alone as it seems like a LOT of athletes had leg cramps, more than the normal "walking wounded" of the last few miles of a 70.3. Lots of athletes in the massage tent afterwards too, some of them with screaming knots in their legs. I think it might've been the combo of a very cold morning (biking hard to warm up with legs that were too cold and stiff), possibly not drinking enough early on (harder to make yourself drink when it's cold), and then the weather turning warmer quickly. Luckily, mine didn't seize up at all, just got a little stiff.  After walking around for a few minutes I got back to the finish line just in time to cheer in Teresa who won her age group!

OVERALL: 5:36:50  4th in AG, 12th OA Woman

This is a PKPR for me at the distance (that stands for post-kids PR, so it's my fastest HIM in the last 15 years). It was also a PKPR in each of the three disciplines for this distance, so I'm very happy with that. I was a little disappointed that I couldn't pull in a faster run time. My biking has gotten much much better in the last few years, but running continues to be my big limiter. If I had the money, a run coach would be in my future for sure! Still, I am extremely happy to still be able to chip away at my times and to find little ways to improve my performance. As always, this is a beautiful race with some very amiable triathletes in a lovely little corner of the earth. I got to make a new friend in the sport, and share some memories of an old friend who is gone. I got to be reminded of how good it is to be alive and have a body that can do such amazing things.

That's a good way to end the season!

Back from the Black Diamond Triathlon

I'll post a full race report later, but I'm back at home from the Black Diamond half-Iron distance tri, and had a terrific time. It rained the day before and the day after, but it was beautiful weather for the race day. How lucky is that? I posted my fastest half-Iron time in the last fifteen years at 5:36:50, so I'm very happy with that!

Feeling Strong, Feeling Ready

I got to spend some time this week getting to know JulieJulie from the Chubby Mommy Running Club (from whom I've shamelessly stolen this photo). She's an energetic mom, social media expert, blogger, organizer and only semi-reluctant runner who is currently considering possibly giving some thought to maybe doing a triathlon next year.... and even letting me coach her through the process!  Whenever I meet with a new athlete, the first thing I start formulating in my mind is a plan that works for them. That means thinking about what might motivate them, how a plan will fit with their life, and what things might detract from being able to complete their plan.

As self-coached athletes, how many of us fail to have a plan? I know I've spent many years doing just that. You all know I'm married to an ex-Army sergeant right? And they have this saying about " "Failure to plan is planning to fail." I'm not sure I would categorize any of my years in the sport or my triathlons as "failures" per say because I love it too much to think about it in such narrow terms. But I do know that for many years I did not perform according to my potential. Now in my mid-40's, my potential may come to a point where it's limited more by age than by training, but at least I know that with better planning I'm reaching closer to that potential than ever. At least I hope so.

This year I think I've done everything right. My nutrition has been great, I've been sleeping 7 - 8 hours most nights, I built strength through the winter and even persevered through a broken bone and injured joint to come out strong on the other side. I created a training plan for my half-Iron and although my crazy life with kids, dogs, chickens, robotics, homeschooling, teaching, coaching, etc. has inevitably gotten in the way more than once, I've stuck to the plan reasonably well. Now I've tapered, am packing my bags, and tomorrow I'll drive to Washington for the 3rd time's a charm try at the Black Diamond Half Ironman distance race. Last year was marred by an experimental training plan gone badly awry. Although my race performance was still reasonable, it didn't feel optimal. Two years before that, I felt terrific until I missed taking my nutrition on the run course and gave myself the Bonk from Hell.  All lessons taken to heart.

My goals this year:
- Sub-30:00 swim: Might it be possible, given my strong swim performances in all races this year, despite broken arm recovery?
- 2:51 or better on the bike: This would be 2 minutes faster than last year, a reasonable improvement.
- 2:05 on the run: This is the biggest stretch of all, it would mean a 5-minute PR on the HIM run. I've put in some good long runs on hills and trails this season. Will it pay off? Pacing is key here.
- 30 seconds off of my total T1 + T2. I have always changed socks in T2, I think I'm going to give that a miss this time and see what happens.

if I can do all of that, I can come in sub 5:39, which is my post-kids PR time. If I can really nail all of it, I can hopefully close in on a sub-5:30 time which is a goal I'd like to hit.

So what can I do this year? Stay tuned and find out!

I'm Not Sure if That Was the Way to Taper

So I've read plenty on tapering, and even written up a Tapering Guide myself. You'd think I'd be smart enough to follow it, right? Well.....um.....

I spent my last week in Reno, in a very very nice VIP tent provided by Dassault (makers of the wonderful Falcon jets), eating from really tasty buffets. They even brought in a Haagen-Dazs ice cream cart every afternoon just chock full of goodies, and I cannot tell a lie... I didn't stop at just one Haagen-Dazs bar a day.

So let's see, who tapers by training almost not at all and overeating sinfully rich desserts? Well, that would be me. Okay, I did go running, and I did do laps in that ridiculous hotel pool. And maybe if I'm really lucky, the altitude of 5,000 feet gave me a little burst of the altitude training that elite athletes do and will hand me a few more red blood cells for race day.

But other than that, this is what I spent my week doing: eating, enjoying the hotel hot tub, and watching really really really fast cool old airplanes fly twenty feet overhead doing five hundred miles and hour. It may have messed up my taper, and I guess I'll know how much come race day. But just hearing the roar of the engines on planes like this Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was well worth it.

Fitting It In, Hotel Pool Style

We just got back from the Reno Air Races, a fantastic experience (can you beat sitting out at the pylons while planes like Corsairs, twin-engined Hellcats, and P-51 Mustangs zoom just over your head at near 500 mph???)! While in Reno, we went running a couple of times in the very early morning before heading out to the races. The air was quite chilly and the altitude was definitely a factor (almost a mile high, wheeze, wheeze), and the strip of casinos isn't a running route I would normally pick. Without my bike, I tried to fit in my workouts as best as I could. Of course I didn't want to go five days without swimming, so you know what that means.....

The Hotel Pool (cue dramatic music).

You've probably been there before: traveling for business or with your family, wanting to squeeze in a swim workout, faced with The Hotel Pool. Maybe it's kidney shaped, or round, maybe it's only three feet deep, maybe it has a staircase that spans one end, preventing turns. It's always a challenge. This one was at least rectangular in shape (that's a bonus), and the staircase didn't reach ALL the way across, leaving me a narrow strip of wall on which to turn (I'll count that in the "plus" category too), plus it was saltwater (niiiiiiice). But it took me six, count them six strokes to get from one end to the other. This, as you might imagine, made for some very vexing lap swimming.

My motto however is Just Get the Workout In, so laps I did, probably hundreds in all (I didn't count, that would've been too depressing) and after awhile I just found my rhythm, got in the groove, and got the swim done. So instead of looking as bad as it might've with the vacation thrown into the mix, my first week of taper looked rather reasonable. I bookended the time I was gone with bike rides, so I got at least two into the week, three relatively short runs, and three forty-five minute sessions in the 12 yard hotel pool left me with a decent workout schedule for the week. That and all the airplanes I could ever hope to watch!

Worth It After All

We're packing up today to head south to the Reno Air Races tomorrow. It'll be the first time that hubby and I are away from the kids for several days (can you believe it?) and we're picking up my dad along the way to take him with us and celebrate his birthday. You see, my dad's been a pilot for over 50 years, and my earliest memories of airplanes come from our trips to the airport together and flying touch-n-goes in a small plane. When I got my pilot's license, he (very bravely I might add) was one of my first passengers. As I recall, it was a windy day as I was trying to land on the runway at Orcas island and I might've bounced the wheels one or two times along the way, but he was still smiling when he got out. So we share a love of airplanes, and most especially warbirds, that goes back a long time. As hubby is a pilot and a plane nut as well, the three of us are bound to have a great time.

But this does mean that with eleven days to go until my last triathlon of the season, I'll be without my bike for the rest of the week. So I just HAD to squeeze in a ride today. It was late, I had to be at work at 7:15, I had a dance team parents' meeting that went until 6:30, so there was precious little time but I set out anyways. The bike path was under construction, now I had a detour to go around, by the time I hit the country road that I was intending to ride on, I had about twelve minutes left in my ride. Racing the clock and the setting sun. Just enough time to go up and over the one hill at the start of the road and that's about it.

Sometimes in a hectic life, it seems like I have almost, but not quite enough time to get something done. This was one of those days. Sometimes it almost seems not worth it to try and fit something in when what I really wanted to accomplish was longer or more focused. Today, when I got to the top of that hill on the road, feeling just a bit frustrated by my lack of time, I was greeted with the sight of the sun setting over a bend in the river. I never bike on that road so late in the day, so I've never seen it look just that way. Suddenly I began noticing all sorts of different things: the way the air smelled like blackberries warmed by the sun, the fact that I could hear the crickets in the hay fields, the sunset turning the water into molten gold. Being in a familiar place at an unfamiliar time made it all seem new and different, and although the ride was short, it was worth it to go.

Sometimes although we may only have a few minutes to do something, we forget that minutes are all we really have anyways. We let them slip by unnoticed, or we get frustrated. I was lucky today to be reminded to appreciate them no matter what.

Full Circle Relationship Ride

Two weeks out from my half Ironman, we come to the last long bike and run of the season. Mother Nature has obligingly parted with some sunny mid-70's September weather, and hubby decided to accompany me on my long bike ride yesterday. This is a banner year for us, we've come full circle back to a point where we can do things together again. We started our relationship skydiving together, hiking, scuba diving, snowboarding, mountain climbing. Then enter the kids and Screeeeeech... it all comes to a halt for many years. For a long time it's been "can you watch the kids so I can go for a run?", "Okay, but I'd like to go for a bike ride tomorrow". We've traded off. But here we are again, able to go out together. The kids are often busy, at activities and friends' houses, and we have plenty of time to enjoy our sports with each other.

So yesterday it was sixty-five sunny miles up to the lake, along the shore and back. Sharing Clif bars and conversation, just enjoying some time together. Next month it's been eighteen years since we met, and part of the glue that has stuck us together has been these things we love to do. Are there any sweeter words a man could utter than "I think next year when you train for the Ironman, I'll go with you on all of your long rides"??? I think not.

Ironman Dream #4 and My Cheap Attempt at Freudian Analysis

The Dream

I am competing in my 2nd Ironman, I'm so excited. The swim has gone very well, I'm through the changing tents in under an hour, right on my goal time. It's obviously Cozumel because I'm on an island with the sea on my right as I'm bicycling along. I go past a lagoon and Asa is swimming there with her friends. But I don't see Wayne anywhere, and I can tell that the tide is coming in and big waves are threatening to wash over the seawall into the lagoon. Any kids in there when that happens will be drug out to sea. I throw my bike down on the side of the road and go get her out of the water. Of course she wants to keep swimming and starts arguing with me (sometimes dreams are SO realistic!) I finally get her to see the danger and move to a safe place, get Wayne on the phone and make sure he's headed over to keep an eye on her. I get back on my bike and start pedaling, noticing that on my watch I've already lost twenty minutes to all of this.

Once I rack my bike and head out on the run course, I'm feeling good. The weather is warm and the glimpses of the ocean are beautiful. My finish time goal has been compromised though and I feel sad about that. I had hoped to be in the running for a Kona slot and I think that might be out of the question now. As I'm running along, I see an athlete on the side of the road. He's having leg cramps and is hollering and curled up in a ball. I know if I stop again, my whole race plan will have gone out the window, but I can't leave him lying there. I stop running. There's no one around. I give him some of my water and electrolytes and move him into the shade. I massage his calf until it unknots and he is able to sit up and drink some more water. I leave the water bottle with him and promise to send help back.

Now the run course takes a strange turn onto some old residential streets. The houses are brightly colored Victorians with peeling paint. It looks a lot like Key West Florida. The run course goes into a house, we have to run upstairs and down these hallways. We do this through multiple big old three-story houses. There are all kinds of things in the way like kids toys, dogs, and the people who live in the houses. I keep saying "excuse me!" and "I'm sorry" every time I am in someone's way. I think what an inconvenience it must be to these people to have all these athletes running through their house. Now I'm at the run turnaround, I see that it's already eleven hours into the race, and I still have half of the marathon to go. Because of all the stairs and the crazy race course, I'm way off the pace I wanted to run. I know I won't finish in under thirteen hours, way slower than my last Ironman. I feel like I've failed all of my goals for the race. I wake up feeling disappointed and sad.

The Cheap Analysis

I know I don't usually start having dreams about a race until I'm a few months or weeks out. I'm guessing I had this dream for two reasons. One is that I do have a half-Ironman coming up in a few weeks, and the Ironman in this dream could be a stand-in for that race. I could be worried about accomplishing my goals for that race. Also, if I'm going to do an Ironman like Cozumel in 2011, I'll have to sign up in a couple of months. I know that if I sign up, I'll be making big sacrifices again in the year to come.

The first thing that will be compromised is some of the time I spend with the kids and my husband. I think the dream shows that I'm worried about putting more of the family burden onto his shoulders again like I did the last time, and that I worry that without my constant care and attention, disaster may strike my family (as if my vigilance alone holds it off, LOL).

The second thing I worry about is that the Ironman is essentially a selfish goal. The man by the side of the road says I will be forced to choose between being selfish (focusing on my own goals) and being selfless and helping others around me. Friends, family, and strangers will be by the side of the road and I will have to choose to put my own goals first and run on by, or to set my goals aside to help them.

The last thing I worry about is disappointing myself and others if I don't fulfill my goals for the race. If I spend all this time, energy, and money training, and then I fall short of what I set out to do, I worry that it will all be for nothing. Of course, I know that the journey is really the destination and all of that, but you can't fool your subconscious and I know my dream is telling me that my goals for the race will be important to me and there's no getting around that.

Well, that's my cheap analysis of the dream. Unlike my friend Jody Mace, a professional writer who draws her own dreams and puts them on Facebook, regularly causing me to spew tea on my monitor (well, Jody is that kind of funny person anyways), I don't dream a lot lately. Some of that may have to do with the half-Ironman training which is reaching its peak this week. Mostly I fall into something akin to a coma when my head hits the pillow. Luckily, I've been getting a steady eight hours lately, which is probably why I finally got to do some dreaming.