Must Title This: I Qualified For Nationals, Woohoo!

Since Nationals will be in Oregon next year, I've been really hoping to qualify. I missed by one slot in a tri earlier this year, as I mentioned in May. Having my local triathlon get cancelled was maybe a bit of a blessing in disguise, since it allowed me to get to the NW Regional Championships instead. The Regionals qualify top 5 or top 33% in each age group, which is a bit easier to hit than the number 1 spot (or so I thought), so it was a great opportunity to try.

Though I felt a bit unprepared for this race, I had a really good time. I had trained for a bit longer race (the Tri-America series), so I hadn't trained for as much speed as I would've for an Olympic distance, and with a week of camping just before leaving for Washington, I was a bit behind the eight-ball going in (especially since, due to traffic, the drive up to Washington took us 7 1/2 hours!!! ugh). But race morning promised perfect Robin Triathlon weather (overcast, slightly cool, no rain) and the race was well organized and very friendly and fun.

When I got to the transition area, that was my first clue that qualifying might be a bit tough. No mountain bikes or scruffy road bikes here, all the bikes looked serious and the athletes equally so. Apparently this race was also a direct qualifier for Worlds, not just Nationals and some of the athletes were aiming for that . Wow, no wonder they looked so fast! Trying not to be intimidated, I got my gear out and saw plenty of familiar faces from other Northwest races. I had decided to wear my new Helix wetsuit (so new, I haven't even blogged about it yet - I just got it last week). I had been having some trouble with arm fatigue in the two times I managed to get in the lake with it last week, so I was a bit worried but decided to give it a go in a race. A woman in the transition area with the same suit gave me a good tip on how to get the shoulders aligned and that seemed to help a lot, my arms felt fine after the swim.

It's a good thing my suit felt fine as the swim was longer than usual by about five minutes (or nearly a quarter mile). This is always in my favor, so I don't mind if I look out and see the buoys looking unusually far in the distance. Unfortunately, they started the men's wave first and then the women, so after the second buoy I was swimming through the swarms of slower males, like an aquatic obstacle course, but the water was calm and I felt happy to be out there gliding along. I had great transition times at 1:11 for T1 and :43 for T2. For once, I didn't feel like I was fumbling with anything, and the full-sleeved suit came off easier than I had hoped (love that upside-down zipper!).

The bike course in this race was....welll...interesting, for lack of a better word. A four-lap course, which was a new one on me in the world of Olympic distance, and I was a bit worried about the course getting crowded after the first loop. As it turns out, that wasn't the hardest thing about this course. I guess when the race description says things like "the course meanders to 28th street", what that really means is lots of turns. I think I counted fourteen turns (as in 90-degree turns) per lap, for a record-breaking 48 - 50 turns over the entire bike course. Wow! So when you add in the little up-and-down rolling hills, it was kind of a technical course. Ordinarily, this isn't to my benefit, since as I've posted earlier I am a bit of a cornering scaredy-cat. But I discovered that this kind of course takes a lot of strength as you keep decelerating for the turns and then you have to quickly accelerate to speed again. Athletes with good endurance but little power were really suffering by the last couple of laps because there were no sections where you could get your speed up to a steady pace and keep it there. It didn't look that tough in terms of the hill profile, but it was a bit of a punishing course leg-wise for this reason. Still, I pulled in a 1:08 for the bike course which is a PKPR (post-kids PR, that is) for me! Also, although there were a lot of cyclists on the course, due to the multiple laps, the USAT officials kept everyone separated nicely, and I saw them many times on the course (and thanked them afterwards). The multiple loops also gave everyone a chance to see everyone else, and I cheered on all the triathletes I passed, which is my little race-day custom if I'm not too winded!

On to the run, those little up-and-downish hills all of a sudden loomed a bit larger. Hills are especially punishing to this athena-class runner, and I knew that I already had at least two, maybe three people from my age group in front of me (two of the three women who passed me on the bike were in my age group - wah!). Fortunately, the bike course was the same as the run course for the first mile, and all those cyclists I had cheered on earlier were now cheering me. The instant karma and good wishes buoyed me up and my second running lap was even faster than my first. All of the hard work I've been putting into my run this season paid off with a 10k time of :50, another PKPR by five minutes! And a good thing too, because a couple more F40-44 ladies passed me on the run and I ended up snagging the last qualifying spot for Nationals in my age group. Whew!

Overall, my finish time was 1:27:06. That doesn't seem too fast for an Oly time for me, but when I take into account that my normal swim time is :21 - :22 and this one was almost :27 (and I checked, all the athlete's swim times were about 5 minutes slow, so it wasn't just me or my new wetsuit!), that puts me into more into the pace for a 1:22 Oly in the future some time. Maybe at Nationals, if I'm lucky.

Humbled By Harry Potter and a Hamburger

I went to the track yesterday for my last tough running session before my triathlon next weekend, expecting to knock off some reasonably paced mile repeats and get some confidence in my running going into this race (especially after my breakthrough the last time I did this mile repeat workout). Instead, I was strongly reminded that it's not just what's in your legs that counts when you run, it's also what's in the rest of your body (or in this case, also what isn't). What wasn't there was enough sleep: I spent the night before at the Harry Potter book release party with my kids, dressed as a witch named Tonks (for those of you who have read the book, that explains the pink hair!). What was in my body was also a hamburger I ate two hours before running. I normally eat a little something before exercise, but that ended up being a little something too much. My miles were thirty seconds slower than the last time I attempted this, and I felt like crap.

But no workout is wasted, and this one was a good reminder that factors other than your physical fitness can signifigantly affect your abilities. When it comes to race day, I won't be staying up late (even though I haven't finished Harry Potter 7 yet) and I certainly won't have a hamburger for breakfast! Hopefully I'll approach race day feeling a bit better than I did at the track.

Another Door Opens

Taking the ol' lemons and making lemonade is the theme of the day today. While I'm still bummed that my exciting, LOCAL, new-distance, never-been-done-before triathlon has been cancelled, I found a nice-looking race just the weekend afterwards and will be traveling to that instead. It's the Federal Escape triathlon in Federal Way, Washington. It's one I've never done before and looks intriguing, an Olympic distance race. And best of all, it also has a kids' race, so my daughter (who was really looking forward to doing the kid's race here) is not disappointed.

She has been training and looking forward to this, and I have to say I'm busting at the seams a little bit with pride here. She came to swim laps with me and dang if the girl isn't just a total natural. She's never swam laps before, but we play in the pool a lot, making it a family priority to go at least once a week. She knocked off fifty yards in no time, with pretty dang good form, side-breathing and everything! I gave her a few pointers and she swam some more laps, doing 250 yards in all. Not bad for a 7 year old in her first time out.

Sometimes, you see yourself in your children so strongly that it really moves you. My parents couldn't drag me out of any body of water with a tow line when I was a kid, and my daughter has always been the same. When she was four months old, we took a family vacation to Hawaii. I got her this teeny tiny little swimsuit that was beyond adorable and took her in the pool on our first day there. After that, any time we even walked by the pool (which was on our way to everywhere else in the hotel), she would hold her chubby little baby arms out toward the water and just squeal. There's something in both of us that is always reaching for the water.

Today, I went for a bike ride myself, then came home and grabbed her and her bike and I went running while she biked. She went three miles (the distance in the kids' tri, along with a 50 yard swim and a one mile run) and then we went to a track and ran some laps together. It's such a joy to share this time with her. She's a real go-getter and did four laps before we called it a day. I can't wait to see her race (and get to race myself too).

Addendum: just looking at these two photos, taken over seven years apart, makes me get all sniffly. I think on our relationship when she was just a baby, and how much it has grown and changed. How much fun she is to hang out with, what a funny, cool, tough, intelligent little girl she is (not to mention my son as well!). I'm pretty dang lucky.

Cancelled. Disappointed.

So I got this email: "The TriAmerica National Series Tour announces the cancellation of the event originally scheduled for July 21-22, 2007. The cancellation is the result of low advance registration numbers.

It is with great disappointment....blahdey blah blah blah..."

So, the race I've been training toward, with a distance of 1.2 m S, 38 m B, 9 m R has been cancelled. Of course, I can just go out and find another race with comparable distances within driving distance of my house to go out and do in a little over a week, right? Right? Thanks a lot, TriAmerica.

F___!

Makes me wonder what would've happened if the first Ironman was cancelled due to "low registration numbers". Fifteen people stood on the beach at the first Ironman, and now they sell out 2,500 slots for each race in a day.

Did I say F____?? And me, having some kids and a husband and a job and other responsibilities and a summer that's all planned out with kids' activities and camps and vacations and trips, well it's not so easy to just find another race that's A) not full, B) is the distance I want to be doing and C) fits in with everything else I've got going on right now.


Did I say F____?? F_____!

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....