I'm a pretty defensive driver. Keep a nice cushion of space and plenty of room for idiots to do their dumbass things. Leaves me lots of space for people-watching, too. (And horn blowing, which Shawn will attest to.) Today driving to Tampa I saw two exemplary cases of dumbassedness on 75.
The first was a guy in a pick-up driving with his German Shepherd in the truck bed. Now doing this on backroads is one thing (that I'd still never do) but going 70?!? He gets a gold star. Poor poochie.
Second, a deputy driving in the left of 3 lanes, probably doing about 85, and there is a woman behind him completely tailing him. Next thing I know, she pulls into the middle lane and proceeds to pass him! Not an unmarked car, but a cruiser complete with lights and whistles. Which were quickly turned on to pull her over (thank goodness!). Not paying attention? Glutton for punishment? Hot for cops? Either way, she hopefully learned her lesson that passing a police cruiser on the right going about 90 might mess with your plans for the evening.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Worky work, busy bee!
Seems like this week was chaotic and fast. Thursday morning was swim time again. I held on for all of practice today. Thursday is more technique work so it's easier for me to keep up. Even though we were to do 6 x 50's in 1:00 so I just basically swam a 300 straight for that one. No need to stop for 2 seconds. We also did this cool thing where there were 3 of us in a lane testing out drafting. For my turn it was two of the guys on the sides of the land with fins on and me in the center with no fins. The key is to leave the wall just a split second after they do to ride the draft they create. It was a pretty cool phenomenon as I was able to keep up and not feel like I was working really hard to do it.
Then it was off to a REALLY long but productive day at work. I had told Shawn I'd be later but he didn't seem to hear me and had the aura of annoyance by it when I got home. My goal was to finish as much as I could to try to not have to go in Friday. I was successful in this, but it makes for a long and mentally draining day.
This morning I decided to get up again to swim. The girls both wanted to get up. After I ate, Sadie scooted out the dog door onto the patio and started barking like crazy. I'm pretty sure it was directed towards the neighbor's sprinkler as it hit the leaves of one of the palms. Once she goes, Nicki goes, and then it's barkey malarkey. Finally got them quiet and back to bed. As it was my first Friday, I didn't really know what to expect, but it's basically a do-your-own-thing kind of day. So I worked on technique, flip turns, and kicking. I saw at least one of my 50's in the low 0:50's, so that was nice. As with anything, time in practice only makes you better. Friday is also the day when the group goes for a ride. Today is the last day for the one coach who gave me some lessons after my bike crash so we had a nice little chat about riding. One of these days I'll start riding with the group. Just not crazy about the idea of being in a line. But I have to get out there.
Then it was off to a REALLY long but productive day at work. I had told Shawn I'd be later but he didn't seem to hear me and had the aura of annoyance by it when I got home. My goal was to finish as much as I could to try to not have to go in Friday. I was successful in this, but it makes for a long and mentally draining day.
This morning I decided to get up again to swim. The girls both wanted to get up. After I ate, Sadie scooted out the dog door onto the patio and started barking like crazy. I'm pretty sure it was directed towards the neighbor's sprinkler as it hit the leaves of one of the palms. Once she goes, Nicki goes, and then it's barkey malarkey. Finally got them quiet and back to bed. As it was my first Friday, I didn't really know what to expect, but it's basically a do-your-own-thing kind of day. So I worked on technique, flip turns, and kicking. I saw at least one of my 50's in the low 0:50's, so that was nice. As with anything, time in practice only makes you better. Friday is also the day when the group goes for a ride. Today is the last day for the one coach who gave me some lessons after my bike crash so we had a nice little chat about riding. One of these days I'll start riding with the group. Just not crazy about the idea of being in a line. But I have to get out there.
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Thankfully today was much better. It was wound round day at work, so I didn't get very much done of my own charting, but it's all part of it. It's actually nice to be part of a group that values the input of a RD. I hear lots of stories, and many times deal with a bit myself, about how so many people still think dietitians are just foodies. While that is one aspect of what we do, there is SO much more. I'll probably discuss that eventually.
I train with a group called T2. They have a GREAT aquatics program and also a performance triathlon program. They have coaches for all 3 disciplines and create your training schedule based on your upcoming races and goals. It's a really great group and I know it's helped me a lot. Now I just have to get more focused on the bike. Those practices are changing to Mon & Thurs evenings, which will present a little challenge. I prefer evenings, but Mr. Duffey would not like me home late 3 nights out of the week. Ah, the challenge and the compromise of trying to work it all in. :-/ Tonight was weekly track practice. I am definitely getting faster in my intervals. Tonight was effort based for timed intervals. My fastest interval, I was able to hold 8:08 pace for 0.5 mile. I also had a 8:10 for a 0.49. So I'm pretty happy with that. Stronger and faster is the goal!
Tonight we discussed how we need to think about our 2012 races. I'll have to give some thought to this one. Please share suggestions!
I train with a group called T2. They have a GREAT aquatics program and also a performance triathlon program. They have coaches for all 3 disciplines and create your training schedule based on your upcoming races and goals. It's a really great group and I know it's helped me a lot. Now I just have to get more focused on the bike. Those practices are changing to Mon & Thurs evenings, which will present a little challenge. I prefer evenings, but Mr. Duffey would not like me home late 3 nights out of the week. Ah, the challenge and the compromise of trying to work it all in. :-/ Tonight was weekly track practice. I am definitely getting faster in my intervals. Tonight was effort based for timed intervals. My fastest interval, I was able to hold 8:08 pace for 0.5 mile. I also had a 8:10 for a 0.49. So I'm pretty happy with that. Stronger and faster is the goal!
Tonight we discussed how we need to think about our 2012 races. I'll have to give some thought to this one. Please share suggestions!
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Escape from Frustration
The day started out like most Tuesdays & Thursdays (and likely Fridays now, too). Alarm goes off somewhere around 4:25 (my clock runs fast) to get up and moving in time for 5:30 swim. I pack everything the night before so I can get up and out of the bedroom before anyone wakes. Lately, it's not working as Sadie (the little morning flower) has decided that it's time for her to get up, too. Which means Nicki and Shawn are then up, foiling my plan of trying to let everyone else rest.
I am completely not a morning person and driving through the fog this morning made me think about how delightful it's going to be during the winter. I also don't drive with any music playing at that time of the morning because I need total focus to make sure no animals don't dart out in front of me. Hey, it's how I roll.
Everyone in the group wanted to know how the tri went. I don't have much of a poker face and I started to feel angry with myself about how bad I did (vs. how much better I should have been able to do). I really let myself down with inadequate training and that bothers me a lot. Hence, the post-race blues.
So, anyway, that first jump into the pool is always the hardest. They keep the pool around 78, I would guess. Utilizing chillers in the summer and heaters in the winter. I don't like chillers. After the warm up, we go into the main set which today was 50m repeats on 1:05 - which is easy for most, but I'm just getting to be able to do a consistent 0:55. My fastest today was 0:48 but the true start of the day was when I just couldn't hold the set and had to set one out of every 5 or 6 out. I don't know if I am still tired from the race or if I just still suck so much at swimming, but it REALLY frustrated me today.
After swim, I swung by Dunkin Donuts for some more iced tea as I didn't have enough at home and headed into work. My first sight at work was a messy, crumby, sticky desk. From that point, it just continued in a downward spiral. Not going to detail too much about work, but there was a lot of dumbass with a swig of stupid today coming from many sides.
I had planned to go to the gym and then spin tonight, but in the end decided to come home and do a little here. Shawn is certain that my lack of swim ability has to do with my complete lack of upper body strength. I'm pretty sure he's right, so we're working on pull ups, hangs, crunches, push ups, and all the other stuff that goes along with it.
Registration for next year's Escape to Miami has opened. Do I want to commit to it again and try to train and better my time? Or do I just want to finish Chicago and move on with indefinite training until I establish a solid base? Not making the decision tonight. Still too frustrated with the performance to want to think about it.
Congrats to Shawn for getting his first "legit" muscle-up tonight! Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QvLH10Ttt8
I am completely not a morning person and driving through the fog this morning made me think about how delightful it's going to be during the winter. I also don't drive with any music playing at that time of the morning because I need total focus to make sure no animals don't dart out in front of me. Hey, it's how I roll.
Everyone in the group wanted to know how the tri went. I don't have much of a poker face and I started to feel angry with myself about how bad I did (vs. how much better I should have been able to do). I really let myself down with inadequate training and that bothers me a lot. Hence, the post-race blues.
So, anyway, that first jump into the pool is always the hardest. They keep the pool around 78, I would guess. Utilizing chillers in the summer and heaters in the winter. I don't like chillers. After the warm up, we go into the main set which today was 50m repeats on 1:05 - which is easy for most, but I'm just getting to be able to do a consistent 0:55. My fastest today was 0:48 but the true start of the day was when I just couldn't hold the set and had to set one out of every 5 or 6 out. I don't know if I am still tired from the race or if I just still suck so much at swimming, but it REALLY frustrated me today.
After swim, I swung by Dunkin Donuts for some more iced tea as I didn't have enough at home and headed into work. My first sight at work was a messy, crumby, sticky desk. From that point, it just continued in a downward spiral. Not going to detail too much about work, but there was a lot of dumbass with a swig of stupid today coming from many sides.
I had planned to go to the gym and then spin tonight, but in the end decided to come home and do a little here. Shawn is certain that my lack of swim ability has to do with my complete lack of upper body strength. I'm pretty sure he's right, so we're working on pull ups, hangs, crunches, push ups, and all the other stuff that goes along with it.
Registration for next year's Escape to Miami has opened. Do I want to commit to it again and try to train and better my time? Or do I just want to finish Chicago and move on with indefinite training until I establish a solid base? Not making the decision tonight. Still too frustrated with the performance to want to think about it.
Congrats to Shawn for getting his first "legit" muscle-up tonight! Enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QvLH10Ttt8
Monday, September 26, 2011
Escape to Miami... and more...
Friday was a day of running around with errands, but I still tried to get a bunch done around the house since I'd be gone most of Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning was low key. I worked on packing for the Escape using the checklist that seems pretty thorough. Shawn had changed over my bike bottle holder for me and after lunch, we packed up the car and I was on my way to pick up Christy and Michelle at M's house. We figured since I have a 3-bike rack on the Camry it would be perfect to drive over. Well, haha on us!
Got to M's place where they both were getting their bikes out and ready to go. Shawn had told me that all the bikes should face chain ring out so that's how I figured we would load the bikes. Well, after a really sweaty 20 minutes, we had all the bikes jammed on the rack. We were looking at the rack and agreed to run to the Cyclery to see if anyone would be so kind as to double check our bike rack work. First words as we walked out of the Cyclery were something to the effect of "oh no, that's so wrong". So after a total readjustment of the bikes, facing opposite directions now, we were off (about 45 minutes later than planned).
The ride across the Alley was standard. The girls always have fun together chatting about the upcoming events. But poor Christy was still fighting her cold. One pee stop and we were following Roberta (GPS) to the race location. Found a place to park, unloaded the bikes and got them checked in to transition and got our bodies marked. We headed over to the hotel, checked in, got our DoubleTree cookies, and after some clean up and organization, we decided to go for supper. Using the iPhone apps, we were looking for restaurants; nothing was really close; asked the Concierge, but wound up just eating a the Italian place in the hotel lobby. Better service than last year. Food was what we needed. Headed to the room, did final prep for race day, and lights out with some last minute chatting and giggling.
I had to get up early since I had to get on the ferry to the island by 5:30, so I put my essentials in the bathroom as to avoid disturbing M & C. My phone alarm went off at 4:25, even though I woke up several times during the night thinking it was time. 12:30? Whew, I can still sleep. 1:25? YES! More sleep...
Got up, got ready, buttered the chafey bits, a little Body Glide here and there, grabbed my bags and was off to do my final set up in Transition. Bag back on the bike, helmet, sunglasses, bike shoes, sneakers, towels, water, gel - all good and organized well. I had about 15 minutes so I decided to see if I could find Randall (good East Coast friend also doing Olympic). Found him and after chatting about his timing chip I realized it was the one thing I didn't have - more like "OMG, where the eff is my chip?!?!?!?" With about 15 minutes left and a quick scan to verify it wasn't in a bag, I sprinted back to the hotel (in flip-flops). Thank goodness M & C were up because in a panic I was yelling, "I don't have my chip, I need lights!!!" Those chicas are the BEST! Found my chip on the floor where my stuff was piled. They agreed to return my flip-flops to transition so I could go straight to the ferry.
Which was actually a LINE to the ferry, where we wound up standing for a good 15 minutes before loading. Anywho, we were on the boat and off to the Island. The Island was the whole reason I wanted to step up from the Sprint to the Olympic. Seemed cool at the time. Sprint is a swim from shore, out, across, and back in. Olympic you are ferried out to an island and swim into shore. So we "walked the plank" and jumped off the boat and swam about 50m to the Island. Night birds were flying low and I was just trying to take in the moment as much as I could. They had water, a guy playing guitar and tiki torches on the Island. It was a little chilly standing there at 6AM after being in that 85 degree water. Tried to stay hydrated. Randall found me out there. Talked with a few random people. One jellyfish was spotted and removed from the water with a stick. Then the 7AM wave (men & elite) were lined up and were off. The ladies gathered for our 7:15 wave - found Cindy and Ann-Margret from Naples and chatted a bit to calm the nerves. Tried to locate all the buoys in the water as we were to swim a bit north before cutting left and back to shore. As we were waiting, someone motioned to get away from an area where one of the men clearly couldn't hold it and left a floater for everyone - how nice. So 7:15, wistle blows and we are off.
The swim generally felt great to the turn buoy. I was focusing on the bottom, you could see the grass - I always wonder about how deep it is, if I'll see any animals, I think about training... I'm pretty distracted from the actual process of swimming now. Some kicking and punching that goes on with a group swim, but nothing bad for me. No bloody noses or goggle-losing blows were received. Because of the current in this swim, you have to focus on really trying to swim tight to the buoy line, but it's really hard. After the turn, it was IMPOSSIBLE to spot the next direction. You knew that you were swimming to the park, which was OK to spot, but it's a pretty long park so you had to guess the general direction. And the current pushes you north. A lot. At times I felt like I was going nowhere. One of the kayakers yelled for me to head to my right a bit, but that was the direction the current was taking me anyway. Whatever. So I just tried to line up the buildings and swim that way. The swim was supposed to be 0.9 miles, but everyone agreed it was definitely more than a mile. M&C were there to cheer me out of the water.
Ran to transition, loaded up for the bike, helmet, shoes, water, gel. And I was off on the bike. Now, the bike is my least favorite part so I knew it would be a suffer fest as there were two laps, 8 hills, and just a lot of time in the saddle. It sucked more than I had even thought. I haven't trained anywhere near enough on the bike and my legs just didn't have enough power. I survived it, but it took much longer than it should have. That was probably the part that I would deem embarrassing. I should have been better on the bike. At one point I was deciding to take off the timimg chip, I was so embarrassed, but talked myself into leaving it on as a reminder that I need bike work. Generally, some people were nice, but a lot of people were jerks on the course. Passing REALLY close, not yelling that they were there. People passing on the right (penalty), drafting (penalty), just doing jerky stuff. Since everyone was passing me, I got to see it all. Somehow survived the bike, and was THANK GOD back to dismount. Ran the bike in and time to get ready for the run.
My rack was right at the Swim In, Bike Out point, so that was easy, but BIKE IN was all the way at the other end. Ran the bike in, darting around the pokies walking and wandering around like it was a picnic in the park. Got it racked, helmet off, sneakers on; ready for run. I decided to go sockless with my racing flats (and on the bike). Feet were wet and grassy, but I had powdered the shoes so they were all easy on. Run out and off we go. Felt pretty good on the run, passed quite a few people, especially on the hill. A lot of people stop and walk, but I have to be in a lot of hurt for that. There was a turn-around at the 5K / 1.5 mile point, but 10K kept going. I decided to take a gel at our turn-around, grab some water and head back out. I try to thank all the volunteers that I can and cheer on fellow participants. There was one memorable guy, was kind of gimping around mile 4, but he was still going. They mark your age on your calf for Tris and his said 62. I gave him a big "you got this. You're such and inspiration!" for which he thanked me. Just goes to show you that age is really just a number. This was also the point I could feel blisters forming on my feet. Over the hill back, I saw M coming to meet me. She kept telling me to stop talking as I was asking her about her race... as if not talking was going to make me go faster LOL!!!!!!! She then started thanking the volunteers before I could just so I would not talk. She's a crack up. She definitely ran me in at a faster pace than I would have solo, so I was very happy to have here there. She kept up the encouragement as I hacked on some water and rounded the last turn (Randall was on a bench cheering us in) to the finish chute. We pushed it in, she grabbed my hand and was telling me how proud of me she was (LOVE HER!!!!) as I was almost hysterical that it was over!!!! Can't wait to see my face in those photos.
We stopped for a photo and to meet up with Christy and Randall, grabbed a bite, then decided to go get our stuff out of transition. We lost Randall somewhere along the way but all met up back in the hotel room for showers and packing. We checked out and carried all our stuff to a cafe in the hotel and grabbed a quick lunch. Randall helped us rack the bikes and load the car. And we were on our way home. We were all really tired and talking to stay awake. It poured a lot on the way back, so I was driving like a grandma, taking over 2 hours to get back. Dropped off M & C at M's place. Hugged and said our "yay us!" goodbyes. Randall did awesome, first Olympic, beating his time estimate. Christy did AMAZING even doing it with how sick she was (really felt crappy). And Michelle was like a pro out there. She is so athletic and just excels at all of this. So proud of everyone!!!!!!!
I got back home and planned to just sleep. I was exhauseted after being up at 4:25, swimming over a mile, biking about 25 miles, running over 6 miles, eating, and driving home. Talked a bit with Shawn about the day and crashed. Shawn was a bit grumpy, not sure why, didn't have it in me to really investigate. He woke me up around 8 to see if I wanted to eat and do the Sunday night bills. I did both, got ready for bed, watched a little TV and was back to sleep soon thereafter.
This is the results page: http://results.active.com/pages/page.jsp?pubID=3&eventLinkageID=122654&year=2011. Like I said, I'm pretty embarrassed about my time. I should have been able to do so much better. But I know I have to be proud of myself for accomplishing a really hard feat. Almost 4 hours straight of pushing myself to the limit. It was definitely the hardest thing I've done to date. I'm still pretty tired. My feet have blisters. I'm a little sore. The butt butter worked well as I'm not chafed, which is really nice (Chamois Butt'r is great stuff!). But generally just happy that it's OVER!
Now I have Chicago to freak out about. 2 weeks and I'll be blogging about that! :)
Got to M's place where they both were getting their bikes out and ready to go. Shawn had told me that all the bikes should face chain ring out so that's how I figured we would load the bikes. Well, after a really sweaty 20 minutes, we had all the bikes jammed on the rack. We were looking at the rack and agreed to run to the Cyclery to see if anyone would be so kind as to double check our bike rack work. First words as we walked out of the Cyclery were something to the effect of "oh no, that's so wrong". So after a total readjustment of the bikes, facing opposite directions now, we were off (about 45 minutes later than planned).
The ride across the Alley was standard. The girls always have fun together chatting about the upcoming events. But poor Christy was still fighting her cold. One pee stop and we were following Roberta (GPS) to the race location. Found a place to park, unloaded the bikes and got them checked in to transition and got our bodies marked. We headed over to the hotel, checked in, got our DoubleTree cookies, and after some clean up and organization, we decided to go for supper. Using the iPhone apps, we were looking for restaurants; nothing was really close; asked the Concierge, but wound up just eating a the Italian place in the hotel lobby. Better service than last year. Food was what we needed. Headed to the room, did final prep for race day, and lights out with some last minute chatting and giggling.
I had to get up early since I had to get on the ferry to the island by 5:30, so I put my essentials in the bathroom as to avoid disturbing M & C. My phone alarm went off at 4:25, even though I woke up several times during the night thinking it was time. 12:30? Whew, I can still sleep. 1:25? YES! More sleep...
Got up, got ready, buttered the chafey bits, a little Body Glide here and there, grabbed my bags and was off to do my final set up in Transition. Bag back on the bike, helmet, sunglasses, bike shoes, sneakers, towels, water, gel - all good and organized well. I had about 15 minutes so I decided to see if I could find Randall (good East Coast friend also doing Olympic). Found him and after chatting about his timing chip I realized it was the one thing I didn't have - more like "OMG, where the eff is my chip?!?!?!?" With about 15 minutes left and a quick scan to verify it wasn't in a bag, I sprinted back to the hotel (in flip-flops). Thank goodness M & C were up because in a panic I was yelling, "I don't have my chip, I need lights!!!" Those chicas are the BEST! Found my chip on the floor where my stuff was piled. They agreed to return my flip-flops to transition so I could go straight to the ferry.
Which was actually a LINE to the ferry, where we wound up standing for a good 15 minutes before loading. Anywho, we were on the boat and off to the Island. The Island was the whole reason I wanted to step up from the Sprint to the Olympic. Seemed cool at the time. Sprint is a swim from shore, out, across, and back in. Olympic you are ferried out to an island and swim into shore. So we "walked the plank" and jumped off the boat and swam about 50m to the Island. Night birds were flying low and I was just trying to take in the moment as much as I could. They had water, a guy playing guitar and tiki torches on the Island. It was a little chilly standing there at 6AM after being in that 85 degree water. Tried to stay hydrated. Randall found me out there. Talked with a few random people. One jellyfish was spotted and removed from the water with a stick. Then the 7AM wave (men & elite) were lined up and were off. The ladies gathered for our 7:15 wave - found Cindy and Ann-Margret from Naples and chatted a bit to calm the nerves. Tried to locate all the buoys in the water as we were to swim a bit north before cutting left and back to shore. As we were waiting, someone motioned to get away from an area where one of the men clearly couldn't hold it and left a floater for everyone - how nice. So 7:15, wistle blows and we are off.
The swim generally felt great to the turn buoy. I was focusing on the bottom, you could see the grass - I always wonder about how deep it is, if I'll see any animals, I think about training... I'm pretty distracted from the actual process of swimming now. Some kicking and punching that goes on with a group swim, but nothing bad for me. No bloody noses or goggle-losing blows were received. Because of the current in this swim, you have to focus on really trying to swim tight to the buoy line, but it's really hard. After the turn, it was IMPOSSIBLE to spot the next direction. You knew that you were swimming to the park, which was OK to spot, but it's a pretty long park so you had to guess the general direction. And the current pushes you north. A lot. At times I felt like I was going nowhere. One of the kayakers yelled for me to head to my right a bit, but that was the direction the current was taking me anyway. Whatever. So I just tried to line up the buildings and swim that way. The swim was supposed to be 0.9 miles, but everyone agreed it was definitely more than a mile. M&C were there to cheer me out of the water.
Ran to transition, loaded up for the bike, helmet, shoes, water, gel. And I was off on the bike. Now, the bike is my least favorite part so I knew it would be a suffer fest as there were two laps, 8 hills, and just a lot of time in the saddle. It sucked more than I had even thought. I haven't trained anywhere near enough on the bike and my legs just didn't have enough power. I survived it, but it took much longer than it should have. That was probably the part that I would deem embarrassing. I should have been better on the bike. At one point I was deciding to take off the timimg chip, I was so embarrassed, but talked myself into leaving it on as a reminder that I need bike work. Generally, some people were nice, but a lot of people were jerks on the course. Passing REALLY close, not yelling that they were there. People passing on the right (penalty), drafting (penalty), just doing jerky stuff. Since everyone was passing me, I got to see it all. Somehow survived the bike, and was THANK GOD back to dismount. Ran the bike in and time to get ready for the run.
My rack was right at the Swim In, Bike Out point, so that was easy, but BIKE IN was all the way at the other end. Ran the bike in, darting around the pokies walking and wandering around like it was a picnic in the park. Got it racked, helmet off, sneakers on; ready for run. I decided to go sockless with my racing flats (and on the bike). Feet were wet and grassy, but I had powdered the shoes so they were all easy on. Run out and off we go. Felt pretty good on the run, passed quite a few people, especially on the hill. A lot of people stop and walk, but I have to be in a lot of hurt for that. There was a turn-around at the 5K / 1.5 mile point, but 10K kept going. I decided to take a gel at our turn-around, grab some water and head back out. I try to thank all the volunteers that I can and cheer on fellow participants. There was one memorable guy, was kind of gimping around mile 4, but he was still going. They mark your age on your calf for Tris and his said 62. I gave him a big "you got this. You're such and inspiration!" for which he thanked me. Just goes to show you that age is really just a number. This was also the point I could feel blisters forming on my feet. Over the hill back, I saw M coming to meet me. She kept telling me to stop talking as I was asking her about her race... as if not talking was going to make me go faster LOL!!!!!!! She then started thanking the volunteers before I could just so I would not talk. She's a crack up. She definitely ran me in at a faster pace than I would have solo, so I was very happy to have here there. She kept up the encouragement as I hacked on some water and rounded the last turn (Randall was on a bench cheering us in) to the finish chute. We pushed it in, she grabbed my hand and was telling me how proud of me she was (LOVE HER!!!!) as I was almost hysterical that it was over!!!! Can't wait to see my face in those photos.
We stopped for a photo and to meet up with Christy and Randall, grabbed a bite, then decided to go get our stuff out of transition. We lost Randall somewhere along the way but all met up back in the hotel room for showers and packing. We checked out and carried all our stuff to a cafe in the hotel and grabbed a quick lunch. Randall helped us rack the bikes and load the car. And we were on our way home. We were all really tired and talking to stay awake. It poured a lot on the way back, so I was driving like a grandma, taking over 2 hours to get back. Dropped off M & C at M's place. Hugged and said our "yay us!" goodbyes. Randall did awesome, first Olympic, beating his time estimate. Christy did AMAZING even doing it with how sick she was (really felt crappy). And Michelle was like a pro out there. She is so athletic and just excels at all of this. So proud of everyone!!!!!!!
I got back home and planned to just sleep. I was exhauseted after being up at 4:25, swimming over a mile, biking about 25 miles, running over 6 miles, eating, and driving home. Talked a bit with Shawn about the day and crashed. Shawn was a bit grumpy, not sure why, didn't have it in me to really investigate. He woke me up around 8 to see if I wanted to eat and do the Sunday night bills. I did both, got ready for bed, watched a little TV and was back to sleep soon thereafter.
This is the results page: http://results.active.com/pages/page.jsp?pubID=3&eventLinkageID=122654&year=2011. Like I said, I'm pretty embarrassed about my time. I should have been able to do so much better. But I know I have to be proud of myself for accomplishing a really hard feat. Almost 4 hours straight of pushing myself to the limit. It was definitely the hardest thing I've done to date. I'm still pretty tired. My feet have blisters. I'm a little sore. The butt butter worked well as I'm not chafed, which is really nice (Chamois Butt'r is great stuff!). But generally just happy that it's OVER!
Now I have Chicago to freak out about. 2 weeks and I'll be blogging about that! :)
Saturday, September 24, 2011
First Post - Venturing into blog space
Generally it seems to me that blogging is somewhat narcissistic. Do people really want to read on the daily events of someone? My husband, Shawn, has one and posts almost daily somehow making what are the most mundane details interesting. Often times, I think that I wish I could respond to his one-sided conversation with the world, or interject my thoughts, or somehow record my own. So here goes!
Am I supposed to create a cast of characters for this, or do I just blog and the reader figures it out? Figure it out for now, I guess.
After waking up to a freshly brewed pot of tea (thanks hubs!), and doing the usual email and new check, it was time to pack for my next adventure - my first Olympic triathlon! Christy, Michelle, and I are driving over to Miami this afternoon to do what will hopefully be a cool annual tradition (2nd year for us), the Escape to Miami. Last year I did the sprint distance, and this year I'm stepping into the longer distance. I had made a packing checklist for us for tri use, so armed with the list, I packed my little suitcase and will be ready to go.
Am I supposed to create a cast of characters for this, or do I just blog and the reader figures it out? Figure it out for now, I guess.
After waking up to a freshly brewed pot of tea (thanks hubs!), and doing the usual email and new check, it was time to pack for my next adventure - my first Olympic triathlon! Christy, Michelle, and I are driving over to Miami this afternoon to do what will hopefully be a cool annual tradition (2nd year for us), the Escape to Miami. Last year I did the sprint distance, and this year I'm stepping into the longer distance. I had made a packing checklist for us for tri use, so armed with the list, I packed my little suitcase and will be ready to go.
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