emma from texas

Race Report: Denver Rock 'n Roll Marathon

2011-10-17T21:34:00.000-06:00

I can't think of a creative intro, so let's get straight to the race recap!

The start line for the race was downtown, about a 20 minute walk from my house. Even though I was so close, didn't have to deal with parking, and the race didn't start until 6:55am, my alarm rang at 4:30. Yuck. Luckily waking up was not hard as I slept very well the night before. I did my best to relax physically and mentally all day Saturday. I spent some quality time on the couch, watching the Texas-OU game (meh) and the Hawaii Ironman online (awesome!). I dressed in my race outfit with throw-away cover-ups purchased from Goodwill (warm-up pants, hoodie, and gloves for $8!), grabbed my gear bag, some waffles and peanut butter, and headed out the door.

Gear check opened at 5:30, and I got there at about 5:25. I was the first one to check my bag when it opened. I then walked down to the Blue Bear at the Convention Center to meet my running group. Guess what? I can stand fully upright underneath the Bear's crotch! You learn something new every day!


Source

I warmed up, chatted with my coaches and training partners, made multiple bathroom stops, and headed back to the start line. The best part of having a good night sleep the night before was that I felt very ready and very calm. When I haven't slept well before a race I have nervous energy to contend with while waiting for the start.


Before the start

I lined up in my corral - (my) lucky number 11! My goal for this race was 4:45, but I thought I would be happy with anything sub-5. The official race pace group for a 4:45 finish was in my same corral. I did not want to run with them because I needed to stick to my 9/1 run/walk strategy. But I planned to keep them near me throughout the race so I would have a good sense of whether my pace was on track or not.

The race started with a "LET'S ROCK AND ROLL!" and I was off!

I made a conscious effort to go s-l-o-w the first few miles to properly warm up and not get too caught up in the early race frenzy. I had 26.2 miles to cover, I didn't want to blow it early on. My Garmin was a little off on mileage (my watch said about two tenths of a mile over each time I passed a mile marker) and I didn't really trust that it was giving me an accurate pace. I stopped focusing on my actual pace and only paid attention to my average pace, which seemed to be about right, although a probably a hair fast. I was glad to have the pace group nearby as an extra check that I was on target.

Cruising By Coors Field around the 5K point

I ran slightly ahead of the pace group for about the first half. I made my way past Coors Field through downtown and up the hill to City Park. I ran into one of my coaches (wearing a "Coach" bib meaning she could go anywhere on the course) and she ran with me for a couple miles. I felt pretty good at this point. My favorite band/song of the day was playing right as I entered the park - "Oh What a Night!"

Next the race worked its way over to Cheesman Park, a regular ~~stomping~~ running ground of mine. At this point the half-marathoners split off from runners doing the full. A woman looked at me and said, "I guess there's no turning back now." Nope.

My experience at my last marathon was, in a nutshell, first 13.1 easy, 14-16 kinda tough, 17-19 second wind, 20-26 OMG get me out of here! My experience was fairly similar this time, except I thought that the race just got gradually tougher miles 14-19. Starting at the half-marathon point, the pace group caught up with me. I passed them, they passed me, rinse repeat.

The next park was Wash Park, where I have trained at least once a week everyday for the last year (according to Foursquare, I've checked in 27 times in the last 6 months), so it was comforting to arrive there. I saw a port-a-potty with no lines around Mile 18 and decided to take the opportunity. I fell behind the pace group at this point, but they were still in my sights. I decided to take it easy and hold back until Mile 20, then I planned to let go and give it everything I had.

My speed up at Mile 20, pass the pace group, and never look back plan lasted only until about Mile 22. I caught up with them briefly, but then huge waves of mental fatigue and self-doubt set in. Why do people voluntarily sign up for this kind of thing?!? If you look at my splits, I did speed up for a couple miles, but once I got to Mile 23, I needed to slow down back to my normal pace.

I saw another one of my coaches at this point and she ran with me from Mile 23 to 26, which was amazingly helpful. I told her I felt fine but that I was struggling mentally. I was not in a place where I could smile or talk or express appreciation in any way, but I did really appreciate that she was there. She re-filled a water bottle from my fuel belt, which were all empty at this point, and she calmly told me periodically how far we had to go. She asked me if I wanted to catch back up to the pace group and I said no. As long as I could see them, I knew I was in range of my goal time and that was fine with me.

There was one last uphill on the way back to downtown between 6th and 8th Ave. I tried to focus on the fact that I only had to get back to 14th, so I couldn't have far to go. My coach left me and I ran the last 0.2 on my own. It wasn't long before I saw the finish line and (best of all) my cheering section!

And I beat my goal time! I crossed the line at 4:43:30 (a PR by 44+ minutes!)

I celebrated afterward with brunch and Bloody Marys.

A week has gone by and I am walking normally again. I took the entire week off from exercise and focused on getting plenty of sleep and doing plenty of walking. My legs felt very sore, but as soon as the race was over and in the days after, I felt absolutely great from the waist up. When I ran the Los Angeles Marathon five years ago, I remember feeling like I'd been hit by a bus.

Tonight was my first day back at the gym, for a combination weights and cardio class. I felt pretty tired going in and thought it would be a tough work-out since it's been awhile since I've done that kind of thing. It was a hard class, but I felt great, especially during the cardio segments. It's a nice feeling to have the level of fitness I've built up after the months of tri training and running. It won't last, I don't want it to - I need a break. But I am glad to know that it's not completely gone yet.

Rock on!

Organizing!

2011-09-06T21:49:00.000-06:00

The Denver Rock 'n Roll Marathon is a little over a month away! These next two weeks are the final build phase, culminating with a 21-Mile run. My coaches noted that this is the time to prioritize running and suggested we do whatever is necessary to make sure we get every training run in. It was recommended that we do things like write our work-outs down in our calendar and lay out our running clothes...anything that minimizes the amount of effort it takes to get to the work-out. It reminded me of something Bobby McGee said during his talk last spring: the athletes that have the most success aren't necessarily the most talented, but they are the most well-organized.

So...

I thought laying out my running clothes would be a good idea, too. Every time I go for a run, I either just woke up, or just got home from work and have 5-10 minutes to change and get out the door to meet my group. My coach probably meant lay clothes out each day, but I don't trust myself to remember to keep doing that. Instead, I just gathered together a bunch of complete running outfits and other running gear and tossed them in a laundry basket so I can grab-and-go without having to rifle through drawers or piles of clean laundry. (I've been averaging about 5 minutes a day just looking for two matching socks! Ridiculous!)

I also have some Lentil Soup simmering in the Crock-Pot so I'll have some easy healthy meals on hand. Hopefully it turns out well!

Happy Fall!

Race Report: Lake Stevens 70.3

2011-09-03T20:32:00.001-06:00

This is about 3 weeks overdue, but I wanted to give a brief report and post some pictures from the Lake Stevens 70.3. (I say "brief", but once I get going, this will probably be as long as my race reports usually are.) I did already post a "Race Review" on the Beyond Transition website.

Pre-Race Day

My bike left for Lake Stevens on Tuesday via FedEx, and I boarded a plane from Denver on Friday afternoon. My parents connected through Denver on their way from Austin, so we were on the same flight to Seattle.

We stayed in Lake Stevens Friday and I checked in and picked up my bike Saturday morning. At noon, my teammates and I went to the course for a pre-race work out. We did a quick swim, got an overview of the transition area, biked one loop of the run course, and drove the bike course.

Dad checking out the transition area

My teammates and our cheering section (including my parents) went out for a pre-race pasta dinner. I had seafood cannelloni - yum!

Carb-loaded and ready for race day!

Race Morning

I had an awful time sleeping the night before due to nerves. I tried not to let it bother me, and thought back to an article in Runners World that I quote and think about often. "As long as you're horizontal, you'll be fine." I had a stress dream about not getting a ride in the morning and missing the race. When I woke up, I thought, "Yay! I must have gotten some sleep!"

I drank a cup of coffee and ate half a peanut butter sandwich (couldn't finish a whole one) on the drive to the course. After setting up my transition area, I headed out to get in line for the port-a-potties. I found my parents and then stepped into my wetsuit and hopped in the water to warm-up.

Swim

At 69 degrees, the water temp was a little warmer than the air and felt great. It was a treading water start, so we lined up on the dock and jumped in once the wave in front of us started. As soon as the canon sounded, it suddenly hit me how little sleep I had gotten. I felt really tired, but I just kept swimming. What's neat about this course is that there is a rope submerged beneath the water holding the buoys up. If you position yourself right, you can focus on the line underwater and don't have to lift your head up to sight. It was crowded at the start, so I pulled to the side, and just sighted the old-fashion way. More people passed me than I had hoped, but I decided that was ok. I finished the swim in 39:19. While this was three minutes faster than my previous effort at this distance, I still feel that I'm capable of more. I've always made the executive decision not to focus on my swim since it is already my strength and will not gain me much time overall. However, that is a decision I may revisit next season. I'm toying with the idea of packing in lots of 100m intervals this winter before training officially begins.

Bike

Clipping in

Managing a smile

Beautiful and hilly about sums it up. No one hill was significantly harder than the others, but there were a lot of 'em, one after another, with some false flats in between. One part was basically like a roller coaster - straight up, straight down, straight up, straight down. It was a two loop course, but the loop did start right away - it was about six miles in. Those first miles were fast and partly downhill. I thought I might be in for a pretty fast (for me) bike split. I was wrong. I tried not to get too discouraged by my average mph and just kept pedaling, but I think I focused too much on my Garmin, and not enough on the pretty scenery. I repeated my mantra over and over again -- "use your granny gear, get over it" -- and tried to keep my legs as spin-y as possible. I had to stop for a bathroom break around Mile 40. I spent awhile convincing myself to just wait until transition (I had already stopped once), but I'm soooo glad I decided to stop again. The volunteers at the aid-station were so nice! They held my bike and filled up my water bottles while I was taking care of business. That little breather gave me a much-needed second wind to head into T2. My bike time was 3:44:55 (14.9 mph) - nearly 20 minutes slower than the 5430 Long Course two years ago. Boulder was a fast course, this was not.

Such a pretty course!

Run

This was the highlight of the race for me. And it was the last time I did this distance, too. I struggle so much mentally with running, but for some reason biking 56 miles beforehand seems to guarantee that I'll feel strong and happy during a 13.1 mile run. I guess it just take me a long time to warm up. :P I set my Garmin so it would give me the 9min/1min intervals and did not let myself check my pace or overall time. The course was two loops, more like two figure-eights, and the first chunk was uphill. I forced myself to go slow and let my legs recover. I didn't know my exact splits, but I could tell I was keeping a consistent sub-11 pace, which I felt really good about. As in regular half-marathons, it started to feel really hard around Mile 9. The second part of the figure-eight was an out and back beside the lake, which was mostly up on the way out. On that last hill, I kept telling myself to shorten my stride, lean forward, and keep my turn-over quick, hearing my coaches' voices in my head. I saw a few of my teammates while on the course which was a good boost. It was tough, but I felt really strong the entire run. And it wasn't just a feeling. It was a PR! 2:16:25 (10:25/mi) - faster than my stand-alone half-marathon PR in Moab this year!

One day I'll learn how to not look like a complete dork in running pictures.

Finish

My overall time was 6:49:23 - about six minutes faster than the race in Boulder two years ago. That's pretty good considering my bike split was so much slower. It was great to have my parents there cheering me in and out of each transition and racing alongside teammates was a blast.

A few relaxing days in Seattle afterward was the perfect way to rest and recover the body and mind.

What's Next?

Tri season is over, but I'm already back in training. I'll be running the Denver Rock 'n Roll marathon on October 9th!

Boulder Peak

2011-07-10T21:32:00.001-06:00

In case anyone has noticed or cares, I've been slacking on blogging lately. I failed to recap 3 out of 4 races from my self-imposed "May madness" series. Now that it's July, I'm going to forgo all that and skip straight to a ~~brief~~ race report of the Boulder Peak, which was this morning.

During the drive from Denver to Boulder, I spent some time thinking about my goals for this race and what I wanted to accomplish. This isn't my "A race" and I've raced this course twice before. This was also my first time this year putting all three sports together (the Summer Open Tri I did in May turned into Du because of high E-coli in the water). I decided that I just wanted to make it up the (crazy hard 15% grade) hill on the bike and see what I could do on the run.

Swim

I made somewhat of a rookie mistake at the swim start (though, ironically, if I were an actual rookie, I probably wouldn't have made it because I would have been paying closer attention to the rules.) I hopped in the water a few minutes before my wave started to warm up. When I finished, my fellow W30-34ers were already lined up in the start corral, so I swam under the rope to join them rather than swim back to the beach and walk over. At one minute before the start, I recalled that I had heard at the pre-race meeting the day before that there was a timing mat you had to cross before entering the swim (for safety reasons, so they know everyone made it out of the water.) This is a rule change since Ironman took over this race. At about 30 seconds before the start I looked back and noticed a "Swim Start" banner with a timing mat underneath. I asked a fellow athlete if I needed to cross the mat before starting. She was like, uh, yeah. So, I ran back to the beach, quickly explained to a volunteer what the heck I was doing, and then ran back into the water Baywatch-style, chasing after my competitors who had already started swimming.


approximation of how I looked at the swim start

Needless to say, my swim was only ok. Though I probably only lost about 30-45 seconds on this endeavor, it threw off my mental game a little. I thought I did a pretty good job of putting it out of my mind, however. I was worried that I didn't actually tag the mat in the right place and that I would get a "DNS" (did not start) for the race. I decided that even if it did go in the books as a DNS, I would know in my heart that I came out and raced, and that helped set my mood for the rest of the day.

Bike

Yes the Boulder Peak has a swim. Yes there is a run that is usually hot as f*&k. But really, the Boulder Peak starts and finishes with the bike up Olde Stage Road. After 6 miles of false flats and steady climbing, the bike leg culminates in a 600 foot vertical climb in just 2/3 of a mile. The final 20 miles are downhill with a few rollers, easy peasy in comparison. I usually make a point to practice the hill before race day, but wasn't able to this year due to construction. I didn't really doubt my ability to make it up, but I was a little nervous.

The main difference in my approach this year was that I gave myself permission to stay in a lower gear and focus on spinning my legs. I used to stay in my big ring as long as possible, but I've been convinced that it's better to save energy using a lower gear than to muscle through the false flats, especially when such a hard hill is ahead. In prior years, I put off switching into my granny gear as long as possible...this year I wasn't afraid to granny it up as soon as it felt right. I made it up the hill and never felt tempted to stop and walk. It sucked, but at the same time it was great because there is such great crowd support and reaching the top feels like such an accomplishment. I tried to make up as much speed as I could on the rest of the course and headed back to the Rez for the run. Even though I didn't have a time goal for the bike (and I kind of worried that I wasn't really pushing myself), I finished almost 3 minutes faster than my previous best effort.

Run

I emailed my coach a few months ago with my goals for the season. After listing my "real" goals, I said that one day I would like to be able to run a sub-10 minute mile on an Olympic distance tri, but I didn't think it would happen this year. Well, sports fans, at the 2011 Boulder Peak I managed a pace of 9:44!

At this years' BolderBoulder 10k, my watch was out of batteries, so I couldn't use it to pace myself. I was pretty freaked out by this because I really wanted to finish in under an hour. Well, I ended up smashing that goal by a good minute and a half, and finished in 58:29 without the help of my fancy pants Garmin. I also enjoyed not staring at my watch the entire time. I felt more engaged and more tuned in to my internal pacing and perceived rate of exertion. The one thing I missed, however, was not being able to time my 9-minute/1-minute walk/run intervals. For this race, I thought about ditching my watch completely, but settled on using only its interval feature, and not allowing myself to switch to the other screen and check my pace.

About halfway through mile 1, a guy ran up next to me and we chatted briefly. When it came time to start my first walk break, I said, "This is part of my strategy, I'm going to walk for a minute" and he ran on ahead. Once I started running again, I caught up to him and passed him in Mile 2, and at some point later he passed me again. I made this the game--catching him or passing him after each walk break. I was able to do it every mile, and I knew I was making good time based on where I was in my 9/1 interval when I hit each mile marker. I saw him again in Mile 6 and we chatted, then he took off. Then I passed him again. This happened a few more times, until I passed him definitively and crossed the finish line first. You got CHICKED, sucka! And I accomplished a pie-in-the-sky goal and beat my previous best run time on this race by almost a minute per mile!

Overall Results: 3:18:29 overall time / Swim 31:49 / Bike 1:37:43 (16mph) / Run 1:00:26 (9:44/mi)

Next up, the Courage Classic, then Lake Stevens 70.3!

Race Report: Cherry Creek Sneak

2011-05-03T22:10:00.001-06:00

Sneaking in a quick race report before bed (gotta rise early for a 6am swim)!


Picture of the Race T-Shirt (because a bunny chasing after a cherry with legs is never not funny)

The "Sneak" 5-miler was definitely not an "A" race. I'd never done it before, so I just decided to sign up (a) for fun and (b) to do a self-assessment for the BolderBoulder. That said, I felt really nervous beforehand. I'm just not a big fan of running in "Zone 3" (5k/10k pace) and I hate knowing that I'll have to spend almost an hour running at an uncomfortable pace.

My coaches have been talking a lot about goals lately: process goals, performance goals, and outcome goals. Process goals relate to the process of training (e.g., I'll go for a short jog every time I get off the bike so my legs get used to that transition), performance goals relate to your individual performance (I'll maintain x pace during this run), and outcome goals relate to factors that you usually can't control (I'll win my age group). A performance goal I've set is to negative-split all my running races. This worked well for me in Moab and I think it is a good strategy for me given how long it takes me to warm-up.

My goal for the BolderBoulder is to finish under an hour. (The last time I ran, my time was 1:00:17 - so frustrating!) I will need to average 9:39/mi for a time of 59:59. In order to practice for this goal, the strategy I decided on for the Sneak was to hover around 9:45/mi for the first 3 miles, and then punch it up to a 9:25-9:30/mi for the last two.

The Cherry Creek Sneak was a pretty fun course. Flat, lots of spectators, people in costumes, and bands playing at every mile. It is a very crowded start, however, and during the first mile, I understood why it is called the "Sneak." I did a lot of sneakin' - around other runners, up on to the median, over to the other side of the road. It was difficult to run fast enough to keep a 9:45 pace in this atmosphere, so I ended up doing a bit of an interval work-out to play catch up every time I had extra space to run.

My motto for the first half (well, 3/5ths) was "hold back" and for the second part, "let go." I spent a lot of time checking my Garmin during the first three miles to make sure I was keeping the right pace. But once I got finished mile 3, I just sped up without caring as much about my precise pace. I caught my watch in the 8s a lot (always exciting!) and a few times in the 7s.

The finish line is a bit of a tease. You turn up First Avenue heading towards the mall with the big FINISH LINE sign in plain view, but then they make you turn and run about 0.75 miles more. Once you do get to the finish for real, you turn a corner, and it's right there. My coach warned me about this sudden finish and advised me to start my finish line surge when I hit Milwaukee Street. I didn't realize that I would pass Milwaukee twice in the final zig-zag, so I sped up a little too early. I'll know better for next year. :)

My final time was 47:35, 9:31/mi pace, which I was pretty pleased with! The BolderBoulder is a lot hillier, but I think this puts me in good shape to break the hour barrier on Memorial Day.

I'm registered for a lot of races this month - I'm calling it May Madness. It probably wasn't the best idea since I'm very susceptible to race burn-out, but I'm going to do my best to just think of them as training exercises.

Here is what's in store for this Month:

May 1 - Cherry Creek Sneak
May 7 - ~~Barking Dog Duathlon~~ Walk for MS
May 14 - Sean May Memorial Run (9 mile option)
May 22 - Summer Open Triathlon in Longmont (sprint distance)
May 30 - BolderBoulder 10k

Happy May!

Race Report: Canyonlands Half In Moab

2011-03-24T22:34:00.000-06:00

My first race of 2011 is under my belt - I raced the Canyonlands Half last weekend! It was a BEAUTIFUL course, a significant PR, and a great time.

the View from my Hotel Room

This is the most consistently and strategically I've ever trained for a half-marathon, so although deep down I really wanted to beat my previous times, my official goal was to "see what I can do out there." I usually write down my race goals and strategy on a piece of paper and keep it with my gear. I didn't do that this time, but (since this is 2011) I did Tweet it:

The race didn't start until 10am and I road the shuttle from the hotel at around 8:15. Since the run literally takes place in a canyon, the start line was pretty chill. No music, no traffic, no mass chaos, just a bunch of runners hanging out and getting ready.

The race start was also chill-y. I raced in a tank-top and capris and had to give up my warm-ups about an hour before start. I had intended to buy some cheap cover ups from Goodwill to cast off right before the start of the race, but I didn't get around to it. I will definitely not forget next year!

In the two halfs (halves?) I've run before, I managed just under an 11 minute mile pace. I knew I could beat that--knew it!--but I didn't want to get too cocky, too soon. So I planned to keep an average pace of 10:55/mi for the first seven miles and after that, if I felt good, I would speed up.

I started off running with a teammate who I ran most of my long runs with. The first hiccup was that I had to stop for a bathroom break . . . at Mile 0.5. It wasn't ideal, but it didn't take long for me to realize that I wouldn't be able to make it through the whole race without stopping and I figured it was better to be comfortable sooner rather than later. I had to run an 8:30/mi pace briefly to catch up with my running mate and stay on track, which again, was not ideal for the "leaving gas in the tank" plan, but it worked out fine.

At mile 1, I realized that my Garmin was slightly off from the course (i.e. it beeped for 1 mile shortly before I reached the mile marker on the course). Since I was heavily depending on my watch to keep us well-paced, I made a mental note that our actual pace would be about 5 seconds slower per mile than the watch said. (I had it set to display both the current pace and the average pace in addition to the overall time and distance.)

The first few miles were downhill, so it was a challenge to slow down and not take full advantage of the "free speed." And it was an interesting experience figuring out the pacing while taking into account my Garmin's margin of error and the impact of the walk breaks. I did the 9 and 1 interval - 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of brisk walking. I've decided I LOVE this strategy! It helps so much in terms of breaking things up mentally and it actually makes me run faster. I decided I wanted the 10:55/mi average pace to include the walk breaks, not just the running intervals. So each 9 minutes I did the math -- if we slow down to/maintain/speed up to a 10:47/mi average, we'll probably finish the walk break with an average pace of 10:50/mi, which taking into account for the Garmin means we're right at 10:55. I ran with my fuel belt and water bottle. I didn't want to - I hate that thing - but I'm really glad I did. I loved just being able to drink when it was convenient and not having to think about when to hit up a water station and whether it coincided with my walk breaks.

We were a little fast for the first three miles, which was ok given the downhill, so we slowed down at miles 4-7. That was pretty easy around Mile 5, which was mostly uphill. I stopped at the Team In Training tent at Mile 6 to ask for some anti-chafing lotion (I had put on some Vaseline in the morning but hadn't correctly guessed all the right spots -- another mental note for next time.) I had to run an 8:30 for a bit to get back on track again, but I was still feeling good for my plan to speed up the second half.

I hadn't really thought too much about what pace I would shoot for, but in the moment I just decided that I would stop holding back. If I caught my pace at 9:30-9:45, I wouldn't slow down. If it felt right, I would just go with it. I also gave myself full permission to keep running the same pace (or slower) if that was what felt right. Right after completing Mile 7, I said farewell to my running partner, and took off!

I felt good, really good. And I was passing a lot of people, which felt even better. My pace was consistently in the 9s . . . hovering around 9:30-9:45 and occasionally dipping into the 8s. I decided I would aim to keep up this pace for the rest of the race and focused on getting my average pace to go down, down, down.

In my experience, half marathons are pretty fun until about Miles 8-9. Then, the novelty wears off and you are ready for it to be over with. That feeling hit me after finishing Mile 9, which conveniently coincided with a fairly challenging hill. But, I was determined to keep up the pace and make a negative split, so I kept on.

The first ten miles are in the canyon and the last 5k goes into town. While it's hard to make Moab ugly, the "town" portion of the race does not mean a cute little Main Street with coffee shops and boutiques, it means running on a major highway with semi-trucks and RV Parks and cheap motels alongside. I had mentally prepared myself for this, but I did not want to leave the canyon! I knew that Tribal Drummers would be at Mile 10, so when I heard the beat I knew the end of the scenic view was coming.

Once I exited the canyon and began running on the coned-off shoulder of a highway, I did what I could to hang on mentally. I was still passing people, but it was a little harder to maneuver with less space. I started focusing on landmarks - run to the RV Park sign, run to the Motel 6, run to the Denny's. When I passed the marker for Mile 11, I told myself to keep pushing. Eleven is my lucky number so I decided I had to make that mile count. I figured once I finished Mile 12, things would take care of themselves.

When I hit the Denny's, that was huge. It meant turning the corner and heading towards the finish. It was still a ways though - maybe a mile and a half. There was a second turn after that to get to the actual finish line, but once I turned that corner I was hoping it would be closer than it was! I could barely make it out in the distance. I had skipped my last walk break and just did my best to run it in. I calculated at Mile 10 that I would probably finish at around 2:17 and I crossed the line at 2:17:33 - a PR of 5:30!

I'm definitely smiling . . . but if you look closely it's not a happy-go-lucky kind of smile. It's an "I've been gritting my teeth for the last four miles" kind of smile. My biggest struggle with running is playing it too safe. I don't like running fast so I tend to . . . not, and I worry that I'm not racing up to my physical potential. But, I think this is pretty good photographic evidence that I left it all on the field.

I haven't analyzed the data (still haven't set up the Garmin software on my new Mac), but in the last 6.1 miles I got my overall average pace of 10:55 down to 10:30. My non-scientific analysis? That's pretty freakin' good! I must have run the last six miles about a minute per mile faster than the first seven.

I was really excited about my PR on Saturday and 100% proud of myself for making such crazy negative splits, but on Monday I started to doubt myself and feel a little down. I PR-ed the half, so what? I could have gone even faster if I hadn't started out so slow. These were my thoughts. But, I've done this enough to know that this kind of post-race depression is normal and it passes. Today I'm back to feeling proud of my accomplishment and excited for tri season.

It really helped to think back to my goals at the beginning of the season - none of them were speed related. All I wanted was to learn to like running more and to re-kindle my motivation to keep at it. And this morning, something amazing happened. I set my alarm early to catch a yoga class before work (I've been taking hot yoga at Core Power - love it!) As soon as I woke up I realized my anti-skid yoga towel was still dirty from yesterday, so yoga was out. So I decided instead, I think I'll go out for a run . . .

Why I Try

2011-03-04T00:19:00.002-07:00

Note that this post isn't titled with the play on words "Why I Tri," a staple in the triathlon blogosphere and a feature in the newsletter or website of every triathlon group in the country. This is less about what motivates me to do triathlons and more wondering how it ever even occurred to me to make this kind of effort.

I started thinking about this earlier this week when I read two articles in as many hours, both about women's self-esteem in the classroom. One was about how bright fifth grade girls were quicker to give up on a challenge than their less intelligent male counterparts, and the other was about how women were less likely to be vocal and engaged in law school. Both articles felt like I was reading my horoscope.

"The Trouble With Bright Girls" by Heidi Grant Halvarson on the Huffington Post posed an interesting theory as to why the smartest girls were often the quickest to give up.

Most likely, it has to do with the kinds of feedback we get from parents and teachers as young children. Girls, who develop self-control earlier and are better able to follow instructions, are often praised for their "goodness." When we do well in school, we are told that we are "so smart," "so clever, " or "such a good student." This kind of praise implies that traits like smartness, cleverness and goodness are qualities you either have or you don't.

Boys, on the other hand, are a handful. Just trying to get boys to sit still and pay attention is a real challenge for any parent or teacher. As a result, boys are given a lot more feedback that emphasizes effort (e.g., "If you would just pay attention you could learn this," "If you would just try a little harder you could get it right.") The net result: When learning something new is truly difficult, girls take it as sign that they aren't "good" and "smart," and boys take it as a sign to pay attention and try harder.

The National Jurist reports on a survey demonstrating what happens when these bright girls grow up and go to law school:

“Female students are less likely to place themselves in situations they perceive to be risky,” said Lindsay Watkins, the survey’s project manager at the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University in Bloomington. “Female students were more likely to report working hard in law school to either avoid embarrassment in front of their peers, or out of a fear of failure, than were their male classmates.”

I read the first article from a link on a friend's Facebook page and one woman commented that in her experience as a teacher, it was absolutely true that telling children they are bright and smart is counterproductive. It was much more important to give positive feedback for their effort and work habits. Another guy wrote jokingly but thought-provokingly that maybe video games were the secret to self-esteem: "As a lad, I learned how to fail, restart, power-up, and reach the next level - with new powers! - again, and again, and again."

Later that night I got to thinking (cue the Carrie Bradshaw voiceover) . . . I've always been more brainy than brawny, why wasn't I more risk-averse when it came to trying sports? Why did I turn bright red and my heart race when trading essays in high school for peer review, but had no problem competing on the gymnastics team? (I seriously sucked - a perfect score is 10, I rarely scored above a 6, and often scored in the 3 range.) I ate lunch in the library every day 1L year re-reading Torts cases out of fear that I would make a fool out of myself when given the Socratic method, yet I trained on my own for my first marathon without a clue what I was doing and am not embarrassed at all about my time -- 5:27:53!!! The first few months of my first real lawyer job, I walked home every day with my head hung low, convinced that I was the dumbest, least capable person in the entire world, but during my first half-Ironman I held my head up high starting the second loop of the run course when most other racers were finishing.

Why the discontinuity? Maybe since I was never naturally talented at sports growing up, I was given praise for my effort and that has stayed with me. Perhaps I owe my crazy triathlon-ing to my kickball coach in third grade. My Dad often reminds me that before every game she would say, "What do I want you girls to do out there?," and we would recite in unison, "THINK!" Or, maybe since school and academic endeavors have always been easier for me, I'm more likely to tend towards perfectionism, which can be very paralyzing. When I enter a half-marathon or triathlon, I know I have no chance at succeeding in the objective sense, so I can just relax and focus on doing my best.

Speaking of half-marathons, I am racing in Moab in two weeks! This is the most consistently and methodically that I've ever trained for a running event (a subject for another post), so I'm pretty excited to see what I can do out there. But regardless of what my chip time ends up being, I think it's safe to say that I'll be proud of myself for my effort and hard work.

Adult Kickball FTW!

2010-10-27T23:12:00.000-06:00

When I was in third grade, I played in a kickball league. I don't like to brag, but I was the recipient of the sportsmanship award and the "bunting Belinda" award. In an effort to revive some of my former glory, I joined up with an adult kickball team called "Orange You Glad Its Wednesday" and have spent the last eight Wednesday evenings at Dick's Sporting Goods Park. Tonight was our last game of the season.

My main contribution to the team has been my two X chromosomes. There is a rule that you have to have at least four girls on the field at all times, so I was recruited by a new friend from book club. For the record, I suck. I completely suck. In the whole season, I caught one fly ball and only made it on base a handful of times. I mostly specialized in kicking short pop-up flies that were easily caught and doing as little damage as possible playing pitcher and catcher. I usually didn't drink any game beers and I never really felt like I was making friends with my teammates. Regardless, I LOVED it! I don't know exactly why, but I always felt sooooo good after a game. It was really helpful for clearing my head after a long day. It's a feeling I usually associate with coming in from a run or bike ride, but kickball isn't really exercise (especially the way I play). I think it goes to show how mood-lifting it can be just spending some time outside after sitting at a desk all day. The excuse to yell and cheer and the whole team effort thing probably had something to do with it, too. Anyway, I'm going to miss it.

But . . . next week I'm starting another after-work, outside, fun activity! I'm joining up with a new team for running and triathlon. FastForward Sports has a holiday running group that involves low-key work-outs at Wash Park and participation in all the fun (short!) holiday races (Turkey Trot, Jingle Bell 5k, Resolution Run). The plan is to get running again and in January start training for the Canyonlands Half in Moab! That will take me right in to tri season and training for my second half-ironman! (Probably the Boise 70.3.)

It was pretty chilly and windy at kickball tonight. Must get some cold weather running gear this weekend!

It's Not You, It's Me . . .

2010-08-11T21:53:00.000-06:00

As I wrote in my last post, I am not doing any more triathlons this summer and am taking a break from training. I thought I would still swim, run, and especially bike just for fun, but I really haven't. The truth is I haven't touched my road bike since getting back from Austin. I feel a little guilty because it's such a nice bike and I LOVE it.

Nobody puts Orbea in the corner

At the same time, I want to be honest with myself. If I'm not feelin' it, I'm not feelin' it. And, it's not like I'm not getting exercise. In fact, I go to the YMCA (err...the Y) so often that I'm the Mayor on Foursquare! And, taking some time away from my Orbea might just lead to us having a stronger relationship in the future.

I actually have been riding, just not on my road bike. I borrowed my neighbor's hybrid to ride the Moonlight Classic and basically never gave it back. I started riding it around everywhere. It was so fun and really nice not to have to deal with parking and traffic -- especially great for trips downtown and to the gym. I never felt comfortable riding my road bike in street clothes (not to mention street shoes) and I was always so paranoid about it getting stolen that I rarely used it to get from point A to point B. I know I'm way late to the game, but I finally get why people are so enthusiastic about biking as a mode of transportation! I'm kinda like people who started watching DVDs of Lost after it had been on for a few years and were like "Whoa... this top-rated, critically acclaimed show that everyone's always talking and blogging about is, like, good!"

I knew I couldn't keep free-loading forever. I got home from the gym one night (using my neighbor's bicycle, of course) and decided that the next day my mission would be Project GettaBike. Then a friend called to see if I wanted to join her for a walk to Whole Foods to get a popsicle. Always! When we reached the end of my block, I saw a mountain bike chained up to a tree with a flashing neon sign (in the metaphorical sense) that said: "Bike for Sale." It was a Giant bike with Shimano gears, so I knew it was a solid bike (not a Wal-Mart POS). It was in good condition and road nicely when I took it for a spin. I googled it (thank-you Droid!) and the seller was asking for about 1/5 the retail price of the 2010 model of the same bike.

This reminded me of how my neighbor (whose bike I had been borrowing) got her new puppy. An unexpected sequence of events caused her to end up at the Dumb Friends League where she met a woman who was bawling because she had a newborn baby at home and couldn't take care of both the baby and her puppy. The woman decided she had no choice but to give the puppy up. My neighbor hadn't planned on getting a second dog, but she immediately thought of the Yiddish word "b'shert" or "meant to be." She was so convinced that adopting this puppy was meant to be that she named the dog B'shert (BiBi for short).

BiBi the puppy (because popular opinion is that puppies are cute)

I felt the same way about this bike. Even though it was a somewhat impulsive decision, it just felt like it was meant to be. I considered naming my new bike BiBi, but I think it's against Jewish tradition to name someone (or something) after a living relative (or neighboring puppy). Even though I had planned to get a hybrid not a mountain bike, it is pretty easy to turn a mountain bike into a speedier commuter by switching out the tires. I took it to my LBS and they put on new tires and tuned 'er up (which together ended up costing more than the bike itself). The new tires work great and I'm loving riding it!

Mountain Bike Tires

Zippy Street Tires (Look, Mom - reflective safety stripe!)

See you out there!

Cap Tex Tri Race Report

2010-06-05T04:52:00.003-06:00

I raced my first (and only) tri of the season in my hometown last weekend. The Cap Tex Tri was a good excuse to visit my family and it was a great race! Traveling with my bike involved lots of logistics, and I definitely could have planned ahead a lot better. But, since it all worked out in the end, I'll skip the hiccups and frustrations and get straight to the main event!

Pre-Race
My Dad dropped me off near the race site around 5:30am. They had us leave our bikes there overnight, which made packing up the car and walking to the transition area a lot easier. After I got my body-marked, I made my way into the transition area to find my bike. The race takes place in and around downtown. When I walked into the transition area and I was struck by how cool it was to see the Austin skyline emerging from the sea of bikes in the night sky. I didn't have a camera with me, so I took a mental picture. *CLICK*

The race started at 7am, but my wave was not until 8:05. I grabbed my wetsuit, goggles, and some cliff shot blocks, and wandered down to the lake to watch the start of the race. Since it was Memorial Day, the race honored active military and veterans. There were a bunch of Texas A&M students at the race. My first thought was "boo," until I realized that many of them were volunteers assisting athletes in the "wounded warrior" category and decided that the Aggies deserved a free pass for the day. At around 7:30, I put on my wetsuit (for the first time this year), ate my shot blocks, and drank some water. Shortly after that, I ran into my family and got to give them all hugs before the race.

Swim
The swim was in Town Lake (which has since been re-named Lady Bird Lake, but I just can't get used to that) and the 1500 meter course was shaped like one of those cork puller wine openers. It was a treading water start and my wave was wearing blue caps. I have no idea what the water temperature was, but I was really glad I wore my wetsuit! The gun fired and I began my first open water swim of the year.

I felt good during the swim. I didn't want to start too fast, so I settled into a pace that felt sustainable. I focused on swimming with long, strong strokes. I didn't feel like I was going very fast, but it wasn't long before I started seeing yellow caps from the wave ahead of me. The buoys marking the turns were also yellow, which made things a little confusing. I just thought to myself that it was a good sign every time I saw yellow - I was either passing someone or approaching a milestone in the course. When I swam under the Congress Avenue bridge, I rolled over briefly to look for the famous Mexican free-tailed bats, but didn't see any. I saw my Dad cheering as I headed out of the water and into T1.

Bike
The bike course for the Olympic Distance was 4 loops, which went around downtown and the Capitol. I felt pretty discombobulated during the first loop. When I grabbed my water bottle for my first drink, the cap fell off. The rules are that you can't discard anything on the bike course. Luckily I caught the bottle cap and was able to screw it back on pretty easily. Next, the auto-multisport function of my Garmin got confused and after about three miles on the bike, it instructed me to start running. I wanted to see my cadence and average mph so I quickly re-set my watch to the bike function as I pedaled. Then, the number on my bike came undone, but fortunately it hung on by a thread for the remainder of the course.

The course had rolling hills and lots of sharp turns. This was my first race with aerobars and I think I used them for most of the course, except during the turns. I stayed in the big ring for the first two loops, but by the third and fourth loops, I figured out the spots where it made sense to drop into the small ring. I saw my Dad at the end of the first and second loop and by the time I finished the third loop, my Mom and brother were there, too. It was hot out and there were no aid-stations, so I knew I had to make a real effort to stay hydrated and electrolyted. When I finished I had drunk my entire bottle of water and half of my bottle of Gatorade. I was pleased about this - sometimes I'll come back from a ride with two almost completely full bottles. I averaged 18.4 mph (total time 1:21), which is really good for me!

Run
When I got into the transition area, racked my bike, and took off my helmet, I realized I was drenched in sweat. I'm not used to humidity anymore, so I decided to take my time and downed a little bit more Gatorade before heading out onto the run. The run is usually the most challenging part for me and the challenge is often as mental as it is physical. I tried to get myself really excited to run while I was still on the bike, but I'm not sure it worked. I started out easy and told myself not to look at my watch to see my pace until after the first mile. I cheated twice and caught myself at 9:41 and 10:02. I was happy about this as I was aiming for a 10:30/mi pace. I had given myself full permission to walk through each and every water station, but I ended up not really wanting to. Austin knows how to plan for the heat, so there were water stations about every half mile and one of the stations had a tent with sprinklers to run through. I ended up only walking through the two stations that had Gatorade so I could fully imbibe those electrolytes and I also walked through a station at Mile 5 so I could recharge and finish strong.

I had a hard time with the first three miles. It's not that I wanted to stop and walk, but I didn't really want to run either. For some reason, the image that popped into my head was a scene from one of the worst movies ever made. (I watched Bride Wars on HBO this winter.) There is a part where Anne Hathaway (whose character's name happens to be Emma) is running in Central Park. She is hooked into her blue iPod shuffle and we astute viewers are supposed to remember that she said at the beginning of the movie, "iPods are for people who can't be alone with their thoughts." Now she is distraught about fighting with her best friend and not getting along with her fiance and she can't hear Kate Hudson calling after her through her headphones. Something about watching her feet hit the pavement in that scene made me really want to go for a run. So for the rest of the run, I pretended that I was Anne Hathaway. I also repeated over and over in my head, "This isn't supposed to be easy, dig deep." I start to feel a lot better by Mile 4. Just as I was thinking that I hadn't seen my family on the run yet and that I could really use their support, there they were at the halfway point of the second loop.

I kept an eye on my pace and saw that I was hovering around 10:30/mi, which was my goal. As I ran across the Congress Bridge for the second time, my Garmin beeped to signify the 6 mile mark. I was excited for the final 0.2 until I realized that either my watch was off or the course was long, because I was definitely more than 352 yards away from the finish. (When I crossed the line, my watch read between 6.5 and 6.6.) I felt good about the run and my overall time when I finished the race, but I confess that I was really disappointed when I got my results and saw that my run pace was actually only a 11:04/mi (a 1:08:44 10k). The man who won the overall race PR-ed in the 10k, so I concluded that the discrepancy was with my watch, not the course. It was hard not to think that I could have pushed myself a little more, but in the end I think I just need to trust that I did the best I could on that day, in the heat of the Texas sun.

Finish
When I picked up my race packet the day before, I noticed that they had be down as being from Cypress, Texas instead of Denver, Colorado. It wasn't a big deal, but they usually announce your name and town when you cross the finish line and I really wanted everyone to know that I had descended from on (mile-)high for this race. I heard other people talking at the expo that their cities were wrong, too, so I thought they would correct it for race day. Well, they must have re-run the excel spreadsheet (or whatever) because when they called my name I was not from Cypress, but I wasn't from Denver either. Instead they said I was from Crawford! Ew! I definitely did not want to be confused with any other residents of Crawford, Texas!

They finally got my city right when they published the results. The most exciting part of seeing the official results was how I placed in my age group! When I race in Boulder, I'm lucky if I finish 71st out of 78. This time, I was 26th out of 83! That's like top-third! Woo-hoo!

My overall results were:
Swim - 36:17
T1 - 5:54
Bike - 1:21:00 (18.4 mph)
T2 - 3:39
Run - 1:08:44 (11:04/mi)
Total: 3:15:35

T3

Now my season is over, and I head into what some on the blogosphere refer to as "T3." I am planning to keep biking on the weekends, do the occasional open water swim for fun, and run at least a little, enough to satisfy my inner-Anne Hathaway. I am looking forward to enjoying each discipline again without the pressure to put in a certain number of hours or miles. I am also looking forward to having the freedom and flexibility to spend the weekends doing something else entirely or nothing at all!

Yee-haw!!!

BRICK!

2010-04-27T22:35:00.000-06:00

I did my first brick work-out of the season tonight and, man, was it tough!

For the uninitiated, a "brick" is a back-to-back work-out with two disciplines, usually cycling and running. After wondering about the term's origins in the car ride over and googling to no avail once I got home, I think I've concluded it's because they are both HARD.

Here is the (run-focused) brick work-out I did earlier:

- Warm-up 8 minutes running
- 1 mile time trial running
- 2 X 2.75mi time trial biking
- 1 mile time trial running
- Cool down

Seeing it in writing makes it looks so easy, but I promise it was a challenge. Those mile time trial runs are killer on their own! Usually triathletes talk about how weird your legs feel when you start to run after finishing the bike. Tonight I got to feel the extreme burn in my quads trying to bike after a pushed-run. The goal was to have the two 1-mile runs be consistent despite the bike in between them. I ran the first mile in 8:28 and the second in 8:38! I was sooooo proud of myself (a) because I didn't think I'd be able to run at all once I finished the bike and (b) because I was pleased with my 1-mile pace, brick or no brick. I averaged 16.4 mph on the bike leg, which I guess is alright considering the state of my legs. I didn't time the two laps separately, but I am pretty sure the second loop was much slower.

Without a doubt this was the hardest work-out I've done this year. But, I was able to do it, which means I've been consistent in my training up to this point. As I type, 33 days until my race! A few more brick work-outs, aerobic runs, and long bike rides and I should be good to go. I'm not 100% sure if I'll get a chance to practice open water swimming before race day, but I feel comfortable enough in open water that it doesn't worry me.

I am moving apartments sometime in May, but I haven't picked a weekend yet. I'm thinking of moving the weekend of May 22nd since that will be my taper weekend and I won't have to worry about trying to squeeze in much training. But.... the series finale of LOST is that Sunday and I would hate for my cable not to be hooked-up in time for that. Decisions, decisions.

I'm Back, Baby!

2010-03-16T12:56:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm working out again anyway!

Now that the bar exam is over, I'm getting more sleep and have more free time. I think lack of sleep was the main reason I had trouble getting a consistent amount of exercise while I was studying for the bar. Now that I'm not studying all day and tossing and turning about the Rule Against Perpetuities all night, I can finally start training again. My sights are set on May 31st - the Capital of Texas Triathlon! I was a little worried that this wasn't the best year to pick an early season tri, given that I wasn't really able to start training in earnest until March. Then I noticed a book on my shelf called The 12-Week Triathlete. March 8th - May 31st is twelve weeks exactly! I can do it! I actually think this is the perfect amount of time for me to train. I am beginning to realize that I am a "less is more" kind of athlete. If I train too much or for too long, I start to get burnt out and lose motivation. And, I trust that I have enough experience and base-level fitness that I will have no problem building back up to an Olympic distance in the next three months.

Work-out Summary (Mar. 8 - Mar. 14)

Monday: PowerPump class (1hr); Learning the choreography to Britney Spears, "Baby One More Time" video (1hr) (Totally not kidding, and it was tough! That girl can DANCE!)

Tuesday: Yoga (hard) (1hr)

Wednesday: Swim (continuous swim + a few drills) (1hr)

Thursday: Bike work-out on the trainer (1hr)

Friday: Yoga (easy) (1hr)

Saturday: rest day

Sunday: 7k (4.3mi) run -- Runnin' of the Green

Life Summary (Mar. 8 - Mar. 14)

Job Applications: 4

Networking Events: 3

Trips to Whole Foods: 2 (each time only for a carton of milk - big improvement from eating 3 meals a day there!)

I felt pretty sore most of the week, but the good kind of sore. I like being able to physically tell that I've been doing something. The St. Patty's Day-themed 7k was literally the first time I ran since the ColderBolder in early December. I viewed it as the official kick-off to my running season. I didn't wear a watch, and my official time was nothing to write home about, but I was very pleased that I was able to run the whole way and that I actually enjoyed it! I had to force my way through the Turkey Trot and the ColderBolder, but with this race I was able to just relax, run, enjoy the crowds, and enjoy running with my friend Annie. I did a track work-out this morning and enjoyed that, too. I don't want to jinx anything, and maybe it's just that raucous Irish spirit talking, but I feel fairly optimistic that I will be able to maintain a good attitude about running this year!

One week down, eleven to go!

Mentally and Physically Exhausted

2010-01-20T14:04:00.001-07:00

I came across this article (titled "Feeling Mentally Exhausted? Maybe You Should Put Off That Run") a while back and now I think I'm living it. Studying for the Colorado Bar Exam has really put a damper on my work-out routine. It's really kind of amazing how something that drains you mentally can drain you physically as well.

I first remember experiencing this phenomenon when I was a second-year law student. I had just taken my first of four exams and thought I would go for a short run to de-stress before getting back to studying. That plan didn't work so well. If I remember correctly, I ran about three-quarters of a mile before giving up, turning around, and limping home. Since I've been studying for the bar exam, I have been too exhausted to even attempt such a feat. Even though I know that keeping up some degree of physical activity will benefit me mentally, I haven't been following my own advice.

This week, I was determined to re-incorporate some amount of physical activity into my daily life. Even though I usually prefer working-out at the end of the day, I thought I would start setting my alarm early and get to the gym before studying, so I wouldn't have to motivate myself after spending hours pouring over outlines and practice tests. I'm not going to rule this out as a strategy (it sure sounds good!), but two days in, it hasn't worked so well. I am proud to say that I did work-out yesterday and the day before, just not in the morning as I planned. On Monday, I took a mid-afternoon break to go on a short bike ride around Wash Park, and yesterday, I went to an evening yoga class. When I'm in shape and in the heart of training season, these would both be pretty easy for me, practically rest day activities. But today - I ache all over! The yoga class I went to is fairly basic and focuses more on stretching and relaxation as opposed to a power yoga practice. Rather than feeling stretched and relaxed, I feel like I spent hours lifting weights!

My plan is to take a page from the yoga book, i.e. honoring your body. I'm clearly not capable of my usual amount of physical activity, so I just need to lower my expectations and do what I can. I'm going to aim for working-out 3-4 days a week for 30 minutes to an hour, but nothing too strenuous. Short bike rides seem to fit the bill nicely (weather permitting) as does the occasional yoga class. I'm also going to get back into hula-hooping, and hula-hoop during study-breaks to get the blood flowing. And, I might break-out my hand-weights and start doing the Target Toning for Beginners from my watch-instantly Netflix queue again. (I always feel so encouraged when that peppy blond woman tells me what a great arm work-out I did!) Triathlon training season officially starts next week, so I guess we'll see if it's too much to incorporate a little swimming as well.

To keep myself motivated, I also plan to blog each week about the past week's work-outs and how I felt.

Now, back to criminal procedure!

Race Report: ColderBolder

2009-12-16T22:00:00.002-07:00

A little late, but finally a few words on my "big" winter race this year - the ColderBolder 5K.

As I mentioned in my last post, my motivation to train and run this race had been slowly dwindling. Dwindling to the point that I seriously considered sleeping in and blowing it off. But, I persevered - my main motivation being that I didn't want to waste the race registration money and I wanted to collect my Headsweats Alpine Reversible Cocona Beanie. So, I dutifully made the drive to Boulder.

After parking, registering, and making a bathroom stop, I huddled near the start line. The waves were going off 10 minutes apart and mine was the last of the invitational waves. Lining up, I started to get excited and felt glad that I was participating. The gun went off and that pre-race excitement lasted about half a mile. After the first few minutes, I seriously wanted to quit. I've been really drained emotionally lately - the stress of finding a job is getting to me and I had been particularly upset the day before. For me, running is as mental an exercise as it is a physical one. When I'm in the pool or on my bike, I can lose my thoughts more easily and just get into the rhythm of it. But, sometimes when I run, it's like I have to will myself through each and every step. When I'm not feeling it, I'm not feeling it. ColderBolder morning, I wasn't feeling it.

I quickly shifted into "survival" mode, for lack of a better term. I told myself that I should completely forget about my time (luckily I left my Garmin at home) and asked myself to simply run the rest of the way without stopping to walk. Sounds silly, right? Although I am by no means a great athlete, one thing I know I can do is run 3 miles continuously! "Run the whole way" is a goal for a marathon or half-marathon, not a silly little 5K. But, I suppose that's how it goes sometimes. You never know what variables you will be working with on a given race day or training day and you have to roll with the punches. Sometimes what you think will be an exercise of prowess and speed turns into a grueling task of perseverance. And, as much as I wanted to quit, I'm happy I persevered. I felt like I was slowing down to 11 minute miles, but I kept willing each foot to follow the other. Things looked up a little when I passed the second mile-marker, which was right near the starting line. The open wave was scheduled to start 20 minutes after my wave and they hadn't started yet, so I knew I was running sub-10 minute miles after all. I kept it up and finished in 30:48 (9:55/mile). It felt like icing on the perseverance cake to finish with a sub-10 min/mile pace.

What kept going through my head during the race was a scene from Austin Powers 2: The Spy Who Shagged Me -- Austin looks at the camera bewildered and exclaims, "I've lost my Mojo!" As I ran, I kept reminding myself of the movie's "lesson" -- if you have Mojo, no one can take it, it's just a matter of finding it within yourself. (I swear, I'm not obsessed with Austin Powers -- I've only seen this movie once, but for whatever reason it popped into my head!)

Even though I've been feeling a little Mojo-less lately, I know I haven't lost it, and I know I'll get it back, sports-wise and life-wise.

Turkey Trot and Stuff(ing)

2009-11-26T12:26:00.002-07:00

I'm in training again - this time for a 5k. It seems kind of silly to train for a 5K, but it probably doesn't matter since I've been interpreting the word "train" rather loosely. I don't usually run once tri season is over, so the fact that I'm running at all these days is huge.

The Race: The ColderBolder. Advertised as "A really cool 5K without any people that are faster than you." The deal is they invite all qualifying finishers of the BolderBoulder to participate in a 5K against only people who finished the 10K within 2 minutes of them. My BB time last year was 60:11, so I was invited to participate in the 60:00-61:59 Invite Race - the last (but not least!) of the many waves of 5K races. The motivating factor is that you have a theoretical chance of winning.

Training: I thought training for the ColderBolder (and the chance at a podium finish) would accomplish two things: (1) motivate me to run, period, and (2) motivate me to do more speed work. I signed up for a free training program on active.com, which sends me an email everyday telling me what sort of training I should do. So each morning, I check my email and if it's convenient and I feel like running, I do the suggested work-out. (You can tell how committed I am to this!) On the whole I've been averaging two days of running a week and have done a couple of speed work sessions. About two days a week, the active.com email suggests 30 minutes of "low" cross-training. Since I really savor my gym time during the winter, most of my "low" 30 minutes of cross-training work-outs ended up being two hours of fairly intense group exercise classes. Often, this left me sore and not feeling up to my suggested run the next day. Maybe, I'm just not meant to be a winter-runner. :)

Goal: Based on my BB time, in theory I would finish the 5K in just under 29 minutes, at a pace of 9:19/mi. But, as they say, IN THEORY, communism works. I'm not in as good running shape now as I was then, so running at that pace is probably an unrealistic goal. I've let go of the hope that I will get to stand on the podium. As per usual, I'm just going to go out there and try to do my best. I'd love to run a 9:30/mi, but I think I'll be happy with anything sub-10:00/mi.

Turkey Trot: I ran the Turkey Trot 4-miler this morning. I thought of it as a pre-race race or a practice tempo run before the "big" day (Saturday, December 5th). It was actually pretty fun to see so many runners and families out there - many wearing turkey headdresses and other T-Day inspired swag. My Garmin ran out of batteries at the starting line so I ran the whole race "caveman-style." It was probably good for me to just run without worrying about my pace or time. I finished in 40:33 (10:08/mi) - slower than I was hoping for, but still decent. It wasn't great racing conditions either (lots of bobbing and weaving around walkers, joggers, and strollers). I imagine I'll do much better next weekend, as being surrounded by fast runners usually makes me run faster.

It's so weird, but I find the shorter distances much more challenging. During most of mile-3, the little voice in my head kept saying "I hate running" over and over. It's kind of the watched-kettle-never-boils phenomenon. When I know the race won't take me much time, it feels like it is taking forever! Today it seemed like I was running for a very long time before finally passing the one-mile marker. But, when I did the Rocky Mountain Half-Marathon last summer, I knew that I would be out running for awhile and each mile seemed to tick by so quickly, one after the other.

After the ColderBolder next weekend, no more running until February! Now, that's something to be thankful for...

Grand, Indeed, and Worth 1000 Words

2009-10-21T23:13:00.023-06:00

At the entrance to Grand Teton!

Jenny Lake

Oxbow Bend

Heron Pond

Iconic view of the Snake River twisting towards the Grand

Lewis Falls in Yellowstone

Lewis Lake (Yellowstone)

Quintessential Yellowstone - buffalo in a geyser!

To the main (geyser) event

Before...

After!

Antlers were everywhere in Jackson

Longhorn fans, too, apparently!

Local brew = great way to end the day

First 14-ers, Part II: Mt. Massive

2009-09-01T20:02:00.015-06:00

The mystery of Day 2 actually began around 7:30pm the night of Day 1. We set up camp in the San Isabel National Forest and planned to wait to pack up camp once we were done hiking on Sunday. Because we were very tired from Mt. Elbert and planned to wake up around 3:30-4am, we all retired to our tents around 7:30pm. I laid in my sleeping bag reading by the light of my headlamp for awhile. It was a little windy and I heard some rustling, but didn't think too much of it as campsites often go hand-in-hand with creepy noises. Later, when I was still up reading with my light on, I swore that I heard footsteps nearby, saw a flashlight right outside my tent, and heard the zipper of a tent or a sleeping bag open and close several times. I was scared, but convinced myself that it was one of the other girls and finally went to sleep. At breakfast the next morning, my two friends reported hearing similar noises. This freaked me out enough that the first thing I googled after getting home was "san isabel national forest halfmoon campground ghost." (Didn't find anything). I know it probably wasn't a ghost. My best guesses are the wind and/or the jerky guys in the campsite next to ours. Regardless, it was enough to make us want to pack up camp before leaving for the hike. This ended up being a good thing. More on that later.

The hike! We started hiking Mt. Massive around 5am. It was still dark out, so we hiked with our headlamps for the first couple hours.

We emerged from the forested area around 7am when the sun was rising over the mountains.

Mt. Massive is called a Class 2 climb, which is defined as "More difficult hiking that may be off-trail. You may also have to put your hands down occasionally to keep your balance. May include easy snow climbs or hiking on talus/scree." (Mt. Elbert was Class 1 -- "Easy hiking, usually on a good trail.") And, there were two routes to get to the summit that formed a loop. One route was 3 steep miles, the other was 5.5 miles in a more gradual climb. We decided to take the 5.5 mile climb up and then assess at the top whether to take the steep route down or go back the way we came. Everything we read suggested that the 5.5 miles route was fairly easy. Well, I thought it was freakin' hard! But then again, it was only my second 14-er ever, not to mention in as many days!

The first 2-3 miles weren't bad and the scenery was incredible - much more varied than Mt. Elbert.

Then we got to this part:

This part, though grueling, wasn't actually as bad as what came later. Some of the rocks were loose, but for the most part it was pretty solid footing. I made up a system for getting up this. I looked down at my feet and counted ten steps, then I stopped to look up and figure out where I was going. When I felt more comfortable, I started counting 20, 30, or 40. Closer to the "top" (of this stretch only) I reverted back to 10 steps at a time.

Then it started snowing.

The snow didn't last long and we pressed on. The rest of the climb was a ridge trail with a series of "false summits", meaning lots of ups and downs. Not too long after this, we were atop one of the summits and noticed a tube containing a log - we summitted!!!

Or so we thought . . . We looked in the log tube more carefully and saw a sign that read, "~~Mt.~~ North Massive, ~~14,421 ft~~ 14,340 ft." We had hiked a 14-er, but not the one we were aiming for. It must be just the next summit over, right? Wrong!

The next summit over was particularly difficult and took us a long time. We couldn't go over the top and we had to go the long way around the side to avoid a large patch of ice. Not to mention that the scree was really loose on this part and almost every movement sent rocks and gravel down the side.

I was able to push through this part because I really, really thought that the next peak was Mt. Massive, the real thing. I felt so demoralized when I reached the top and realized it wasn't. But, when we finally were looking up at the actual Mt. Massive, the sky was looking pretty ominous. It was getting late, we had already made it up to a summit of 14,ooo+ feet, we were worried about lightening, and at this point I was so frustrated I cared much more about making it back to the trailhead than making it up to Mt. Massive. We made the decision that it wasn't worth the risk to try to summit and hung out in a rock alcove for awhile, seeking shelter and making a plan.

Since we weren't going to summit, the shorter 3 mile route to get back along the ridge was not an option. We had to get back down to the trail we came up on without turning around and going back the way we came. This involved more loose scree and took FOREVER! I wanted to keep my center of gravity low and I was afraid of slipping on loose rocks, so I pretty much just slid all the way down on my butt. I have ripped pants to prove it!

After this, I tried to keep my spirits up, but I was in full on death march mode. I just wanted to get back to the car and tried to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Much more than the day before, I was feeling the elevation and had been the entire hike. It wasn't so much the aerobic challenge or lactic acid build-up in my legs, it just felt like I was wearing ankle weights. Putting one foot in front of the other was much more challenging than usual.

We finally got back to the car around 7pm - 14 hours of hiking! I have to say I was glad that ghosts or whoever scared us out of the campsite that morning so we didn't have to go back and pack up our tents. That would have sucked.

I was glad that I was able to summit a second 14-er and I really enjoyed the scenery (before I switched into death march mode). The fact that we didn't quite make it up to the Mt. Massive summit makes me feel that there is some unfinished business. The next time I attempt it, I'm definitely going for the shorter route even if it's harder. But, I need at least a year moratorium from Massive before I can even contemplate tackling it again. For now, I got my first 14-ers under my belt--pretty challenging ones, to boot--and that's all that matters.

First 14-ers, Part I: Mt. Elbert

2009-08-31T22:03:00.024-06:00

We set off on our journey to hike Mt. Elbert--the highest point in Colorado--around 6:45am. This was a little later than we had planned on, but more on that later.

Once we got above treeline, there was a great view of Twin Lakes - gorgeous!

The trail was basically up, up, and more up. Steep and challenging aerobically, but nothing technical. Just walking, no scrambling.

Yeah! Made it to the summit around 10:30am. My first time ever at 14,000 feet and atop the highest peak in Colorado!

The main mystery of this hike was the reason we got started later than planned. When we pulled up to the trailhead, we saw smoke, red embers, and a few flames. When we got closer we realized that the sign marking the trail was on fire! We grabbed some jugs of water to douse it and so did the car in front of us. Upon closer inspection, it looked to be intentional. There were logs set up directly in front of it and a few beer cans and empty bags of chips. We hung around awhile to call 911 and let someone know what was happening. While we were waiting we met these two guys, who eventually became our main suspects. At first they said that they had showed up at 2am and saw the sign engulfed in flames and moved some of the logs to keep it from burning more. They claimed, "Yeah, dude, it must have been some drunk college kids or something. We did our best to put it out." Once we realized how much these two reeked of alcohol, we were pretty doubtful that it was, in fact, "drunk college kids" who started it. The sheriff called us back later to get more information once he got to the trailhead and realized how bad it was. By the time we got down at the end of the hike, one of the three signs had fallen.

After this hike, it was on to the campsite to rest up for Mt. Massive.

What's Next?

2009-08-15T08:31:00.006-06:00

Now that tri season is over and I no longer have to wake up at the crack of dawn for racing and training, the main advantage is . . . now I can wake up at the crack of dawn for a day of hiking!

One thing I've regretted about being so into triathlon since moving to Colorado is that I haven't had as many opportunities to enjoy the natural beauty of my own backyard. As a first step in making more of an effort to get out in the great outdoors, yesterday I joined two friends and hiked 13,375 feet to the top of South Arapahoe Peak in the Indian Wilderness. I was worried about the elevation and that even though I'm in shape, I'm not really in "hiking shape," but I did just fine. Even though it was chilly and very cloudy, the scenery was beautiful and it was great to spend my Friday off in the mountains.

It is supposedly very normal to feel a sense of let down once you meet your major race goals for the season. Last year, I was not sad about the end of tri season, but I was completely burnt out. This year, I feel neither let down or burnt out. I'm not struggling with "what do I do now?" nor does the sight of my bike or the thought of running make me want to vomit. Since I purposely divide my year between "training for a goal" season and "exercising for the sake of exercising" season, I'm content to arrive at the latter. Since I'm a gym rat at heart, I'll happily go back to Zumba, hip hop, spinning, lifting, step, yoga, and Pilates. And, now that my weekends are free from long runs and long bike rides, I'm going to try to get more into hiking and outdoorsy stuff. Also, I'm planning to combine gym work-outs and the great outdoors by trying out Boot Camp at Red Rocks.

Even though this feels very "cart before horse," I'm already thinking about my triathlon goals for next year. Since they are bopping around my head, might as well write them down. I suppose the only post-season disappointment I feel is that I really loved the Half-Ironman distance, but I know I can't commit to training for them too often without burning out. I really want my summer back and I want next year's to be significantly more unscheduled. It would be so nice to be able to say "yes" to an invitation for camping without hesitating because I need to do a 60-mile bike ride or be able to zip down to Austin for the weekend without having to squeeze in a 10-mile run at Town Lake. Therefore, the current plan is to do two triathlons early in the season and then have the rest of the summer to do whatever I like. I'm thinking of doing the Cap Tex Tri (Olympic distance) in Austin on Memorial Day and TriathlON Friday in early June - a new sprint distance in Denver that is on Friday evening so you don't have to wake up at 4:15am!

I'm also thinking of a vague three year plan. I would focus more on biking next summer and maybe train for the MS-150 or some other multi-day rides or centuries. The following year, I would focus on doing 3-4 half-marathons and some 10Ks and see if I can improve my running. The next year, I would put all three sports together again and go for another Half-Ironman or other challenging race. One race I'd really like to do in the next few years is Escape From Alcatraz. It looks like so much fun and is theoretically a good one for me because the most challenging leg is the swim.

And now back to enjoying the rest of my first post-season weekend! A mani/pedi is in order!

TriathLONG!

2009-08-10T19:35:00.007-06:00

It's done - I finished the 5430 Long Course yesterday with a total time of 6:55:07! It was a great experience and surprisingly doable (though definitely a challenge). The key factors seemed to be pacing myself, staying hydrated, taking in enough calories and electrolytes, and keeping a calm mind.

Pre-Race

The night before, I had one of the best nights of sleep I've ever had before a race and probably the best night of sleep I'd had in the last couple weeks. Perhaps I owe this to my plan of taking care of all logistics the day before, so I didn't have do much besides pick up my race packet and lay around watching The West Wing. My brain wasn't still reeling with mental to-do lists and reminders, so it was easier than usual to fall asleep around 9:30. I woke up once at 2:30, but went right back to sleep and didn't even hit snooze when my alarm sounded at 4:15.

I got to the transition area and found a spot in the racks for Wave 10. It was right near the Porta-Potties, so it didn't smell that great for 5am, but at least it made it easier to find my bike during transitions. The girl who racked her bike next to me tied a fake Gerber daisy around our rack as a marker. Gerber daisies are my favorite flower, so this was a nice addition to the transition set up.

For a race of this distance, there was more transition gear and steps to think of - mostly related to food and staying comfortable. I was afraid of forgetting something important, so I decided to stuff the transition items I was most afraid of forgetting into my shoes. Going on to the bike, I didn't think I would forget my socks, helmet, sunglasses, or bike gloves, but I was worried I would forget to put plenty of C liff Shot Blocks in my back pockets. Likewise, going into the run, I knew I could remember my hat and race number, but I thought I might not remember to throw on more sunscreen, apply anti-chafing lotion, and grab more food. This strategy worked pretty well.

Here's me in my Porta-Potty-Proximate transition slot. I usually wear this same T-shirt before all of my races - the big, important ones anyway. This shirt was from the Corpus Christi "Swashbuckler's" Beginner's Triathlon, my first ever multi-sport race. It wasn't even a full sprint distance - just a 200 yard swim in a pool, a 10 mile bike ride, and a 2 mile run. I did it with my helmet on backwards and almost no air in my tires (this was before I realized you were supposed to pump your tires before every ride). I wear it as a little security blanket and a reminder of how far I've come.

Swim - 1.2 miles - 42:26

My wave (the very last) didn't start until 7:15, forty-five minutes after the gun for the first wave. This gave me plenty of time to put on my wetsuit and mill around on the beach before getting in the warm-up. I was chilly so I was excited to finally warm-up in both senses of the word and plopped in the water around 6:55. This is the point when I usually start to get nervous, sitting in the water, anticipating the start. But yesterday, I felt remarkably calm. I've done rehearsals for this distance twice before (though, never with the full run) and both times I remember sighing to myself while waiting in the water, "Man, this is the beginning of a very, very long day." My mind didn't go there Sunday and, while I'd like to think it was because I felt so confident in my training and preparation, I think most of the credit goes to that FANTASTIC night of sleep.

Women 30-34 shared a wave with Men 20-24. I'm not sure I've ever started in a wave with guys before, so I wasn't quite sure where to place myself. I put myself about mid-pack, slightly further back than usual. Although it was nice and cloudy for the earlier waves, the sun came out just in time for me to spend yet another morning in Boulder squinting in search of the buoys. The start was a little more chaotic than I've had in awhile. For the first 50 meters there were people on top of me and all around me. I eventually carved out spot for myself and felt pretty good. The water was calm and I didn't have any panic attacks that my wetsuit was strangling me like during last month's Boulder Peak. Swimming is by far my strongest of the three sports, but I didn't think it would be worth it to spend too much energy hammering out a super-fast swim time. Mentally, I thought of the swim as a warm-up and made a conscious effort to cruise through the swim and feel fresh going on to the bike. The one positive to starting last was that I didn't have to worry about different-colored swim caps from later waves creeping in on me - if I saw another colored cap, it meant I was catching them. By the last stretch of buoys, I was almost completely surrounded by red and blue caps (my wave wore white) so I figured I was making decent time. I cranked the speed a little for the last stretch and ran up the hill to the transition area.

Bike - 56 miles - 3:26:09 (16.3 mph)

The bike started out with a slight hiccup - I had barely turned out of the reservoir when I switched gears and my chain fell off. I might have jinxed myself the day before when I thought to myself that I hadn't had to adjust my chain in awhile and maybe I should practice that before the race. I did not end up practicing and instead got to practice right there on the course. Luckily it only took about 30 seconds to fix and, since I was just getting started, I didn't lose much rhythm or momentum.

My main goals on the bike were to stay hydrated and re-fuel regularly and to push it as much as I could without killing my legs. I set my watch to beep every 5 minutes to remind me to eat and drink - I drank water at every beep, drank Gatorade at every other beep, and ate a Shot Block at every third beep. I doubt I kept that rotation exactly, but overall it worked pretty well. The first 12 miles (of the 28 mile loop) are mostly a steady incline, then a few miles of awesome downhill, then it flattens out with a slight incline towards the end. I had an easier time with the uphill part than the last time I practiced it. I was able to stay in my big ring almost the entire time, dropping into the small ring occasionally to get up some of the hills. At one point during the second loop, I realized that I hadn't switched back to my big ring once a hill had flattened out and I was so annoyed at the speed I must have lost that I stayed in the big ring, stood up, and powered up the next hill. This was probably a mistake as it resulted in a cramp that lasted the remainder of the bike ride. I spent the rest of the time trying to make it go away. A cramp isn't so bad on the bike, but I knew it would be really uncomfortable on the run. I stopped taking in calories for awhile and just focused on small sips of water and deep yogic breathing. It didn't feel completely gone by the time I dismounted, but I didn't notice it at all once I started running.

Even though my second loop was much more uncomfortable than the first, I managed to keep a pretty consistent pace, finishing each loop with an average speed of 16.3 mph. The last time I did this ride at race pace, it took me 3:33, so I was happy for the 7 minute improvement and for an average speed above 16 mph.

Run - 13.1 miles - 2:35:44 (11:54/mi)

My quads were definitely feeling the burn as I got ready for the run. I headed out of the transition area trying my best to ignore the many people already finished and finishing and focused on the task at hand. My absolute only goals during the run were to (1) stay sane and (2) keep cool. I had planned and practiced running 5:1 intervals -- run for 5 minutes, walk for 1 -- and set my Garmin to beep accordingly. I adjusted the display so it only showed me how long I had left in each interval. I didn't even want to think about my pace. Although I felt a little sheepish stopping to walk midway through mile 1, I was happy to have the break. The first couple miles were tough, but eventually I settled into it. I drank water and Gatorade at every aid station and also grabbed ice to put in my hat and ice water sponges to stick inside my sports bra.

I could tell I was keeping a pretty good pace on my run-intervals, but I kept doing the walk-breaks nonetheless. I adjusted the timing of the walk-breaks occasionally, mostly to accomodate hills and aid stations. I felt so strong that I wondered if it was silly of me to walk periodically. But, I decided that this was cocky - the reason I felt so strong was because I was taking the time to walk. I'd much rather walk on purpose throughout than go to hard and be forced to walk out of necessity. Plus, the mental benefit of breaking the run into six-minute segments was incalculable.

Finishing the first loop and going into the second was a little challenging, just because most people running around me were on their second loop and going into the finish. The crowd was cheering, "Keep going - you're almost there," but I still had 6.5 miles to go. I had prepared myself for this and kept my head high when asking a volunteer which way to go to continue for a second loop. I was totally fine, but then someone in the crowd recognized that I was still going, yelled out my race number and told me I looked strong. It sounds silly, but that random support from a stranger made me so emotional I thought I was going to cry and was fighting back tears for the next mile.

I think I enjoyed the run more than any other leg, which is surprising because it was the one I was most terrified of. I just couldn't believe how strong and capable I felt for most of the half-marathon. It did get hard again towards the end - I thought I was going to cry again at mile 12, half because I couldn't believe I had run that far and half because I didn't want to keep running to the finish line. Once I got off the dirt trail around the Rez and hit the parking lot for the last three-quarters of a mile, I wouldn't let myself take any more walk-breaks. At long last, I veered into the finishers chute and saw my awesome cheering section of friends and family as I crossed the line. Awesome feeling!

I finished with an overall time of 6:55:07. I was predicting a time of around 7 hours, but secretly worried it was going to take me closer to 7:30. I was delighted to come in sub-7.

When you cross the line at an Ironman, they announce your name and say "You . . . are . . . an Ironman!" They don't say anything like that at a Half-Ironman, because the rhetoric doesn't quite work. But hey, I'll say it. I'm half an Iron(wo)man, and that ain't bad!

Pre-Race Prep and Food

2009-08-07T22:08:00.006-06:00

As I type, I am 1 day, 8 hours, 20 minutes, and 55 seconds from the start of the 5430 Long Course - my first half ironman!

In order to be as rested and relaxed as possible for the big day, I'm focusing my entire weekend around it. Basically, I'm trying to get every little chore and errand done today so I don't have to worry about anything Saturday but picking up my race packet, hydrating, eating well, and getting to bed early. Right now, I'm watching DVDs of The West Wing (late to the party, but glad to be here!), folding laundry, laying out all my gear for Sunday, and doing some cooking.

I've been cooking a lot of vegetables in the oven lately. It all started when I got a craving for Parmesan chicken a couple weeks ago and tried a recipe I found online. I like to overcook and have plenty of leftovers to re-heat the rest of the week, so I made four chicken breasts. While it was great out of the oven, the chicken was not nearly as good after being nuked (way too dry). I love eggplant, and figured it would hold up much better in the microwave, so I applied the same recipe to eggplant. It was AWESOME! Very yummy without much effort. The only problem was that I wanted to eat it all and it was much harder to save any for leftovers.

After making that a couple times, I decided to branch out to other vegetables. Here's what I made earlier:

Eggplant, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and Brussels sprout parmigiana! I'm not sure how healthy this is, but at least I'm getting my veggies. And making it was really easy. I just chopped everything, dipped each piece in butter, and lightly coated each with a mixture of breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan cheese, dried parsley, and garlic powder. I baked them in the oven at 350 for about an hour with foil covering the pan.

This was my first time eating Brussels sprouts and I thought they were quite good. Neither they nor the cherry tomatoes really needed the crusting (nor did it stick well), but it was a fun little experiment.

For my "last supper" tomorrow evening, I'm opting for something a little healthier. I'm making eggplant and zucchini again, but no butter or Parmesan crusting. I tossed them in the oven with a light coating of olive oil and a sprinkling of parsley and garlic powder. In addition, I'm going to have some ground turkey and tomato sauce with whole wheat pasta. (I'm staying at a friend's house in Boulder tomorrow night and bringing my pre-race meal with me, ergo the need to cook it tonight). The experts say to have a big lunch the day before a race and then a modest-sized dinner. This meal should give me some vitamins, some lean protein, and some "good" carbohydrates and (I hope) will leave me feeling energized Sunday morning!

Boulder Peak

2009-07-13T20:55:00.003-06:00

Yesterday was the Boulder Peak - my second Olympic distance tri and my first time ever racing the same tri in a different year. Warning - this post is really long.

Goals

When I first joined CWW, my coach gave me (and everyone else) a little zip-up pouch with a very specific purpose. She reminded us that when doing a triathlon, there is so much gear to gather - goggles, wetsuit, bike shoes, helmet, running shoes, water bottles, etc. But, in the haste of gathering everything, it's important not to forget the reason that you are there. Thus, she gave us the little pouches to hold perhaps the most important thing - our goals. It's all about the power of visualizing what you want to accomplish and committing it to writing. If you write it down, it will happen. (Though goals should be realistic and focused on you - who wins or how you place depends on who else shows up, not you.) I forgot to write down my goals before the 5430 Sprint last month, and perhaps that's why I felt so discombobulated and disappointed afterward. I thought of goals in my head before the race, but it's not the same. Also, my goals were number oriented, which is just a set-up for disappointment.

The goals I wrote down for the Boulder Peak were:

-Have fun and work hard!
-Enjoy and revel in the fact that you are a triathlete!
-Appreciate the crowd, the views, and fellow racers
-Push it from Rez to Olde Stage
-Crank it up Olde Stage - relax and breathe
-Run so you will be sore Monday
-Smile and wave at CWW teammates and coaches when you cross the finish!

The race t-shirt this year had a similarly inspirational message: "Training at ALTITUDE means i get up everyday BELIEVING i have the CONFIDENCE to SWIM 1.5k across the REZ . . . KNOWING i have FUELED my body enough to BIKE 42k and POWER up OLDE STAGE . . . and REALIZING that no matter how HOT it gets out there, i will hit the 10k RUN with EVERYTHING i have left in ME and i WILL cross that FINISH line!"

The theme of this race for me was having fun, doing my best, and not worrying about the numbers. I did have a few numbers in the back of my mind and was worried that I might finish 15 - 20 minutes slower than last year. But, I ended up easily finishing in the same ballpark as last year, which I felt really good about.

Swim

At last year's Peak, my age group was in the very last swim wave. I didn't start until about an hour and a half after I had to be out of the transition area. This year, I was in the second wave, starting at 6:40, only 20 minutes after the transition area closed, so less time to wait around and get nervous. I hopped in the water right away to warm up and then stood to listen to the Star Spangled Banner while the sky-divers parachuted down with a huge American flag. I was really excited at this moment and glad to be doing the race.

The first wave was most of the older age groups together, so there was a 10 minute gap between their start and ours to give them a head start (all other waves were 5 minutes apart). The first wave got a lead kayak that steered toward the buoys through the glare of the Boulder sun and we got a lead kayak too, since the swimmers from the first wave were 10 minutes ahead. The course was kind of a pentagon shape (with the fifth edge being the shoreline between the swim start and swim finish). The first leg of the swim, I just tried to follow the kayak and the streak of the sun in the reservoir, conveniently masking the buoys. One buoy, I literally did not see until I was a few feet away from it. Once I got to the first turn, I was astounded by how clearly I could see the buoys now that they were out of the sun. I thought to myself, this is almost too easy! After the second turn, into the third pentagon leg, I started to freak out a little bit. Right before the swim started, I was thinking about how thirsty I was. The day before at the packet pick-up, the race director was talking about how important it was to take water on the bike because you'll likely leave the swim deydrated, especially if you wear a wetsuit. I started obssessively thinking about how my wetsuit was dehydrating me and constricting me and it even occured to me to wave down a kayaker, strip off my wetsuit, and hand it to them to take it to shore for me. But, I tried to put that out of my head. During this third leg, I started to see white swim caps from the wave ahead of me, which meant I was catching people with a 10 minute head start. But then, I also started seeing purple caps from the wave behind me starting to infiltrate. I knew that this wasn't going to be my best swim, but thought my time would be typical for me. Once I made the third turn and could see the red arches of the finish and cranked up the speed.

I ran out of the water and up to the transition area and was shocked when I saw the timer clock: 45:39. What? Subtracting 10 minutes to account for when my wave started, that meant I had a time of 35:39. My swim time at last year's race was 29:26 (though I remembered it as 26-something). Either way, 5-10 minutes is a HUGE amount of time when it comes to swimming and it really stunned me that I had gone so slowly. But, when I got into the transition area, about the same number of bikes were still there as usually are when I come in from the swim. And, as I was putting on my bike gear, I saw a teammate come in who usually finishes the swim a couple minutes after me, so I figured something must have been off with either the swim course or the timer. (Many people had the same experience with their swim time and it seems like the course was a bit long.)

Bike

I did my best to put my swim time out of my mind and headed out on my bike. Even though I didn't write down a goal for bike speed, I knew that I had averaged 15.1 mph last year and came in two minutes behind the 78-year-old nun from Spokane, WA. This year, I was determined to beat that nun's time!

To give you a sense of the bike course:

It is a steady climb for 5 miles, then about an 800 ft elevation change over the span of two miles - the infamous climb up Olde Stage Road. After that, it's all down hill, rolling hills, easy cheese. I've practiced that hill about 5 times this year and I know that for the worst part of it, I hover between 3-4mph. I knew that I would be able to make up a lot of that speed on the downhills, but I also didn't want to go in to the steep climb with too much of a speed deficit. Ergo, one of my goals was to push that gradual incline the leads up to Olde Stage and not lose too much time.

It was perhaps a blessing in disguise that my cadence sensor wasn't picking up. Usually, I aim for a cadence between 80-90 rpm and shift gears accordingly so I have the most efficient pedal stroke possible. But, I can pretty much do it by feel now - I know when I'm spinning too easily and when I'm grinding too hard. I realized about halfway through the gradual incline that I was still in my big ring (harder to pedal, but propels the bike further and faster). I think I stayed in the big ring much longer than all the times during my practice rides and I think it helped me rack up the average speed I wanted going into Olde Stage.

I finally got to the hardest part of the hill and just focused on breathing and pedalling one stroke at a time. There were huge crowds cheering us on and a big sign for CWW. It was definitely grueling, but I had practiced it enough that it didn't even feel that hard. When I got to the top, there was another CWW sign that said, "You are one tough cookie!" (My coach even drew a picture of a cookie.) After that, it was flying time, down the hills, which was fun on my new, lighter bike. I took me until about mile 20 of 26, but by then I could tell from my computer that I was safely out of "nun territory" and ended up finishing with an average mph of 15.6 with a time of 1:40:09 - almost two minutes faster than Sister Madonna Buder's time from last year! Suck it, Sister! (Just kidding - I think you're awesome.)

Run

Towards the end of the bike, I tried to visualize how good it was going to feel to run after the hilly bike ride. I'm not sure if it helped, but I transitioned from the bike and was off. I gave myself about half a mile to work-out the jelly in my legs and settle into a comfortable, doable pace. When I looked down at my watch, I was glad to see 10:23/mi. It felt more like an 11-11:30/mi, so I was really happy that I felt able to sustain a sub-11 minute mile pace. It did get hard at parts. I walked through the water stations at each mile so I could get little breaks and have something to look forward to. Between mile 2 and 3, I freaked out a little. It was like I stepped outside of myself and looked at what I was doing. I started thinking, "What the hell am I doing? How am I going to get out of this?" I was able to refocus and just keep running for the most part, but I never quite reached the zen of "I'm racing right now, it sucks, but just take one step at a time and it will be over soon."

I did fall back to an 11:00+/mi pace several times, but I was able to think "I need to pick it up and run a little faster" and have my body actually respond. It was nice, because often my body says, "That's great that you'd like to run faster, but it ain't happening." I kept telling myself what I wrote in my goals - you've got to make sure you'll be sore tomorrow. (I felt really disappointed in myself the day after the sprint because I wasn't very sore, which made me feel like I hadn't given 100%). The last mile was probably the slowest, but I cranked it up to 9min/mi when I saw the finish line (and my teammate and coaches). The announcer called my name and city, which is always an exciting touch, and the race volunteers handed me the wet "Boulder Peak Finisher" towel (this race's equivalent of a medal). I finished with a 10:43/mi pace and a run time of 1:06:23 (about a minute and a half faster than last year). Oh, and I am definitely sore today!

My overall time was 3:29:16. About three minutes slower than last year, but that seems to be because of my inexplicably slower swim. Had my swim time been on par with my time last year, I would have beat my previous time by 2-3 minutes. It was most imporant to me to make improvements on the bike and run legs. I was also glad to prove that I haven't majorly regressed since last year, which was the main thing I was worried about.

Overall, it was a great race and I met all of my goals. Just a few more weeks of hard training until the Long Course on August 9th.

5430 Sprint

2009-06-22T22:51:00.003-06:00

My first tri of the three-part series in Boulder was yesterday. Overall it went fine. It wasn't my best effort or best race, but it wasn't my "A" race either. Yesterday was a nice warm-up to the longer distances later this summer that I really care about -- the Boulder Peak and the Long Course.

The swim was nice and easy. No major waves, panics, or collisions with fellow racers. The only slight hiccup was that I didn't have a good understanding at the course ahead of time. With the glare of the sun, it usually takes a couple minutes before I can sight the buoy and know where I'm heading. Before that happens, I just follow the crowd. I finally spotted the triangle shaped buoy, thinking that was the turning point. Once I got there, everyone else was still swimming straight ahead, so I figured I must have gotten it wrong. Luckily, following the crowd worked and I eventually made it to the second buoy, which was the actual turning point.

The bike was probably the highlight for this race. Though I'm still worst at cycling of the three sports, I improved the most on this leg. The course (17 miles) was a slight, but definite uphill for the first five or six miles, then mostly downhill with a few rolling hills for the next six, then a mostly uphill, though not as steep, climb back to the transition area. I had practiced the exact course two weeks ago at my team's rehearsal. During the rehearsal, I was really hoping to have an average speed of at least 16 mph, but I ended up averaging 15.9 mph. Urgh! So my main race goal was to average 16mph+ on the bike portion. For the first third of the race--the uphill portion--my average speed hovered between 12 and 13 mph. I was worried I wouldn't be able to overcome that deficit, but ended up making good use of the downhills once I got there. I even caught my speed at 31 mph a couple times. Towards the end of the descent I had an average speed of about 17.1 mph. I was worried that the final miles uphill would lower my average a lot, but I ended up with a final average speed of 16.7 mph! Woo hoo!

I had a pretty quick transition to the run (read: no bathroom break needed). I don't know if it was because I pushed harder than usual on the bike, or because I just wasn't feeling it, but my run wasn't quite up to par for that distance. During the rehearsal, I averaged 10:10 min/miles and was hoping to get closer to a 10 minute mile if not sub-10. Yesterday my pace was 10:30 min/mile. I'm really not sure if I just didn't have anything left to give or if I just wasn't motivated to dig deep and push through.

I think my feelings about the run explain why I've wanted to move up to longer distances in recent years. Since it's doubtful I'll ever mutate into a speedy machine, most of my satisfaction from doing these races comes from enjoying the course and the crowd and just finishing. Now that I've finished the sprint distance several times over, I know I can do it, and "just finishing" doesn't do as much for me anymore. As much as I'm dreading the upcoming 10k following a 24 mile bike and (yikes!) the half-marathon after a 56-mile bike, I think finishing will probably seem a sufficient accomplishment. The Boulder Peak will be a little trickier mentally because I did the course last year and will likely be a little disappointed if I don't beat, tie, or come close to my previous time. But for the half-ironman, I'll be happy if I manage to limp across the finish line before they close down the course.

My overall time was 1:55:28. My other goal was to finish in less than two hours, so yay! In my age group of 111 women, I was 30th out of the water, 84th on the bike, and 88th on the run for a final placing of 73/111. Not bad and fairly typical for me. As the race director said during the awards ceremony, Boulder is a tough place to compete. Most of the podium finishers had at least been to Kona and many of them had placed there too!

After the race on Sunday, I went home and slept away most of the afternoon - I was so tired! But this evening, I'm barely even sore and bounding with energy, which makes me feel guilty that I really didn't give it my all yesterday. Again, it doesn't really matter because this wasn't my "A" race. And, I have two more chances where I'll probably have no choice but to give it everything I've got.

Duathlon Rehearsal Re-Caplet

2009-05-30T12:48:00.002-06:00

Today was the first time this year that I put together biking and running in an official-ish capacity. My tri club put on a duathlon rehearsal and we had the choice of doing an Olympic distance (1 mile run / 22 mile bike / 6.2 mile run) or a Sprint distance (1 mile run / 11 mile bike / 3.1 mile run). I did the Olympic distance, which is what I did last year, too. I remember last year, I felt obligated to do the Olympic because that was the distance I was training for. But, this year, I didn't so much feel obligated (even though I am), as I felt the Sprint du would be too easy, or at least a waste of waking up early, packing up all my gear, and driving out the 'burbs.

I finished in 2:46:28, which was fine with me. (It was fun using the multi-sport feature on my Garmin - it even clocked my transition times!) I didn't have a goal going in, I just wanted to see how I did. Ideally I'd like to improve my bike and run pace a little, but I still have time, so I just may. I'm realizing that for longer distance tri's, it may not be a realistic goal to run a sub-10 min/mile pace after the bike portions, especially when it's hot and sunny like it was today. I averaged just over an 11 min/mile pace this morning. I wouldn't say I was giving it my all, but I don't think I would have been able to go much faster. At the Boulder Peak last year, it was 104 degrees and I felt like I had to slow way down from my normal pace and ended up averaging 10:55 per mile. In future races and rehearsals, I'm going to make a point of hydrating more on the bike so I'll be more prepared for the run. In sum, the two things I learned today: I'm used to the longer distances enough to not be tempted to take the shorter option and I need to hydrate more on the bike!

Speaking of hydrating on the bike, I'm riding 65 miles tomorrow, the majority uphill, from Boulder to Ward. Yikes!

AA BBig ImprovEEment

2009-05-26T21:10:00.002-06:00

The t-shirt slogan for this year's BolderBoulder (BB) was Altitude Attitude (AA) and I qualified and registered to run in Wave EE. YipEE!!!

As it turned out, I didn't actually get to start with my wave, which was only disappointing because of the previously mentioned correspondence to my first two initials. The reason I didn't get to the front by the time my wave started was because I got stuck in the line for the FedEx mobile locker (to transport to the finish line any belongings I didn't want to run with). I was so COLD after last year's run that I basically packed enough extra clothing to be prepared in case of a post-race blizzard. Even though it's not my initials, Wave FB was a fine wave to start in. I mostly just wanted to start with people who were my pace or faster so I would get off to a good start rather than have to spend the first mile weaving through joggers and walkers. The race used chip timing, so the actual wave you start in doesn't really matter for purposes of clocking your time. Added bonus--according to the announcer at the start, Wave FB included the only couple ever to get married during the BolderBoulder!

I set my trusty Garmin's virtual partner feature to pace me for a pace of 9:49/mile, which was my goal based on my 5k time last week at the Federal Cup and last year's BB time. The first part of the race is down hill and that coupled with the excitement of the start meant for a very fast first mile. I caught my pace at sub-8 min/miles several times, so I knew I needed to slow down, but I also felt pretty good and thought I would be able to keep up a pretty fast, consistent pace and would likely exceed my goal. Because of such a fast first mile, my average pace was just over 9 min/miles for the first 2-3 miles of the course. I decided to slow down a little for miles 3 and 4 so I would be able to speed it up again at the end. (That was a convenient decision because much of miles 3 and 4 were uphill.) This strategy didn't work out exactly as planned because I ended up getting a cramp around mile 5 and couldn't push quite as hard as I wanted. But, I pushed on, got a good laugh out of two guys wearing gorilla costumes, and saw that my average pace was right around 9:30/mile -- I was psyched! For the last 2K, I really wanted to keep my pace fast enough so my average pace would stay the same. I checked my Garmin and was nearly 2 tenths of a mile ahead of my "virtual partner," so I knew I would easily beat my goal and just wanted to beat it by as much as I could. As I neared the CU Stadium, I thought the visual of the end would be all I needed, but I completely forgot how steep the last hill leading into the stadium was! I had to slow way down to make it into the stadium and my average pace dropped by a few seconds. Once I got into the stadium itself, I was able to speed up and finish strong in a Ralphie-style victory lap.

My Garmin beeped as I crossed the finish-line, signalling that I had finished my 10K at an average pace of 9:36/mile with a total time of 59:41. That's 18 seconds faster per mile and almost 2 minutes faster overall than my time from last year! This was actually the first time I've ever done the same exact race more than once (it's hard when you move all the time) and it was exciting to be able to compare my performance year to year, even more exciting to beat my previous time by so much.

But, when I got home, I checked my results online and they told a slightly different story. The timing-chip clocked me at a 9:41/mile pace with an overall time of 1:00:11.57. Not too disappointing because it was still faster than last year's time and my goal time, but it would have been nice to have the official results show that I broke an hour. It's a bit perplexing because my GPS watch should have been accurate. If it were only off by a few seconds, I would have assumed that I didn't start my watch at the right time, but 30 seconds is a pretty big deficit. I haven't decided which time I'm going with . . . it's hard for me to understand why the time I clocked was off by so much, but it's also hard for me to go against something official and on the internet. I guess I'll go with my official BB time. If for no other reason, it will be easier to beat my time next year.

The BolderBoulder was the official kick-off to an all-Boulder, all the time race season. My next race is the first of the Boulder Triathlon Series: the 5430 Sprint on June 21st!

Race Report: Fed Cup 5k

2009-05-16T15:09:00.002-06:00

I did my first official race this morning: the Federal Cup 5k. The race is a "a fun and low-cost fitness event that honors the entire U.S. Government workforce and their families" and apparently the longest consecutively run fitness event specifically for federal employees.

The weather was great for running - overcast and temperature in the 50s - but not so great for hanging around before and after. The sun did start to come out around Mile 2 and it has since turned into a typically beautiful sunny Denver afternoon. I ran as a member of one of EPA's two teams, "EPA in the ZONE," but the whole team thing was just for fun. We didn't run together or have matching t-shirts or anything. I think they just calculated the team winner by adding together the top 2 male and female finishers from each.

The run itself went fine, great actually, but I had a pretty bad attitude for about 2.5 miles of it. I've pretty much accepted that I'm a slow runner and I'm never going to improve that much, but it's hard not to get a little annoyed when co-workers who say that they haven't run in months or who don't train nearly as much as I do still easily beat me. So, I childishly spent the first half of the race wondering why I even bother training and thinking how delusional I am to think I have any right to race a half-ironman this summer. But, with my trusty Garmin on my wrist I knew that I was making good time and maintaining a pace that was faster than I was hoping for.

When I was in law school, before I did any regular running, I was in career services freaking out because I hadn't found a summer job yet and everyone else in my class had and I was never going to find one and my life was over (you know, because it was November and summer was only seven months away). I ended up getting what was probably the most useful advice that I ever got out of the career services office. My adviser occasionally did marathons and other running races and said that when you get the starting line, it's really easy to pay too much attention to what the other runners are doing and get worked up or run too fast at the outset. But, what you're supposed to do is know what your own pace should be and focus on maintaining that. "Run your own race," she told me, "don't worry what other people are doing." Good advice for running and for life, I guess, so I kept that mantra in mind as much as I could and my bad attitude mostly subsided by the time I was in sight of the finish line. I still feel a little bit down that I'm never going to improve my running speed that much, but if my choices are go out there and run slow or stay in bed, it seems like a no-brainer.

My official time was 28:59, which is a pace of 9:21/mi. Despite my whining, that's actually a really good time for me, probably the best I've ever done. I haven't felt all that great about my running lately, and I was really hoping to run around 9:30/mi but worried I wouldn't be able to do much faster than a 10 minute mile. So, in terms of my internal personal goals, I did great.

This actually gives me a lot of confidence going into the Bolder Boulder 10k next weekend. Based on my time last year (1:01:32, 9:54/mi) I qualified for the last of the qualifying waves, Wave EE. Since those are my first two initials, I decided I had to do it even though I wasn't sure I'd be able to make that pace again. My goal for next weekend is to do the same as or faster than last year. According to an online calculator using the Bruce Hamilton method, my 5k time means I should be able to run a 10k at a pace of 9:44/mi. I think I'm going to play around with my Garmin, figure out the "Virtual Partner" setting, and set it to pace me at 9:49/mi (splitting the difference).

On an unrelated note, I'm eligible to upgrade my cell phone. I'm thinking about getting a Blackberry, but I'm not quite sure I'm ready yet. The cons for me are the extra money for the data plan and that I'm afraid I'll start obsessively checking my email, when I'm not the kind of person who gets enough email that she would need to check it obsesively. On the pro-side, I am the kind of person who gets lost and confused enough that there would be advantages to having access to my email, directions, and the internets when I'm on the go. I'm putting off getting a new phone until I know what I'm doing for work after June (I guess some things never change). Any thoughts?

Apparently my latest hobby is power point...

2009-04-21T21:35:00.002-06:00

Here's a power point I made for my Toastmasters speech about organizing my apartment...

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by emma.garrison

Here's another one I put together a few weeks ago about storage options for my new bike. (I got this new bike that I'm paranoid about keeping on my back deck, but I don't have much room for it in my apartment and I want to install a hook to hang it from, but that requires drilling, which is against the rules, but I ended up getting special permission as long as I get someone to help who knows what they're doing and promise to be responsible if and when I take out a chunk of drywall. A friend is coming over this weekend to install it for me.)

Any-who...

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by emma.garrison

Inauguration!

2009-01-23T17:19:00.002-07:00

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by emma.garrison

I spent a ridiculous amount of time putting this together and figuring out how to upload it, so I hope you enjoy! (Click button in the lower right corner for "Full Screen" to see the pictures better.)

New Place, New Space

2008-12-02T20:32:00.023-07:00

I'm moving to a new apartment. It's one of five units in an old Victorian house that was converted to apartments during World War II. It's a great apartment with friendly neighbors, and I'll think I'll be very happy there. Even though I'm not moving to a new city this time, or even to a new neighborhood, it's still an undertaking to transport your things and routine from one living space to another. Moving day is 10 days away, but my brain is already working overtime visualizing how my stuff will go in the new apartment. The current occupants are artists and clutter-monkeys, making it even harder to use my already lacking spatial reasoning skills.

Some pictures and initial thoughts ....

La Cucina... It's bright and pretty roomy, with lots of windows and natural light. The main drawbacks are that there is no dishwasher (I'll deal) and that there isn't much counter space. What I'm currently using as a desk is actually a kitchen table, so I'm thinking of putting that in the kitchen for now (it would go in the right-hand picture, underneath the silver star) and getting a new desk, one that's the right height for computer use. I also have a folding shelf and some stacking storage cubes that I might put in the other corner (where the block of knives is) and keep the microwave and/or toaster oven there.

Oh, the kitchen leads on to my...

Awesome Deck!!! Enough said.

Living Room. It's smaller than my apartment now, but it definitely has enough room for me to live as well as space for an office nook and my dining room table (there is no separate dining area.) I think I'll enjoy having the (non-functional) fireplace as a centerpoint to the room. I also love the built-in shelf!
Here is where I'm thinking of putting my "office":

If you can see through the clutter, I'm thinking of putting a little computer desk on the wall with all the paintings leaned up against it, and maybe a small bookshelf underneath the window. A new desk probably won't be my first priority, especially given that the "office" I'm sitting in right now consists of a papasan and a laptop and is more than adequate for my purposes. But, as they say, a place for everything and everything in it's place. This nook shares a wall with the bedroom; I'm planning to put my dining room table in the nook opposite that shares a wall with the kitchen (thank goodness I didn't splurge for all four chairs because I'll only have room for two!)

Bedroom and Closet. The bedroom is smaller, but definitely adequate for sleeping (and has two windows!). My current bedroom has lots of extra space that doesn't really get used. The closet space in the bedroom is about on par with what I have now (if a married couple has been sharing it for three years, I think it will be enough space for me), but it probably will take some work (extra bars, some hanging shoe and sweater bags, etc.).

However, there is no coat closet in the entryway or other additional storage space, so I'm going to have to get rid of some stuff and get creative. I'm a big fan of baskets and bins for storage - you don't have to be super-organized and things are still pretty easy to find without all the clutter. Mostly, I'll need easily accessible storage for all my tri gear, everyday outerwear like scarves, hats, gloves, hoodies, fleece, etc., which will hopefully leave room in the closet for stuff I use less often like luggage and camping gear.

For the quickly accessible stuff, I'm thinking of going the shelf with canvas bins route. For example:

Something like this:

with some of these:

Or ready-made, like this:

or this:

One day, I'll have cute entryway storage, like this:

I've also gotten used to having drapes, which my current apartment has (if you're wondering, I'm only moving because I have to), so I feel a little downgraded going back to blinds. I'm hoping I'll be able to spruce it up some with fun fabric to put over the windows. But, for now, I'm going to slow down, and not go nuts. (I promise I'll wait until I actually move in to make any purchases; I probably won't get anything until the new year.) I really want to make sure I have a good sense of how I'll use the space on a day-to-day basis before I go out and buy a bunch of stuff I don't really need. The closet and storage bins are probably the main priority, and everything else can wait. I've started an "apartment kitty," meaning I'm putting $20/week into a cookie tin (along with every Bed, Bath, and Beyond coupon that comes in the mail) so I'll have some cash to spend on new stuff for the apartment when I get back from Christmas.

When I get the key next Friday, I'll post more pics of the apartment as a "blank canvas." And, once I get moved in and settled, I'll post some "after" pictures.

Thanksgiving Traditions

2008-11-27T10:27:00.002-07:00

I've been thinking lately about what my Thanksgiving traditions are, in addition to the traditional traditions like turkey, pumpkin pie, and football. There are a few things that I tend to do, not necessarily every year, but are nice ways to enjoy the holiday.

1. Go to a Movie or Concert on "Thanksgiving Eve"

I like taking advantage of not having work or school the next day by going out somewhere I don't normally on a Wednesday. I remember seeing the Comedian at the Parkway in Oakland one year and a couple years ago I saw a show at the 930 club in DC. This year I tried to reinstate it by rallying friends to join me for a Prince vs. Michael Jackson DJ Dance Party. I called the place and everything to find out all the details, but when we showed up, it turned out to be teen night! I guess they either neglected to tell me it was a dance party for high schoolers or they assumed I was one. We ended up going out elsewhere and had a great time, but the whole teen night thing gave me a good chuckle.

2. Big Turkey Day Work-out Thursday Morning

It's always fun to go out and do something active before sitting down to eat, eat, and eat some more. I did the Turkey Trot in DC once and did a big 3 hour cardio-sculpt class in Berkeley a few times. This morning I did the "Turkey Burn" at the YMCA - 30 minutes of step, 30 minutes of step-n-sculpt, 30 minutes of Zumba, and 30 minutes of yoga. I'm glad Zumba was part of it - it's a work-out based on Latin dance moves and is my latest fitness obsession (that and hula-hooping). The yoga was nice at the end too... I may or may not need a nap before heading out for my Thanksgiving plans.

3. Get Obsessed with a New TV Show

Having time off work when it's cold outside is such a good time to cuddle up with some DVDs. It was two years ago Thanksgiving weekend that I curled up and watched seasons 1 and 2 of The Office - best Thanksgiving ever!!! This year I have the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It has a major cult following and 7 seasons. Hopefully I won't get so hooked that I'll be chained to the couch until Christmas.

4. Be Thankful

Ok, this is obviously a traditional one, but a good one. This time last year I was thankful because I was finally offered a job after a long search. This year I'm thankful that I took the leap and moved to Denver to take the job because I have truly had a wonderful year here. I'm really thankful to have a job period, not to mention one that I really like. While it may not last, I have it now, and I'm thankful for it now. When I was waiting for the bus yesterday, a woman came up to me and commented on the bag I was carrying, which has lots of inspirational quotes. I said that my favorite was, "Life is full of setbacks. Success is determined by how you handle setbacks." She mentioned that both Donald Trump and Walt Disney both declared bankruptcy multiple times, which I had never heard. Then she said that this time last year she was homeless and talked about how grateful she was that she had managed to get back on her feet. Aww.

I'm spending Thanksgiving dinner with some relatives in the area that have a ranch with donkeys and llamas. I'll report back on whether the llamas spit. When I offered to bring something, I assumed I would get the young single girl exemption--"Oh, no don't worry, there will be too much anyway"--so I could just show up with a bottle of wine. But, I found out last minute that they wanted me to bring a side dish. I braved the Wednesday crowds at Whole Food, which actually weren't that bad. The employees kept making weird jokes about what they like to eat for Thanksgiving dinner in an attempt to keep up shopper morale. I really wanted to make something in my new Crock Pot. So, I looked at the holiday section of the Year of CrockPotting Blog and found this recipe for sweet potatoes. It's crocking away as we speak.

Happy Thanksgiving!

84 Hours Later

2008-09-03T21:19:00.003-06:00

Before my quick recap of the looooong race, I thought I'd post this video about what 24 Hours of Triathlon is all about. NBC sports did a special on last year's race.

The basic premise is for you and your team (or for those brave souls who did the race solo, just you) to do as many short-distance triathlons in a 24 hour period. The course was a tenth the distance of an ironman -- .24 mi swim, 11.2 mi bike, 2.62 mi run. We completed 18 triathlons plus 1 swim and 1 bike, or 1.866 ironmans. In addition to lots of sitting around and reading US Weekly, I contributed 4 swim legs, 1 bike leg, and 2 run legs.

As I alluded to in my live blog, I went into this race exhausted and without any training for the two weeks leading up to the event. I was out every night the week before at DNC events and hosting two house guests so sleep wasn't really my focus. I thought I'd be able to push through on the adrenaline, especially for the short swim legs in the early hours of the race, but I guess I'm old now, because that wasn't really the case.

The way the race works is that you have to do the first three triathlons in traditional triathlon order - swim, bike, run - and the rest of the legs can be done in any order, with the main constraint being that the water is closed to swimming at night. We strategized about each others various strenghs, and my main contribution was going to be swimming. I did the very first swim leg of the tri - I was kind of honored that they picked me to lead. Less than halfway through that (very short, way shorter than usual!) swim leg, I thought to myself, "I don't think I can do this. Forget the 24 hours, I don't even feel like finishing this one swim." I feel bad about joking about drowning in Lake Washington because the water was pretty choppy on Saturday and there were a few times I felt uncomfortable. I pushed through and I was fine, my time was fine, I just knew that I was not operating at 100% and that I was capable of going faster. Did I mention the long run uphill after the swim to get to the transition / hand-off point?

After we did the first three tris, we assessed our pace and then set the goal of completing 18 triathlons. The plan was to bank our swim legs before the water closed, bike as much as we could before sunset, and run into the wee hours of the morning. There were 4 "A" swimmers, and we went one after another and through the rotation twice. Neither of these swims felt much better than my first - each swim was 30 seconds slower than the last. After two rotations of the A-team, we went to rest and the other members of the team each did one or two swims. We were done banking swim legs by 3pm and moved on to biking.

Since biking is my weakest of the three, I mostly rested while our strong bikers made the most of the sunlight. I got on my bike around 7:30pm - right at sunset. I took off wearing my sunglasses and came back with my headlamp turned on. It was actually pretty cool getting to see the sunset over the reservoir. At the turn around point, a volunteer warned me to watch out for deer, especially since I was wearing a headlight. I saw one! Luckily the cliche about deer in the headlights didn't come to pass. Once I got back to the transition area, I headed to bed.

My bed for the night consisted of two thermarests, my sleeping bag, and my camping pillow sprawled out in the back of an SUV, and I have to say it was probably the most comfortable set-ups I've ever slept on while camping. I knew I was up for running in a few hours, but I had no trouble getting in some much needed shut-eye before heading out. They woke me up around 1:30am, and I had about 45 minutes to have a cup of coffee, get the blood flowing, stretch, and get ready to go.

I think that those two runs - one at 2:30am, the other at 4:30am - were the most fun I had during this experience (though I admit it's an odd use of the word "fun.") I thought that the swims during the daylight hours would be a piece of cake and that I would dread the nighttime running and biking, but it turned out to be the exact opposite. I guess since one of the cardinal rules of being a woman is "Don't run alone at night!" it was a rush running underneath the stars with my lil' headlamp. After two decent runs (averaging less than 10 min/mi!) I crawled back into bed thinking that was my last leg.

About an hour later, I heard a knock on the window and someone calling my name. I opened my eyes and my teammate asked me if I would be willing to do one more swim leg. I sprung up and said, "Yeah!! I really want to!" She laughed thinking that she wouldn't be able to convince anyone who hadn't been running all night to wake up and swim. But, I had been hoping I would get another chance to redeem myself in the water. And I did! My time was almost a minute faster than my fastest time the day before and the fastest our team logged during the 24 hours. Some combination of calmer water and a more rested me really did the trick.

That was my last race of the 2008 season. I'm ready for a break and looking forward to being active in ways other than swimming, biking, and running. I've already gone highlighter happy on my YMCA class schedule and, inspired by Shawn and Nastia, I'm even thinking of trying an adult gymnastics class on Saturday mornings. I went to a boot camp class at the Y tonight, and, man, am I sore! Even though it might make more physical sense to keep up a moderate level of training through the winter so I don't have to spend so much time re-building my endurance next year, it makes more sense emotionally (for me anyway) to take a break so I'll be fresh and re-energized come February.

Here's to a re-energizing break!

24 Hours of Triathlon: Live Blog Transcript

2008-08-31T17:26:00.002-06:00

Transcript of my real-time updates to my Twitter account. I'll post a post-race recap once I'm better rested...

06:58 AM August 30, 2008 I will be live-blogging the 24 hours of triathlon. Got off to a stressful start - mix-up meeting my team. Here now.

07:16 AM August 30, 2008 My team just informed me i'll basically be swimming all day. I'll do the 1st leg - then rest for the 1st 3 tris then swim swim swim.

08:22 AM August 30, 2008 1st swim done. I'm tired! Maybe i shouldn't have gone out every night this week. Time to recharge

09:28 AM August 30, 2008 Ok - feeling better. Had some coffee .and i'm excited to swim again. We're almost halfway thru the 2nd tri

10:16 AM August 30, 2008 Reading us weekly while i wait - j.lo is training for a tri !

10:50 AM August 30, 2008 Starting to feel tired again – we’re about to start banking swim legs. I'll go every 4th person.

12:44 PM August 30, 2008 Just did 2 swim legs. I’m kinda sucking today but I suppose that’s to be expected given my lack of sleep & training lately.

12:48 PM August 30, 2008 June & Debbie came by & saw me come out of the water on my last swim – that was the highlight. Now I rest for awhile.

02:06 PM August 30, 2008 Just laid down w/ my ipod for a bit. Maybe I need Michael Phelps’ playlist. We’re almost done with swimming – about to start biking.

03:01 PM August 30, 2008 We're currently 9th of 19. I'm eating a cheese & potato chip sandwich on wheat & reading the other boleyn girl

03:47 PM August 30, 2008 The water, which has been choppy all day, has just been closed hours earlier than planned bc it has white caps.

05:29 PM August 30, 2008 I've decided that this is sort of like camping except instead of hiking you go swim bike or run every now & then. Lots of sitting around.

06:04 PM August 30, 2008 I'm up for biking in 2 more legs - in about an hour & 10 minutes. It's very windy - hope it dies down.

08:15 PM August 30, 2008 Just did the bike - it's the split i'm most proud of so far. 42:35 for 11.2 mi. Not bad for windy, dark, & having to reattach my chain.

09:05 PM August 30, 2008 Laying down for a nappy-poo in an suv. They’ll wake me 45 minutes to an hour before my run leg

01:40 AM August 31, 2008 Awake. Rallying to go run soon.

02:51 AM August 31, 2008 Just finished the run - 2.62 mi in 25:37 so 9:45 / mi! Weird rush running at 2:30 am! I'm up again in about an hour & a half.

05:12 AM August 31, 2008 Finished my 2nd run a bit ago - 25:28. I'm done & crawling back into suv. So is the grand finale to my tri season.

06:28 AM August 31, 2008 Waking up. Turns out they want me to do one more swim before we finish. That'll be in about 30 minutes.

07:20 AM August 31, 2008 YES! So glad i did that extra swim. It was 56 seconds faster than my fastest time yesterday & the fastest swim of our team.

08:57 AM August 31, 2008 It's been 24 hours! We finished 18 full triathlons + 1 swim (mine!) & 1 bike. Going home to sleep now.

Seattle Danskin, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bottom of Lake Washington

2008-08-20T20:55:00.017-06:00

I'm not sure quite what happened. I started my race as usual -- donning wetsuit, cap, and goggles, poised towards the front, and feeling good. Sally Edwards started us off with a pep talk, we all cheered and high-fived one another until the sound of the air horn started us off. Then the normal chaos at the start of a triathlon ensued as everyone plunges herself face first in the water, furiously stroking, kicking, occasionally on top of one another, occasionally elbowing your neighbor. I'm used to this by now, so I was stroking and elbowing along with everyone else.

I remember the rest in flashes. A kick to the head. My goggles pushed to the side, water rushing in. A gasp for breath, getting only water. Seaweed wrapping itself around my ankle. Panicking suddenly. Realizing that accidents happen to good swimmers all the time, but it couldn't be happening to me. Sinking slowly. Fading to black.

Kidding! Totally kidding. I finished the swim in 14:16 and was 8th out of the water in my age group. Unfortunately, my parents didn't see me after I finished the swim, and I didn't see them either, so they never saw me for the rest of the race. I found my Mom about half an hour after finishing and she ran up to me and said, "I'm so glad to see you! I thought you were at the bottom of Lake Washington!" I guess she wasn't at all comforted when commenting that they hadn't been able to find me to a fellow spectator who responded, "Oh don't worry. They have divers that can go out and find people."

But as for the rest of the race, it went well! A personal best of 1:26:28, though it feels like I was cheating or something because the whole training at elevation and racing a sea-level definitely worked to my advantage.

I did the race "caveman style" - I didn't have a computer on my bike and I wasn't wearing a watch, so I had no idea how I was doing. I didn't feel easy, like "Wow, I'm Superwoman!" It felt difficult, but I could tell I was pushing pretty hard. Usually, I try to focus on my own race and not pay too much attention to what others are doing, but on the bike portion I was intent on passing as many people as I could. The bike course was AWESOME by the way! A quick jaunt over Lake Washington to Mercer Island in beautiful, sunny-but-not-too-hot weather. I averaged 19.5 mph. (After all the drama, the bike store was able to rent clipless pedals to me.)

The run was the first time in a while I had run without a watch. It seemed like I was taking forever, even though I could tell I was running pretty fast. I must breathe really heavy when I run, because often during races people in front of me will turn around and say, "Wow. You go girl!" Friends have told me that I look like I run fast, which I suppose is a good first step to actually running fast. But, I did run pretty fast that day, averaging 8:58 per mile. In the last half mile of the course there was a pretty steep uphill - no fun! But, at least there was a good downhill right after that, leading right into the finish line. When I finished, the announcer called my name and said, "She's all the way from Denver! The Mile High City!"

I thought maybe my family would have heard that and would see me cross the finish, but no such luck. I had given my brother (who came to the race with my uncle and cousin) a list of the times I would reach each critical juncture, but of course he forgot it, so they never found me either. But, since my doing this race was in large part an excuse to have a vacation and a nice mini-family reunion, it's not that big a deal that no one saw me during the actual race. It was a really nice visit all around and a great race! I finished 34th out of 222 in my age group, and 214th of 3714 overall.

I've been exhausted since I got back, so I haven't been training this week, and who knows what I'll be able to manage next week with the DNC (!!!) in town. I only have one more tri left this year . . . 24 Hours of Triathlon! (A) I'm NOT crazy and (B) yes I will write a more detailed post about what the race entails soon.

Zen and the Art of Bicycle Maintenance

2008-08-13T23:29:00.003-06:00

It turns out that the flat I got walking my bike after Tri for the Cure Sunday before last was just the beginning . . . the first in a series.

I had to replace the actual tire and the innertube for the back wheel, which I did. I rode it to work with no problems, but when I went to get it after work, the back tire, the brand new tire that I just replaced, was flat. I filled it up and it seemed to hold, so I took off, thinking it would hold long enough to get me home. It didn't.

When I fixed that tire, I didn't notice anything that caused the flat. I thought maybe it was just a faulty innertube with a slow leak. The next time I rode it, I rode it to work in the morning, planning to go to a Brick work-out straight from work. Before I left work, I went to add some air to the tires and the valve on the front tire blew off, and completely deflated.

Since I had already replaced two tires that week, I didn't have any extra innertubes. They do have some spare tires in the bike cage at work, so I tried fixing it with one of those. Either the new innertube wasn't the exact right size, or I messed something up in fixing it, but when I was adding air to the new tire -POP! So loud! The innertube completely ruptured with a loud bang reverberating in the parking garage.

The next day, I came to work, armed with new innertubes, which were definitely the right size. As I fixed it again at the end of the day, everyone who came down was like, "Weren't you fixing a flat yesterday too?" This time I was very careful, I fixed the front tire, no explosions, no incidents, and I made it home just fine. I went into my apartment for no more than 30 minutes to change clothes and went back to my bike to ride over to a friends house. The back tire -- the other tire, not the one I just fixed -- was flat.

Though this has been frustrating, there are two silver linings: (a) I've gotten a lot quicker at changing tires and (b) the most recent flat--the slow leak--is the first repeat of circumstances leading to a flat, meaning there is probably something I can do to prevent it from happening again. I dropped off my tire with some friends, and they are going to conduct a full investigation while I'm out of town this weekend.

I'm going out of town this weekend to do a Tri in Seattle. It didn't seem worth hauling my bike all the way there for a 12 mile ride, so I'm opting to rent a bike instead. The rental place said to bring my own pedals so I can use my clip-on shoes. But, after running around this evening, borrowing wrenches, watching videos online on how to remove your bike pedals, and getting a neighbor to help, I finally gave up. Those pedals have been there for 3 years and they are not budging. I know I should have tried to take them off earlier, but I've just about used up all the energy I have for bike maintenance this week. I'll just use the regular pedals on the rented bike with my running shoes, and it hopefully won't slow me down too much.

It's midnight, I'm leaving town tomorrow right after work and I haven't even packed yet. Ugh. Hopefully I've had enough maintenance issues that I'll have a good run of smooth sailing ahead of me. But, given my luck lately, I think the race this weekend will be a victory if I can go the whole way without getting a flat.

Tri For the Cure

2008-08-04T22:31:00.002-06:00

I had another race yesterday. Although it was only my second official race this year, it feels like I've been doing nothing but triathlons lately. If you count all the race rehearsals my training group puts on, yesterday's was actually my 6th this summer and my 4th weekend in a row waking up at 4:45 to do a race. All day Saturday, I kept saying to myself, "Really? Another triathlon? Really?" I also went on a long hike on Friday and, since my hiking muscles are a little out of practice, I was still really sore on Sunday morning. I dragged myself out of bed (actually, not the hard part - on top of everything else, I didn't sleep a wink!) and decided to just go and enjoy the race. Tri for the Cure is all women and packed with first-time triathletes, which is really exciting and empowering. A lot of the women in my tri group were doing it as their first tri, so I just tried to focus on enjoying that energy.

Guess what? It was a personal best! I typically finish this distance in around 1:45 and my time yesterday was 1:32:15, which was in the top 15% of my age group! It was actually really good for my confidence - lately I've been feeling like no matter how much I train, I just never get much faster. Maybe it's a little lame to get a boost in confidence by competing against a bunch of beginners, but, hey, I was doing my first tri ever in a similar all-women's race a mere three years ago. If anything, it was another reminder of how far I've come.

I finished the swim in about my usual time - just under 15 minutes. The waves started 4 minutes apart and the women in the wave in front of me were all wearing green caps. I just kept saying in my head, "Catch the green! Catch the green!" Before I even reached the first buoy, I was pretty much surrounded by green caps. (Again, a lot of beginners in the race, so probably a lot of new swimmers). Every time I saw a blue cap (from my wave), I tried to keep up with them, catch them, or pass them. Of my wave, I was 27th out of the water, which isn't bad considering there were 320+ of us. For my next race (another all-women's race with lots of beginners), I'm going to pay close attention to the color of the caps two waves ahead of me and try to catch them too!

I enjoyed the bike a lot. It was a little chaotic because the race wasn't governed under USAT rules, which prohibit drafting and require specific passing procedures. But, the roads were blocked off and was really liberating to not have to worry about cars. There were parts of the course where we were even able to use BOTH lanes! I paid close attention to my cadence and speed and averaged 17.5 mph! (Unfortunately, I got a flat tire while walking my bike back to the car, but during the race I was good to go.)

The run! Ok, it was still really hot, but after the scorching heat of the last two weekends, the 90+ degree weather almost felt like a cool front. I was able to pace myself at 9:24/mile, which may be the fastest I've ever run a 5k! And it pretty much felt like business as usual . . . it was a pushed pace for sure, but definitely doable. I felt so good after crossing the finish line, I almost felt like I could run another 10k. About two hours later, the tiredness and soreness set in!

My next race is the Seattle Danskin in two weeks, which should be a fun one because my family will be there to cheer me on! It should also be interesting to see how cooler weather and lower altitudes affect my race. And this weekend - wait for it - I get to sleep past 5am on Sunday!

Two-Thirds of a Half

2008-07-27T20:05:00.002-06:00

I was at the Boulder Reservoir again this Sunday, this time for a practice of the Half-Ironman distance (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, 13.1 mile run). This was mostly an exercise in getting my feet wet and seeing what I could do. I really want to do a Half-Ironman next year to celebrate my thirtieth birthday. I'm generally opposed to setting goals to accomplish before turning thirty, as that seems to imply that in February 2009 I will curl up and die and never again accomplish anything important. Rather, I want to celebrate that I'm doing all these things at thirty that I never dreamed of doing when I was twenty. When I was twenty, I couldn't run a mile, I didn't own a bike, and, although I could swim, I'm not sure it ever occurred to me to swim over a mile in open water.

I enjoyed the day a lot, even though it was hard work and another hot hot day. Going in, I tried to think of the swim as my warm-up, the long bike ride as my main work-out, and the run as a short jog after to see how my running legs held up after 56 miles of pedaling. (I never planned on doing the full half-marathon, and only ran one of three loops for 4.3 miles).

The bike ride was only the second time I had ridden longer than thirty miles. Looking towards goals for next year, I think the bike is the area where I have the most room to improve. (Hopefully I'll at least be able to beat the nun next year!) The sensor of my computer was not adjusted correctly during the Boulder Peak, so I wasn't able to see my speed, cadence, or distance during the race. I don't really know myself as a biker - what pace is typical for me, what pace I should aim for - the same way I know myself as a swimmer and a runner. I've never been sure if my slowness on the bike is mostly mental (because I tend to space out and just enjoy being on my bike rather than being in race mode) or due to my physical limits. Today I played around with this a little using the data from my computer. Whenever I was on an uphill or a patch that was slow going, I focused on my cadence (aiming for 85-95 rpm) to make sure I was in the best gear; whenever I was on a downhill or a fast flat, I would switch over to my average mph and try to get my current mph as much over the average as I could, hoping to see the average inch up. My average mph was slightly faster than my average for the Boulder Peak, which is cool. I even got up to 37 mph during one downhill, which I think is the fastest I've ever gone. I used to be much more timid, riding the brakes all the way down a hill, but I think I moving past that and am finally able to use those hills to help me up the next hill and make up for lost time. The hardest part was that after 40 or so miles, I just didn't want to be on my bike any more. More long training rides next year should help this.

I actually felt a lot better after the 4.3 run than I thought I would. The first half was rough (in part from adjusting to being off the bike, and in part because it was uphill), but I felt pretty good on the last two (downhill) miles (especially after hanging out at the water station for five minutes before heading back!) It was a slow run, even slower than last week, but, as I said, it was scorching hot and I had just finished my second longest bike ride of the year. My coach said that heat like that can increase your time by 30-40% and in those situations you should throw your time goal out the window and just focus on staying hydrated. Most of the other women at the practice had the same difficulty, so I didn't feel too bad. But, I definitely feel motivated to work on my running for next year. I want to start doing more speed-work so the easy pace that I default to when the going gets tough will be faster. I joke that I have no pride and as long as I finish the Half-Ironman, I don't care if I have to walk the whole 13.1 miles. But, since they close the course after eight and half hours, it would be likely be cutting it close to walk the whole way and still finish in time (it took me just under six hours to do the swim and bike plus the 4.3 mile run).

My coach encouraged us to write down all the little things that you learn during these practices so you remember on race day. One important thing that I learned - I need to remember to put anti-chafing cream on before the bike and again before the run for this distance. I didn't use it at all today and I'm still pretty sore. Nutrition, hydration, and electrolytes are also very important when racing for 6+ hours, and this was a good chance to practice that. This morning, I ate / drank:

Breakfast - two whole wheat waffles, peanut butter, frozen raspberries
Pre-race - half cup coffee, 1/2 power bar
T1 - 1 cliff shot, water
Bike - 6-8 cliff shot blocks, 1 package jelly belly sport beans, 1 power bar (1/2 at halfway point, 1/2 at mile 49), 3 1/2 bottles water, 1 bottle Gatorade
T2 - 1/2 power bar, 1 cup water, 1 cup Gatorade
Run - 1 cup water, 1 cup Gatorade, a few potato chips
Post-race - two (half) burritos and lots of other snackies, lots of water

Probably could still use some tweaking, but I stayed hydrated and didn't bonk. I thought the combo of instantly absorbable calories (cliff shots and blocks) and calories that take longer to kick in, but sustain a little longer (power bars) worked well. I probably should have drank a little more water and more Gatorade. I'm probably going to start experimenting with the electrolyte tablets in addition to Gatorade.

My Ride with the Devil

2008-07-21T18:25:00.005-06:00

I successfully finished the Boulder Peak – my first Olympic distance triathlon! It was a lot of fun, but definitely a challenge. My time was 3:26:32, which I was happy with.

The race started at 6:45am, but my wave wasn't until the very end and didn't start until an hour later. It was kind of a drag having to wait around (everyone had to be out of the transition area by 6:30) because it just meant more time for nerves and anticipation. I got in the water around 7:30 to get wet and warmed up. I swam out about 15 yards in the warm-up area. When I turned around to swim back towards the beach and saw it swarming with people in wetsuits and brightly colored caps – I always think the start of a triathlon looks like an alien invasion – it finally hit me, I'm actually doing this. Right before our wave started, the announcer said that they saved the best for last and we all cheered.

As per usual, the swim was my strongest leg of the race. I got to use my fancy new goggles, which suction-cupped to my face to prevent leaks and were mirrored like sunglasses so I could sight the buoys marking the course in the glare of the sun. I got out of the water in just under 30 minutes and ran to get on my bike and face the most challenging part of the course – the hill on Old Stage Road.

Old Stage Road has a 600 ft elevation change in 2/3 of a mile, so it's pretty intense. I road by a lot of people who had to climb off their bikes a walk up it, so I was proud that I was able to keep pedaling the whole way. My friend Patty and her boyfriend were there to cheer me on and had written in chalk "Go Emma!" on the street. There was also a guy in a devil's costume who ran along side me saying "Ride with the Devil! Ride with the Devil!" I did wonder for a second if I was hallucinating, but I have photographic evidence that I did, in fact, ride with Devil on Old Stage. The rest of the course was a nice ride – a big downhill and then a few rolling hills back to the reservoir. I averaged 15.1 mph, which I was pretty pleased with, although I must confess that a 78 year-old nun from Spokane, WA beat my bike time by about 2 minutes! But, this was still an improvement for me – my first tri barely had any hills, and I only biked that at a pace of 12 mph.

Even though there was nothing particularly hard or challenging about the run course, it was very difficult that day. The temperatures in Boulder reached into the hundreds on Sunday for the first time in years. One of the race organizers owns a bike store in Austin and he joked later at the awards ceremony that he must have brought the Texas weather with him. The run was hot hot hot and at times felt like a death march. I looked at my watch and realized I was going at a slower pace than I had anticipated, but quickly decided that I didn't care. I just wanted to take care of myself and finish, rather than push too hard and end up dehydrated or sick. It's so tempting to Monday-morning quarterback and think that I could have gone a little faster and shaved a few minutes off my time, but I know that in the moment that's all I could do and I was giving my best.

Some members and coaches from my tri team were there to cheer me on at the finish and it was exciting to hear the announcer say, "Emma Garrison from Denver, Colorado!" when I crossed the finish line. All in all, a good day.

Thanks to all of you for your love and support!

Twitterin' with my Tweets

2008-04-29T19:09:00.002-06:00

If you're interested in a more blow-by-blow account of my ever-so-exciting life (all three of you that read this), you're in luck! It is now available. I've succumbed to the latest social networking trend of Twitter. Twitter is basically answering, multiple times a day, the question "What are you doing?" According to the Twitter FAQ, my Mom may want to know that I skipped breakfast in favor of a latte (I did not skip breakfast today, for the record) and my friends may want to otherwise keep abreast of my quotidian rituals. It's so hard to say no to something that involves the word "quotidian."

My Twitter page.

Karma Part III

2008-04-22T18:04:00.003-06:00

The $60ish refund from PG&E is not entirely mine. I was not living by myself at the time, but I was the one PG&E tracked down because my name was on the account. In order to pay it forward and ward off bad karma, once again, I used $30 of the refund to become a member of the Sierra Club.

Happy Earth Day, bitches!

Karma Part II

2008-04-18T16:36:00.003-06:00

One of my major New Year's resolutions this year was to get my finances in order, pay off my credit cards, and start saving and planning for the future. So, I've been reading Suze Orman and the Washington Post financial advisor. Suze Orman has a mantra - respect of money will bring you more money. In her book, she convinced a woman to up her contribution to her retirement from 5% to 10%. Then, a month later, she got a raise in the middle of the year, even though she had never gotten a mid-year raise before. Suze Orman was not at all surprised - she says that she has witnessed this kind of money karma time and time again.

This year I've been much more respectful of money. I've been writing down every time I spend money on anything so I can get a good sense of where it's going and what I can afford, I've been eating out a lot less, and I've retired all but one credit card to my desk drawer (the one in the wallet is for emergencies only). Well, wouldn't you know it, today I got home and got something in the mail from PG&E. This was someone surprising given that I moved away from California almost four years ago. Panic immediately struck that I owed them money, but, as it turns out, it was a refund check because they owed me money! Karma? Maybe respect of money does bring you more money! It's only around $60, but it's something.

My electricity got turned off once my first year in California . . . I never got a bill because PG&E was accidentally sending it to the apartment upstairs. It didn't occur to me as odd to go four or five months without getting a bill because when I moved there in 2000, everyone was talking about how screwed up PG&E was and how many of their accounts were backlogged. Apparently, California's Consumer Protection division investigated and ordered PG&E to pay everyone back for unauthorized charges related to these backlogs and mix-ups.

As for my other karma issue . . . I still owe the universe $14. I've made charitable contributions during that time (to public radio, MS research, etc.) but these are causes I would have donated to anyway. I think to settle my debt with the universe, I'm going to donate $15 to the father of an old friend from high school who is running for Austin City Council. He's a wacky liberal in the best way and would probably be great, but it's not something that would normally cause me to immediately reach for my checkbook.

Karma

2008-03-02T10:37:00.002-07:00

I went to a concert last night, a CD release party for a local band. When we went up to buy tickets we noticed that it was $12 if you paid in cash, but $14 if you used a credit card. While my friends and I were figuring out if we had enough cash between us to avoid paying the extra $2 for using a card, a woman walked in front of us and went to the ticket window.

Two things were apparent about this woman: (1) she seemed a little "off," and (2) she had been arguing with the people in the ticket window for a while. Apparently, for whatever reason, they weren't going to let her in even though she really wanted to see the band. Then, all of a sudden, she was like, "Well, the three ladies behind me need tickets, can I buy tickets for them?" We tried to tell her that we didn't need her to buy our tickets, but she kept insisting, saying that she felt guilty. Once she gave us our tickets, we tried to give her cash and she screamed "NO!!!" in a very scary way. So as not to anger her, we kept the tickets and our cash. We said that we would promise to pass the good karma along, "pay it forward," etc., and she screamed, "Well, better not give it to anything that involves religion or kids!"

I definitely feel like I owe the universe $12 (or $14, as she paid with a credit card). Any suggestions on how to spend it in a way that would honor a crazy lady who hates religion and children and is a die hard fan of Oakhurst?

Denver Weather

2008-03-02T10:28:00.002-07:00

Yesterday was a BEAUTIFUL day in Denver--60s, sunny, I went on a bike ride wearing shorts and short sleeves. So many people were outside, running, roller blading, walking their dogs. Even artists were set up painting landscapes on their easels. When I woke up and looked out the window this morning, everything was covered in snow. And, the flurries have started again.

I'm Back, Baby!

2008-02-29T13:50:00.002-07:00

I never should have complained about the thirty minutes or whatever I spent on the phone with Pay Pal. It was nothing, NOTHING, compared the ongoing battle I've had with Dell for the last six weeks.

Let's just say it involved at least thirty total hours on the phone with Bangladesh, several attempts to restore my system, a replacement keyboard (my old keyboard had the down key permanently stuck down, preventing me from finishing the system restore), a trip to the hardware store to get the right size screwdriver to install the new keyboard, realization that one of the screws was too worn down to let me unscrew it, a trip back to the hardware store to see if they could help me unscrew it (they couldn't), shipping it back to Dell for them to replace the keyboard, more unsuccessful attempts to restore the system over the phone, Dell's agreement to give up and send me a new laptop (yay!), a new laptop whose screen was messed up right out of the box, an A/C adapter that is incompatible with the battery, my not realizing I was supposed to save the new computer's box to ship my old unit back to Dell, spending an hour and fifteen minutes on the phone with customer service convincing them to send me a new box to ship my unit back, and a service technician making a house call to replace the screen.

I'm still waiting on the A/C adapter and the box, but I think it's safe to say the worst is over. I have a nice new computer with a working screen, a down key that isn't stuck, and connects to the internet (my original reason for calling Dell.) And, this experience has done a good job of weaning me from my internet addiction. So, now that I have my computer back, I may blog more, or I may not. Who knows? An exciting round of "will she, won't she" to keep you entranced until the post-strike tv shows start up again.

Pay Pal Woes

2008-01-04T12:46:00.000-07:00

I want to sell something on eBay -- my first time. Before I can post an ad for my old Tivo, however, I needed to make sure I had a pay pal account so I can received payment. No problem, right? Wrong. I've used pay pal only a handful of times in the last few years, years in which I have moved a lot, switched phone numbers a lot, and had a few different email addresses and credit cards. Pay pal made it impossible to create a new account, because I was already registered, and it also made it impossible for me to figure out my old log on information so I could access the system.

Stephen got to "hear" me vent over IM while I was straightening this all out:

10:51 AM dewstephen: hey

10:52 AM me: sup

i'm having problems with pay pal

10:53 AM dewstephen: oh yeah? whatup

me: well i already had an account, so they wouldn't let me register for a new one

dewstephen: no way to get access to the old one?

me: but i don't have enough old information to get the email address and password for my old one

dewstephen: call them?

me: like i've tried my last few addresses and stuff

yeah - that's the next step

10:54 AM dewstephen: can you call? btw, haha, they are in the adjacent building to freescale.. lol

want me to walk over there?

10:55 AM me: :)

11:50 AM dewstephen: so what up in denver? you doing anything outside of cleaning up the house?

11:51 AM me: i've been out a few times

11:52 AM dewstephen: when do you start work?

11:57 AM me: I F***ING HATE PAY PAL

12:01 PM i set up pay pal for the journal at law school and had a similar headache inducing conversation with their customer service then

12:02 PM they really need to revamp their system

dewstephen: you don't even know the half of it

their legal agreement you sign is really restrictive for the customer

there are a lot of websites devoted to how paypal are a**holes

12:04 PM me: like i couldn't remember when i last used it, or what email address i used. and i confirmed my old addresses, etc. and they wouldn't f***ing give me what email address i need to submit to figure out my password

12:05 PM then they said they would send me an email with a new link that would allow me to re-register

12:06 PM but it's just my most recent pay pal receipt

and i asked if there was a way i could call back to talk to him specifically and not have to wait 10 minutes on hold, and he said call back at 5pm pacific time

wait 6 hours so you don't have to wait 10 minutes

f**k them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

12:11 PM OK - now it says enter credit card type, when there is no space or pull down menu to enter type

12:16 PM me: then i offered to verify using my phone number and it asked me to input the last 4 digits of some phone number that's not even mine

12:17 PM dewstephen: lame, lame lame

12:19 PM me: i finally figured out what address, phone number, email, and credit card i used, and that's not even helping

i better f***ing get 200 for my tivo after all this crap

12:24 PM dewstephen: haha, sorry

12:26 PM me: now i can't even send them a bitchy email while i'm on hold because you have f***ing log on before you can do that

dewstephen: that's lame he told you to call back....

12:27 PM me: i should have stayed on the line until i got the helpful email he was supposedly composing

but honestly i'd rather talk to someone else, he was not particularly helpful

12:29 PM have you ever listened to this episode of This American Life about the woman stuck on hold with MCI for forever

dewstephen: no!

dam...

me: it's really good

that's how i feel now, though my situation is not as extreme

12:31 PM dewstephen: customer service these days is just terrible

12:41 PM me: ok - problem solved (knock on wood)

you'll never guess what they had me do to sign up for a new account

12:42 PM i had to sign up using a fake email address, a gmail.net address, so it would let me create the account

then i had to go into my profile and add my real email address

and delete the fake one

12:54 PM dewstephen: nice, smooth move.

I really curse like a sailor when I'm on hold. :)

Here's the link to eBay, just in case anyone is interested in bidding on my Tivo.

William Husky?

2007-11-19T09:28:00.000-07:00

I went to the Washington-Cal game this weekend and was surprised by two things:

1. William Hung of American Idol reject fame performed his infamous rendition of "She Bangs" (Warning! links to youtube) at halftime.

2. He performed with the accompaniment of the Washington marching band, was decked out in purple and gold, and yelled "Go Huskies" at the end. He went to Berkeley! What happened to his Bear pride?

Saludos de Costa Rica!

2007-09-01T07:50:00.000-06:00

Just a quick report on the highlights of my trip to Costa Rica thus far:

1. Ate bird seed (accident)
2. Ate termites (on purpose)
3. Saw sea turtles laying eggs
4. Hiked uphill in a rainforest at night in the pouring rain
5. Swam in a crystalline waterfall
6. Played soccer in the mud
7. Luxuriated at a posh hot springs resort
8. Went whitewater rafting
9. Fed bananas to spider monkeys
10. Rappelled down a 200 ft waterfall

We´re off (via horseback) to Monteverde to ride the zipline!

Pura vida,

Emma

A New Spin on Teaching

2007-08-10T08:11:00.000-06:00

So even though my official title is "Graduate Teaching Fellow" (at least for the next 7 days), I don't usually do any teaching during the summer. But, this morning I had an opportunity to do so when my spinning instructor didn't show up. Three other women were there and they were all mad that they woke up early for nothing. Then they started talking about how maybe one of us should just run the class, and I volunteered in a small voice that I had actually taken a spin class certification class three years ago. (This is when I was at Berkeley and obsessed with spinning. I mostly just got certified for fun. I used to be certified to teach Turbokickboxing as well.)

I had never taught before, I didn't have any kind of work-out plan, and the only music they had for us to use was Sweedish techno music. But, I did it! I had fun (it was definitely a rush!) and I didn't even feel self-concsious even though I didn't really know what I was doing. I guess I've taken enough spinning classes over the years that ideas for work-out sets have been engrained in me. After we finished, everyone was really nice. One said that my "class" was better than some of the usual instructors at Georgetown and that I should teach. I was totally flattered. So now that unemployment is fast approaching, maybe I have another option for making some extra cash before I find another job...

I'm starting to freak out

2007-07-30T10:33:00.000-06:00

I have to leave my job in less than three weeks and I still don't have anything lined up for afterwards. Up until now, I was pretty relaxed about it because I know I'll eventually find a job. The only thing that annoyed me was constantly being asked by others what I'm doing next year and facing the obligatory grimmace when I tell them I don't know yet. But, now I just want a little certainty in my life. Has anyone tried the whole Oprah / Secret / just visualize what you want and it will come true thing? Do you think that could work?

Aaahh Freak out! / Le Freak, C'est Chic / Freak out!

Dictionary Fun

2007-07-27T07:51:00.000-06:00

The last few nights, I've been doing some puzzles out of a New York Times Crossword Puzzle Book. Full disclosue: I am a crossword puzzle "cheater" in that I think research is fair game. Usually there is some inferential step required to successfully find an answer, so it's a sufficient brain exercise in my book. (Sometimes I actually cheat cheat and look in the back when I know it's a clue I will never figure out, but getting some letters down will help me with clues I know will eventually get.)

My laptop is broken, so I don't have a computer at home right now, which is probably the reason I've been doing crossword puzzles in the first place because I'm so ADD, I can't just sit and watch TV, I have to be doing something with my hands and the same time. (Fold laundry? Preposterous!) With my usual research method (I call it the Google/Wikipedia method) unavailable, I've been using these crazy old-fashion devices called reference books. It is so amazing how much information is contained in the Merriam-Webster dictionary!

For instance, I was able to confirm that "TET" was a correct answer for the clue "Eastern New Year," as it is defined as "the Vietnamese New Year observed during the first several days of the lunar calendar beginning at the second new moon after the winter solstice." It also lists a "Flemish painter: van ____," though not the one I was looking for. Apparently Jan van Eyck is dictionary-worthy, but Michiel van Coxie is not. While I was trying to figure out a five-letter word in Kansas's state motto, I looked to see if there was any kind of chart with that type of information in the back pages. No luck, though there is a chart with states, their capitals, populations, etc., and I was able to (correctly) guess that the missing word was "ASTRA," Latin for stars. (In case you're wondering, the full motto is "ad astra per aspera" or "to the stars through difficulty," which, if memory serves, was also the motto of my junior high school.)

While looking for the non-existent state motto chart, I did come across another interesting chart listing suggestions on how to avoid sexist language when referring to various professions. Some examples include: using cinematographer instead of cameraman, firefighter instead of fireman, and homemaker instead of housewife. This reminded me of growing up, how whenever we needed to something fixed or have some service done, we would always talk about needing to call the [something] man. The dishwasher man. The washing machine man. The parkay floor man. The fence man. One time we saw a frog in the backyard and my brother asked, "Are we going to have to call the frog man?" I'm not sure any of these were addressed in the dictionary chart, certainly not "frog man." Just the other day, my mom mentioned having to take the morning off work to wait for the dishwasher man. Perhaps she should have called him "the dishwasher repair person."

We were, however, politically correct whenever the toliet was clogged. We never called anyone "the toliet man," we always said "plumber." One of my favorite memories growing up was when my mom came and asked my brother and me if we had seen the plumber's friend (meaning the plunger), and we answered in sync, with the same incredulous inflection, "The plumber has a friend?"

I have a fan!

2007-04-30T20:42:00.000-06:00

Lately I've been spending a lot of time on Yahoo! Answers, which is an "online community" where people can post questions on literally everything, and others can post answers. The questioner then votes on which response is the "Best Answer," which awards the answerer ten points in a largely meaningless point system. Currently, I have 236 points and 20% of my answers have been designated as "Best Answers." :)

Another feature of this system is that you can let people know that you are a fan of their answers, and I got my first fan today! A college student posted a question last week about being tired all the time, due to depression and the medication she is taking for it. I responded by first suggesting that she talk to her doctor about her medication, and I also suggested that she try taking a short walk after class every day, instead of going straight down for a 3-4 hour nap as she said she had been doing. I wrote that, in my experience, exercise usually makes me feel less tired, even though it seems counterintuitive, and that physical activity is known to ease the symptoms of depression.

After getting chosen as best answer, I looked at her profile. I know this sounds silly, but I just thought her "About Me" section was so sweet!

I heart pilates and yoga! I love my boyfriend dearly. I wish I had more control over my life. I'm always tired and it sucks. I'm a vegetarian because I love animals! I'm very laid back. I'm a hippie at heart. I love comfy clothes. I'm a movie fanatic. Anything or anyone that makes me laugh is awesome! I'm in college, working towards a Bachelors Degree in Family and Child Studies. This May I'm getting my Associates Degree in Sociology too! Only two more years of college! Woo!

Her other questions range from the typical issues facing 20-year-old college girls--like fighting with her boyfriend and whether or not to go to the tanning salon--to much darker issues--like her struggles with bulimia, depression, and thyroid dysfunction. She obviously is having a rough time, yet still seems so cheerful and optimistic in all of her posts. I find it so endearing that it restores my faith in humanity. Is that weird?

Regardless, I was so honored that she wants to be my fan. It made my day.

April Fool

2007-04-09T21:52:00.000-06:00

I suck. Apparently, the naysayers were right . . . I'm losing steam on this whole monthly resolution thing. I've just been so lazy lately. Here it is April 9 and I haven't even touched my taxes, the piles of laundry are just sad, and I haven't even blogged about the Cherry Blossom 10-miler. Maybe it's because spring hasn't quite sprung yet and it's sapping my energy. Yeah, that's it. I'll blame it on the rain, yeah yeah.

Then again, my resolve this year hasn't been a complete failure. I think I've accomplished a lot in my post-Fancy New Can-opener world. Most notably, I've been lifting weights regularly, cooking more, staving off scurvy by eating my veggies, and watching a lot less television. Oh - and I bought Chucks! The brownish pink ones.

Ergo, my resolutions for April are:
1. Don't be hard on yourself.
2. Do what you can.

Emma Went Down to Georgia

2007-03-27T17:42:00.000-06:00

Partly due to the nature of my job and partly due to the fact that I'm a big dork, I'm always excited to find new online resources for grammar questions. I frequently refer to Dr. Grammar and I recently discovered (and am now addicted to) Grammar Girl, which is a weekly podcast and accompanying blog that provides "quick and dirty" tips for remembering particular grammar rules and often includes really interesting trivia and discussion (well, interesting to me.) I also highly recommend checking out other similar "quick and dirty" podcasts on qdnow.com. I like Mr. Manners and Legal Lad. (So glad I recently joined the 21st century by downloading iTunes!)

Today I was google-ing when to use a hyphen between the words "follow" and "up," and I came across a blog called Business Writing. (It corroborated my instinct that there is no hyphen when using "follow up" as a verb.) On the site's blog roll was a blog called Legal Writer. Of course, I eagerly clicked over to that one!

An interesting tidbit that I picked up by reading through Legal Writer's recent posts is that Georgia font was specifically designed to be read on screen. The post recommended changing your email program settings to write and display Georgia as the default font, thus making it easier on your eyes and those of your email recipients. (Apparently, as online fonts go, Verdana is a close second.)

FYI - The default font for this blog is, in fact, Georgia. Blogger must be hip to its "brilliant serifs."

Short, Sweet, Late

2007-03-11T12:23:00.000-06:00

March has come in like the proverbial lion so I haven't had much time for blogging or resolution-keeping-track-of.

In short, I met all my resolutions for last month but one. I bought coat hangers, went to see the dentist, and have applied for a handful of jobs, maybe 5. I haven't gotten around to donating my cell phone and laptop, but thanks to Laura's tip, I should be able to shortly.

This month, I'm taking it easy on myself, and only have one resolution: do my taxes by the end of March. That will keep me from waiting until the last minute as I have done almost every other year.

More Fashion Advice

2007-02-12T19:04:00.000-07:00

When I first (re-)started this blog, I asked for advice on picking out a tote bag, which, by the way, I never picked out. There were just too many choices! Anyway, I'm having similar issues with picking out a pair of low-top Converse All-Stars a/k/a "Chucks." I currently have two pairs of tennis shoes to wear with jeans--one is bright orange the other is white with red stripes. I want another pair of casual, comfortable shoes that are versitile, but still fun and colorful.

Any thoughts? (Source: Zappos.com)

Month of Purification*

2007-01-31T20:35:00.000-07:00

As promised, my monthly post of resolutions.

But first, let's recap January:

Goal: Unpack my suitcase from winter break before MLK day.
Result: Success! I made it in just under the wire, finishing Sunday of the holiday weekend. Also, this small task inspired me into a full on cleaning frenzy.

Goal: Purchase a Metro Smartcard.
Result: Did it. Love it. Can't believe it took me so long.

Goal: Lift weights 1-2 times a week.
Result: Yes. I lifted at least once, and probably twice each week this month. When school (and group exercises classes) started again, I started going to a muscle conditioning class on Mondays for low weight/high reps. Wednesdays I've been using the machines. Also, we always do about 10 minutes of weights at the end of my step class on Thursdays. I plan to keep this routine up. Supposedly, now that I've done this for 21 days it should be ingrained in me as a habit, therefore eliminating the need for me to formally resolve to this again.

Goal: Have at least one day in January where all of my clothes and linens are clean, dry, and folded or hung in their proper place, save only the sheets on my bed and the clothes on my back.
Result: Not quite. I spent several evenings in a row watching Alias DVDs while doing laundry, and made huge progress on the doing of the laundry, but not so much progress on the putting away. The upside is that it's in laundry baskets, rather than in piles on my futon. Part of the problem is, you know in the movie It's A Wonderful Life when there's a run on the Building & Loan and George Bailey has to explain that the money isn't all in the back in a safe, it's in your house and his house . . . Anyway, my clothing storage system depends on a certain amount of clothing being in the laundry hamper. Also, I need more coat hangers. (Wow, that's a nice segue!)

February Resolutions

1. Purchase coat hangers.
2. I haven't gotten around to finding a dentist since I've been in DC, so I resolve to finally get around to that and make an appointment.
3. Find a place where I can donate an old cell phone and an old lap top, and donate.
4. Apply to an average of one job a week.

*Just in case anyone's interested in the etymology and history of February.

In Praise of Cereal

2007-01-24T20:35:00.000-07:00

crunchy with whole grains
late night; spoon splashing cold milk
satisfied, shortly

Dishevelled Lady? Me Thinks Not!

2007-01-20T15:16:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to report that I am making good progress towards disposing of my formerly dishevelled self. Last night, I even managed to cook myself dinner. (Thanks, Mom--the can opener worked great!)

Something came up at work around 5:00pm on Friday (which is always fun), so I ended up having to stay late, until about 9:30 or 10. While I was working, I got it into my head that, since I didn't have any plans for the evening, it would be fun to cook as opposed to ordering out or heating something frozen up. I was thinking back to an episode of the Take Home Chef, which I happened to catch several months ago where they made turkey meatballs. For whatever reason, that just sounded really good. So I googled an easy-looking recipe for low fat turkey meatballs and spaghetti and headed to the grocery store on my way home.

There is one grocery store between work and home, which is small, and another one only two blocks away from my house, which is smaller. I got to the store a few minutes before it closed (I forgot this would be an issue for the small, family-owned places) and grabbed a few things I needed. One of my classmates from law school said that every time she tries to cook, she just ends up calling her mom every five minutes asking for help with the directions. I didn't think I was this bad (my position has always been, that it's not that I can't cook, it's that I CHOOSE not to), but I did briefly consider calling my mom from the store to ask if there was a discernable difference between crushed tomatoes and diced tomatoes (I could find the latter, but not the former.) I finally did find "crushed tomatoes," but it looked more like tomato sauce/tomato paste and I wanted something a little chunkier. Luckily, I found a compromise--chunky crushed tomatoes. Unluckily, the store had no ground turkey, no ground beef, basically no anything in the meat department.

Undeterred, I decided I was on a mission. The corner grocery store by my house was closed as well (and even if it had been open, I doubted it would have ground turkey) and my car wasn't working so I couldn't drive to the 24-hour Safeway. So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided at 10:30 at night, in 30 degree weather, I'll just run to Safeway! As it turned out, however, there was another corner-ish grocery store a few blocks away from my corner grocery store that stays open until 11. I went to the meat section, and there was exactly enough ground beef for the recipe. I did debate going on to Safeway anyway so I could actually get turkey, but decided there were many good reasons to just go with the beef in the hand. (Probably a good decision considering (1) my Safeway's nickname is the UN-Safeway, (2) I didn't eat dinner until 12:30 as it was, and (3) I was cold enough just walking home five blocks with groceries and Safeway is a little over a mile away.)

Anyway, no major cooking disasters and I enjoyed both the meal and the satisfaction of cooking for myself. (I even remembered how to separate an egg!) Now that I have my fancy new can opener and a new car battery, I may try this more often. Fodder for future monthly resolutions, perhaps....

You say you want a resolution?

2007-01-03T20:51:00.000-07:00

My friend says she doesn't believe in New Year's resolutions because there's no point because everyone gives them up by February anyway. I propose that's because most people aim too high and resolve to do things that are somewhat vague. Any good personal trainer will tell you, the only way to reach your goals is to set some that are realistic and measurable, as opposed to "I want to lose weight and improve my fitness." Therefore, I propose to set a few bite-sized monthly resolutions. My only New Year's resolution is to do so here on this blog each month, and the next month, I'll report back on how I did.

January Resolutions

1. Unpack my suitcase from winter break before MLK day.
2. Purchase a Metro Smartcard so I don't have to worry about having change for the bus or slowing my friends down when I have to purchase a new metrocard and they can just quickly swipe on through.
3. Lift weights 1-2 times a week. (I'm aiming for two, but one is sufficient to meet my resolution. If I end up doing it twice weekly, next month I'll consider upping it to thrice weekly.)
4. Have at least one day in January where all of my clothes and linens are clean, dry, and folded or hung in their proper place, save only the sheets on my bed and the clothes on my back.

UPDATE: I'm already 3/4ths of the way there! I just purchased a Smartcard online.
UPDATE II: Resolution #5. Improve math skills. I meant to say, I'm 1/4 of the way there, and only have 3/4ths to go.

How do you measure...?

2007-01-03T20:34:00.000-07:00

The best advice I've heard about taking stock of those 525,600 minutes was from Ally McBeal (but then again, I only take advice from television shows about quirky lawyers). Anyway, if I recall correctly, Ally's mother used to say something along these lines: "A year is only wasted if looking back on it doesn't make you both laugh and cry." Check. And check.

Happy New Year!

A Benihana Christmas

2006-12-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

As any of you who have had a conversation with me in the last month will know, I have recently become obsessed with NBC's "The Office," the hilarious un-sitcommy sitcom with wacky hi jinx, a lot of heart, and a sometimes tragic depiction of the human condition. I don't just watch it because John Krasinski is smoking hot, but let me state for the record, John Krasinski and his character, Jim Halpert, always leave me satisfied and smiling.

I started watching the DVDs over Thanksgiving, and have since finished two seasons, and am currently jumping into the third season mid-stream. After I watched an episode called "The Client," wherein boss Michael Scott holds an important business meeting at Chili's and continually interrupts things by ordering appetizers and several "specialty drinks," I emailed my brother and suggested that when I come home for Christmas we should go to Chili's (as we often do) so and order "an Awesome Blossom, EXTRA awesome," just like Michael did on the show. Then I tuned into this season's Christmas episode, and the chain restaurant featured there was Benihana, where a few of Michael's co-workers take him to help heal his freshly broken heart.

Tonight my parents went to a Christmas party, and my brother and I had planned to hang out--go to a Yoga class and then have dinner. As I was intent on an Office-related food option, we decided on Benihana, as neither of us had ever been there and both of us would probably chicken out from ordering something "EXTRA awesome." Also, Paul informed me at dinner, he will be gainfully employed at the Kerrville Chili's next semester, so he'll probably have his fill of Awesome Blossoms soon enough.

Anyway, our Benihana Christmas turned out to be lots of fun (and lots of food!) (Note: Nog-a-sakes were conspicuously absent from the menu.) Paul was surprised how much he liked sushi with freshwater eel and I was surprised how many puns one grill-master could make. (The word eggroll will forever evoke a different image for me now.) We enjoyed our experience so much, we filled out the comment card with the words "Awesome, extra awesome."

Michael and his "bros"

Me and my bro

Merry Benihana Christmas, everyone!

Finals are Here! Part II

2006-12-06T19:45:00.000-07:00

A slightly more thoughtful analysis of the differences between working long hours as a student and working long hours as a lawyer...

When you're a student studying for finals and you suddenly decide that you'd rather sleep/go out/get a mani-pedi/drive to Pinole to get Krispy-Kremes/go see a movie at the Parkway than outline your Fed Court notes, you can if you want. If slacking on your studies has any repercussions when it comes to the exam, the only person it will affect is you. Maybe you'll get a low grade, maybe you won't make law review or get a clerkship, or maybe you'll flunk out altogether--you are the only the only person those things really matter to. But, when you're working on a brief and representing a client, you can't slack off as a matter of professional responsibility.

That said, you still have to make the time to relax and recharge. I've been pretty busy these days, and intended to work a good portion of last weekend, but I just couldn't. By refusing to concentrate on anything work-related, my brain was insisting that it needed a break (or so I justified).

When I was a student, I was pretty conscientious about being good and doing my work, though I did always make an effort not to get too bogged down in the law school minutia. When given an opportunity to blow off studying to do something fun, I often told myself that I'd be more likely to remember that in ten years than, you know, that day I was really prepared for class. That philosophy probably didn't have much of an impact on how I did in law school, because it's not like I was constantly being bombarded with wild social invitations and because of my aforementioned tendency to be conscientious about doing my work.

I guess the reason not to slack off when you theoretically can, is to train yourself for the times that you can't. Like Justice Breyer said in a talk he gave at Georgetown last year, "If you're good student and do your homework, the reward is that you get to do homework for the rest of your life." :)

Finals are Here!

2006-12-04T16:10:00.000-07:00

Even though I generally feel pretty removed from the goings-on at good ol' GULC outside my clinic, I can definitely tell that the palpable anxiety of finals has settled upon the law school. My first clue was my difficulty in finding parking on Saturday, and today when I went down to the cafeteria for an evening snack, I noticed that the content in the vending machines has been decimated (well, more like 70-percent-imated) and the hot chocolate machine is woefully low on syrup.

I guess I'm glad not to be studying for finals and frantically finishing up papers, but it's not like I have a shortage of work to do these days. And, at least when you're a student, you have all of winter break to relax and recover. If only being a lawyer came with a month-long break every December...

I have dishevelled life and a ghetto can opener

2006-10-24T20:17:00.000-06:00

"Dishevelled" Lady. Bosse, 1640.

In addition to the unfolded laundry, the dishes in the sink, the cluttered piles of junk mail, etc., etc., my valient attempts to (semi-) cook the last couple nights (i.e. heating a can of chili on the stove as opposed to microwaving a delicious frozen treat) have been hindered by a can opener that doesn't actually open the can all the way around, but only allows two crescent moon shaped slips on either side, and requires me to use a knife to pry the Hormel goodness out.

Items to purchase this weekend? One of these. And perhaps, this. Maybe if I clean and organize my apartment, I'll treat myself to a trip to IKEA.

P.S. Don't worry, Mom. I do best to drink juice and eat vegetables at work so I won't get scurvy.

Interview-een

2006-10-18T12:31:00.000-06:00

I’m happy to report that I've scheduled my first interview this job-hunting season for the first and only job I’ve applied to so far – a tenure-track teaching position in the Southwest Indian Law Clinic at the University of New Mexico. It’s a thirty-minute telephone interview on speakerphone with the entire hiring committee, which sounds super-scary, and it’s on Halloween, to boot! My co-workers have offered to crowd into one office on speakerphone and call me in my office for a practice round, so hopefully that will help.

I’m nerve-wracked about the interview, but excited about the position. Wish me luck and go lobos!

Half-Assed, but not Half-Bad

2006-10-17T15:42:00.000-06:00

As my final race of 2006, I ran the Baltimore Half-Marathon last Saturday. I had originally planned to run the Army Ten-Miler, but when an opportunity to party with my girl, et al. in NYC presented itself, I (rightly) decided to bail. (Technically speaking, "Emma Garrison" did run the Army Ten-Miler with a time of 1:24:04, but that wasn't actually me. It was some chica named Courtney who is training for the Marine Corps Marathon and who I allowed to impersonate me for the day.) Since I knew as early as mid-summer that I wouldn't be able to run, and I thought it would be good for me to do one last long-run race before year's end, I registered for the half-marathon instead.

Though it sounded like a good idea at the time, once fall arrived, things got busy and I started to lose interest in going out for long training runs. I figured all I had to do was one 10-mile run before the race, and it wouldn’t take many runs to ramp up to that as I can run 5-6 miles fairly easily. The problem with an easy training plan, however, is that it’s also very easy to blow it off. And, boy did I. I did make it out for a couple (literally two) 7-9 mile runs about a month before the race, but mostly my training consisted of lounging around the house, going to pilates and spinning as per usual, and sneaking out for the occasional 3-5 mile run during the week.

The main motivation I had for actually going through with the race was to not let the $80 registration fee go to waste, in addition to the registration fee I had already wasted on the Army Ten-Miler. I got kind of annoyed with myself for the self-imposed pressure to do race after race after race. As a compromise, I decided to go through with the half, pledging to walk or do whatever I had to do just to finish, and then I would take a break from races and not even considering doing another before the Cherry Blossom Ten-Mile Run next April.

It’s seems silly, because it’s not like I was even training that much, but something about feeling like I should constantly be running, swimming, biking, or doing some activity that supplements my training efforts was getting to me and starting to take away from the enjoyment I usually associate with exercise. I thought it would be good for me to forget about what I should be doing and give myself the freedom to do whatever I feel like doing. Lift weights, go to kickboxing, try out Zumba and Hip-Hop.

The Thursday before the race, I actually ended up going to Step, which I haven’t done since law school, and, I have to say, it was tons of fun. Probably not smart, because I was definitely still sore on race day, but it reminded me of the benefit of getting back to basics. What initially got me into making physical activity a regular part of my life was group exercise classes, the fun music, the peppy instructors, and getting to know the other regulars in the class. That’s always something I can go back to whenever I get sick of training alone.

Anyway, long story short (too late!), I had a BLAST in Baltimore, and I’m so glad I did it. Baltimore is one hilly city, but I ran the entire way and even beat my marathon-time-cut-in-half by a good 20 minutes. (My time was 2:23:03, which means I ran at a 10:55/mile pace.) The crowd support was also great. My faves included a woman dressed up like a pirate holding a sign that said “AAARGH you ready to run!?,” a pee-wee football team called the Longhorns, and various locals offering runners free beer.

In conclusion, the excitement of the Baltimore Running Festival reminded me why I love participating in these kinds of events and why the training bug bit me in the first place. I’m still going to take that break, but I’m glad to end the season with a positive impression of races. It will be all the more exciting when I get back into it.

Why do awesome job opportunities keep popping up in not-as-awesome places?

2006-09-18T10:01:00.000-06:00

I must say, Grand Forks, North Dakota is starting to make Tulsa, Oklahoma sound pretty darn appealing.

Tulsa v. Grand Forks

Population: 382,457 v. 56,573

Distance from Austin: 452 mi v. 1,396 mi

Average Temp. in January: 26 low/47 high v. -4 low/15 high (degrees Farenheit)

Number of America's Next Top Model contestants produced: 1 v. 1

Number of America's Next Top Model winners produced: 0 v. 1

If my head weren't screwed on, I would probably leave it at the gym

2006-09-14T07:25:00.000-06:00

First it was a hair brush (my keroppi hair brush that I've had since high school). Then it was another less exciting hair brush from CVS. Then it was a pouch with little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Then it was two full-sized bottles of shampoo and conditioner. Then it was a plastic bag of sweaty clothes, including my fun yellow shorts from Target.

The times I've asked to go through the gym lost and found previously, I've never recovered anything. Today, I went in to search for the sweaty yellow shorts, et al. A gym employee took me down to lost and found proper, but the bag of clothes was nowhere to be found. Then he took me around to a few other places where lost and found items might be. During this trek, I found the aforementioned lost pouch of shampoo and conditioner lying on a random table in the lifeguard area at the pool! After more poking around, we went back up to the front desk. He decided to double check to see if my clothes were there. And they were.

So, yay to the return of shampoo and shorts! You are welcomed back with open arms. Now that I know what a treasure hunt it is to recover lost items, I'll try to be more careful about not losing you in the future. Well, I can't promise to try. But I'll try to try.

Should I Move to Tulsa?

2006-09-12T19:58:00.000-06:00

Everytime I start a job search, I get this overwhelming "the world is my oyster" type of feeling that I can do anything and move anywhere. This is, of course, closely followed by intense, anxious thoughts along the lines of "but, if I move there, I won't know a soul and I'll have to find a new person to cut my hair!" I'm not searching in earnest yet, but I am keeping my eyes open and am starting to see opportunites that might interest me. In Albuquerque. In Chapel Hill. In Charlottesville. In Tulsa.

Since I've been in DC, my thoughts have run the gamut in terms of what to do and where to go next. I've gone from wanting to stay in DC, to wanting to move home to Texas, to wanting to go back to California, to wanting to blindfold myself, point randomly at a map, and move wherever my index finger leads me. If I had to limit myself geographically, I'd say I've narrowed it down to DC and the western half of the United States. But I'm pretty much open to whatever, or, more accurately, wherever. I feel like Shakira.

Would I be happy in a place like Tulsa? I'm definitely not a geographic snob. I'm a firm believer in "Wherever you go, there you are." As long as you have friends, a good job, and something to do for fun, any place is bearable, right? I felt hesitant about moving to Corpus Christi, but ended up really liking it there, and was sad to leave. The idea of picking up and starting all over again is scary, but also exciting, like starting a new adventure.

The original focus of this blog was a log of my job search during my clerkship. It seems that things have come full circle and a similar theme may well pervade many of my future posts. :)

Bag Lady: Emma's Dilemma

2006-09-09T10:38:00.000-06:00

One of my students this semester has the cutest tote bag ever. I asked her about it and she told me that you can customize your own on the LL Bean website.

I've sought advice from Evita and over at Global Wage Slave, but I thought (on the off chance that anyone is reading this) I'd pose my dilemma here as well. I've decided I want a small tote with a long strap, a zip top, and a front pocket, but when it comes to picking a color scheme I can't decide on the right permutation.

Color options I like: yellow, natural, cocoa, olive green, blue, red. Color options I'm so-so on: true teal, mulberry, dark green, cayenne. Color options I'm vehemently opposed to: black and foliage.

Any thoughts?

Transition to Blogspot Bloghood

2006-09-08T22:33:00.000-06:00

Apparently myspace is out and blogspot is in.

Sunset Triathlon: Not Sunny at All

2006-07-23T21:40:00.000-06:00

Around 5 am on Saturday, I hurried about shoving my pajamas and toiletries into my duffle bag, grabbed my bike, and opened the door to my hotel room only to reveal a torrential rain storm. Though definitely not ideal race conditions, considering that I had already spent time and money to get to Bridgeton, NJ (well, actually I stayed the night in Millville), and that the race was clearly advertised as a rain or shine event, I figured I might as well go to the race site to see what was what.

The drive there was not particularly fun. I hate driving in the rain, especially since I'm still recovering from the trauma of driving back from my visit with Lauren in Delaware during the huge storm a few weekends ago. But I arrived safely and by the time I did, the weather had cleared up a little. It only sprinkled intermittently in the time between packet pick up and the race start. At the race meeting, the officials announced that they had checked with whatever authorities youre supposed to check with, that the swim was a go, and that the storms would be cleared out within the half hour. One of the race organizers joked that he was going to check with the USAT officials to see if we could get a few minutes off our time for showing up in bad weather.

When we (non-elite women 44 years and younger) stood there in our pink caps waiting to start, the thunder started. And it started raining again. There was lots of yammering about whether we would still be allowed to go, whether there had been lightening, etc. We were the second wave starting five minutes after the first. The aforementioned race official leaned in and said, "Ladies, if you want to know your time, subtract five minutes from the official race clocks. And, if you want to subtract more time, just let me know." Hee. Soon enough, the race started, thunder, rain, potential lightning, and all.

The swim was a good course--basically a straight shot out and back, with calm water. Basically the closest you could get to a pool swim in open water. The bike went fine as well. I was probably more cautious (i.e. slow) than usual (if that's possible) because the ground was slippery in places and my brakes were wet. It was a good scenic route--not how you picture New Jersey, but this was quaint farm country. I rode by a sign next to someones mail box: "Fresh brown eggs--$1.25." I wondered to myself if that meant $1.25 per egg. Whats the going rate for fresh brown eggs? Or, non-fresh brown eggs for that matter? This is the kind of thing I think about during these races.

I was chatting with a woman before the start and we agreed that rain during the swim and the run would be ok, but we were hoping it wouldn't rain during the bike leg. Luckily, that wish was granted and it did not rain at all while I was biking. It did start to rain again lightly during the run. It was a pretty course through the woods and eventually across a baseball diamond (the race is put on each year by a local high school). I even ran by some adorable fuzzy yellow ducklings. About two minutes after I crossed the finish line, the torrential downpour started again. Luckily it was only a one and a half mile walk back to the car in the pouring rain with my bike and all my gear. J

All in all, Im glad I weathered the storm. It was an adventure and the race was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it was the third triathlon in a row where I had to rush back to DC to spend the afternoon and evening working. Everyone cross your fingers that this won't be the case when I do the New York Danskin with the girls in September.

Results: 184/221 overall; 62/88 woman's division
Overall time: 1:58:16; 1/2 mi swim: 17:29; 16 mi bike: 1:02:22; 5k run: 32:41 (note: the run time includes a detour at the port-a-potty). What was that again about getting time taken off for showing up in bad weather?

Race Review: Two thumbs up. Well organized, pretty scenery, flat course, fun and homegrown. Definitely on my list for next year's race season.

I'm Breezy!

2006-06-08T07:48:00.000-06:00

So I went down to the Breezy Point Triathlon last weekend and . . . (drumroll please) . . . I finished all three events! I rode to victory on my brand new fancy front tire. (And by victory, I mean I finishing 39/63 in my age group and 440/593 overall with a time of 1:43:07:30.) My favorite part of this tri (besides NOT panicking in the swim and NOT getting a flat tire on the bike) was wearing my new DC Tri Club uniform. People who don't even know me would yell things like "Go DC Tri!" It's so much more fun when you have people to cheer you on.
My swim time was 20:49:80, which actually is a vast improvment from my 19:38 time at Luray. The swim course there was only a 1/2 mile (750m), while this one was a full 1K. According to this swim pace calculator, my time for a half mile would have been about 16:00 minutes. Additionally, I paced myself and sited properly this time so I didn't panic and actually felt good when emerging from the water.

In my age group, I finished 30th on the swim, and was ranked 40th on the bike and 47th on the run. Since my final rank was 39, only 9 fellow female 25-29 year olds passed me once I got out of the water. I guess that's not too shabby.

I remember chatting with a woman I worked with briefly in Corpus Christi right before I did my first race in Austin last year. She was a hard core triathlete -- she started doing ironmans on a whim and didn't take long before she qualified for Hawai'i. Anyway, she coached swimming before going to law school, so the swim was obviously her best event. She totally cracked me up when she was telling me that during her first ironman, as she was starting the bike ride everyone who passed her would yell "Nice swim!" She said that she must have been really slow on the bike ride (well, comparatively) because at Mile 75 people were still yelling out "Nice swim!" I always think of that when the usual hordes of people pass me as soon as I get on my bike. So whenever someone whizzes by me at mile 8, I think to myself, "Wow, I must have really kicked your ass on the swim if you're just now passing me!"

Small world report -- this hardcore ironwoman triathlete, Heather, worked for one of the magistrate judges in CC and left around the same time as I did because her husband was in the service and was transferred to somewhere on the East coast. Anyway, when I checked the results for Breezy Point, I noticed that she was there and won the open women's division!
Next race: Sunset in New Jersey on July 22, 2006.

See Emma Tri

2006-05-14T21:10:00.000-06:00

This morning I competed in my first triathlon of the season, which was kind of a bust (literally) but definitely still good fun.

I registered for the Luray Sprint Triathlon, a race nestled in the heart of the Shenandoah, about a month and a half ago on the suggestion of my co-worker Kristi. Despite our original grand plan to spend the weekend camping and hiking before the race on Sunday, we ended up just driving down there for the day, departing DC at 4:45am.

I've been really busy at work lately, and only finally decided to go yesterday afternoon. On the drive down, I was reflecting on the difference between doing this race and my first triathlon last June. When I did the Austin Danskin, I made sure to go to bed early two nights before the race, I spent the day prior carb-loading and hydrating, and even took Monday off of work so I wouldn't have to drive the three and a half hours back to Corpus Christi following the race. This time it was just like, can I squeeze in a triathlon to my schedule this weekend if I work 11 hours on Saturday and go straight to work after the race on Sunday? I also didn't really have much riding on this triathlon, nor had I really been gearing up for it. (Apologies for the cycling puns.) Rather, I thought of this race as a beginning of the season diagnostic.

See Emma Swim

Swimming is definitely my strongest of the three events, but I was a little disappointed in my performance this time. I started out swimming way too fast and got tired before I even swam past the first buoy. In other races I've done, it was difficult to swim quickly at the outset because tons of other bodies are around you and on top of you. This race was not as crowded and I easily pushed ahead. Not only did I swim too fast, but I also got disoriented and had to swim extra to get back on the right course. Because of this, I spent a significant portion of the first quarter mile in panic mode and had to stop frequently to do an easy breast stroke. Luckily I calmed down and pulled it together in the second half. I think my time was about 18 minutes, which is about 2-3 minutes slower than my usual half-mile open water time. I am a little disappointed, but at least I learned the value of pacing myself.

See Emma Bike

My bike got a flat a couple weeks ago when the innertube in the front tire randomly exploded when my bike was in the back seat of my car. (A friend suggested this was likely due to the tire's rapid change in temperature when I put it in the hot car.) When I replaced the innertube last night, I noticed a small tear in the tread of the tire itself. I read on the internet that you can prevent a puncture in the tube by placing a piece of fabric or a dollar bill in between the tube and the tread. I did this, using some left over fabric from IKEA, but I was definitely nervous about my tire holding up during the race.

Sure enough, the front tire blew out around Mile 3. I didn't have an extra innertube (I had used my last one the night before), and assumed that the problem was with the tire itself and replacing the tube wouldn't do much to prevent another flat. I started to walk my bike back to the transition area, but stopped at Mile 2 where another woman had stopped and was fixing a flat on her bike. Shortly after this, a woman rode by and declared that the she was too tired from the swim to finish the bike ride, and offered to help us with our tires. The three of us pooled our resources and did our best to fix the two tires. The woman who stopped to help was really fun -- a lawyer who works in Reston and a fellow member of the California bar. She was cracking me up the entire time. We used her patch kit to mend my tube and tire, but to no avail. The tire deflated immediately after it was inflated. The other woman wasn't able to fix her tire either. I finally hitched a ride back to the transition area with a friendly local in a pick-up truck.

Going back to my earlier comparison between this tri and the Austin Danskin: if I had gotten a flat during my first triathlon, I would have been devasted! But since I was doing this race just to do it and the preciousness of my first race was not at stake, I wasn't too disappointed by the turn of events. Even though I didn't finish the bike ride, I actually had fun attempting to fix my tire with my new friends. And, at least I got some exercise and got to spend time outdoors (in the Shenandoah, no less!) I also learned that in the future, it's probably best to carefully inspect my bike sooner than 7pm the night before a race.

See Emma Run

Even though I didn't finish the bike, I decided to pick up with the run. I was most likely DQ-ed for failing to complete the bike, but the race volunteers let me keep my chip so I could still get my split for the 5k. The run course was actually really pretty -- around Lake Arrowhead, through the woods, with the mountains in the background.
When I was training for the marathon, I had to slow my pace way down in order to handle the distance. I'm worried that in doing so I some how programmed my body to always go that slow, regardless of the distance I'm running. I'm eager to see what my time is and will be ecstatic if I was able to get back into my usual 10 minute mile-ish pace.
Work permitting, I'm going to San Francisco to run Bay to Breakers next weekend (yay!), so I'll probably devote my work-outs this week to running and work on improving my speed.

My next triathlon is in Norfolk on June 4.
If at first you don't succeed, tri, tri again. :)

UPDATE

The results are in. My swim time was 19:38, my "bike" time was 1:29:40, and my run was 33:07, meaning a 10:37 pace per mile, and an overal "time" of 2:28:42. Even though I should have been DQed, I ranked 11/15 in my age group, and 55/71 overall. (Had I actually completed the bike, my time probably would have been a little faster, but not much.)
Kristi suspects that the run course was actually longer than 5k, given how many people's run split was just around 30 minutes (unusual). Similarly, I'm wondering if the swim course was also a little longer than a half mile. In other races I've done, the top swimmers all clocked in at around 11 minutes. Here, however, although one woman finished in 11:47, the other top swimmers' times ranged between 14 and 17 minutes. Heh! Blaming the course instead of my own performance is fun!

I'm a "Friend"

2006-04-08T16:09:00.000-06:00

Well, I at least look like one.

I was watching Best Week Ever this morning and learned all about myheritage.com, a site where you upload a photo and it tells you what celebrities you look like. Intrigued, I submitted a picture of me and Eva from a few years ago.

As it turns out, the celebrity whose features are most similar to mine is Courtney Cox. Other close matches included Martina McBride, Kate Beckinsale, the O.C.'s Rachel Bilson, Halle Berry, Anne Hathaway, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nicky Hilton, Cindy Crawford, and Cheryl Tweedy.
The celebrity recognition process was not limited by gender, and determined that Eva looked most like Annette Bening, Mariah Carey, Harry Houdini(!?!), Nina Hagen, Jake Gyllenhaal, Grace Kelly, Missy Elliott, Douglas Fairbanks, Primoz Peterka, and Harrison Ford.

Click here to see our results complete with side-by-side comparison of the celebrity photos. You may have to register, but it's free and definitely worth it if you're dying to upload your own photo for celebrity recognition, or, you know, if it's rainy outside and you're bored.

I Heart LA

2006-03-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

I just wanted to report that I had tons of fun in LA last weekend and also managed to cross an item off my life's to do list by completing the 21st Annual Los Angeles Marathon. Here's my best shot at summarizing the 5 hours 27 minutes and 53 seconds spent on the course in addition to the days, hours, and months leading up to the big day. (Sorry so long!)

Marathon Striptease

Although I carefully picked out my race day outfit a couple weeks before boarding the plane and brought back up clothing in case the weather was cold, there was an aspect of dressing properly that I had not prepared for. LA has been having a bit of a cold snap lately, meaning that it dropped below 70 degrees and has been raining some. But on race day, the weather was perfect sunny and around 65 degrees. However, this was still a little chilly for shorts and a tank top and I would likely be too cold while waiting for the race to begin and when running the first few miles. Deborah, who has run two marathons, suggested wearing extra clothes at the beginning and ditching them during the race. It's a common enough phenomenon that the clean up crews collect and donate the cast-off clothing. So we went to Goodwill the day before and I bought a "disposable" warm-up outfit for around nine dollars. (The pants and top were even the same brand and looked pretty darn cute even though I picked them exclusively based on functionality and cost.) I ditched the pants right before the start line (I almost tripped taking them off, but not quite) and I lost the long-sleeved shirt around mile three. I wonder if they'll end up back at the same Goodwill from whence I bought them . . .

Strength in Numbers

The Marathon Expo the day before had lots of exciting booths with free samples, demonstrations, race gear, etc. And, it was LA so the Expo included a contest to win plastic surgery and a Scientology consultation table. Although I didn't win free implants or learn the ways of L. Ron Hubbard, I did chat with the people at the Clif Bar Pace Team booth. I talked to Sharona woman who said she would be leading a group that planned on finishing the Marathon in 5:30and she seemed really cool and encouraging. I had trained alone and planned to race alone, but after talking to her, I figured I might as well meet up with the group at the starting line and give it a try. Even though I decided to join the group on a whim, I'm so glad I did!

The Big Day

The night before, we met up with Karen for a relaxing carb-loading meal at an Italian place in Pasadena, stopping off for some yummy frozen yogurt before heading to bed early. I didn't get much sleep that night, but more than I usually do before big events like these. (I didn't sleep a wink the night before the first day of the bar exam or the night before my first triathlon.) I at least slept long enough to have a really dorky dream wherein Chief Justice Roberts yelled at me for buying clothes from Goodwill with the intention of throwing them away during the race.

We got to the start of the race in plenty of time, I didn't forget anything (except to put sunscreen on my legs), and I found my Pace group after only a slight detour through the group of runners in the sub-4 category (hard core!). The other people in my pace group seemed nice and the crowd was pumped up with opening words by Cruz Bustamante (I guess Arnold was booked) and continued blasting of the song, I Love LA (which is still in my head.)

The race started out fine. The group was to keep about a 12:30 minute / mile pace and take two walk breaks every mile. (I didn't train this way, but it actually ended up being a really good way to do it.) Sharon ran while holding up red and yellow balloons so we could always find the group in case we fell behind.

The first bit of drama I endured during the Marathon was, as always, the result of my worst enemy during events like thesemy bladder. I figured that it would just get more annoying the longer I waited, so I left the group around Mile 2 to wait in line for a port-a-potty. Unfortunately, this took at least 15 minutes! After leaving the bathrooms, I was worried that I was too far behind to catch up with Sharon, but I decided that I should at least try. I ran at a faster pace with no walk breaks, peering frantically into the distance for the red and yellow balloons. When I hadn't found them by Mile 5, I started to panic a little. I knew that at some point I would have to slow down and settle into a steadier pace, and I started to stress myself out trying to figure out when to give up on finding my group. I managed to calm down once I starting thinking about what I had just done. I had just run five miles like it was no big deal! This in itself was a huge accomplishment from where I was a year ago.

I kept running and soon enough I passed a group holding a sign for a 13-minute mile pace, which meant that I couldn't be too far behind my group. I finally found them somewhere between Mile 5 and the 10k marker. When I spotted those balloons, it literally felt like I was six years old and had just found my mother in the supermarket after losing her in the cereal aisle. It was such a relief! I'm sure I could have finished the race without the group, but having someone else in charge of the pace made the mental aspect so much easier.

Overall, I thought the first half of the marathon was very enjoyable and doable. I chatted with people, enjoyed running through LA's various neighborhoods, and engaged in my favorite pastime of people-watching the spectators and other runners. I high-fived the pom-poms of a local cheerleading squad and ran through a tent that was blasting the theme song from Chariots of Fire. I wouldn't say that it was easy, but the first half was well within my comfort zone.

Finishing Strong

It started to get harder around mile 14-15, partially because of some uphills and partially because the reality of what I was actually doing started to sink in. Jason and Aura live around the Mile 16 marker and they stood outside their house to cheer me on. I stopped long enough to give Jason (from my small section first year of law school) a big sweaty hug, and then kept on going.

I felt a second wind around Miles 18 and 19, which were breezy and partly downhill, but I started to panic again around Mile 20. At first I was like, "Oh, 20 down, 6 to go, no problem." But then I started to freak out when I realized that 6 more miles meant more than an hour left of running. How could I possibly run for another hour? I also started feeling weird, sharp twitches in my calf muscles, which made me worried that I was going to hit "the wall." I thought eating might help, but every banana, pretzel, or balance bar I took a bite of just made me feel like I wanted to puke.

Jessie, Julian, and Deborah were standing and cheering at Mile 22 and, when I passed by, Julian joined me for a bit. I kept telling him that I was doing fine with my Pace group and he didn't have to run with me, but every time he tried to leave I was like, "Julian, don't go!" He cheered me up, telling me a few stories and instructing me to just listen and pant and I finally released him around Mile 23.

Shortly after this, I was worried that I might start balling at any minute for no reason other than I just felt so overwhelmed by everything. But I held it together, smiled for the cameras, and kept putting one foot in front of the other. I started to see the light at the end of the tunnel once we finished Mile 24, and during Miles 25 and 26 I was in a state of total disbelief. Even though intellectually I thought I would be able to finish, I don't think I really believed it or appreciated it until those last few miles. I took it pretty easy during Mile 26, but after passing that last mile marker, my legs just started moving independently from my body. I surged ahead of my group and finished with a chip time of 5:27:53.

All in all, it was a fun race and it was so nice to have friends cheering me on along the way. My parents followed my progress from Austin over the internet and when I called them afterwards, they seemed even more excited than I was.

Final Thoughts

I feel some obligation to wax philosophical on what these six months of training and five hours of running have taught me. Of course there's the cheesy and the obvious: trust in yourself you can achieve anything and when times are tough, just take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other. More importantly, this experience has taught me to not be ashamed of mediocrity and that doing something is better than doing nothing.

I'm not a fast runner. I never have been. Even though I work out a lot, even though I do triathlons, I suck at running and I'm slow. When I started training in October, I thought maybe that I would work up to running the marathon at a 10-minute mile pace (which is my typical 5k pace). It didn't take me long to realize, however, that this was an unrealistic goal. It was very discouraging to read books about marathons (even those aimed at beginners) that would casually describe an 8-minute mile as taking it easy. But these books also had very helpful advice: when running your first marathon, finishing should be your only goal . I kept training and pledged to finish, even if I had to walk the last ten miles of the race, per my Mom's suggestion.

I decided internally that finishing was my only goal, but I still avoided telling people my actual anticipated race pace. I just downplayed it and said that I was going to run really slow. And, I figured that after the race I would similarly avoid revealing my slow time and focus only on the fact that I finished. But, you know what, I ran the LA marathon in 5 hours, 27 minutes, and 53 seconds, and I am proud! I hereby proclaim to the world that I ran 26.2 miles at a steady pace of 12 and a half minutes per mile! (By "world," I mean my two loyal readers who wouldn't care if it took me ten hours to finish.)

The point is that I ran my own race, I did my very best, and there is nothing to be ashamed of because all I can be is myself. I could have shrugged and said, "I'm not a very good runner, so why bother," but I didn't. I could have spent the last 24 Sundays sitting on my ass instead of braving the cold for a long run, but I didn't. Emma, you ran 26.2 miles in 5:27:53. This is hardly an occasion that requires wearing a bag over your head!

Thanks to everyone for their support and good wishes! Hopefully, I'll post pictures soon!

Eighteen [Miles] and a Life to Go!

2006-02-19T20:38:00.000-07:00

There's nothing like a Texas girl . . . who can actually adapt to her new surroundings. This time last year I could barely run three miles and I classified weather less than 50 degrees as "fucking freezing." Today, however, I ran 18 miles in "17 degrees feels like 1." Literally, my water bottles froze shut and I almost broke my tooth while eating my Snickers Marathon Energy Bar.
My last two long runs--both 16-milers--for lack of a better word, sucked. During those, I spent half the time walking and the other half wishing I would break my ankle so I would have a good excuse to quit. But this time I ran almost the entire time (not freezing to death is a good incentive to keep running) and I actually enjoyed myself. It took about a mile and a half for my toes and fingers to thaw and I was able to stay motivated almost the entire time. The last three miles were really hard, but I did it!

I ran the Capital Crescent Trail from Georgetown to Bethesda. I think it helped to run a trail with mileage marks rather than guestimating the distance and dodging tourists as usual when I start my runs from Captiol Hill.

Afterwards, I treated myself to a yummy sandwich from Dean & Deluca, a bubble bath with the Lush-icious grapefruit shower gel from Matt and Laura, and a viewing of Tivo-ed 12 Angry Men. Excellent flick.

I only have one more looooong training run next weekend (also 18 miles) and then I taper off before the real thing on March 19. Now to more important things. What does a girl wear when running a marathon down Rodeo Drive . . . ?

Ready to Run!

2006-01-24T22:36:00.000-07:00

If I were a savvier myspacer I would have the Dixie Chicks playing in the background...

As many of you know, I'm training for this. (I love the way I say that considering I only have 6 "friends" and I doubt any of them are reading this.) For the past month or so, however, I've been wondering to myself, "What have you gotten yourself into?!" In an effort to get the spring back in my step, I devoted part of my Amazon Christmas gift certificates to purchase this. (On a random side note, I got two gift certificates, one for $20, one for $30, and after selecting all my purchases, my total with shipping and tax came out to exactly $50. Cool, huh?)

Anyway, the book suggested running without wearing a watch and leaving the headphones at home. These are two crutches I've been very dependent on! But, for my shorter week-day run this evening, I decided to try it without music. I also couldn't find my watch, so I ran without that too. The results were amazing! I ran faster, I got annoyed whenever I had to stop for traffic lights, I enjoyed myself much more, and I when I got home I just wanted to keep running. Rather than running for a set amount of time, and counting down the minutes until I could stop, I just ran to the Lincoln Memorial and back home. That's five-point-six miles according to G-map Pedometer. (Google Maps is the best. True that! Double True!)

For the first time in awhile, I'm actually looking forward to my long run this Sunday. 16 miles this time!