Tag Archives: sports

You know you are an “insert thing you might not really be” when…

Posted on April 14, 2015 | 1 comment

If you only stop by to hear me get weepy about my kids, skip ahead.  But if you enjoy my triathlon related rambling with a dash of bodily fluids – this one’s for you!

Observations Pre Race:

The day before my first Olympic length triathlon I had a couple of goals –   get on and off my bike a bazillion times and try not to panic about riding clipped in and get back in the water in my wetsuit and see if I hyperventilate.   Note the trend – don’t freak out.  I was dreaming big, guys.

I took Lucy into the kid room and managed to push my bike, hold her hand and hold my helmet and my shoes.  I even successfully pushed my bike from the seat for a bit, which if you don’t know, totally makes you look like a Cyclist.  It is the Grown Up equivalent of riding downhill with no hands. Not NO HANDS when you have your hands up over your head, but just the casual Big Kid in the Neighborhood hands hanging straight down and zipping down the hill with a slightly bored expression on your face kind of Cyclist.

Shoes on.  Helmet on.  Onto my bike. Rode around about ten miles, switched gears, went up and down some hills.  Came to a dead stop in an empty parking lot and decided it was do or die time. Picked a line in the parking lot and pretended that was the Mount/Dismount line. (In a triathlon there is a Transition Area where you switch from one activity to the next, you can’t ride your bike in there. Just outside of there is a line where you mount your bike on the way out and dismount on the way in.  Side note: If you have the pleasure of knowing the delightful Laura M from high school then you know that I love this line on my way out.  She is a bad mofo that supports my triathlon endeavors and I love seeing her name as I start out on the bike leg of a race!)

I told myself that I would ride to the line and dismount 25 times.  That seemed like a reasonable number.  I did it 21 times and thought “oh hell, I got this.”  And then I decided that was lame to cut it short and did it 4 more times.  And then I felt so damn good about riding clipped in that I stopped and took a picture of myself to send to my mom with the caption “Look, I might not die in my race this weekend!” And then I prepared to ride back to my car and rack my bike.

And I fell down.  Of course I did.  I should know better than to get cocky.  Falling actually thrilled me, I no longer had to fear tipping over! Bloody knee?  Check!

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I hobbled into the pool.

IMG_3214 copyWetsuits are tricky.  Getting in a wetsuit on a cool, crisp morning in the out of doors looks pretty silly but you’re doing it because you’d freeze if you just hopped in the water.  Wriggling into a wetsuit poolside at an indoor community pool warrants weird looks from the pool joggers and the AquaBikers.  And when you can get pool joggers to look at YOU funny… well, that’s a win.  Swam 1000 yards before I was so warm I had to get out.  Wetsuit Success.

Into the showers at the gym.  Rumor has it chlorine is dreadful on a wetsuit so I just hopped in with it on to rinse off.  As I pulled my neckline out from my throat to let the lukewarm water run down the length of my body I immediately set a new goal.  I wanted to pee in my wetsuit.  Not now in the shower, I save that for the summertime.  But I wanted to pee in my wetsuit during the swim portion of the race.  If lukewarm water from the gym shower felt this good some 98.6 degree pee would be glorious!  (As I said above, I dream big.)

That just left packing up my tri bag and getting a good night’s sleep. Heh. Sleep eludes me on a good night.

But I did get packed.  And I did get out the door at 0’dark thirty. Did I Swim 1500 meters, bike 27 Miles and run a 10K?  Well, you will just have to stay tuned! I have to get to the gym because… well, because I am obsessed.  Determined.  Obstermined? Detessed?  Your call.

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Race Recap: Boys on the Left

Posted on August 21, 2014 | 5 comments

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Another excellent sprint triathlon put on by FS Series this past weekend! My race preparation was not what I wanted it to be.  The previous week included the consumption of a lot more pizza and beer than is ideal and the night before featured a long phone call with Poison Control (Thanks, Lucy!) but in spite of the lack of proper fueling and sleep I had a great time.

I am ready to take on the Olympic Distance triathlon next season.  I have two more sprints this summer before I switch gears into half marathon mode for the fall and winter.  So, now that I have more than a handful of sprints under my belt I feel like I can make an observation.

Answer me this, friends.  Why don’t the men tell you before they pass you on the bike?  Are they trying to kill me?

I am a novice cyclist.  It is super obvious.  If you don’t notice my white knuckled death grip on my handlebars than certainly you can see my somewhat swervy riding style, even from behind.  And if all of that escapes you – I am on a 35 year old, $200 bike.  That ought to tip you off.

I get passed on the bike.  I have made peace with this fact.  The bike is my weakest part of a triathlon.  Of the dozen  people who passed me – eight of them were men. Eight times I thought I was going to die as they zipped past me on my left.  Four of the people that passed me were women.  All four of them shouted “Left!” as they zipped past me.  What gives?

Is it just some kind of competitive streak? Maybe.  But I can’t say that the men aren’t supportive. As I was returning on this moderately hilly out and bike course every single man that I rode by while I was giving it all I had up a hill said something to the effect of “Yeah, get it, girl!”

It seems like the fellas like to see you work hard.  I understand the idea of having a little skin in the game, but, guys, do you want to see my skin on the street?  Because really I all but leap out of my bike seat when you whizz by.

Question for the cycylists – I get the etiquette for a group ride.  Do the same rules not apply for racing? I can see why they wouldn’t but it seems odd that everyone has plenty of lung capacity to shout out words of encouragement but can’t seem to yell out “Left!” to keep me from possibly wrecking us both.

So, that’s what’s on my mind. Summer is wrapping up.  School starts Monday.  Backpack is full of supplies.  Lots of debate about the first day of school ensemble is happening.  Pictures are forthcoming.

What’s on your to-do list as the summer winds down?  I still need to paint the kitchen in my ceiling before I can tell you about our summer kitchen reno.  That’s I have got!

 

 

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Measured Success

Posted on April 22, 2014 | 13 comments

The very best part about doing something you have never done before is that no matter how you do – it is the best you have ever done.  In the last month I have set two personal records (PRs.) Having never run a 25K or a half-marathon at all until recently –  I was all set to crank out two PRs.

I went after the 25K with an “I have never run this before ever” mentality  and I was pleased to have finished strong.  Knowing that I had another race in only two weeks that was of slightly shorter distance, I set an attainable goal.  I felt like I had a little gas left in the tank when I finished the 25K so I decided to try and go a little faster.

I’m not fast. A year ago I couldn’t run one continuous ten minute mile.  Last week my half marathon pace was 10:07 on average.  That’s measurable progress.  So many people have asked me in the last year why I run.  It’s a simple answer.  There aren’t many opportunities for an adult to have measurable success outside the workplace. For months and months I wasn’t getting faster so I set my sights on distance.  Mission accomplished. My 5K time is creeping faster.  Slow and steady progress. marathon mama

This weekend I will switch gears (oh man, do you love a good pun!!  Switch gears, I am gonna ride my bike, guys.  I kill me.)  My personal triathlon season will kick off at the scene of the original crime.  Last year I finished my first sprint triathlon at an all women’s event.  It’s technically a super sprint (250 yard swim, 10 mile bike and a 2 mile run.) Last year I wanted to finish.  I rode a heavy hybrid and I had run for less than three months.  I was happy with my finish.  It’s a small event.  I finished 64th out of 126 participants. This year?  I am going back to run the same course.  There should be measurable improvement.  Right? And so begins the sleepless week.  I like to set goals.  I like to achieve them.  What’s reasonable?  I am pretty sure that cups of coffee at 10 pm and loads and loads of googling and looking at my runkeeper graphs for the last year will not help. Getting my bike out of the shed might be a good place to start.

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How Athleticism in your 30’s is just like Getting Loaded in your 20’s

Posted on August 23, 2013 | 12 comments

In my early twenties I wasn’t much of an athlete. If I went for a jog after class it wasn’t unheard of for me to have a ziploc bag with a lighter and a couple of Marlboros stuffed in my sports bra. This way I could have a smoke after I left the cafeteria, a dinner full of botttomless bowls of cereal and pudding from the salad bar.

Now just because I wasn’t big on athletics didn’t mean that I wasn’t a competitor. “Shall we get another round?” Umm, yeah. And it better be pitchers not pints. “Can I get you a drink?” You bet. Jack neat with a Bud back. (For those among us that are not nor have they ever been a bit of a drinker, that is a Jack Daniels shot straight up with a Budweiser chaser.)

The order smacks of youth. Jack Daniels is the Crystal Light of whiskey. It’s almost water and sweet as candy. And Budweiser? No Bud Light for this girl with the metabolism of a 16-year-old boy, and nothing that tastes too much like beer.

But I was giving it my all. If one drink was good, two was better.

I was going for the gold. I frequently ignored that warm feeling that would rise in the back of my throat. You know that feeling. Eventually the warmth would travel up my spine and collide with my tonsils creating a burst of saliva. And then I knew. I was going to throw up. It was inevitable. I’d order a shot of Jaegermeister and head over to the bathroom. No big deal, hurl really quickly, knock back a cold shot of Jaeger and I was ready to Go, go, go!

Checking in, blissfully unaware of my fate.

Checking in, blissfully unaware of my fate.

What does this have to do with anything? You might have wondered how the sprint-triathlon turned out on Sunday. I went in with a little limp. TENS unit in the morning, lots of Advil. But I was determined that I wasn’t going to quit. The swim and and the bike would be fine, the run might be ugly. But I was going to finish strong.

The swim and the bike were uneventful. I got off my bike and took a few steps out of the transition area and as I started to run nowhere in my mind was I thinking of my early twenties and my penchant for boozing it up. But by the end of the first mile I could think of nothing else. My mouth was filled with spit. I wasn’t nauseous. Not really. But I was definitely going to puke, only I wasn’t ready to pay my tab.

At the second mile marker I was keeping pace with a gentleman that looked like he was hating it, too. “C’mon. One more mile. Let’s go, I might puke.” He laughed, but he steered clear of me. We traded off leading the way over the next ten minutes. I rounded the corner and could see the finish line and my mouth filled in that way where you know you have less than twenty seconds. Had I been 21 years old and in my favorite bar on the way to the bathroom I’d have been afraid I’d run in to someone that I knew. I had twenty seconds and max three words before I was going to let my Gatorade soaked puke fly freely.

I crossed the finish line. I wasn’t walking or limping. I was smiling and sweating. “I’m gonna puke,” I told the volunteer waiting to collect the time chips.

And puke I did.

With my hands on my knees I had three more words in my head. “Oh. Hell. Yes.” I did it. I finished. Injury, be damned. Who knew that the boozing of my twenties would have prepared me for this strange surge of athleticism in my thirties? As soon as the heaving stopped I thought “That wasn’t bad.  Let’s run it back again!”

Tri season is over for me. Love the new physical therapist. And I will keep training through the winter. Maybe even do a little of that old-school training of my twenties just to keep things interesting.

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The Happiest Girl That Just Puked Ever

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Poetic License for Bloggers is called Bullshit

Posted on April 18, 2013 | 12 comments

Poetic License – the distortion of fact or narrative to tell a story or evoke a feeling. It’s cool.

I mean, poetic license is cool when you are writing a poem. But blogging or a personal narrative? I call bullshit on “poetic license.” I call the stretching and fudging of truth and fact bullshit when you are telling a “true story.” And man… that is just too damn bad.

Sometimes when something happens to me I start to write a blog post in my mind. I ramble on in my own personal little stand-up routine. Occasionally I get to laughing and I realize that the “punch line,” the part that made something really, truly funny… it didn’t actually happen. And I am left with what could have been funny “if only…” But more often than not what makes it funny is if I stretch the truth about how I think or feel on a subject. A spider in my medicine cabinet can get really funny if I couple it with a crippling fear of spiders. But I am not scared of spiders. At all. It is kind of funny to realize that I am standing in my bedroom fresh from the shower and all the blinds are open if my neighbor moonlights as a cabana boy, not so much if it is the seven year old son of my best friend. You get the picture.

Today I tore open the top of a PowerGel with my teeth (because working out like such a bad mamajama that you require PowerGels means that you no longer use scissors! The brute force of your own teeth will work just fine, thankyouverymuch.) I squirted the Vanilla tasting snot-like substance in to my mouth, waiting for the promised immediate burst of energy and thought to myself:

PowerGels taste like shit. The horrific taste helps make me certain that it is entering my blood stream and getting shit done! Just like tossing back hard liquor – I wince and think good lord, that was heinous. And that is how I know for sure that it is going to fuck me up.

Only that last part is not true. At all. I might have been the only college undergrad that didn’t hate the taste of booze. Not even Scotch. Sure, I am not wild about the lowest of the low. The bottom-shelf, plastic bottle of rotgut and I are not fast friends – but I can guarantee you that it is not as horrible as a PowerGel.

But the trouble is the blog post that starts “So, I ate a PowerGel today and man, did I wish it was a mini bottle of vodka” isn’t very funny. Although, now that I have typed it out perhaps I am on to something. I can see how a quick shot of vodka midway through the bike portion of the sprint triathlon might actually kick my ass in to high gear. It would at least help me out in the fearlessness department. I have a moderate fear of riding my bike really fast downhill brought on by one too many late-night crash and burns in college. But I suspect once the shot wore off my run would certainly suffer – unless there was more booze and a pizza at the finish line. Again, I think I might be on to something.

I will be 37 in 19 days. 9 days before that I will swim 250 yards, bike 10 miles and then run 2 more. It’s no Ironman. Hell, it isn’t even an Olympic distance triathlon. But it’s further than I have moved my ass in a long, long time. And it is a first for me.

A few years ago at the bottom of a bottle of wine I confessed to Mike that I wanted to get married before I was 35 so we could try and get pregnant before I was an “elderly gravida,” a wickedly offensive term for a woman over 35 who is pregnant. We pulled it off. We got married 7 days before I turned 35 and I am fairly sure that we were pregnant by my birthday. Take a newlywed couple that has been living with their five year old daughter and give them a hotel room and an open bar and they can make a baby pronto. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

36 passed in a blur of breastfeeding and tears and sleeplessness and finding my groove. If 35 was the Year of the Newlywed and 36 was the Year of the New Stay At Home Mom, what I am calling 37? Beats me.

I can tell you this. 37 will not be the Year of the PowerGel because they taste like shit. I have a sneaking suspicion that in retrospect 37 will be phase one of Turn in to a Bad Mofo Before I Turn 40. I will continue to work on a catchier name. I have 384 days before it is over.

Sorry this wasn’t really very funny. Or insightful. Or poignant. Y’all seem to like the funny and the sad. You especially love the embarrassing. So, I offer you this. My pinhead is disguised by my widow’s peak ordinarily. I’m glad swimming caps are not required for all trips to the gym or my effort at picking up gym moms might be fruitless. I mean, would you go on a Mom Date with this girl?

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