whew! i'm still pooped! my second danskin triathlon (4th for katherine) was on sunday. a few comparisons with last year: - MUCH more fun with a friend, especially an awesome one!
- 70 degree weather is infinitely better than 95 degree weather
- boo understood what was going on a bit better. last year, he was excited to see me running towards him, saying "mommy! mommy!" then when i kept running along the race path away from him, he was worried. "mommy? mooooommy?"
this year, he told A in the car "mommy's going running, then swimming, then biking, then running, then biking, then running, then biking, then swimming, then biking ..."
- shaved 8 minutes off my time! 1 minute off the swim (rotating your torso really helps), 4 minutes off the bike (bought clip-in pedals this year), and 3 off the swim (i chalk this one up to running with katherine!). katherine had so much energy, cheering everyone on during the bike and the run. i barely had the breath to cheer myself on! :)
afterwards we treated ourselves to a spa afternoon (massage, pedicure and manicure) and then a steak dinner at Tramonto's (after showing katherine the last few episodes of Top Chef). the 3 of us split a tomahawk!
just got back from seattle! more on that later. it's been a bit chaotic. piles of mail and stuff halfway unpacked, everywhere. been trying to get my last real workouts in before the tri this weekend. biked 12 miles yesterday followed by a 1.5ish mile run; today, i'm completely wiped out, i'm getting short of breath just going up the stairs. what happened? i tried to run about every other day in seattle, even ran around greenlake a few days ago (about 3 miles). hopefully it's just getting used to the heat. even though it's not that hot yet here.
speaking of getting used to the heat, dixie's been beat. it's not even that hot yet. on today's attempt at a run, she would seriously slow down and pull back on the leash at every shady spot. she even sat down once in the shade and didn't want to go on. i think she's probably feeling out of sorts - i'm thinking she has kennel cough, despite a recent vaccination. poor thing sounds like a foghorn.
till i have a chance to go through more pictures, here's a family picture taken at the windermere club on lake washington:
did i tell you that i've been training again for the danskin triathlon in july? i'd actually almost decided not to do it - too many projects on my plate, especially gifts to knit! - but then my friend katherine called me up to tell me that she had signed up and that she was flying in from out of state to do it with me! nothing like a little peer pressure to get one back into shape.
so i've been reading a book by sally edwards, the amazing woman who started the danskin triathlons and completed more than a dozen ironmans. she talks about using buzzwords to motivate you throughout training and through the race. i've heard this before from her - she stands at the starting line at the danskin and gives every wave a different word to think about throughout the swim/bike/run. it's usually motivational words like "power" "strength" etc. in her book she talks about two different words: allez and faito. the french shouted "allez" at the top of their lungs as they cheered her through the triathlon in nice. the japanese shouted "faito" as she ran the ironman in japan. here's her description of their definition:
"Allez means "let's go." And "go," for the French, is a single word that combines two powerful English words, that all athletes ... instinctively use - "go" and "power."
Faito ... means "to fight." "To fight" to a Japanese means to fight against that inner part of yourself that prevents you from doing your best.
Now I use allez whenever I need a boost and faito whenever I'm working against myself."
i really like that description of "faito." i feel like my worst enemy during training is my own mental block. i chant that a lot while doing the slow uphill bike, or trying to get going the first few hundred yards of the run after the bike.
this morning adam and i drove up to wisconsin and biked the danskin course. not too bad - it felt a lot better this time, since the last time i did it i was trying to save energy for the run since i wasn't sure i'd be able to finish. we then ran around the lake, which is probably a touch under 2 miles. it was really tough to get going, but around halfway around, i got that fabled "second wind." it truly was an endorphin surge. wow, i thought, this is what it's all about. this is why people get addicted to triathlons.
it was a weekend full of water. storms flooded the nearby river, so no biking on the trail for a while. i am so thankful that boo doesn't seem to be scared of the thunder, because we've been having a lot of it.
boo had his first swim lesson at the local aquatic center. at first he did not want to go in the water at all. it might have been a bit chilly - mid 60s this morning! beautiful for playing outside but not necessariliy in the water. when i picked him up and carried him, he clung to me with the tenacity of a barnacle, even in 2 foot deep water. so funny too, because he is a completely different creature in the bathtub at home. in our deep tub he blows bubbles, floats on his back, walks on his hands (he calls this the "shark swim" when on his belly and "octopus swim" when on his back).
just as i was thinking it was going to be a very long half hour and a long summer of saturday mornings, the teachers started jumping up and down like frogs, which broke his endless repetition of "no no no" and put a smile on his face. the turning point was when they sang "wheels on the bus." he didn't do the bubble blowing (which is what the motors on the bus do) but he did it later at home. he loved jumping into the pool and later loved walking through the little fountains and going down the kiddie slide. i think he just might be willing to return.
this morning was my open water swim clinic from mary meyer life fitness. i almost didn't think it was going to happen because of thunderstorms here; but at the exact same time, it was crystal clear just 20 minutes north where the lake was. this lake michigan weather is funky.
i went to the clinic last year and it was inspiring and really helpful. mary meyer talked about how it is totally normal to panic when you go into the open water, and said that she herself panics every time, and always has to talk herself down ("okay, you can't panic right now, there are 50 people watching you during this swim clinic"). good to know.
one of her partners (who has swum a race on every continent, and i think has won the english channel swim) talked about always finding the positive. if you get kicked in the face and your goggles fall off, tell yourself, thank god that i have vision so that i can appreciate this. when she was swimming the english channel a chunk of her hair got loose from her cap and fell into her face during every breath she took for the remaining hours of the swim. she thought to herself, thank god i have hair so that it could do this to me. thank god i'm healthy and not going through chemo at the moment and still have hair. (note that one person who did the danskin tri was going through chemo at the same time! now that's strength!) thank god i have the strength to swim for this length of time so that it could do this for several hours. a good illustration of not dwelling on the negative, because something will happen, and it will just bring you down.
this year i skipped the intro lecture and went with the "advanced" group - which might have been a bit much for me, but was definitely a challenge. there was only one other woman and the instructor. we practiced a couple of beach starts - man was the water cold (it was mid-60s today). then we swam to the middle of the lake and worked on sighting and our stroke. eek! i was out of breath and not at all thinking about form. and my sighting needs a lot of work. i end up doing a few freestyle then switching to breaststroke to sight. i really need to work on rotation and lengthening my stroke. yet i have just one more week of swimming and biking before we start travelling for 2 weeks, and i won't really be able to swim/bike very well.
here we are fixing one of many mini-bike-emergencies the night before. we eventually ended up changing tires on all the bikes and getting to the bike store 15 minutes before closing the night before the tri for a part.
we stayed with katherine's mom's cousin and her two daughters so that we wouldn't have to wake up at 3am to drrive in. the night before she treated us to an amazing noodle place - joy yee. pages of pictures of asian noodle dishes. heaven! if i lived near that place i'd be there every week. after the tri we went out for ice cream, where we ordered the kitchen sink - 6 scoops of ice cream with all the fixin's!
