“She’s not believable as a person.”
Which I’m totally going to tell someone sometime.
OK, I know this was like way back on Sunday and no one cares anymore, but I’ve been working 60 hours a week at least, and most of that work is writing things on my computer. Which means I don’t have a lot of time to write on my computer for fun.
The second Alcatraz went better than the first. So, there’s that. And I had a lot of fun — which is a first in a while.
But, it’s definitely one thing to know that your bike fitness sucks and another to actually experience it.
We dove off a boat early, early. Actually, I was going to jump, but someone convinced me to dive. Only, there we were standing on this like 6-inch ledge and then ohmygodfiveseconds and I was like ‘wait, am I diving? am I jumping? am I diving at the same time as everyone else or should I wait?’ So, in the video on TriCal’s website you can see someone sort of wait a second and then bellyflop/dive, then stop and empty their goggles of all the water that filled them. That person was me.
This is the only picture I made it into on Slowtwitch. I’m not sure if I was falling on Courtenay or hitting her with my wetsuit.
The thing that was amazing about the swim was that after I started swimming there were still pink caps around me! It was choppy. I couldn’t see anything, no idea what direction or landmarks or lead boat we were aiming at, then the age-group men started punching us just to add to a challenge. But, I’ll be damned if anyone was going to separate me from those other pink caps!
When the shit cleared, I was swimming with two other pink caps [actually I was swimming into them, then 10 feet to the right, then back into them] and I was pretty sure one of them was Charisa (who I’m 100% sure is faster than me) and I was feeling pretty good. But, after awhile it became clear all those age group swimmers were gone because they were way, way over to the right. And we had aimed straight and were nowhere near the line headed to the actual finish. I tried to head us that direction, but I kept running back into the other two. And, then, I made the conscious decision that I wasn’t going to worry about the age-groupers to my right (far to my right) or my time. Maybe it was stupid, but these two were my competitors. If I was with them, I was in the race. This was my race.
We finally hit the exit stairs and I’m a super fast getter-out-of-the-water — it’s really my best triathlon skill — and I got to my bike first. But, I don’t (know how to) do flying mounts and followed the other two out onto the bike.
The bike was good for about 20 minutes. Except for the part I almost ran into a curb because I was shaking water out of my ear.
This was right after that:
Then, right after that Charisa passed me. Then, she really, really dropped me on the downhill.
I knew that my bike fitness wasn’t good — I rode like 120 miles all of last month in no chunk longer than 25 miles — but I didn’t realize that my bike handling was also gone.
I braked on the gradual, sweeping descent. I practically came to a dead-stop in a wide open turn, freaking out all the people behind me. Partially, it’s because I haven’t been riding. Partially, it’s because the stupid carbon brakes I put on my bike turned out not to be carbon brakes really at all (which, obviously, is my fault and dumb). Partially, it’s because I got in my own head then and started freaking out.
Charisa dropped me. Lots of age group men passed me. This girl from Navy passed me. At the first turn-around, I saw another PacBikes girl ahead of me and could NOT figure out who it was or why they were ahead of me. Then, Courtenay passed me just after halfway. (And I didn’t realize she was only two minutes behind me after the swim, so I thought she’d made up like three or four minutes in just 12 miles.)
Then, I had a little pity party.
I braked some more at random points where no braking was needed. I whined in my head. I also forgot how to eat a gel while riding and just poured it all over my handlebars instead. I just wanted to get off my bike — a totally understandable sentiment after 4 or 5 hours but not so good after 1 hour. Then, with about a mile or two to go, Kristen passed me too.
I didn’t give up, though.
I knew my biking was going to suck. I didn’t know it was going to be the slowest of the pro field, but I probably should have known. So, I just put my head down and rode next to Kristen. [Evidently, with the pro drafting rules, we're allowed to ride next to people as long as our drafting zones do not intersect?]
As I rode into the transition, I realized the PacBikes girl ahead of me was Erin and she had like two minutes on me. And I realized, Kristen and I were right next to each other. Which is like a personal nightmare of mine. I hate having people breathing down my neck.
I felt like crying getting off my bike. My legs felt trashed. In the first mile, I didn’t know how I was going to finish 7 miles.
But, I didn’t give up. (This is huge for me.) And I just started running to put as much space as possible between me and Kristen. And, then I just kept running, waiting for her to pass me. I figured it would be any second. Eventually, Erin came into view and I just focused on slowly catching her.
Then, I realized we were running downhill and I was loving running downhill and everyone I saw was cheering for me and I knew lots of people from PacBikes and GGTC and the people I teach swim clinics to and other racers. And, I realized I was having fun. Who knew.
So, I kept running strong and caught Erin, talked to her a little bit, caught this other girl, held off Kristen and finished by running as hard as I could. [Steve says it would be hilarious to show a video of me running 'as hard as I can' at the end of a triathlon. It's be like 7:45 miles and me swearing I was sprinting.] And, sure, I did not have a fast pro run split. But, I don’t know how much I can worry about that. I ran my race and I stayed in it mentally and did what I needed to do.
And I ended up 9th. And I won my first paycheck. And that’s me on the stage:
It wasn’t an amazing race. It wasn’t even a great race. But, I actually raced and didn’t just participate. Which was a nice change. And I felt like the “fire,” so to speak, was coming back. And, considering how shit my biking was when usually it’s my best leg, it wasn’t a bad race to pull out of my ass. (Not really out of my ass, because I’ve been running A LOT.)
So, we’ll see how the rest of the season goes. Or if there is even a rest of the season. Making the judgement calls on a week by week basis.
Posted in Race Reports, Triathlon | 4 Comments »
The thing I always wonder about people who believe their own conspiracy theories: is if you really believe everyone is trying to kill you and everyone is corrupt and everyone is fucking everyone over, then how can you exist? How can you believe it’s so terrible and be having this conversation with me?
Posted in Life and shit | Leave a Comment »
OK, this is going to be short while I’m lunching, because my site (see, Loren, I linked to it) requires constant attention and work. Fun.
Tuesday we had a record high heat wave here. If I had known it was going to reach 107 degrees I would have actually gotten out of bed at 6:55am and gone for my run instead of laying there for another hour and a half.
Instead, I had a lot of work to do after I did get up and things came up and I almost lost it driving home in the car where the air-conditioning doesn’t work very well. It just kept blowing hot air in my face and the driver’s window doesn’t roll down and my jeans felt so, so heavy and hot and OHMYGOD I just need to get these pants off. I almost took them off at a light because I was so hot, but I didn’t. Oh well.
Finally, I got home, laid on the couch in the cool 80 degree house and tried to motivate myself to go for a run at 1:45 in the afternoon.
In the shade or when there was a small breeze, the run really wasn’t so bad. But, when it died down and the sun was beating, I could feel the heat rolling up and beating me in the face and the air started to get shimmery.
I had originally planned on doing some miles at the track at my half-marathon pace. I’m smart enough to realize that six of them was not really going to happen. But, evidently, I’m not smart enough to realize that none of it was going to happen.
So, I actually ran down to the track. It’s just under two miles from my house. And, after a few minutes standing in the shade to regroup, I actually ran one tempo mile. And I actually ran it in 6:52. And, then I stood in the shade and poured another whole water bottle over my head and drank another whole water bottle. And, then, I revised the goal of ‘run TWO miles’ to ‘ok, run ONE mile and TWO 800s’. And, I actually started the first 800.
But, I made it about 300m and the heat was rolling up off the track and the breeze dies down on the back stretch and it felt like the heat was melting me into the track.
It was nasty.
On my stumble back the two miles home, I stopped at this water playground cooling station for kids and just stood in one of those water play things while the kids ran around the crazy, bright-red lady and the parents worried they might have to save me from drowning in the one tablespoon of water.
Posted in Life and shit, Triathlon | 2 Comments »
These are some complaints I heard from high school kids at cross-country practice today:
‘The highway makes my ears hurt.’
‘I can’t even swallow.’
‘I think I’m nauseous.’
‘I, literally, can’t pick up my legs.’
This was all because it was 85 degrees today. God. I don’t even know what they would do if I was actually mean or ever asked them to do anything that was actually hard.
–
While I was walking into a coffee shop this afternoon, a guy started yelling at me, “AM I CRAZY OR IS IT YOU?” I was like, well, it is me, but I’m going with the crazy thing.
–
I also got a rather obtuse email today, from which I finally gathered that the word “bussing,” as used in an article on my site, does not mean ‘to take a bus,’ but is actually a common (17th century) word for kissing. Clearly, that is what I meant.
Posted in Life and shit | 5 Comments »
When you see that Christian Children’s Fund commercial and the guy is badgering you about the orphan children and he says “they’re too poor for words,” don’t you think ‘shit, someone should buy those kids some words.’
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Haven’t you wondered where the blond woman on the View came from? You look around the table and think ok, comedian, comedian, talk show host, barbara walters, then what’s with the blond lady.
Her credentials? She was on Survivor.
Those are also her credentials for hawking some kind of ab machine on the TV right now.
–
I will keep you updated on my TV watching as I finish this article about flood prevention.
Posted in Life and shit | 1 Comment »
I’m sick — I blame all the shaking hands and kissing babies. According to my training log, the last time I took a day off because I was sick was in January. Not that in between everything’s been awesome.
On the plus side, this cold is probably the smallest problem I’ve had in the last few months. Still, my head feels like it’s going to implode and I think I’ll probably go lay back down. I was trying to lay down and read a book, but I couldn’t even follow the words.
You can also blame that for why I’m not particularly funny right now.
Here’s is something I would like to share, instead:
At no point in human history was Australia ever not an island. This means that in order for people to get there, they’d have had to travel across water. No problem. Except that the historical record suggests people were in Australia long before there were any sort of developed boating skills beyond basic, shallow fishing. The Aborigines would have had to travel 60 miles by boat from the nearest land, without any knowledge that Australia was there to land on. Which means that, ok, someone happened upon Australia accidentally, a small canoe gone astray. Except that, in order to populate Australia it would require 25 people to initially land there (according to experts in this kind of thing). A small canoe or fishing boat that accidentally landed on Australia would have had, what, one or two fisherman. So, they would have had to go back, get more people and re-navigate to Australia. Something that, evidently, would have basically been impossible given the lack of navigational boating skills recorded that many thousands of years ago.
It’s basically a mystery.
That’s the extent of my coherent, highly rational thought for the day.
Posted in Life and shit | 3 Comments »
Today, I volunteered at the library. I was shelving materials — which I thought was pretty self-explanatory. Evidently, it’s not.
There was a lot of, “Now, do you know how the Dewey decimal system works?”
I was so not sure if that was a trick question; like was he going to follow up with ‘so, what number is Shakespeare? how about cooking books?’ Apparently, it wasn’t a trick question. The answer really was: the numbers go in order.
There was also a lot of, “Now, can you put these in alphabetical order? Great! And I’ll just come by to check on it. Great. And then after I check, you can go shelf them!”
Apparently, people really do struggle with the order of the alphabet and numbers.
There’s been a lot of awesome conversations lately. Lots and lots. There’s really just been way too much talking to people, period. And, that is why I need the TV.
Posted in Life and shit | 3 Comments »
I think this picture is before my knee blew up during the race.
It hasn’t gotten better, in case you were wondering. Last Thursday, I rode an hour and a half and it blew out again. Since then I’ve just been a combination of freaking out and icing and going to doctors and freaking out some more.
I figured I’d just get faster at swimming and running, but everything is so sore it feels like it’s just getting worse and worse. My knee had never hurt except the few times cycling. Badly. Then, it was sore some running. Now, I don’t even know — it hurts sitting here.
(P.S. It’s not really my knee. I mean it is the outside of my knee, but it’s really my IT insertion coming down from my hip.)
I think I’ll go back to freaking out now.
Posted in Triathlon | 4 Comments »
Here is a piece of information you maybe could have done with out: I hate the OBGYN.
The excess of pink and cartoon teddy bears make me nearly as uncomfortable as the whole exam part. People, these woman are having kids, that doesn’t mean they are kids.
I hate that you’re pretty much required to go. It’s so condescending. Men aren’t required to go to some doctor to check out their private business. It’s figured that generally they got that shit under control. But, no, us ladies, we need special help. Pink special help.
I hate that when you do go but you’re not popping a kid out, it’s oh-my-god-so-boring. The doctor is bored. You’re bored. No one wants to be here. Just like how no one wanted to sit through high school sex ed either.
And, I hate, that because you’re the boring-not-popping-a-kid-out patient, you have to spend even more time sitting in the pink waiting room. I hate that the magazines are all Parenting and Gardens. Naturally, ovaries mean people lose the capacity to care about anything but babies and flowers and cartoon teddy bears.
I hate that when you finally do see the doctor for the less than ten minutes, condescending, required exam, they want to bond and paint toenails and share Cosmo details. And give you a mini-high-school lecture. Shit, woman, if I wanted to be educated (or make friends) I’d take community college classes. And — as a side point — no, I do not want to switch to whatever fancy new drug you’re pushing this year.
Then, you think, well you only have to go once a year. It’s not that bad. But, I did the math (I know, it was hard, I had to surpress my feminine hormones in order to be able to add) and I figured out in my life I’ll spend 3-4 straight days doing this — this, the required yearly bullshit no one wants to be here part, not even the OMG! YOU’RE HAVING A BABY THATISSOAWESOMEYOUMUSTBESOEXCITED part.
I wonder if you could just put your head down, tough it out and get the 96 hours straight done in one go.
Posted in I would like to register a complaint | 4 Comments »
TEAM PACIFIC BICYCLE
Kelly Dunleavy on Twitter
- People just think I'm angry all the time because of the media. 5 hours ago
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