run this amazing day

1. All the clothes in my closet face the same way.  To the right. 2. I think my heel-striking problems stem from a very long and successful marching band career.  I learned how to roll-step in the 6th grade. 3. I never call out sick (when I have a job, that is). 4. Two of the windows in my house are missing screens. 5. I'd like to be famous so that stores would close down for me to shop.  Can you imagine how brilliant Costco would be? 6. When I learned to type, I put two spaces after a period, and probably will for the rest of my life. 7. The thing that I will buy to celebrate my next-first paycheck will be a new dishwasher. 8. I take my tea with one scoop of sugar, no milk. 9. The number of random facts for today will be determined by the time Beth knocks on my door. 10. Learning how to mute people on twitter had a very serious positive impact on my life. 11. I probably shouldn't keep teaching people how to do it, because I strongly suspect I am ...

1. This actually happened a while ago, but we shaved 66% of our puppies.  They are thrilled. We didn't shave Sofie because she blew her under-coat and if we shaved her top coat she would essentially look like we turned her inside-out.  I think she appreciates that. 2. I'm starting to remember how to run hard, but I still can't get my HR up and I still don't like it.  I ran off the bike this morning at an average pace that (barely) started with a 7.  I can't remember the last time I ran that far at a pace that started with a 7, but it was rude.  RUDE. 3. I don't have anything else of remotely any value to say, so here's a picture of my ass (I may have just summed of blogging in its entirety). Yes, I ate peeps on the bike in a sprint.  My aero bottle was splashing because of how full it was so I actually ate peeps doused in EFS + PreRace.  Delicious.

I just don't feel like I have a lot to say right now. Part of it, I'm sure, is that I'm in the last little push before I taper into my 70.3, and I'm feeling a little flattened.  I'm still reading the Mr. MAF book, and I can see that my body is following the process of HR training the way he lays it out.  At first, it's difficult to keep the HR down on the run.  When I started with Sonja last December, I had to chug along at a pretty meager pace and walk up even the slightest incline to keep it low.  I'm not sure when the switch happened, but now I'm firmly on the other side.  It is almost impossible for me to get my HR up.  It started out on the bike but has now trickled over to the run.  I think this means I have fitness now where there was very little before, but I'm not exactly sure.  The only thing that I enjoy about it is that my miles are starting with smaller numbers again, and "enjoy" is probably a strong word.   I'm pretty su...

1. I was sneezing a lot on Sunday.  Monday I was sneezing more and my sinuses seemed to be full of tree pollen.  April is always the worst month of the year for me, allergy-wise.  Last year I got the needle test done by my allergist and the spots where they tested for tree pollen swelled up so much that I had to get a shot because my arm was the size of my thigh, and then I had disgusting scabs for about two weeks.  So I just figured that it was a really bad couple of days.  Tuesday morning I swam, which always makes me feel better because it cleans the yellow powder out of all my crevices and tissues when I inevitably snort water on a flip-turn, but when I got out of the water I actually felt worse.  In the late afternoon, I got dressed for my ride and sat down on the couch...only to wake up an hour later with my ears ringing and my sinuses throbbing.  So, I'm sick.  I went to the doctor yesterday who very annoyingly didn't examine me before send...

I like that I haven't been racing much this year.   Nothing in January, nothing in February, half marathon at the end of March.  But then suddenly April rolled around and CdA is getting close.  I decided to add this sprint early last week, as a "dust off the cobwebs" race before my 70.3 in early May.  Short enough that I don't need any recovery from it but still can get practice going from swim to bike to run under race pressure.  When the job bombshell hit, I had thoughts about sending a "sorry I registered for this race three hours ago but I just lost my job" frantic retraction email to the race director (which probably wouldn't have worked) but decided to just roll with it.  I didn't really intend for it to be a secret, I just decided not to blast it all over the internet with everything else that was going on. I invited Emily to come along with me since I hadn't seen her in a few weeks and dangled the bait that we could ride easy afterwar...

Swimming is still a language I don't quite understand. I finally figured out how to do flipturns back in December.  The math is starting to make sense - I can do a 500 yard TT and I don't need a calculator and a notepad to figure out the pace.  But I signed up for this swim meet with Allison and suddenly there are all kinds of new things to figure out - scratch and heat and counting. We signed up for the SCY (see?  WTF does that mean?  Short course yards.) meet a few weeks ago.  By the time I got around to registering, the mile had filled, so I signed up to race the 1000.  I had no idea how to seed myself so I ambiguously chose 15 minutes when I registered without really doing any math.  On Friday afternoon when I remembered that this was happening , I went back through Training Peaks and found that the last time I did a 1000 yard TT (January), it was 15:35.  I've been swimming fairly consistently under 1:30 pace in the pool for shorter dista...

I had this whole post written up for today about peace. I was struggling, you see, about writing about the rest of my Colorado trip.  It was wonderful to spend time with Sonja, I wish I could just walk around her all day and absorb the mojo that flows off of her in waves.  And I came back to DC trying desperately to hang onto the peace that I felt inside of me.  Peace that I've been searching out over and over in this training cycle, along with the realization that while triathlon training isn't really changing my life that much, the mental work I've been doing for the past few months has been making an enormous impact. I hate it when people talk about struggling to write posts, mostly because generally, they are just being ridiculous.  However, I honestly struggled over whether to talk about this, what I'm about to talk about, on the internet.  I believe in a very strong separation between work and personal life, and in the years I've had this blog, I've ...

Please indulge my undignified display of complete self-absorption and pick your favorite. OR leave suggestions and/or email me something you think is a billion times better (which it probably is, there is a lot of creative talent in our house but none of it has anything to do with graphic design).  If you come up with something I pick, I'll give you a couple of free ones AND owe you some major life karma points.

Crotch problems are not a delicate subject around here. I've been having a handful of minor issues on the bike for the past few months.  It's seems like they rotate around - adductor/knee/piriformis/crotch/adductor.  I've been refit quite a few times and while my ride hasn't been exactly uncomfortable, I've been managing a small side series of issues along with riding, especially as the time on the bike has gotten longer.  My adductor has had a death-grip on my right leg for over a month and I recently switched back out of the compact crank because that was when the pain really got serious.  Switching back to the longer cranks made it better, but it removed a lot of my ability to climb and I was still dealing with quite a bit of tightness as well as far more inner-thigh chafing then I really can appreciate.  So I leapt at the chance to get a new set of eyeballs on the problem while I was in Colorado last week.  My coach recently got a snazzy new bike fit o...

I have so much to tell you guys. But it's going to have to wait a day or two until I finish cleaning and buying groceries and doing laundry - the bike shorts need to be washed twice - and making up a week's worth of snuggles with my babies. See you soon (don't hate).

Howdy, folks! As we all know, Katie’s not always of sound mind. Which is why it should come as no surprise to you that while she’s on vacation, she foolishly left her website in care of me. Come ON...I can barely keep plants alive. Does she really think I can handle this responsibility? I can only assume that when she asked me, she was A) drunk, or B) completely out of other options. At any rate, I’m here for Three Things Thursday. I’ve noticed lately that Katie has turned down the ranting on here. You’ve observed that, too, right? Quite frankly, I’m disappointed and bringing snarky back. Here’s three rants I just gotta get off my chest: 1: Beware the Mommy Blogger I’m getting sick of going to my favorite health and fitness websites and discovering that it’s now a mommy blog. I get it – people hump, babies come out, miracle of life, yada yada – but don’t continue to present yourself as a fitness writer if 80 percent of your writing is now about the current or former contents of...

We've had a busy week. Lots of hanging out with good friends. And, you know, with each other. I've gotten to run in the snow... In some very interesting places... And we've had lots of decadent meals. Meanwhile, our puppies are up visiting their grandparents. I'm sure everything is just fine.