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Showing posts from April, 2016

NOLA 70.3: race report

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I can tell you the exact moment I decided to race. It wasn't Monday evening when, after a big - all things being relative - weekend of training and a long day of work, I sat down and wrote a brief race plan only so I wouldn't do something stupid like forget to pack my bike shoes and then had a bowl of ice cream after dinner (no, all of my clothes being tight right now is not a mystery). It wasn't Tuesday afternoon when I dropped my bike off with Wes ( ProBikeExpress is the best way to go, as always!) and laughingly told him that I was sending it on vacation and maybe we could ride Saturday afternoon while everyone else was napping.   It wasn't Thursday  afternoon when I was getting the shit beat out of my hamstring or Friday morning when I showed up to swim half of masters with all my friends before hopping on the plane.  Or later that day when I switched over from "eating like a normal human" to "eating only food that is white which includes both

one hundred thousand yards

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I love to swim.  It's a fact of my life, a big ol'  no duh  right up there with the sky is blue  and the grass is green  and double stuf oreos are goddamn delicious  and I certainly don't need to rehash my love for it here, yet again.  When I first got hurt, it broke my heart that swimming was at the top of the long list of things I couldn't do.  But a physical therapist gently suggested that I try a buoy and to quit dicking around with open turns, and it came back.  Slowly.  With all the gear at first; paddles + buoy has always been my favorite combo of toys (hashtag triathletes), I love the feeling of shoving water back with so much strength and power.  So I happily pulled myself bonkers for weeks.  It was something that I could do, running was off-and-on and riding was firmly scrapped, but I could swim twenty minutes easy.  That calmed my brain.  It helped, at times it felt like that twenty minutes was the only time during the day that I got a break, swimming was the