run this amazing day

If I ever have a child - and please note that as long as the major tenants of physics and chemistry continue to hold, I will not be doing so - but if I did drop out a sprog, I would wield one of my parental rights and enroll it in piano lessons and force it to be on the swim team from the time it could talk until it finally  was arrested moved out. Piano lessons I've found to be maybe the single most useful thing I did from age 7-16 (other than learning how to fold notes into crazy oragami shapes and curl my bangs under without blow-drying my hair), and not just because I studied music in college.  I feel like that and swimming are the two things that force your brain to grow differently, and it's tough to learn these skills as an adult because your brain is busy making snarky Facebook comments and reading hetexted.com and trying to keep the vodka from destroying the brain cells you have left.  While I sat through year after year of piano lessons, I was not on the swim team

Last year I was lucky enough to race for SOAS Racing .  They make some pretty baller kits for women, and if you have a vagina and haven't heard of them (or read any of my blog posts before, um, this one), you should check them out.  Their tri shorts got me through every race I did last year without a single chafed spot or saddle sore. This year I'm pretty thrilled to be back on the SOAS party wagon, which is chock-full of awesome women from all over the US, quite a few of which are new and I can't wait to get to know better. When I came out to visit Colorado last spring, I was fortunate enough to meet all the people that make up Kompetitive Edge , which is hands-down the single best tri shop I have ever wandered into.  So when they put out an application in the late summer for their racing team, I filled it out as fast as my little fingers could type and sent it right back in, along with a bribe for Jared and Ryan .   I was ALL CAPS excited to find out in De

A lot of people think the 10K is the worst race distance.  I used to agree, but that was before I had to properly race a 5K.  It hurts, a lot, and it doesn't stop hurting and it goes on forever and when you're done you have to go run ten more miles or get on the bike for three hours because, um, you only ran three miles. Rude. I hadn't even planned to run a 5K when my schedule was written, and because it's only a 5K, it just got kind of... wedged into the weekend.  My sister was coming into town to visit and we decided that it would be fun to do a St. Patrick's Day themed race, and since the 5K is the shortest one we picked that.  By Thursday night I was deep in a grumpy tired hole of training and regretting the minute I emailed Sonja to ask about "the hurting thing" and had no idea how I was going to try and run miles that started with a 7 when it made me exhausted to run miles that started with a 9 in my long run earlier that day. Fortunately the

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. I bought a hot pink jacket on eBay last week. I've been selling stuff on eBay recently, just cleaning out a bit and trying to round up some extra cash, but it's a slippery slope from selling to buying.  And of course I just happened to see a jacket, in exactly my size, that I didn't need in the slightest.  Hot pink, purple stripes inside.  Instant lust. I almost didn't buy it, you see, because I have a lot of guilt about buying stuff I don't need, still, and also because I'm 32 years old.  I'm not a sticky three-year-old, I don't need a hot pink jacket with purple stripey insides.  I need vegetables and oil changes and that little metal thing that holds the water heater to the wall, and even when I have all of those things, I need to squirrel away every dime I can scratch together.   Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. I need to be able to protect my family.  I failed a