fish and chips

the cougar race took it out of me. i was so sore for days after that one. the next day we went out to padden for eric to race. i was going to do an ows and mtn bike there and brought all my stuff, but ya know, i just didn't do it. i did hike up about a mile or more with sara to a feed zone but it was super cold and started to rain and i was totally sore. it did feel good to wear my clogs though since it had been oh so long. after the race i passed out in the car waiting as awards happened and then we went to dinner with some of eric's friends. finally we made it home.
monday i was beat. i was still totally sore so i slept in and didn't go to masters. instead i hopped on the trainer for an hour and watched the Tudors some. that worked out pretty well. tuesday i sawm at lunch time i think, at the redmond pool. i kind of like going there at lunch. i was just kind of chilling and then that evening we led a track workout. it was hot and i wore my new running skirt. i was hesitant to get one but so many of the girls have them and they look so darn cute and when we are just hanging around chilling, i think its a good option. but we were out late and it was tough getting up for masters on wednesday - IM wednesday. but i actually did really well, hitting my times. but since the normal coach wasn't there, the other girl in my lane and i skipped fly and just did free. no fly if we have to.
friday i decided to try to commute into work. i had 1 to 1.5 hrs on the bike, zone 2ish. i haven't commuted once this year. i had spent the whole week procrastinating over things for work, including the presentation i was going to give on wednesday... so i rode into work, with my computer on my back. i actually stayed out for a little over an hour and it was quite lovely. lots of baby bunnies and pleasant weather. work itself was fine, but i continued to procrastinate over that darned presentation. mark from work was going to show me a route home and graciously agreed to carry my computer for me because there was no way i was going to make it up any of the sammamish hills with an xtra 10 pounds of computers, backpacks, clothes, etc. plus it was 92 degrees out. he warned me about the hill, the steepest hill in sammamish. he was on a mountain bike and had gone up it a ton of times. i was freaking out and figuring i would have to get off and walk. not just stop, but walk. so we road along until we turned left and THERE IT WAS. gracious. i went up and although working totally hard, was doing ok. luckily about 3/4s of the way there is a bail out so i turned in there and did 3 loops. by the time i went back to the hill, mark had passed but i quickly passed him again, out of the saddle, just trying to get up that thing since it got even steeper for that last section. it eventually got a little less steep but did keep going up for quite a while. whew!! that was hard!! when i told eric he couldn't beleive that he took me that route and was all impressed i got up it ok. apparently the road is so steep that fire trucks can't park on it and the houses all have to have their own sprinkler systems!!
i got home and fired up the computer and bam!! hard drive was dead! totally dead. i guess all that "work" on the presenation that I was going to do over the weekend wasn't going to happen. yikes, i totally stressed all weekend. partly about the presentation but mostly because we had ZERO internet access at home!! and it wasn't like i could even go to work since it was my work computer that fried!! long story short, i'm getting an i-phone from work, should be here monday or tuesday. it won't help me with doing presenations but at least i will have access to email and stuff. i won't ever use it to look at facebook.
saturday nikole met up with me for some trail running. fartleking, 1' on/ 1' off repeat 13 times. dude, it kicked my arse. nikole was fun to run with because she is damn fast and made sure i wasn't walking any of my 1' offs. she really helped with me my 1/ ons, too. but i was twisting ankles all over the place, once really good, too. but i wound up ok.
SUNDAY the kids and i headed out to the wading pool at greenlake only to find out that it is empty in the morning and they need to fill it up and it would be ready for another hour. so we headed to park and then to the running store to pick up some trail running shoes. then back to the wading pool! when we got back, i had had enough of this lack of internet so we stopped at the library, but it WASN'T OPEN!!! WTF!! not until 1pm. whatever. later leslie invited me over to her inlaws house on the lake. talk about delux! it was an amazing day and the water was amazing! we did a swim that was so fabulous that i might even like this whole open water swim thing. the water was perfect, even a little wavy, it was the right temperature and the sun was shinning. i would have like to hang out there all day if i was able. but i headed out for a mtn bike ride and i eventually made it home.
monday i was stressing but headed to masters and had a really good swim. something is starting to click i think or something. then i got to work and left a note on the helpdesk's door and on my boss's door since i wasn't going to be able to send any of the regular monday morning updates that i normally send. then i sat there. i did eventually jump on a co-workers computer to check email (and facebook) and then i sat and waited some more. our sales and bizdev teams were coming into town that day (hence the presentation on wednesday) so i started gabbing with them for a while. helpdesk confrimed that my hard drive was indeed fried but they were able to get me a loaner later in the day. i went to some weird conference in the afternoon that was ho hum, and then a work dinner which was a lot of fun. but i didn't get home until late. luckily it was a rest day on tuesday with an open water swim clinic in the evening. i did get the presentation hammered out on tuesday, thank goodness. luckily two weeks prior i had made some mystery notes about what i was going to talk about and i found those and then just hammered it out, with animations and everything! we had a company picnic that afternoon which was fun. it was a billion degrees out but quite pleasant in the shade. the swim clinic went well, too with 20+ attendees. it was at the madison park beach which was CROWDED with all of seattle. i swam out to the furthest buoy to be out there for the women in the clinic and i about passed out when i started swimming over the milfoil. i hadn't swam in any since last year and had totally forgotten about it. luckily i was able to get my act together but sheesh!! freaky. it was super wavy with all the boats and everything but it was good practice. i think the clinic went well though.
once again i didn't get home until pretty late. i passed out and woke up for masters in the morning, IM Wednesday! once again, the swim went pretty well, AND i actually did some realy fly for an entire 25. a few times even. it was such a momentus occasion that the swim coach commented on it. good stuff. it was a hard workout but good. then off to work for the presentation which went well. i don't get nervous about those things anymore but was so glad for it to be done. then there was wednesday night mountain bike racing which was fun except i was sporting blue shorts with a black top! i was mixing it UP! boy i was glad that eric wasn't racing and we were ablt to go right home. thursday at work was waaaay more calm, and quite quiet and although i had been working all week to re-build all the stuff i had lost with the crash of the hard drive, things were going pretty well. i had a track workout that night but was tired. really really tired from all the workouts and late nights i wasn't sure what i was going to be able to get done. but i headed out afterwork to the track. i had 6x800s and that seemed like a lot. but i was able to get under my times for each of them! the 6th 800 even accidentally turned into a 1200 even, and was still at the right pace, so i was cooking. the 2nd 800 was way fast but that is partly, ok, probably mostly because a group of probably 20 highschool girls got onto the track to run a few laps. they were running in a group and i don't know why they were there because they weren't runners. but i caught and passed them, and they even commented that i was going really fast! which made me laugh. but i was beat. i contemplated walking home but ran.
friday i woke up early again and rode my bike into work. i was sore, really sore, which suprised me and the small tiny hill from the house was almost more than i could bear. but i stayed out for an hour before getting to work. the original plan was to ride home, too, but i was pretty positive that would not work out well. i walked to get some lunch and had some vegetable spring roll thing and in 2 hrs knew instantly that i needed a 1/2 lb kobe beef burger with oregon blue cheese and a beer that evening. i called eric and he agreed, so he and the kids picked me up from work and we headed out. but THEN the kids told me that my fancy yellow mavic mountain biking shoes had come! i could hardly contain my excitment but couldn't understand why they didn't bring them to dinner!!
we stopped at a shop before dinner but they didn't have any of the cleats i needed. WTH! so i pouted a little but then got over it when my awesome hamburger showed up. seamus ordered fish and chips which was funny because we were totally suprised that last time we went to this resturant she ordered it as well. but it was a ton last time and sirus wanted fish and chips this time, too so we ordered one. when it arrived, sirus quickly said ooh, chicken! and we said no, fish. to which he replied, this chicken tastes funny, to which we replied that is because it is fish. and this went on for the rest of the meal.
then we stopped at anohter bike shop, got my cleats and then stopped at cold stone creamery because it was next door. of course.

dude

so i have been having a ton of fun at wendesday night mountain biking. i really like riding out there and I have been getting better with my bike handling by being able to ride harder and faster there. pretty much every wednesday i get all car sick on the way there but by the time racde time starts i am ready to go and ready to have fun. now i know why eric likes to go there every week and has been for so many years.

good gracious, onto saturday. i did the cougar mountain 10 miler. wholy shirt. so its not that i wasn't up for doing the race, because i was. i wasn't nervous, i just wasn't sure what was going to happen and i didn't know what to expect. last weekend when i was doing the 1x1s on the trail i had fun, although i was dying of dehydration, because i had never run so fast on the trail. it was kind of scary but at the same time just plain fun. eric said he likes trail running because its kind of like mountain biking, just without the bike. which is true, but it was funny to hear him say it.

we were lucky this weekend in that eric's mom came to visit with the cousins, so she hung out with the kids and eric came with me to the race. we got there about an hour early and i registered and then we just sort of hung out. i got into the potty line and then it was pretty much time to start.

and we were off. we started out by running around this field that was totally sketchy. i turned my ankles probably 15 times in that first 1/4 mile, if it was even that long. but we got around that and then onto the road. next thing ya know we were turning into the trail, which was quick, but that was good. i hung with a pretty big group for the first few miles. there was some up hill but nothing unbearable. i took my own water bottle filled with my very favorite LUNA Sport Pink Grapfruit Electrolyte Splash and two CLIF shots. I wasn't sure what I would need but after last weekend, I knew I needed something. i passed up the first water stop and then the 2nd. i think it was after the 2nd that we turned and went straight up hill. for ever. and ever. and ever again. it was a death march. i never have a good sense of when things happen during a race but i do remember that we were going up for a really long time. then once we were done going up, we went straight down. for a really long time. and it was long and steep and there were a bunch of switch backs. i thought about how i might like to run up that instead of down it. i did tend to walk down the whole thing and i got passed by prolly 20-30 people going down that hill alone. i just couldn't do it. i need to get some trail shoes and my legs were just killing me. my quads, my shins and my calves and oh yeah, those toe nails that i chose to not get fixed yet. once we got to the bottm though it was so awesome that we just started going up hill again. now i wasn't having very much fun but i was ok. i was going slower than my stretch goal, and even slower than i thought i could do. but i got over it. i knew that all that down hill really hurt me. now, back in 2006, i had done the 13 miler and i was very mis guided and very much ready to cry several times. not once in this race did i feel like i was going to cry and really i felt ok the whole time. i did go through my whole water bottle and both clif shots and even stopped at the last water station for 2 cups of water.
i was pretty stocked when i saw eric on the trail and knew i was almost done. i came towards the finish line and saw that i could come in just under 2:10 so i pushed to the end. i went right over to fill my water bottle and chugged it and then filled it again. i shook hands with a few people who i was running with at the end and then started walking towards the car. i got only part of the way and had to sit down. my legs hurt so much and i just couldn't go any more. eric found me and said he moved the car closer, thank goodness and i asked him if we could please go to the lake so i could stand in it. he took me to lake sammamish and dropped me off close by and then went to park the car. i waded in up to my mid thighs and it felt so good. the only thing that was totally gross was that if i stood there for even just a tiny bit, the little fish would come and chew between my toes. i really didn't like that at all.
but all in all, i would call the day a sucess.

fears

i have a few fears that some may say are irrational but really, i bet if you looked around a little you'd be able to fin examples of each of these that have happened in real life.

- dying and no one finding before the cats have begun to eat me.
- there being an earth quake while i am swimming and whatever body of water i am in cracks open and sucks all the water and myself down into the earth. i have had this thought while swimming mostly in lakes but i have also had my heart rate start to increase when the thought occured to me while in an indoor pool.
- there being a tsnuami in any body of water that i might be near. could be irrational because i am mostly near lakes but i swear it could happen although this one doesn't worry me when i am at the pool.
- filling up the bathtub with water and once i step in, my added weight being too much for the floor to bear and me and the bath tub crashing down into whatever room is below.
- getting in a car wreck while eating fast food and being found by the firemen and paramedics with a big old whopper, blizzard or bean burrito smashed all over me. i get most worried about this when i am a passenger chowing down.

last night even, i was chewing on a particularly messy bean burrito and became overly concerned that we might wind up in a crash.

but duuuude, i am having a FAT week, with an F not a PH. its really bad. gotta get this show on the road. i am a little worried about the 10 mile trail run race this weekend, yikes! i imagine it will be good, i just need to try my best.

on tuesday i overslept because my alarm was set for 530pm instead of AM. but i did get up by 6 and drove to the redmond track. after the eastlake hs track was locked last week i figured i wouldn't mess with that and i had heard that redmond is never locked. until tuesday. i didn't know what to do so i drove all the way home and went to the dirt track right across the street. the workout was fine, i had some motivational issues but got it done. then i got in the car and drove the one tenth of a mile home while the landscapers at the school watched me. funny stuff.

and i'm feeling a little sad today. we took sirus to go check out a new preschool. we decided we don't want him to go to the same one that seamus went to. all 4 of us went to the tour and we liked it. what made me sad was that whenever sirus got a little shy or something he went right to eric and hung all over him. and now, sitting at home, both kids are cuddled up with him. i'm feeling a little not loved so much.

wow!

dude, its been a really long time! it is soooo hot here, like waaaay hot. like i went for a trail run yesterday and had to walk during my cool down because i couldn't get my heart rate out of zone 3!! i was soooo dehydrated. and i took two naps! we walked to watch the 4th of july fireworks and poor little sirus fell asleep litteraly 2 minutes before they started and he was OUT. today was a busy day for them, too! they played outside in the heat and then we all hung out inside for a bit then went to the lake where they played at the playground for almost an hr then played at the beach for prolly 1/2 hr or so. we went to dinner and they both passed out in the car on the way home. we managed to get them both into bed at 6pm! we think it will stick for sirus but we'll have to see with seamus.
friday i had a way fun zn 2 road ride with the girls, then saturday the crazy hot trail run. it consisted of 1 minute on / 1 minute off repeated 13 times. it was hard and for my 1 minutes off i had to walk. i would still start out my 1 minutes on high zn3 and sometimes already in zn4. but i hadn't ever run so fast on the trail. it was fun and it was good practice to see what my feet would do.
sunday i met up with kirk and xtie for some swimming in beaver lake. it was soooo nice. i swam pretty hard but i needed to float a bunch, too, and i didn't stop the timer while I was floating... so i guess i kind of cheated. then i got on the mtn bike and headed out for an hr and 15. fun stuff.
not sure what next week entails, but i think its going to be warm and sunny for most of it. i love licing here, with the trails and the lakes and all the fun things for the kids to do.
this afternoon leslie came over and took out my stitches! she did an awesome job. i'm glad she did it because it was totally not how i would have done it and seeing how she did it, i would have royally messed it up. we dropped the stitches into the yard so the birds can pick them up and use them for their nests!