mood

wow, have i been in one for sure lately. its been bad. like on the verge of crying all the time, total despair type of crap. except for wednesday, it was 70 degrees and sunny out! windy as hell but warm. i will take 70 degrees with a headwind any day before 45 degrees and a tailwind. yesterday i was in that crapola mood but today i feel a little better. i skipped my workout last night. ugh, that made me feel like a wuss and more worse, too. it was the first track workout of the year, 3x1600s in zn 4 to help set times for the following workouts. i had been worried about it all week. i was ready to go and just waiting for the work day to end so i could go but then the rain came. and not just drizzle but down pour. i frantically emailed my coach but seeing as she is currently on the other side of the international dateline, i wasn't really expecting an immediate response. so i emailed a few runner friends who basically all said to just say no. at least that is what i read it as. the thought of even trying to run in that, with the little water drops splashing up onto the back of my ankles was almost too much for me to bear. so instead i went home. i have been totally tired lately, too. the past two days have been a struggle to get through work (which has thank goodness been much better lately) and all i want to do is lay on the floor and nap. but i haven't.
swimming today was good. i felt like i could have slept through it :) but was happy to have gone. i am getting better, really i am. i think.
poor seamus! yesteday she was so excited because she was going planning on riding the school bus home from school today. they have a kindergarten only school bus that is filled with just kids from her class. since we live so close, she doesn't ride it but eric arranged with the teacher and the bus driver to let her ride it today. except she woke up with a sore throat, cough and fever. and next week is spring break, so no school bus for her for a while.
counting down the days to the vegas trip. we are going to drive. goodness that is going to be a long drive and i am keeping my fingers crossed that the old volvo makes its way down and back and doesn't strand us in the middle of the desert.
on other notes, i need to get my chowing down under control. eric is dropping weight like crazy but for every pound he is dropping i seem to be gaining 5. its horrible! gotta stop with all the crap all the time, but i love me some terrible foods! love me them i do!! i have no will power, self control, nada, nothing. today i accomplished something really big though. i went to target to get some tube socks for the 1970's themed party i am going to tomorrow night. i will wear them with my star wars shirt and gym shorts from when i was in the 7th & 8th grade at harvest park middle school. i was going to wear my princess leai - jabba the hut slave costume but eric said i wasn't allowed since that is technically from the '80s. plus the way things have been going, i think i would pass more as jaba than prince leia. don't even let me tell you what eric said about my cycling shorts... so i managed to get out of target for under $100 which is a big deal but also i managed to avoid target pizza hut. one of my true loves of redmond fine dining. i love it and it is so hard for me to resist! but i did and came back to work to enjoy a frozen entree that i picked from my grocer's freezer instead.

the ultimate warrior

dear friend EA sent this to me today to use as inspiration.

so much

yesterday sirus learned to ride his bike without training wheels! can you believe it? eric took the training wheels off, sirus messed around some, and then all of a sudden he was off! and even more impressive was in a matter of just a few minutes eric had set up a course on the driveway with cones and sirus was weaving in and out, hair pin turns and navigating it with ease! totally amazing little guy!
today i went on a mountain bike ride that kicked my arse. really hard. we went up to almost canada. we parked the cars and headed out. i knew right off the bat i was going to be in trouble because everyone was riding with so much ease and i was struggling with every bump. i was however really happy that i got up the first batch of switch backs but everythign else was tought! apparently i needed baggy shorts since i was the only one in lycra. there were 10 of us there, 3 training for la ruta, 2 training for bc bike race, one of whom is a pro, two dudes, and then two others who have some pretty awesome technical skills. i was the slowest of the bunch and not just slow, but like really really slow. i could keep up on the fire road climbs! and even on some of the single track climbs as long as they weren't too technical, oh and did i mention that my garmin said 33.3 miles and 10k ft of elevation? good grief. over 5 hrs of riding time. luckily there was some good stopping along the way! it was way fun, but really really hard. and then i drove the 2hrs home! tomorrow's run is going to be tough!

after paradise

so like i said, i had that sore throat on that ride. i felt terrible that sunday and skipped my swim and was a horribly, not fun mom to be around, on monday i finished up some stuff for work, ya know, all the late night friday drama that needed cleaned up. i had another rest day from training, too. then tuesday - ahhhh, day OFF. i slept in until like 830 or something. the kids didn't know i had stayed home so no one crawled in bed keeping me awake. i had 3 nights in a row of 9+hrs of sleep. i was getting caught up. i hung out at home for a few hours. just chilling out. then i went to bellevue square for some reason. i can't remember why. what was i doing there? but then i came home, changed real quick and headed out for a mtn bike ride. eric and sirus had picked up seamus from school, they had lunch, they took sirus to school and now eric and seamus were doing trail work. i rode around for a bit and came across the trails they were working on. seamus had her bike out there and was doing some mountain biking, too. after, we all headed over to pick up sirus. he didn't know i was home and when he saw me there waiting to get him he started jumping up and down getting all excited! it totally made my day!
wednesday morning i got up to go to masters swimming. i get up at 5, but really its 450 since my watch is 10 minutes fast. i get dressed, i get a glass of water, i get in the car and i drive there. then i sit in my car looking at email on my iphone. OMG - work drama at 524 AM. i took a deap breath, got out of the car and went to the pool. yeah, main set 8x100 IM followed by 5x100 free. it was good. after only a few minutes into the warm up i had let the work drama roll off and just worked on swimming. when i got to work i just did it. like i've said before, i like my job. i like the people i work with and i like what i do, just sometimes, it gets to be too much when it all kits at the same time and something is up because its hitting like crazy right now. i am trying to be very careful at looking at it objectivly and making sure my inability to deal is due to too much training, but i don't think it is, shit is really just nuts and once one shit is down the train, another one starts knocking at the door. so not cool.
on thursday morning i got up at 5am to ride the trainer for 2:15 in zone 3 and watch the movie 2010. thats a lot to deal with at 5am. more drama at work, more of the same drama - once we get one hole plugged another springs a leak, i wondered if the world really was coming to an end. later seamus lost her first tooth! ealier in the week we made tooth fairy pillows for the both of the kids. good thing - just in the nick of time! we also went to the art walk at seamus's school where we had the opportunity to buy her art work. it was cute and she seemed happy to be there and was excited to see her friends.
friday i made it to swimming. i sat in the parking lot and nothing alarming was coming over in email. i got out of the car, took 2 steps and realized i was in my slippers and i had not changed into my shoes... which was fun until while i was doing my sprints the masters coach who decided to swim with us since not many folks were there and he was getting soaked in the torrential downpour anyway, well, he was kicking with a kick board and was faster than my all out sprint. whatever.
someone in the locker room had made the comment about it being friday to which i replied - only 10 more hours and we are all set!
the first part of work was fine, slippers and all. at lunch i went to do my core workout in the gym. i warmed up on the treadmill then went to get the floor mat. as i walked towards the middle of the room i banged my knee head on into the metal foot plate of the seated row machine. full force. i felt it hit but felt nothing, but then it hit. my leg was completely stiff, i couldn't move it and all i felt was extreme pain all the way from my hip down to my foot. i wanted to cry but knew if i did i wouldn't be able to start. i almost threw up. i was thinking i was going to need to call eric to come pick me up, i didn't know how i was going to manage. after i saw there wasn't any immediate discoloration or swelling i decided to bend my leg despite still being in extreme pain. it was horrible. i dont' know if i have ever been in so much pain. i hobbled around and hobbled through my core workout avoiding anything that involved bending my knee or bearing weight on it. dude, it sucked. i hobbled back to my desk and within minutes found out that my personal email account had been hacked. muffa farker. minutes later i got a call and even more shit happened. unfreaking beleiveable. i just listened and said ok. i got through the rest of the day, eric and the kids picked me up, i cried in the car and then took a deep breath. i was going to enjoy the rest of my evening. and i did. i had two lemon drops with dinner, i got and gave lots of hugs and kisses and ya know what, i love my family and really that is all that matters.
today i ran for an hr of zone 3 on the treadmill. after the knee incident yesterday i was pretty sure my season was over, but it doesn't hurt to run, just to bend. after i swam, and it felt great. except when i would push off the wall, then my knee would hurt but whatever. when i got home we went for a walk. really i wanted to take a nap but it was so beautiful out that i wanted to be outside some. when we got home though i took a nap! its been a rough week, a rough few weeks. but dude, its going to get better here soon, right?

paradise

the other day i got a note from a designer friend if i would be a fit model for her for some photos for her portfolio. i of course said yes since i was indeed a super model before becoming a professional triathlete, and i love her, too, so of course i wanted to do it. and it was for cycling clothes, so that was fun, too. she was trying to decide where to do the shoot since she wanted good scenery and all. first we were going to head down towards crystal mountain and then go mtn biking and trail running after.
but once we all started thinking about it, we realized we'd be hauling 5 bikes and road riding gear, mtn biking gear and it was just getting to be too much. so location changed to Paradise up by Mt Rainier and we'd do a road ride and trail run. i hadn't ever been to Mt Rainier park before so i was really looking forward to it.
i met them at 6:30am and we got loaded up. we drove for a few hrs, met up with the photographer and then drove up into the park. we scouted locations, decided where we wanted the shoot and parked the van. burr, it was cold! super sunny, but burr! I took this photo with my iphone from where we parked. it was THAT amazing out.
we did the shoot which involved a few clothing changes, some riding towards and away, in circles and some standing there look good. then we had lunch. we drove down the mtn, changed into some casual wear and did some more photos. it was much warmer at the bottom. once the photos were done, we drove out of the park and said good bye to the photographer. we all changed into our cycling gear and got ready to ride back up the mountain. we had already driven up it so i sort of knew what to expect, but as we all know driving it and riding it are two different things.
on the way up i wore arm and leg warmers with shorts, a short sleeve jersey, a vest, booties and shortie gloves with some light glove liners under them. i packed a bunch of other things for the ride down since i knew it would be cold. the park was not that busy, but got much busier as the day when on. the drivers were mostly really good about having us on the road and a few would yell out words of encouragment as we were riding up. the grade was never so bad that i was ever dying. my workout was to be in zn3, so i was easily able to stay in it the entire 18 miles. the three of us stuck together the whole time, but we didn't do too much talking. while i was zn3 the whole time, the guy with us never got over 100bpm. he obviously wasn't trying hard enough. i had brought two bottles of discontinued LUNA Sport Electolyte Splash in Pinkgrapefruit and it was delicious. the wooded areas were amazingly wooded, and then we hit the snow. when we would be in the sun we'd be toasty warm, and then we'd hit the shade and it would be very cold. after almost 2hrs we were at the top. the trick to it all is to get up there, put on your layers and head down before you have the chance to get cold. so not a lot of enjoying the top, but enough to get a photo!
by the time we got up there, the parking lot was full and several people stopped to ask us about the ride. it is winter time and all... for the ride down i put on a dry base layer under my jersey, a wind breaker jacket, winter gloves over my glove liners, and a hat. i was pretty good temp wise for the ride down, but the ride down was really not very much fun. it was very scary. i'm not so big on going down hill, plus with the cold, the icy patches on the side of the road, the cars, the gravel.... it all lead to a stressful descent. i tried riding in my drops, but i have zero confidence in them and i'd just wind up going so fast that i wound up staying in my hoods for the most part. braking for 18 miles in the hoods is on the uncomfortable side. luckily, it wasn't the whole 18 miles, towards the bottom there are a few very fun miles where you can pedal hard, the road is wider and smooth, you are out of the snow and its just more fun. i think it took about 45 minutes to get back down. crazy! when we got back to the van, we made the decision to not go out for the scheduled run. i had a sore throat all day long already (i just didn't tell anyone) and it was getting late, almost 5pm, so we bailed on it. i felt like i had the energy to do it, but i also felt like if i did, i might be sorry. turns out i was right about that... but we headed back home and were treated to some amazing views of the sun setting on rainier - the whole mountain was pinkish orange! totally breath taking! once we got back to seattle, i jumped in my car for the 45 minute drive home. i was beat and feeling pretty thrashed.
sunday morning i was wide awake at 630ish and had not an ounce of ability to fall back asleep. not cool. it was a busy day and i felt terrible. my throat was so sore and the kids were driving me crazy. i felt back because i wasn't any fun at all and they were stuck with me since eric was out riding. they were going to a birthday party at 230 and would not stop about wanting to go to the party. they didn't want to go home or run errands or anything so finally i said fine, we will go and sit in the parking lot. for an hour. we sat there for a few minutes when sirus decided he had to use the bathroom and couldn't wait a single second so we left and went to the gas station. we all got back in the car and went to go wait the remaining 1/2 hr in the parking lot. we weren't even in the parking lot for more than 2 seconds when seamus decided she had to pee so bad that she was going to pee in her pants. i about lost it. we went into the birthday party place and everything was fine but OMFG. they had a ton of fun at the party and i just sat there. i didn't feel well, and i didn't know any of the other parents, so i just hung out. on the way home the whining started INSTANTLY. i couldn't beleive it, so we had no talking on the way home. i haven't ever done that before, but it was actually quite nice. i felt like a terrible mom, but ya know. sometimes no talking is best. and the even better part is that everytime i was about to lose it seamus would come up to me with open arms saying "awww, does someone need a hug?" aaakkkkk!!! NO I DO NOT NEED A HUG JUST STOP WITH THE WHINING!!!

so this morning after 10 glorious hours of sleep i feel better, not great but better. i did not do my workout on sunday which was just a short swim, and i am taking a total rest week today. i am taking the day off from work tomorrow, so i am just going to chill out and try to chill the hell out.

nadj

in 1998 xtie and i ran the very first san diego rock n roll marathon. ok, run is a bit of a stretch, but we finished it. xtie trained and would have done really well, but lucky for me, who did most of my training runs after drinking a beer or two, she got a stress fracture which slowed her down. we were able to do the race together, which was what we wanted to do in the first place. i felt bad that she got the stress fracture since i knew she would have done really well, but at the same time, i was happy to have her to spend those many many hours with me. :)
a few weeks before we left to go to the race i went to seattle humane society in bellevue and picked up a tiny black purr machine. i called her kitty for those first few weeks until i figured a name for her, and she just purred and purred. she was a flea magnet since my capitol hill basement apartment was flea infested and after her arrival, the fleas left me alone. every night i would comb through her hair getting rid of fleas and i gave her bath after bath. i also fea bombed that appartment hundreds of times and finally got some super toxic, super expensive flea spray from the vets and that took care of the situation. totally gross, the whole thing was.
after the race, at the awards or somewhere, they announced the winner of the women's marathon - Nadezhda Ilyina. I thought that was a pretty name and to me it sounded like Nadjalene, so kitty's name became Nadjalene or Nadj for short. i spelled it ending in an E despite the sound being an A because i worked with a girl named Lene which was pronounced Leena. There ya go. Nadj!
this morning while laying in bed, thinking about getting out of bed, nadj jumped in with me. after eric gets out of bed, nadj is there practically instantly. she purrs, she cuddles, she touches my face with her paw, she climbs under the covers. sometimes if i am asleep on my back, she sits on my chest and nearly suffocates me, but sometimes, unfortunately only sometimes, she massages my hamstrings. its so awesome. she's not a light weight cat, but just the perfect weight for when she stands with her front feet right on my hammys and starts kneading, ahhhh, it feels so good. now, only if she could take direction a little better....

again

i got this idea from Steve in a Speedo. now, i totally get that these people are doing crazy things that i can't even begin to understand how they do it since so much of it is pretty amazing, but sometimes, its just funny.

vs

i read this somewhere and liked it:
who would win in a fight between a minotaur with a trident and a centaur with a cross bow?
the answer: when a minotaur and a centaur fight, everyone wins!

love, true love.

ok, so there are many things i love. for instance: daniel craig. I love him. I also love simon baker and eric bana. see for yourself how dreamy they are:

i also have a new love of xterra racer dan hugo. i mean, come on, really???

eric of course knows about all of this, he is a good sport, because if you think about it, all these dudes are really just extensions of him - one is named eric, two kind of look like him and the last one, well, he rides bikes. see???
but i also love LUNA SPORT ELECTROLYTE SPLASH IN PINK GRAPEFRUIT.
I LOVE IT. I used it at every race i did this year. i was dependent on it. a while back i heard that they were discontinuing it. so i went out and bought a bunch. i was at the road runner sports and bought all the ones they had on display. the dude that worked there came up to me and was just like, wow, and i just hissed and swatted him away. i didn't want him to take any away. then i went to REI not too long ago and i bought all the ones they had on display. that was the day before the stinky spoke. the dude there asked if i planned on drinking it all on the ride. no, but i did take some with me! now every time i fill a bottle for a ride, i cry a little but also make sure to drink every last drop of it, because someday there just won't be any left. to my credit though, at least i am using it and not just saving it for something special, ya know. which brings me to when i went to costa rica.
i went to costa rica and ate cookies there. there were some really good coconut ones and then some totally amazing lemon ones. i loved those lemon cookies. when i came home i looked for them online and found them! and ordered 40, yes FORTY boxes of them. why not? i started with maybe only like 5 in my shopping cart, but that seemed silly, so i kept upping the amount until i got to 40 and figured that would be good. well, turns out it was a good thing i ordered those 40 boxes because they stopped making them!!! and that let me keep enjoying my cookies for at least a year or more. they were damn good cookies. i just did a search for them and came accross this terrifying photo from Ads of the World. it really scares me.

transition

i'm in transition! going from base building to getting ready for race training, yikes! the only kind of transition i ever think about is when they talk about when you are in labor and like you are totally dying from the pain of it, then you go into transition to get ready for actually pushing the baby out. i remember when i was in labor with seamus i think, i was in so much pain it was killing me and i asked the nurse - so is this labor? am i doing it now? and she kind of looked at me funny and said, no, not really. she said i was indeed laboring but i wasn't quite in real labor yet. i didn't know what to think about that.
i had an interesting conversation with eric the other day. he has this friend who used to work at a gym, was like the manager or something and he was a body builder and now is a bike racer and the guy when he saw eric commented on how eric is looking pretty fit these days and guessed his weight within a pound. pretty impressive, too since he didn't guess a round number like a 5 or 0, either. real weird. this is the same guy who once at the same guy's house where we were they both ran upstairs to weigh each other. i can't remember what that was about, but it was weird. anyway, apparently eric told them about my recent trip to the dunk tank. the guy totally guessed my BF! he was off by like .3 or something crazy, but still, it was nuts. anyway, so eric went on to tell me about how when we were in hawaii back in 2007 that i looked super model hot. here is photo proof of my alleged super model hottness. i was like - oh! well, thats a nice thing to say until he followed it up with "yeah, but super model hot is hot and all but really its actually not that hot in real life, you're much hotter now." what the hell does that mean? so i have been bugging him non stop about it because its the weirdest thing i think he has ever said to me. anyway, apparently my xtra 8.4 pounds of muscle and 0.9 pounds of fat or whatever it was since then helps me reach a much hotter potential, or something of that sort. i think maybe it has more to do with the fantasy hair than anything. yes, the fantasy hair that when i asked sirus tonight if he thought my hair was pretty, he replied with no. he thinks i should cut my hair like his - it shouldn't cover my ears he says.

rest week

aaah, rest week. although rest week's are tough because i have a hard time scheduling stuff and its all out of routine and oh no, i can't get everything in and i chow down way too much. and then i wind up what seems to be even more tired than anything else.
pawpi seems to be feeling better. she never seemed to feel too bad, she just looked horrible. she did have to go back to the vets two more times to get the grossness out, they had to pop another hole in her cheek and she dripped goop all over the house. but i think she is on the road to recovery.
eric turns old today. i told him when he turns 40 he will get 40 candles since we kind of cheated this year with a 3 and a 6, both of which went on the kids cakes at various times.
i need to get the taxes done. but heck only yesterday did i finally get the insurance thing figured out for sirus's doctor appointment way back in october!
i can't beleive its february. its WARM, ok not really, but SUNNY and today was totally beautiful! i go to the dentist tomorrow morning. its my normal visit but then he is also replacing my one and only filling. i got it back when i was like 7 or 8 or something and finally now its oozing, or leaking, or goodness knows what. also he's been talking for years about how i'm gonna need to have some surgery to get my receeding gums taken care of. the last visit tho he said i'd need to get it done this year sometime. yikes, it sounds terrible, so i will have to see. he doesn't do the surgery but will refer me to somewhere else. hohum....

Olympics

I have a long history with the Olympics. For instance, I have watched them for many years. :) I remember watching Mary Lou Retton get her perfect 10s. I remember hearing about Bruce Jenner way back before he became a reality star - not really understanding why i was hearing about him, but my dad would talk about him, and then there were those speed skaters who weren't they brother and sister or something? and then didn't they become cyclists?
and then after college i went to atlanta and was supposed to have a job at the olympics there. i even went and had my hand scanned and had my totally high tech id and access badge created but then i didn't actually take the job i was supposed to. we arrived in atlanta when they told us to, but once we were there they said they didn't need us for another month. so i got a temp job at AT&T. my bf at the time got a job "jogging" checks. his temp job blew, so he wound up taking the job at the Olympics while I stayed at AT&T since i figured it would be better for my "career". not sure i was missing out too much since he wound up in food service, cooking in the olympic village, which was walking distance away. he got to wear a fancy olympic's chef coat and terrible cooks pants and had to work the night shift. he didn't know how to cook so it was hard for him but he got the hang of it. all the while i was working at AT&T. we had a few visitors while we were there and i was lucky enough to see a few gold medal races at the velodrome, the cycling road races with both Lance Armstrong and Alison Dunlap (not at the same time of course and too bad i didn't know who there were back then) and also the women's soccer match where the USA beat China for the gold medal. i also was able to see olympic basketball and olympic baseball - both terribly not exciting at all. because we were so close to the olympic village we would see the athletes just walking around, buying snacks at the gas station and doing whatever which was pretty cool, and actually, the olympic marathon went right by our apartment building.
also one night when we had some friends in town, bf was working so i took the peeps to Olympic Park. Yes, the night the bomb went off. We were close enough to where it went off that we could see the debris rising into the air. it was so loud and so scary. it was crazy because we started going away from the blast, but it was amazing as to how many people rushed towards it. it was also amazing how the police came out of the woodwork. everywhere you looked there were police all of a sudden directing people and trying to clear out the area. we went straight back to the apartment and turned on the radio (we had no tv, ok that is a lie, we had a tv that we took from the hallway that didn't work). the bf called and said they were on lock down and weren't allowed out.
after the olympics were over we hung out and the paralympics started. we didn't go to any of the events but we went to the closing ceremony. we didn't have tickets but went to hang out anyway. while we were sitting there, someone came up and handed us two tickets. it was an amazing night.
the whole summer was amazing. the olympics are amazing. that was 1996.
in 2001 i was getting ready to get married. i was working a lot, not riding my bike very much any more and planning our wedding for january. at work we had an ad proposal for coca-cola and my boss asked me to do some research, so i did. i stumbled across a contest coke was having where you could nominate someone to carry the olympic torch for the torch relay for the salt lake city 2002 winter olympics. you had to write up a thing saying why you were nominating the person and why they are inspirational. i nominated my mom and xtie, two people who had a huge influence on me and who i had become, two people i looked up to and who i loved. i hit send and then never thought about it again.
months later i got a weird message on my answering machine that went something like "yoohooo..... it got this weird message saying that i need to call some people about salt lake" and something something, i can't remember. so i emailed my mom, and said "ooh! i wondered if anything might come of that!" to which she replied something like "what are you talking about? come of what?" so i picked up the phone and called her, email was getting us no where. i told her how i nominated her and then she started to get stuff in the mail. all kinds of crazy stuff that needed to be notarized and signature guaranteed and it all the deadlines had just passed or something crazy, which didn't make any sense at all. but she got everything shipped off and then we just waited. eventually she got her uniform - white pants and a jacket with the Salt Lake logo and a white hat and gloves. she got information about when and where she would be carrying the torch, when to arrive and what to expect. they even gave her a training plan which was funny since i think each torch bearer only goes two tenths of a mile, or something of that sort.
so she found out that she would be carrying the torch on new years day, 2002, in cleveland. i flew home a few days before then, visited with friends and hung out. on new years day, we woke up super early and drove to where she needed to be. there was a crowd of torch bearers, all getting ready for their turn. they had a meeting where they learned everything that was going to happen and then they all were loaded onto mini buses. i had a map of where she would be carrying the torch later that day - after it was dark! i parked the car and rushed to the intersection where she would receive the flame. also there was my pre-school teacher!!! and my aunt and uncle. we waited and waited. then the lead cars started to come through. there were a ton of them. i think chevy was sponsoring the relay and a bunch of chevy cars and corvettes and trucks drove by and then some wacky other kind of parade like vehicles and then the little bus that was carrying all of the torch bearers came and stopped. out popped mom! she had a few escorts with her, who were wearing blue outfits similar to hers, and then some officials. the person who was to pass her the flame came running up, they passed the flame and then she was off doing her part! she carried her torch and looked so excited but nervous, too. there was a strange dude who was running along, too, with no shirt despite it being below 30 degrees. he was cheering for her the entire way. once she covered her distance, she passed the flame to the next person and a man on a motorcycle extinguished her torch and turned the gas (??) from it off. she could have gotten back onto a new little bus but instead she stayed with us and we drove back to the big party happening, oh gosh i have no idea where it was! there were a ton of people and kids were asking my mom for her autograph and to get their picture taken with her. it was really pretty exciting! not only was she able to keep her outfit but she was able to keep her torch, too, which now hangs on the wall of her house. it is very cool!


Happy Olympics!

these cats

this morning i got up to swimming. i was excited to go because i have new goggles and new goggles are really awesome. so i stumbled out of bed and waddled into the bathroom. i turned on the light and saw a drop of blood on the floor. oh no! what is that? i looked around and saw a few more drops and then i saw IT. a dead mouse laying right there. good gawd. so i went into the bedroom, saw seamus mccat and nadj all perched on the bed looking all proud and i woke eric up and asked him to do something with it. he looked at it, said hmph, got a kleenex, picked it up by the tail and tossed it in the trash can in the bathroom. yeah, not quite what i was thinking.
so pawpi's face was puffing up again. and her eye was getting even more gooey. bad news, i was pretty sure she was miserable but she would just go about her business. so today eric took her back to the vets and they poked another hole in her cheek to get the goo out. they said if she wasn't so old, they would put her under anesthetic and install a drainage tube into her face. i hadn't ever thot of pawpi being too old. i mean, she is almost 13, but she should be good for another 5 or 7 years, at least, i'd like to think.
goodness, i'm not ready to deal with old pets.

crabby patty

seamus said she wanted a sponge bob square pants birthday cake. i said ok, and told her i could make her one, she said no, she wanted the one from the store. so i went to check it out and gasp!!! it was $42. yikes! but she only turns 6 once..... so i sent eric to the store and i guess when they went the display cake was gone and he said they couldn't find it in the book, so they got the smaller one that looked like crabby patty. i was waiting anxiously for it to arrive because i was wondering if it might turn out as a cake wreck. he didn't order any writing on it, so that was one way to avoid at least a partial wreck, but still i was wondering what it might look like.
once i found out that the cake was going to be a crabby patty i instantly wanted to make the little hamburger cupcakes i saw a while back. i had thot about making them for sirus's birthday but he wanted a cookie cake so we passed and i figured i make them some other time. so it turned out i had 50 mile bike ride to get in this morning so eric was so awesome and cleaned the house, decorated and made the mini brownie burgers! they looked awesome and tasted great!!! none of the kids wanted them though even when we told them they were cake and brownies. that's ok because all the adults wanted them!
Happy Birthday Seamus!!

today

today seamus turned 6. that is crazy to me. we will have a little party for her tomorrow, but today we all went to her school so we could participate in her classroom birthday festivities. they sat in a circle and went around the room and each of the kids said something nice about her. i almost cried. for her birthday dinner she wanted to go to the redmond pancake house and then we went to coldstone creamery. yes, they had gone twice this week, but oh well. i asked her if she would like to open one of her birthday presents today or if she would like to wait for her party. she said she wanted to wait, which i thought showed a lot of self restraint for a 6 year old! uh, so i was going to make a collage just now of photos from every year but i have none of those photos on this computer.. so that will be a project for another day.
a few weeks ago i hurt my wrist. i was doing pushups and just pushing up through the pain when i realized my wrist really hurt, so i stopped. but my wrist never got better. the other day at the pt i asked her to take a look at it. ok, so one of those little bones in there is all stuck. she did some moving of stuff around and it was all better, just like that. she said no more push ups and that i should keep doing the stretches she gave me, and that it should be ok. apparently i have a lot of bones all over the place that are stuck, but the wrist thing was funny because she made the comment, hmm, yeah, your wrist really doesn't bend.... its just stuck. whatever.
the other day we noticed that pawpi didn't look so good. her eye was all goopy and her face looked swollen. we gave it a day and decided yeah, she did not look good at all. eric and the kids took her to the vet today. they say that it looks as though one of the other cats must have hooked their claw in her eyelid, poked a hole in it and sratched her eyeball. then the whole shebang got infected. eric said they pinched her cheek and all kind of nasty squished out her eyeball. groooooosssss!! so they took her in back, shaved her cheek and lanced the grodyness. now she is on eye goop antibiotics, some oral antibiotics and some pain medicine, too. she is just chilling out and seems in good spirits, but then again that could be the pain medicine. she however, does not look good but will get better soon.

tomorrow before seamus's bday party i am meeting some of the girls for a 3:15 bike ride. sunday is a 1:30 run, that will be fun... and i am working on breaking in my new orthotics. the verdict is still out on them, but they do make me go faster, i can tell it already.

good times in the dunk tank

since all my friends have been going in for hydrostatic body fat testing lately, and since i have been curious as to what has been going on with my body composition, i made a spur of the moment trip to have the test done.
the guy and i chatted a while, he asked me why i was testing again. my real reason is that i've put on some pounds since i did the test back in january 2008. i have also been training waaaay more than i had been prior to that test. for instance, in january 2010 i swam more than i did in all of 2007. although i did a 1/2 iron man in 2007, i wasn't doing a ton of training. i was running, but not a super ton, but it was about all i was doing.
i got in, held my nose, went underwater and blew out all the air. then i did it again. apparently i did a better job with the air the 2nd time so he had me do it a 3rd time. the 3rd time was identical to the 2nd, so that was my average. the guy was funny, it was like he was trying to build up the anticipation of my numbers. he wouldn't tell me, he just kept asking what i was thinking my numbers would be, and whatever. anyway. so, i had gained 9.4 pounds since the test in 2008. i knew that much before going into the test. the good news is that of the 9.4 pounds, 8.5 of them is (are???) lean muscle, and 0.9 is fatty fatfatfat. my overall % though is down by 0.2%. so all in all thats good i think. i have to take those 9.4 pounds up hill with me, but at least most of them are helping me get up the hill, right?
we did talk about how he is going to take a truck to LA and call it the Phat test.
but good grief, after work the kids and i made a quick stop at cold stone creamery and then i topped of the night with some peanut butter captain crunch. that box is almost done and that cereal won't be making another appearance in a long long time.
onto other things, i ordered another splish suit. they are having a $20 grab bag sale so i risked it and ordered one. the one i received is good! nothing crazy, just green with a bunch of shamrocks on it with one giant one on the butt. i would have been totally happy with this suit had i not known about the fabulous suits my friends received! they each got ones with random writing like Big Mo, VC, and Merry Christmas Kelly. i might need to take a sharpie marker to mine!

oh i'm tired.

so thursday started with a 2hr ride on the trainer in the morning before work. there was lots of mad men being watched folliowed by the tudors. i can watch the tudors all day while on the trainer. its slow, and not much goes on, but its good. i like it. but that was the end of my happiness. work was really hard. lots happens at work all the time, but when it all happens all in one day, yeah, sometimes i don't do so well. i wound up crying to my boss! ooooh nooo!! wow, that was embarrassing. but i was pretty upset. usually i am a low key, easy going kind of gal, but yeah, not that day. i was all riled up and wow. anyway, my boss was awesome about it, made me not feel like a dumb ass for getting so upset and helped me figure some stuff out. it was good. embarrassing, but good. so i went home after work and drank some cosmopolitans, which weren't nearly as good as the lemon drops but there were no lemon drops, only cosmos. they did the job.
up early and off to swimming on friday. WTH??? when did friday become butterfly friday? ugh. but swimming has been going so well so that was good. saturday was a fun 3hr ride with the girls. at one point i was doing a standing drill and my hr monitor started beeping. one of the girls riding near me asked me what the beeping was telling me. my initial though was to say that it was telling me how awesome i am, but instead i told her the truth. the weather was semi-crappy but really not too bad, so it was way fun but sheesh, i was pooped after! i passed out on the couch!!! PASSED OUT.
in the morning i took seamus to her circus class. its way fun. she really likes it although some of it is "scary fun", like sitting on the top of the trapeze. she is not a fan of that. today she did some crazy things on the rope and the hoop. they also did more acrobalancing. i think we need to so some of that at home, but its so cute because the kids all balance in funny positions on top of each other.
after we went for a run in our new compression tights. i wore my new orthotics for the first half and they were awesome. but i took them off 1/2 way just to be sure. i am very concerned and dont' want to push it. every time my hr got too high and the hr monitor beeped, eric would look over to me and tell me that i need to back off of my awesomeness. january is not the time to be awesome.
but right now, i am exhausted. i am patiently waiting for the kids to go to bed so i can chow down on some peanutbutter captain crunch, and then i suspect i will go to bed. but i am chilling in my new compressions socks recovering, right?

big week

i am in the middle of a high volume week! or at least high volume for me!! i am happy though because i just finished up the last of the running until sunday (which on my tracking plan is considered next week!).
so far just a little over 22.5 miles running, i've already swam 3.5miles and have one more swim to do on friday which will put me at around the 4.85 or more miles for the week and then i've got 5hrs of biking to do between tomorrow and saturday. so its a big week. for the month, its on track to be the biggest month i've had in my training, which is pretty exciting and pretty cool at the same time.
i was looking at my training log from last year and noticed a pattern - on my rest weeks i am starving non-stop! eric always tells me when i complain about being so hungry all the time - hey yer on a rest day, or its a rest week and i'm like whateva, but apparently its true. except my notes are more along the lines of "omg i totally chowed down and now i feel sick" during those rest weeks but never during the high volume weeks.
i can't remember if i mentioned before the sweet gear a friend of ours gave me as payment for some work eric did on her house. we're talking super high tech awesome winter riding gear. anyway, today she gave us compressions socks and tights and hats! i wore the tights on my run and they felt good! and the socks are awesome, i want to wear them forever. is it bad to sleep in them? can i wear them to work?
what i learned on tuesday is that wearing jeans that are too tight do not have the same affect as compressions tights. i had to take my pants off, yes - at work, towards the end of the day because i was getting a head ache. i was sitting in a meeting talking to my boss when it hit me. luckily (i guess??) i had swam in the morning so i had all my pajamas and stuff with me, so i took those too tight jeans off and put on some nice cozy sweats and my slippers (because i was also wearing some fancy tall boots - but A+ for me since they are flat with no heel!!!). i think the pants were fine except i ran for an hour on the treadmill in the middle of the day and then put them back on and that is when the trouble started. not sure if my huge, massive muscles were just bulging out all over the place after that run, or what the deal was but there was soemthing definitly going on after the run that was not working with the jeans. can i wear my new compression socks with the boots to work? i told eric i would wear the compression socks with my running skirt and i'll tie a shirt all up all britney spears all baby one more time like and that is how i will do all my runs from now on. because as he and i discussed about me and swimming - its not really about the swimming, its about making a spectacle of myself which he will be doing soon, too since we got him this for his upcoming birthday:

is this normal?

i haven't ever swam so much as to wear out a swim suit. but now i have. is this wear pattern normal?

testing - 1,2,3, testing

this week was a rough week. wait, i meant to say it was a rest week! PT has been going well although seems like everything else is falling apart! my lower right back, or maybe its my hip apparently doesn't move. the joints are all squished or something. but all i can say is no more massage therapists, now i will always go to a PT. they do magic.
work is good. its always good. december was super crazy stressful and now january has been pretty mellow although today was stressful and busy. but i got through it.
today also i was doing a functional threshold test on my bike. i did a similar thing for running at the end of 2008 and it made me want to cry. so, as one might imagine, i was worried about this test. it was similar in that it was a pretty much all out effort for 30-ish minutes. the running one was 30 minutes no matter how you sliced it. the biking one was 10 miles, so the faster you are, the shorter the test.
since it wasn't until 6pm, i was worried all day about what i was eating and drinking and blah blah blah. i treated it like a race and had a pb&j 3hrs before, and thankfully right after the last stressful meeting of the day. then it was just a count down.
i got there early and hung out in the parking lot playing bejeweled blitz on my iphone then i decided it was time.
i got my bike set up on the computrainer and ben took all my info. since i hadn't done any rides there before he wasn't sure what to expect for my wattage but gave me a range that he thought i might wind up in.
there was one other person there to take the test, so that was good. taking the test by myself wouldn't have been nearly as much fun.
i normally don't like having fans on me while on the trainer, but they were all set up and i just went with it. i did notice that it was drying my mouth out quite a bit but whatever. next time i might ask for the fans to be diverted.
then it was 3 - 2 - 1 - BEEEEP!! and we were off. i think those first two miles went pretty well. i didn't feel like i was going too hard and i wasn't going too easy either. they did seem to take a long time. miles 3-4 flew by, mile 5 took a really long time. at some point in mile 6-7, i got dizzy and was pretty sure i was going to pass out. i was breathing well, but i was dizzy as hell. i figured i was too far in to quit, plus if i really did pass out, well, that would have been embarrassing but i kept going anyway. i started to feel better. with 2.5 miles to go i was feeling it but feeling pretty good, too. 2 miles to go, i took another gear and was really working. 1 mile to go i think i took another gear, i'm not sure, but it was almost done. and then it was done, for real.
around that 6-7 mile period i noticed that my average wattage dropped by 1. i totally panicked!! but then i managed to get the average up by 5 before the test was up. and i fell pretty much right in the middle of the range he predicted for me.
i also collected my average HR data which was interesting. when i did the similar test running it was 181, this time it was 177. does that mean i should have been working harder? could i have worked harder? i don't know. but in 6-8 weeks, he suggested i test again so i guess i might find out then. yikes!
now off to bed soon to get some good rest before 2:30 of biking tomorrow, and 1:15 of running and :30 of swimming on sunday.