Drizzly Weather

We've had cloudy, drizzly weather the past few days. Kind of like living in Seattle, I suppose, only warmer. The weather people keep saying we need the rain, but not this type of rain since it's not a whole bunch. Just annoying enough to get your glasses all speckled when you walk outside. I hate having to wear glasses.

I only had a 1 hour bike ride yesterday and it just didn't seem worth it to go outside for that, especially with traffic/stoplights/chance of showers so was planning on riding the trainer. Kari emailed me right before I left work and asked if I wanted to bring my trainer over to her house so we could ride together - fun! I brought over Twilight and we made fun of the awkward acting and the 1.5hr we ended up doing went by in a flash. I also gave her the book in hopes that she'll become as addicted as Brooke and I are and we can all dissect the plot line chapter by chapter.

I love this website.

Patriots Half and Busch Gardens

Alysia and I had such a fun weekend! We seem to find endless things to talk about and laughed a lot. Such a great time. I know Marty was building forts for himself in the living room, not knowing what to do while I was gone all weekend, but girl time is a must.

We started off Friday afternoon heading to Williamsburg, Va, and proceeded to get slightly lost trying to find the race site (this was a theme of the weekend). Race morning came very early and I started my paparazzi and sherpa duties. I think I did a pretty good job on both fronts. Alysia had a great swim and bike – her bike time was solid even though she had to ride the last 6 miles pretty easy so as not to cramp too much. Onto the run, she got into a groove after the first mile and was closing in on 3rd place when I saw her at mile 7. It was nice to meet Crystal Pruitt and her friend Meagan and have some people to chat with while we cheered on the competitors. Crystal and I raced against each other earlier this year but I didn't get a chance to talk with her. Such a nice girl! I was like the worried mother hen during the race hoping everything was going okay for Alysia, and I got very worried at the end when she didn’t turn the last corner when I thought she would. Turns out a really bad hamstring cramp at mile 9.5 had her doing the shuffle for the rest of the run. Even so, she finished 5th overall and 1st in her age group – not bad for her first half!

The course seemed really nice (I did most of the run course while she was out on the bike) and she ended up winning some wine, a wine glass and and gift card – nice winnings for a smaller half! I like supporting the non M-Dot races.

Besides the cramping, she had one other obstacle to overcome on the run course. The week of when we were talking about the weekend and going through any last minute questions she had about the race, I tried to convince her to wear socks on the run. But she was pretty adamant that it wasn’t necessary. Not wanting to be pushy I didn’t want to say anything else, but on the drive up it was bothering me so I mentioned it again, but that still didn’t budge her. Well, several bad blisters and one bloody foot later, she told me after the race that she would do anything I told her to do before a race – even if I told her something ridiculous like “eat 10 hot dogs before the start” Ha!

Later that night, we went to Cheeburger Cheeburger where Alysia finished their ‘famous pounder’ without any problem. She flexed for the camera that took her picture for the wall of fame, and the cooks in the back couldn’t get over how ripped her arm was. We hit a local bar after that and did a couple of celebratory shots. It was a great way to end the evening.

Busch Gardens was fantastic. There weren’t any lines on any of the rides and we managed to ride each roller coaster twice (front row and back row) plus saw a show, and did most of the other little rides. We ate at the Festhaus for lunch where they were doing Oktoberfest celebrations and one of the dancers took a liking to us (after teasing me about eating a cookie monster cupcake – where are the kids? he asked). So we both ended up in front of the crowd – Alysia did the polka and I did the chicken dance. It was me and a bunch of 2 year olds holding hands and flapping our wings. Awesome.

This week has been pretty busy already and this weekend is my last triathlon (Wahh!) in Wilmington. I’m hoping that the cooler weather brings a wetsuit legal swim for this longer than normal sprint (1500 meters with a current). We’re staying overnight with Tassie and we’ll be a running an open water swim clinic on the beach on Sunday. The following weekend I’ll finally be at home and will hopefully get caught up on the rest of life!

Patriots Half

Nope, not doing the Patriots Half, just going to support one of my bestest friends Alysia - it's her first half! She had been debating for awhile about doing one and I told her a long time ago that if her husband couldn't go with her I'd be happy to be her sherpa.

It'll be a fun girls weekend; we're going to go to Busch Gardens in Williamsburg on Sunday. Hopefully, Alysia won't be too tired because I'm going to print out the map and plan out what rides we're going to go on first - of course we'll sprint through the gate right when it opens (this is what my dad would always do when we would go to Busch Gardens in Tampa - roller coaster riding is serious business).

So Marty will be the bachelor this weekend, but he's keeping himself plenty busy with the Pier 2 Pier swim in Wrightsville Beach on Saturday and then the Magnificent Mile on Sunday.

Always Check the Seat Back Pocket

On our plane flight down to Florida I was jamming to some new Muse on my i-pod. When I was done, I put it in the seat back pocket in front of me because I had a drink and peanuts on my tray table and I didn’t feel like shuffling everything around to put it back in my bag.

Big mistake and you can probably see where this is going.

I didn’t even realize I had left it on the plane until Sunday night when I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I’d better charge up my i-pod so I can listen to it tomorrow.’ Then I went to my bag and was puzzled when it wasn’t in the pocket. Then it hit me…..oh what a horrible feeling!

At the airport I went to check if any very moral person had found it and left it at the Southwest office, but I wasn’t so lucky. And the employee said that usually those things turn up right away; if hadn’t been turned in yet, it probably wasn’t going to be.

Bad karma to that person! And an annoying lesson learned by me – always check that seat back pocket when you leave a plane!!

Labor Day Weekend in Florida

Friday morning, Marty and I flew down to Hollywood Beach to spend Labor Day Weekend with his family. Specifically, for his father's 75th birthday. We rented a little studio condo right on the beach, and it was very nice - updated and clean. After the conversation I had with Marty earlier in the week, I was a tad worried since he had picked out the accommodation and I hadn't seen nary a picture.

Marty: I got us a place right on the beach! It was only $200 for the weekend.
Me: Hmmm. It was only that amount for one of the busiest summer holiday weekends? This can't be good.

But it turned out to be fine...very small...but nice. We don't need anything that big, and the Murphy bed was really quite comfortable.

Down in Florida we did a lot of eating with the family and caught up on each other's lives. I also listened to way too many poker stories, political rants, and national economy woes, which are always the themes when Marty, his dad, and brother-in-law get together.

Marty and I did a little open water swimming in between the oh-so-Floridian thunder stormy weather. The water was bath water and I thoroughly enjoyed that! I also read The Time Traveler's Wife (thanks to Laurie Zack, who I'm always getting book ideas from).

We also did a 5K early Sunday morning. It was put on by a 17 year old kid who was raising money for The National Kidney Foundation. He did an EXCELLENT job! You can read more about him here. He was able to get almost everything donated and had a much bigger turnout than he expected; really nice to do a race where literally all the proceeds go to a good cause. I managed to win and beat Marty by about 20 seconds. I didn't catch him until after the mile, though. I felt kind of yucky and seemed to be swimming rather than running -- the humidity was unbelievable! I've raced down there so many times throughout my life, but not having done it in awhile is always a shock. It does get hot and humid up here in NC, but you really don't know how humid it can get until you go to south Florida in Aug or September and do a race.

We flew back in this afternoon and have reunited with Tassie. Life is good.

Glorious Weather

I was looking at the website for the 5K Marty found for us in Fort Lauderdale on Sunday, and had to snicker at this warning:

Heat Warning

Temperatures and humidity can be high in South Florida. Drink plenty of fluids prior to and during this event. (Non-Alcoholic!)

Pheww! Good thing they qualified that statement.

There is definitely NOT a heat warning here in NC - the weather has been absolutely gorgeous! Last night we ran at the track and I felt so good! We did a bunch of 800s with short rest and it felt incredibly easy. Too easy. I'd like to feel like that in an upcoming race!

Got sucked in and couldn't stop!

As Marty pointed out yesterday, my blog has been awfully quiet. There a few reasons for this, but the main one being I read all the Twilight series books (and the leaked draft of Edward’s perspective of the first book). Devoured is not a strong enough word for what I did to these books and I had no idea that they would capture my attention so much! Marty is probably glad I’m done with them so I can get back to being a normal talking wife who folds laundry and all that.

Of course, besides reading 2,300+ pages in one week, I had work and training. And we ran a camp here Friday – Sunday (lots of training and eating), and Marty and I did packet pickup on Saturday for the final open water swim we put on. Sunday morning we were up early again to get out to the lake early enough to set up and I once again was in charge of checking people in and handing out the t-shirts. No one yelled at me this time around for not getting a t-shirt, but we did order extra this time and can you say LOCUSTS after the swim when people found the box of extra’s?! Like Marty mentioned, the race sold out last week which we were super happy about – being that it was the first year of the series and all that. Plus, we didn’t have to do any walk-up registrations the morning of which is time consuming. I can’t say enough nice things about the Finish Strong guys and gals. They know what they are doing and they are so calm and nice about everything! We’re so glad we were able to team up with them to bring some open water events to the area.

By Sunday I was pretty exhausted but was still planning on doing the swim myself. I had no idea how it would go with the less than normal sleep I had been getting, but it all turned out great! At the start I tried to get on some fast feet but they proved to be a little too fast for me so I ended up swimming by myself the entire way. My time was much faster than the Jordan lake swim, but it’s so hard to compare these open water events. We all had to deal with some very thick high grass, which was interesting to swim through to say the least, but hey, that’s open water for you! At the final turn buoy I swam hard to the finish and I felt like a swimmer!! It is always going to be hard for me to understand that yes, I am actually a pretty good swimmer when it wasn’t so long ago that I was almost always the last elite person out of the water in the Florida races. Being able to swim hard and feel pretty good makes me better understand why collegiate swimmers have the reputation of being pretty big partiers. This was not something you can really do in the midst of a cross country and track; if this had been a road race instead of a swim race I’m sure it would have been ugly and hurt bad, but something about the water made it much easier. Not to confuse anyone – we didn’t party all weekend or anything like that, but being exhausted/tired would have me believe that a race of any sort wouldn’t go all that well, but apparently swimming can be a different story (at least distance swimming).

This weekend we’ll be heading to Fort Lauderdale to spend some time with Marty’s family (it’s his dad’s birthday). Of course, Marty has found us a 5k to do! He always finds us some random race when we’re traveling. It’s in a park where we’ve done some triathlons and I’m not sure if any of it will be off road since there are some trails there, but it should definitely be flat!