runningyankee

wait, its 2012? are you sure?

2012-01-11T12:03:00.013-05:00

so yep. if you really miss all my way funny jokes and commentary on life you can pop on over HERE . its been awesome writing about something I love. i've taken alot of ribbing on the abrupt ending. and yes some of it quite funny, i give credit where its due, but please people, if you are going to diss make sure it plays out ok in real life and not just sound good in your head. i'm working on that too.

and well i'm busy watching the batchelor. admit it. so are you. who can miss such a hot mess.

on the TRI front, i'm back to some training, just trying to manage and most of all work the recovery so my old haggered and somewhat uncooperative body can get back in the saddle. some interesting things brewing for 2012 that hopefully can get tied up in a pretty little bow soon. stay tuned, if you care.

the other bulk of my life is spent right here. at the factory of sadness. errrr i mean work. i'm not sure if its gotten worse or if my tolerance has been maxed out. remains to be seen. but the happy side to that is once again the perk-a-lator is up and bubbling and quite possibly some changes might be on the horizon.

could i be more vague? probably not. and i hate those people on FB who post things like "i just got the worst news" OR "so excited about the new addition". so my apologies for sounding like my pet peeve.

signed,
snarky.

home made chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream a la bobby.

sweet new splish a la bradbury

thanks for both!

LOST

2012-01-04T16:06:00.002-05:00

an actual post of recent events to come. just too much going on.. and the priority has been the other blog..this one got deleted and probably for good reason.. but i'm bringing it back.
**************************************************

getting all wrapped up in the holiday spirit. here's my weekend up date version of the 12 days of christmas. sing it. really.

12 miles running (err ok 13)

11 bourbons pouring

10 ladies dancing

9 steelers winning

8 hours sleeping (all weekend)

7 elivs sightings

6 Who Dats saying

5 reeeeeee-ally strong drinks (the rest were merely mild)

4 swimming shrimps (in creole sauce)

3 Brees TDs

2 giddy girls

And a honey badger in the heisman hunt.

and the accompanying evidence....maybe later i'll write the full story.

or head on over to DAMIE.. she made me do it.

and i swear the party is almost over and training will commence momentarily. maybe.

A is for Apple

2011-11-21T10:58:00.030-05:00

if there is one thing to know about me, its that i have to be in the mood to write. i'm a diva like that.

snap. snap.

moving on.

Practiqué mi español la semana pasada con el hombre que vino a pintar nuestra casa.

bet you didnt know i could whip that out. thanks college. though still a bitter reminder that i chose NOT to study abroad. loser, party of one.

anyway he (the painter, if you are still trying to remember if you know any other spanish besides cerveza) and i got along like gangbusters (that saying makes absolutely no sense whatsoever).

the only problem is that our dogs dont understand spanish. or english apparently either. though, through the tried and true method of trial and error, they did learn that the paint can is not chicken flavored and owner lady (me) gets pretty pissed when there are oatmeal (paint color) colored footprints on the hardwoods.

moving on.

we scored some carolina panthers tickets as guests of a friend that bid (probably too much) in a charity auction. cam newton? club seats? yes please.

lets everyone stop for a moment and 1-agree that panther blue/teal/hint of aqua is a hell of a hard color to match and 2-give me some props for trying. unless you are 'modern family cam' you dont usually have it. on purpose that is.

two good things happened this day. one. our friend somehow managed to expense the entire thing because bobby is technically one of his customers. that meant free beer. oh and there was a krispy kreme right in the stadium. maybe i should have listed that one first.

the panthers lost. and i might have made a big scene hollering at the "around the league" hi light reel that showed the steelers tied with cinnci. i mean, i had the inside track on the game and the broadcast was clearly behind. and i felt obligated to let the crowd know that, in fact, the steelers were ahead by 7. call me the messenger of truth. and dont think i didnt get a couple of hi-fives.

so about a week ago i got together with neo to craft some posters for our friend doing her first ironman. yes, glitter was involved. quite a lot actually. and yes, after the ironman's husband stopped by he may or may not have gone home to his ironman wife looking like he spent some time with a cheap hooker.

in other news i feel compelled to shake my head at.

lets not fool ourselves. i will be the first one out of here. i dont run intervals on the track for nothing.

and if you're still scratching your head about the apple header. deal with it. i went rogue today.

lingo bingo

2011-11-11T11:18:00.030-05:00

is anyone else sick to death of the corporate 'isms that basically say nothing because they are completely beaten to death (perhaps like a dead horse?)

its no wonder that american businesses are going in the crapper. people are too busy trying to get a seat at the table to align their synergy and accomplish key initiatives by EOD. excuse me, i need to bang my head against something hard.

luckily. some of my more forward thinking coworkers found the answer. and i got a nice gift out of it.
not knowing the edges of offensiveness, i wont reveal some of my favorites, but "shit donkey" comes to mind... hours of fun kids. hours.

next topic. football. did you really think it was AT ALL avoidable?

we flew up to pgh to see them whoop on the pats. it was beautiful. the game, not the flight. lets just say bobby read an entire book and i have 8 new facebook friends. it was a LONG day of cancelled flights.
this was outside philly. the remnants of the freak snowstorm that f'd up the east coast. thanks.

we did make it and to the game. might i add it was 34 degrees. thats COLD people. especially when you got on the plane it was 76. great to catch up with my brother. we four partnered up for a game of flip cup.

and of course there was beer pong. good day. muchas gracias to our lovely hosts.

finally made it into the game and i likely didnt shut up for 4 full quarters. though i will make a plea to the folks at heinz field.. as much as we LOVE the renegade song and clips, its PROVEN that our D will give up a big play immediately following. i've seen it EVERY time. so come on. play it when it doesnt count so much. really. i'm begging you.

i came across this and i LOVE it.
ive entitled it "suck it tom".

our buddy marty celebrated his big four oh. and all he got was this stupid plate on the ceiling. sheeeesh.. (errr ok .... he ONLY had to drink 200 different beers to earn it...).

i also flew to ny. at 6 am. that my friends is a BAD idea. i mean there are bad ideas then there is a 6 am flight. totally different level. i did manage to find some time to see central park in the day light. and pop into some shops...

who doesnt want to smell like that? i mean i'm thinking if you combine these two you get Cirrhosis of the liver....(yep had to google how to spell that one)

and then it was time to celebrate marty's bday again. lucky SOB.

what better than to see the foo fighters. oh yes. yes. yes. yes. it was awesome. they played for THREE hours. excellent show.

maybe one of these days i'll actually write something with meaning and depth. or jeez, about triathlon. eh, maybe not.

winner winner chicken dinner

2011-10-26T09:22:00.014-04:00

feeling lucky today?

game number one:

one of these lovely ladies is seven months pregnant. can you guess which one? its similar to the shell game where you have a snow ball's chance in hell to get it right. because lets be honest, NO ONE looks it. as evidenced by my coworker who actually said "you're joking right?"

game number two:

guess which of these i had at the fair....if you said "fried oreos" you are correct! if you said: "a rough nite in the tummy dept" you might also be correct! other acceptable answers include: "how is it they are able to fry a fruity beverage" OR "we should have made better rules after the civil war so things like this and dollywood wouldnt happen".

bonus round:

this is the award winning biggest pumpkin. tell me how many times gallagher would have to hit it with a sledge hammer to get it to really spew. (and if you dont know who gallagher is, your world is sad).

next:

this is a two parter... first predict the winner of this game. Then, if you said steelers you get to play again!(if you said the pats i hate you and you are not my friend.and i curse you.) now tell me how many beers will be consumed at our tailgate*.
*beer pong is involved.

if you've made it this far, congratulations for having NOTHING to do today.

lastly, this is a multiple choice question....

thanks for playing. i hope it is not too obvious that i'm pretty low on material these days.....

normal

2011-10-17T14:08:00.022-04:00

today i was told i was normal. and i wasnt happy about it. not that i'm some left wing idealist who needs to feel separation and superiority from the general population. nope. far from that.

i've been feeling off. for a while. while the details are not important, the future is. and i'd like to figure out what beat i'm missing.

you might find yourself at this point saying 'jeez, could you be any more cryptic'. well in fact yes i could. but i came to this party a little late and missed the hammering home of the definition of "public domain". meaning people read this shit. so with all due respect, i'll stay vague and perhaps just throw in more comedy bits to make up for it. sound ok?

so lets skip to dessert.

i was in the ladies room today, doing the business. and as i was toweling my hands a co-worker came in. we exchanged pleasantries and i headed out. but then as she clicked closed her latched door, she proceeded to ask me a project related question that unfortunately required a rather lengthy response. ummmmmmmmmmm.

maybe its my fault for not bolting out. or did i give her the green light by saying "hi how are you?" does that open the gates for a full on meeting in the lavatory? is anyone else cringing right now?

so heres a thing. anyone seen that show on CBS called two broke girls? i did. and i regret the 10 minutes wasted. during the game yesterday the station mentioned it was the number one show on tv. with what audience i had to wonder? surely no one with a brain who resides in an english speaking country. who knows.. maybe its better dubbed in french.

i am way excited for a little running road trip. looks like i'm heading down to the big easy for some fun and games. that is shaping up to be a good one.

i'm racing again this weekend. a little trail thing here local. a friend who actually is from pgh who lives her now won it last year averaging something stupid like 545 min miles. my plan is to not fall.

i'm loving reading the full reports from kona and seeing all the photos. hawaii is such an amazing place. and for one split second it made me want to do an ironman.

i stole this off the internet. from the guy who did the cool steve jobs tribute logo. its pretty cool.

the most wonderful time of the year

2011-10-11T10:52:00.015-04:00

yep football. so happy.

this weekend we made the pilgrimage to knoxville. for some down home southern fried football.

to say its loud here is like saying will and kate had a big wedding.

here's madison. she likes to stick her head where it is convenient to be scratched.

and today its raining.

lets drink about it

2011-10-05T13:58:00.016-04:00

words to live by. at least when you are 26.

my old friend matt taught me that. he also taught me:

russian bar owners in NYC will open up to a scragggly bunch of crazies at 4am

when little brothers get kicked out of bars it simply means its time to find a new bar

pretending you work for the IOC has more perks than actually doing it

the ability to hold a somewhat coherent conversation with strangers can sometimes lead to a wedding

he's been gone for a few years now. and i'm alot more behaved. neither is good.

As my tri-less life comes more into balance these days, thoughts for sure turn into 'whats next'.

but in the meantime, while i try to convince bobby we need a beach get a way (st Martin anyone??) in preparation for the holidays...he counters with the fact i burned his vacation quota on the Kilimanjaro trip...bah humbug i say.

i give you these bits to ponder...

David stern has announced some cancellation of the nba season. anyone care? anyone? maybe now TNT can carry some quality programming instead of nets v magic. (wow i'm amazed i just named two nba teams. right? arent they?)

i heard a little nugget talking about if Jesus was alive today... would for sure be interesting.. would he be on the cover of US Weekly with headlines about "the saviour" haircut sensation? would there be chatter about him wearing the same robe to last years oscars? would he and penn get in a twitter spaz about who actually invented the water to wine trick?

tosh.o is one funny m*f'ckr.

i've been a bit down lately with some yucky stuff. one BBM* message later and i was reminded that "geez kari, you and i skied down the road in the commons. did the walk of shame on parents weekend. sat five across in the explorer for half the east coast. how much worse can it be". true that. *BBM=black berry messenger for all of us who milk the work phone for all its got.

my resume is full of things i'm mostly good at but alot hate doing. my chair at work swivels and spins. awesome.

modern family is the best thing on tv right now. case in point:
Dylan: I don’t think we’d like the same music.
Cam: Because I’m gay and only like show tunes?
Dylan: Because you’re old.
Cam: Well, that hurt more, Dylan.

madonna will be singing at the super bowl this year. i guess they figure if there is a wardrobe malfunction, the general consensus will be "seen it already"

i'm back to run focus. and it feels good. or rather not swimming feels not bad...in the market for a nice fall half and then maybe some trail stuff in the new year.

peace.

(who says that. lame).

the only way

2011-09-27T11:32:00.018-04:00

i know for sure what time it is these days is to consult my phone. it has the ability to automatically adjust for the proper time zone. i do not.

they say when you have a near death experience your life flashes before your eyes. as evidenced in the photos below, i will likely be hoping the slide show isnt very long.

this is me in the luxembourg gardens in paris. some of us literally snuck away from work to see the city in the light of day.

i admit i stole this, but it shows the type of things we find funny while trapped at the shows. all. day. long. i mean nothing says fresh (in a YO! MTV raps sort of way)like a baby on skates.

i love this.to me its saying "get this f'ing cotton shirt off of me"

oh yes all you jealous folks. i spent my birthday in paris. here it is. champagne in plasic cups. but only one glass in accordance with company policy.

the actual party was in montmarte. best. mojito. ever. ever. previous paris birthdays have been celebrated with an armenian key board player, but this time we thought we'd upgrade to posh. it worked.

i took this on my last night. its the view we have of the... umm...ahhh....

this is my game watching buddy. seriously. bobby is usually in and out, and depending on the pitch of my screaming might come see what happened.

so thats it folks. thanks for all of the well wishes on my birthday, and for those of you who sent actual cards in lieu of face book, i applaud you.

and to my friend jen, THIS looks amazing and i would eat it in one bite. and i mean, who the hell thought there would be a blizzard in hakone that day.... lylt.

I get by with a little help from my friends

2011-09-15T21:37:00.025-04:00

Surely you know the next line....

I have a great grilled cheese story that might be appropriate here... But I'll refrain.

Supersized congrats to all the girls who killed it at ironman this weekend. You are amazing! I'm so happy to call you friends and sometimes chase you around on the bike! (jmw you know the madira canyon ride and double stuff played a major role in your podium!)

Ever feel like time passes and you are just not even present and accounted for? That's Been me. Bueller...bueller....?

A week ago I took off for the gulf coast. Honestly I wasn't entirely sure the exact spot on the globe I was headed, but hell that's why we have smart phones, providing us an utter lack of responsibility. How nice would it be, if some one was acting like an ass, you could simply pull out the battery and hard boot them.....

I was meeting Liz and her sister for a weekend of fun in the sun, and maybe a little racing...

I will now summarize.

Rollin in the impala. Lost in the hood. Killer hotel view. Weird drunk man roaming halls. FOOTBALL! Up at the crack. Unknown fried pig parts on breakfast buffet. Trashy magazine choice, Kim or Jen? Day at pool. Who needs SPF? Race check in. Holy shit fast looking folks. Who was dumb enough to drag wetsuit RD asks? Me me. Dinner a la italia. Race day. Nerves. i refuse to wear paper bracet. drama. Oh it's wetsuit legal you say? Water temp dropped ten degrees you say? F you I say. Mines still packed. gun bang. swim hard. get kicked. keep swimming. all alone. sharks? jellies? crap. out and on the bike. lets roll. chant "i am neo. i am neo". it works. dismount of glory, crowd cheers. i'm running. i'm good. fourth. fun. booze cruise cleverly disguised as dolphin sighting. cheap wine and new friends. thanks hall sisters.

holla!

i pack up my bike and bid a fond farewell. most of you share this same heartfelt passion for your kids, i like my ride. shut up. im on the next flight.

destination baltimore. home of the black birds and sight of an epic sunday match up. i got hooked up with some ridiculous seats. i admit heckling joe for 4 quarters helped to ease the pain. well that and some cold beverages.

attention ESPN: my level of depression only deepens as you continue to play that game over and over and over and over again. the fact that you follow it with tom brady highlights only twists the knife. must you do that? must you?

in other news my bike is home.

admit it. you're a sucker for a happy ending.

also, i'm back at work. cotton farmers hold your applause.

my major accomplishment for the week turns out to be my ability to keep my self-topped fro-yo cup under $3. my companion was not so lucky. she claims the bananas put it over the top, but i seem to remember some cheesecake under there....

this weekend i head to paris. dont start hitting your LIKE buttons quite yet. if you recall my time there is not unlike a 6 grade science class spent watching a filmstrip about mitosis. even if you were the one who got picked to advance the slides, there was still a zero chance of any fun. and if you were like me you got in trouble for doodling your lead pencil on the black table.

care to read a recap of my time there from a while ago? come on, everyone is doing it.

cheers.

picture pages

2011-08-30T11:50:00.025-04:00

anyone remember? with bill cosby and his magic singing pen called Mortimor Marker? i loved that. i loved that i thought he was talking directly to me. i was five. what can i say.

i got an email the other day saying your race photos are now online. that email should instead say "dont open this link unless you want to see very unflattering images of yourself" really. twenty bucks for me squinting and fat? no thanks. but i did steal one. just because it reminded me of the agony of that race.that run. the worst 6 miles ever. i showed it to bobby and he just said "ohhhhhhhh". and cringed just a bit.

thanks again for all the love after that race. the hugs, the texts, emails and calls. meant alot. we decided not to dwell and as one friend put it "f*** the race and go drink." um ok

anyway. my alternative to writing crap in this blog today is this:

so aside from the allure of eating paste, its not looking so good. so figured i would purge my phone of its contents. pay attention. i move around alot.

while in burlington it is obligatory to stop at ben and jerry's. even if its at 9 am on a sunday. trust me, ice cream still tastes good.

we met up with bobby in boston. he spent a day there himself (probably loved it better than with 3 girls cramping his style). here we are after dinner in the north end. he is so happy to be near me it kills him.

the three lovely ladies. 2 out of three are science nerds with PhDs who regularly insert words like "fibroplasia" and "myocardial" into general discussion. guess which one of us doesnt.

we went on the duck boat around boston. where they tell you to quack at the locals. i'm not sure it was exactly quacking the locals were saying back...

but it was fun and informative. and i dont remember a single fact except that Sam Adams was pretty bad ass.

the freedom trail is cool. though i found it most entertaining when the guide, had to "break character" to silence his cell.

there is an amazing tribute to the victims of the holocaust. since visiting Dachau, it takes on a whole new meaning.

fenway. i'm NOT a fan of boston sports teams in any way shape or form. but the history there is undeniable.

view from our NY office balcony. (yep stay with me kids).

NO. this is not me. i dont know the sick puppy who did this. but i do know a legal department (mine) that will fret over the fact that the circle r is not visable.

i met sadie. such a gorgeous little girl. but still capable of very un-lady like behavoir. ha. (sorry M. had to put that in there, it was priceless hearing you and N with her!)

on the way home from the track tonight i got gas and a snack. oh pretzel sandwich you are so delicious.

new england

2011-08-23T13:48:00.004-04:00

is an amazing place. so gorgeous. and probably holds the nicest people on the planet. here is a recap of the past week. i'm too tired to make jokes so anything funny i happen to say is not on purpose.

burlington is gorgeous. i was there years ago as a college student, all i remember from that trip is a diner and all the trouble we caused...

on the way up we stopped for dinner in NH near dartmouth. football was on tv. it was after all a sports bar. as i asked the guy to turn on the steelers game, it suddenly dawned on me i was in enemy territory.

it was so much fun to see so many familiar faces. Ange and Mary from recent Kona fame, cover girl Mary who doesnt just poke on facebook, Liz who was on call for any wheel drama, Wendy and Bob who we pal-ed around in budapest with, my fun teammates and some others who i didnt even know would be there.

the food was amazing. so fresh and some great combinations. lots of props to the local farmers.

did i mention how pretty it was. and cool? you think how amazing it would be to live there until the waiter tells us the average winter temperature is 3 degrees. yes. 3.

vermont is famous for two things. ice cream and cheese. how can that ever be bad.

my race started out great. PR in the swim (err well a PR for a well marked 1500 course). then it went down hill. i lost all my nutrition at mile 2 of the bike thanks to some divot in the road. i guess all the months of winter really wreak havoc up there. anyway i thought there was a water exchange but no. so i just rode hard and figured i would deal with it. got off the bike and was ready to tackle the run. excited for the course knowing it would be fast. after summiting the first and only (monster) climb i felt like i got punched in the stomach. i couldnt breathe and it hurt. and it didnt go away. everything just sort of seized up on me. so two things. first --TMS athlete Mollie - who is all of 18- was my biggest support out there on the run. here i was heaving in pain and she is encouraging me, trying to help, get me going - while in the race herself. the girl is what this sport is about. second- i ate a big plate of heartbreak. watching 30 or so girls pass me on the run was hard. really hard. BUT you gotta take the bad ones with the good ones. and move on.

a stop at ben and jerry's at 9 am on a sunday is not all that weird.

boston is amazing. we had the best time up there. did all the touristy stuff and just enjoyed the city.

i learned there were 2 other guys with paul revere.

and a good joke:

why does a can of boston baked beans only have 239 beans in it?
because one more would be "too faaaaaarty"

maybe if i think of fun things i will blog again. who knows.

oooops i did it again...

2011-08-16T14:47:00.003-04:00

just as i cannot seem to hate traveling enough, a flight to boston looms in my future. this weekend my trusty side kick kern and i will travel to vermont (via boston) for nationals. should be fun. we'll see old friends, eat good food, try not to get lost, and oh yea race. bobby decided to skip that fun and meet us in boston on the tail end for a few days. nice. we've signed up for a duck tour. yes. a tour aboard some sort of WWII hum-vee. shaped like, well, a duck. i'll bring my fanny pack.

in other news, i got the nod to represent NC in the best of the us tri this year. cool. so more travel.. hmmm....

i saw "the help" this weekend. good flick. different from the book which i liked better, but still worth seeing either way.

madison has learned a new trick, or maybe just suddenly realized she has use of her hind legs, and is now jumping up to the counter to snag food. its taken her 7 long years to put together the knowledge and the know-how for this. i'm not sure whether to be mad or content with her achievement.

i'm still sick. boo hoo. perhaps i've become immune to thera-flu after ingesting several quarts of it. i'm changing tactics and hoping for the best.

and oh yea. foot ball started. the world is right again.

take pity on me

2011-08-09T09:17:00.008-04:00

i'm sick.

WAH.

i had to go out to salt lake last week for work. what should have been a four hour flight turned into 17 hours of travel time. thru the day i held boarding passes to five, yes FIVE different cities. it was not fun.

i flew the red eye back and arrived yesterday morning. i have to say, having a head cold at 37000 feet is a bit unsettling. its a very strange and somewhat alarming feeling to not be able to pop your ears.

anyway. i might be a bit more chipper did i not have a 6 am flight to NY in two days. there are times when i do not like my job. at all.

here are some hi and low lites of the trip:

SLC has a beautiful out door LC pool. crisp mornings with the sun peeking over the mountains. as much as i'm not a fan of swimming this got me out of bed a few mornings!

99% of you have no idea what my actual job is. thats ok. neither do i. BUT this is where i spent my time, 10 hours a day to be exact. telling people how awesome cotton is.

this is what it all looks like.. hundreds of companies (columbia, brooks, clif, north face, merrel, prana, keen, etc.) all showing new product.

if you read Born to Run, then you know barefoot Ted. Caballo Blanco was also at the show. interesting guys. really nice.

last night we went to the bulls game.

thats all.

getting back up

2011-08-01T11:29:00.003-04:00

this weekend my race buddy extraordinaire KERN and i headed out east to compete in an oly tri. we had the usual pre-race day hazards to contend with:

*getting a bit lost and relying on the blue dot (iphone maps) to get us right again
*making peace with our lackluster conditions. i didnt tell her i found a bug in the bathroom until AFTER we checked out
*finding a dinner choice that we both are content with. in this case we settled on microwave meals and quiet hotel time. but that involved navigating a wal mart that was not short on wacko-s.
*negotiating a wake up call.
*trying to convince our selves that even though the out side temp was 97 and our room temp was 92 (at 9 PM) we were not going to die the following morning - or that night!

but all in all, if you are going to spend a solid 24 hours with someone, kern is a good choice.

so race day morning. we both felt good. it was a low key race and part of the FS series and you know they just do a good job. we knew alot of the people on the staff and racing with us so it was just that homey good vibe.

though to say the day was disgusting was an understatement. it was HUMID.
capital H-U-M-I-D.

the water felt good at 82 degrees. refreshing! anyway. i swam pretty well. though by myself. too slow for the lead group but no one else around me. i felt pretty strong and moved up through the earlier waves well. thought my sighting was pretty spot on.

i'm getting good at transition finally. not a whole lot of fumbling around. off on the bike.

for the most part i was rolling. no one was passing me and i felt strong moving along. at one point a girl went by me and i made it my goal to keep her in my sight. about 18 miles in i hit a bit of a wall and had to fight pretty hard to keep things status quo. i'm still getting schooled on the corners. that kills me.

anyway, with about a mile left we turn back into the park. my "follow that girl" girl is about a minute ahead. i remember something that i read about - dont slow down when you come back in, the race is still happening with that last mile or so on the bike. so i keep at it. and from the left i see this white-ness. its a big van. he is pulling out ahead of me into the intersection. he comes out part way, stops, then goes forward to the middle and STOPS again. WTF. its too late. i ran smack into him. no brakes, no swerve. no time. jesus.

i wasnt badly hurt. nothing broken. the guy drove away. i peddled back into transition in a bit of a daze and put my shoes on and started the run. about a mile or so into it, i guess the whole ordeal hit me. that was the end of the day for me.

i'm thankful it wasnt worse-- as i've seen and heard about too many people being hit on their bikes and breaking legs and worse, losing their life. and i feel a bit silly for walking away and still being freaked out about the whole thing.

i plan to get back on my bike today and ride around a bit. we'll see.

thanks to my teamates and FS staff and heather (!) at the race for giving me some comfort (esp heather for telling that pesky "here's an ice pack!" lady to F off. ha!). and for the encouragement and patience these past 2 days from friends. i guess we all deal with this stuff differently.

its been a while...

2011-07-28T15:43:00.009-04:00

here is july.

went to pittsburgh for my mom's retirement and caught the bucs playing. its been half a lifetime since they were good. the city is absolutely buzzing.

spent the 4th of july at the beach doing alot of this.

went to fl to celebrate my grandpa's 99th.

i raced in charlotte. fun stuff. and my new "yikes! pull your elbows in while running" photo.

i made some amazing banana bread.

i somehow make it to work.. some days even on time...(no this is NOT my view. it is a made up photo of cotton. cotton doesnt grow in gorgeous places next to pretty ponds).

i have no need for an aparatus of this kind.

a week in pictures

2011-07-12T11:30:00.007-04:00

errr well, a summed up week with a few random shots. i've turned from super camera happy to either getting one pic of nothing or stealing from others.

if we are true to the title and go back one week that would start with the aquathon. a night that brought thunder and lightening and very dark clouds... and marty saying "eh, lets get 'er done". it actually was a fun race. the swim was short enough for me to not hate it, and the run gave me the opportunity to win back those lost yards. my super secret strategy paid off.

it was a fun night that ended at Tylers for some food and laughs.

neo actually didnt mind that we were smelly and gross.

friday bobby and i flew up to pittsburgh. i ran a 10k saturday morning in washington pa. there were lots of locals (i was likely the only one who mailed in my registration...) and a bunch of kids from the HS cross country team. nice. i didnt know the course at all. but when the race director was trying to describe it and i heard groans and more groans, i knew it would be ugly. and it was. when the gun went off my only hope was to hang on with some young'ins who actually knew where they were going. hilly doesnt even begin to describe this course. i could have skied down some of them.

me and my mom and bobby after the race. i ended up winning and bobby laughed at me the whole rest of the day for the way i "broke" the tape.

that night we went to the pirates game. its a gorgeous ball park. and well since the bucco's are actually winning (something they havent done since kurt cobain was alive...) it was a sellout. good times, but the crowds are quite a bit less rowdy than a steeler game. something i do enjoy. afterwards there was a fantastic fireworks display while .38 special (you so do remember them) played a few of their 'new' hits.

this is the roberto clemente bridge with teh ball park to the right.

sunday we celebrated my mom's retirement. woo woo. mine is immenient as well. perhaps sooner than one might anticipate....

we landed back in RDU at 130 am after getting stuck in philly. i hate philly.

kure beach

2011-06-27T11:53:00.009-04:00

there was much discussion as to the pronunciation of our destination. it was one of those weird NC places (i swear this state has more exceptions to every rule..)
for example:

Kerr lake. think it rhymes with fur? nope its CAR lake. wtf.
Corolla. think its pronounced like the car? nope its cor-ALL-a
and now KURE beach. one would think it to be like the indian spice, curry, but NO. its CURE.

whatever.

so a bunch of us went down for the long weekend, marty and his three wives, bobby and jimmy for the fun and carniage.

first weekend stop was brek-essert at this place:

i HIGHLY recommend the banana bread french toast. wow. bobby got it and i ate as much as possible.

afternoon spent at the beach. we "practiced" some beach starts, and i promptly realized i am not cut out for wave dodging. while kern was aptly dolphin diving i thought the crouch and let it pass approach best suited me. after swallowing a gallon of salty mess, i determined that sunday's race would be less fun than originally thought.

we went out for a good old italian dinner that night and while our waiter was young and hot, he was lacking in the brains category. more than a few times we found our selves saying "awwww, he's not so smart".

***here is the conversation*** note this was pilfered from another blog.. GASP!

Bobby: "Do you have any microbrews?"
Waiter: "Micro whats?"
Bobby: "Microbrews."
Waiter: "Uhhhhh. I've never heard of that."
Marty: "Small commerically made beer from the US..."
Waiter: "Huh! I don't know what that is and I'm a bartender!"
Me: "Craft beer?"
Waiter: "Draft beer! Yeah! We have draft beer!"

the boys hit the bar for some wings and beer and us girls went direclty to the squiggles ice cream shop.

sunday morning came early. but our hotel was right near the race start and we rode over in a few seconds. it was a bit weird for me, yea kinda confusing since this was the first time i did this race. here is the low down:

swim 400m in the ocean, run up the beach to T1, get your shoes (leave your goggles and cap), run 1.5 miles to T2, get on your bike and ride 12 miles, go back to T2, get your shoes and run 1.5 miles back to T1, get your goggles and cap and RUN DOWN THE BEACH (yes we had to run more down the beach to the swim start) and then swim 400m back to the finish.

there was some confusion. do i need to wear my race belt on the run? do i leave my shoes in the sugar sand or up on the road. how much time do i spend getting sand off my feet before putting on running shoes. all of these questions remained un answered for me and unfortunately i had to solicit advice MID RACE. ha. oh well.

here are some pics from the race.

swim start. this actually went some what smooth for me. i was of course trying to run as far as i could and the field got away from me. and my water exit was nothing out of bay watch. its freakin hard to high knee out of the ocean especially when you keep falling down.... i was for sure schooled by some steller exits.

this is how i felt after the swim.. very pouty!

off on the run. with sandy feet, and i swear i put my shoes on the wrong feet...stuck with the boys around me.

and went off on the bike. only passed by 2 AG guys so that is a win for me. second best bike split too. those IOS rides are starting to work. the best part of the bike (as least specator wise) was the 180 degree U turn at transition to go back out on the second loop. it was TIGHT, one lane to preform this balancing act. and so much pressure from the fans to NOT take a foot out to "tap, tap, tappy tap" on the ground. i came up here, slowed and took a foot out, BUT DID NOT TOUCH THE GROUND. HA. i could hear everyone (ok mainly bobby, bri and jimmy) saying OHHHHHHHHHHHHH watch that foot.. and i rode away in triumph with my fist pumping saying 'oh yea!'

second run was uneventful. we went thru a neighborhood and one guy and his daughter had turned on their hose and were spraying the competitors. oh man. that was likely the best feeling of the race.

i caught kern in T1 (or is it T3?) and we ran down the beach together. i totally hammed it up telling the crowd that i was going to take her in the water. that I GOT THIS. little did they know that we both knew she would of course out swim me.

it was a good day for the IOS team. us girls managed the top three spots. and we had some guys on the men's podium as well. marty took the masters win.

fun weeekend at the beach.

BOONE goes the dynamite

2011-06-22T13:57:00.007-04:00

a bunch of us (does 19 constitute a bunch? or a gaggle) headed west to boone nc last weekend for a little riding, a little running and a lot of fun. kern and i left together early evening and managed to fill the entire back of my truck with stuff. there were a few essentials to bring- bikes, little debbie, vodka, clothes, gu, and heathers cooler. the same cooler i brought home from boone last year. the same cooler that made its way to neo, and then found heather only to be left once again with kern..and now finally is making the return journey to boone. funny how that sucker had to go three hours west to refind its owner.

the drive up was good. we always have tons to talk about. we stopped at subway for dinner and kern got into a rather legnthy discussion about the decision by corporate to discontinue the (i think) strawberry cheesecake cookies. i learned more about the inner workings of a subway franchise than maybe the average person should know. thanks for shedding so much light on that topic.

after a bout of heavy rain, we finally made it to the blue ridge parkway. only to find a blanket of fog had descended on the road. visability was about oh 4 inches and it was rather scary knowing that the road just kind of fell off on either side.

we finally found the house and discovered a party going on. i was shocked! (ok not really). lots of hellos and hugs and catch ups. finally to bed with strict orders for rolling out at 8 am.

waking up at camp to a full breakfast spread, including 2 kinds of eggs and pancakes is every girls dream. (errrr maybe just mine). we all fueled up and about 12 of us headed out on a ride toward the viaduct. we were lucky to have a great sag guy Andre, whos a cat 1 rider. serious stuff. we got some really good climbing in and an awesome ride over the viaduct.

there is a pretty sweet downhill coming off grandfather mountain. its just long and straight and goes on for about 4 miles.

back home to eat and get ready for a run. we managed about 5 miles on the greenway.

we loved lou (cari's husband) out riding and running with us. he jokes that he would be 4th over all elite female at the camp. great guy.

that night was more of the same crazy chaos. just a great dinner. lots of wine and some fun people to hang out with. oh and we went thru 2 tubs of ice cream faster than charlie sheen goes thru hookers. we also managed to spend a bit of time teaching some of our more "senior" campers how to actually use facebook.

friday morning brought another ride lead by 2 amazing collegiate cyclists. i spent some time watchign them, their cadence is always super high and they just look like the bikes are extensions of their bodies. so cool.

we hit the pool for a swim, a 25 m saline pool. god that felt good to get that workout over with!

friday night brought out the bartenders. baby guiness shots and purple hooters were on the menu. couple that with birthday cake and its a pretty darn good time.

sat we went out to bass lake to run up a pretty big hill. running a continuous 5 miles UP is not so easy. but the view at the top, where you can actally climb the fire tower is pretty awesome. the cruel part is that the hill gets steeper as you go up.

after a solid 11 mile run, we were down to four and one guy said - lets do strides. UMMM WTF. so in all my stupidity i followed him in 100m increments of trying to bust out to 5th gear. oh what a feeling.

follow that up with a little afternoon in blowing rock. ice cream, pizza, good coffee and soda. the perfect post run picnic.

we had planned a swim that afternoon but a huge storm blew thru and the pool closed. dang it. so not much choice but to start the festivities.

at some point it was decided we would hit this bar (i have no clue what its called) merely due to the fact it had a DJ. upon further investigation (thank you iphone) it was announced that tonight was roller derby night. oh lord. i will give a shout out to our DD, who i think was likely scared she was going to have to make a side trip to the ER when one of us shot our mouth off and ended up with a kicked ass... (didnt happen, phew!).

the night started out.... and then... well.... i cannot even begin to describe the craziness. the things that happened, the words that were said, the state we were in. i'm chalking this one up to a good time. if you DO want to hear the stories i'm more than happy to tell. just making them public might maybe not be in everyone's best interest! ha.

camp was awesome. i'm so lucky to have these amazing friends who also happen to like to run, bike and swim. there is nothing like knowing you have a solid group around you to make life pretty darn good.

weekend recap

2011-06-13T09:39:00.007-04:00

phew!

maria's shower was amazing. straight out of real simple magazine. she's just the same sweet, funny, caring person she has always been, now just add mom to that list.

out that night to try to find the UFC fight, (obviously not my idea) and ended up at this fun bar in cary. and heard this guy. **sorry upload not working*** picture an old country dude singing acoustic... "its a great day to kick somebody's ass"

sunday early was the jordan lake one mile swim. then 60 miles on the bike. then bobby and i went out to blue hill farm for the afternoon with the dogs. they played in the lake while he harvested lavender. madison ate an entire bag of bacon treats because it was the only way i could keep her content and still and let me rest instead of running around the farm with 2 dumb dogs. note this lasted (ie the treats) for about 8 minutes. she doesnt chew.

now i'm tired.

Kerr Lake

2011-06-05T17:49:00.013-04:00

i decided to jump in the kerr lake race. its a really great oly about an hour from home. even though BOTH times i've done it the swim has been long.....

they added an open wave to the race this year. i'm still not sure how i feel about this wave. depending on who and how many, you can be racing by yourself the entire time. thats NO fun. anyway on to the race...

the swim looked long to start with. turns out it was WAY long and getting longer as one of the buoys had come undone.

i love this picture for 2 reasons. first i (on the right)acutally look like a good swimmer. sweet. and second, i'm swimming right next to alicia parr. how often can i say that? :) my problem on the swim started when (according to bobby watching on shore) "you were swimming fine, a bee line to the first buoy when all of a sudden you took a hard right...". WTF. i need a black line in the lake...

i swam 90% of the race with the dude behind me and we finally caught no shirt guy around the last buoy.

here i am running by feeling good off the swim (had the stars aligned?) even though it was WAY longer than 1500.

i will say my transitions rocked. in and out. and off on the bike. i was testing out a new front 808.

i felt OK on the bike. a few guys passed me but other wise i was all alone. it started raining, like pelting drops, and i was actually shocked, having not looked at the weather i was not expecting that at all. oh yea, i almost got hit by a truck. the first big intersection was unmanned. our direction had stop signs and the cross traffic did not. i rolled up to the intersection expecting a volunteer or police. nada. good thing i slowed as a monster pickup was flying thru. i screached and nearly skidded to a stop. yikes.

heading out on the run i felt pretty good. it was nice to pass back a few of the guys who blew by me. nothing spectacular time wise, but a solid run. good enough to put me 2nd OA.

notice my horrific running form. perhaps i need to work on that chicken wing cross over a bit.. huh?

congrats to alicia - who KILLED it yesterday. she had the lead for the entire race. as in she beat all the men (well except one guy). awesome.

thanks sherpa.

and in "thats gross" news. i finally ordered one of those soft chip bands and will no longer be using the hog ties they give you. this is acually worse than it looks. and yes my feet are tore up from my flats.. but only in that one spot...

aqua-thon

2011-06-02T10:11:00.003-04:00

The sport of aquathlon consists of a continuous, two-stage race involving swimming followed by running.

in otherwords: torture. especially when temps are topping out at 100 and the humidity level is fluctuating somewhere between gross and palpable.

i have been working hard on my swimming over the past say 7 months. its coming along. maybe not at mock speed, but more like lazy river speed. i thought i signed up for the overnight improvement program, but apparently that is only in session when hell freezes over.

the event was old school. and it was awesome. so laid back. what all races should be. instructions included - swim around the lake, put your shoes on, run on the trail, then turn around and run back. easy.

the question became do you warm up for this? being a newbie aqua-thon-er i just kinda did what others did. little jog. little swim.

the water by the way, was 90 degrees. not kidding. there were cool spots here and there that maybe some of us sort of slowed down to relish, but over all the kind of water you might enjoy on a cold winters night, not the beginning of June.

with 70+ racers at the start it was a bit chaotic. i dont have the speed to get out in front of everyone so i tend to get caught up quite a bit in arms and legs and inevitably end up trying to get a piggy back from some unfortunate person.

the swim was two loops (800m) and i swam ok. the first pack was way ahead. beat my by a solid 2-3 minutes. YIKES! grrrr.....

though i will say my transition rocked. up and out and shoes on and gone. makes it a whole lot easier when there is so little to do.

out on the run i felt like frying bacon. it was disgusting. but i wanted to try to push the pace to see how i could go. my heart rate must have been 200, i guess the bike can sometimes give you a bit of relief and allow you time to maybe calm down. but not tonight. no bike :( bad for me as i tend to use that as my catch up. i worked hard on the <3 mile run and passed a few girls.

bobby was working the water stop and when i went by him he didnt say anything to me (he claims different but um, i was there..). nice. so on the return i yelled "helloooooo bobby!" he was none too thrilled. just shakes his head and pretends not to know me. i kinda wish he would have thrown water at me or something...

anyway i ended up gettig my first ever swim (though sort of cheating as it was combined with a run) award. 4th OA, 1st AG and only about 90 seconds off the winner. decent.

the race..

2011-05-31T10:55:00.003-04:00

Thank you to everyone who helped us out with donations and came to support us at the race. We held a good lead until disaster struck.. not one but TWO flats on the bike. Unfortunately that took us out of the race. We still finished (umm duh, the last leg was dessert!) and had a great morning with great friends!!

we did make the paper, both durham and raleigh :)

la isla bonita

2011-05-24T14:50:00.010-04:00

i spent the weekend in the keys. it was glorious. was it because i wasnt at work? was it because i was with two very good friends? was it because the weather was perfect? ummm YES.

gorgeous views at dinner

great talks about now, then and of course later.

snacks by the pool

a little tennis (actually it was ball chasing, yelling explatives and sweating)

more sunsets and fruity drinks

fireworks at the full moon party (never mind we never actually saw a moon, let alone a FULL one.. details..)

kayaking on the clearest water i've seen in a long time. gorgeous.

gelato on the beach. does it get any better?

fun stuff.

i didnt do it.

2011-05-17T09:02:00.004-04:00

yesterday called for a pool workout. i'm not always, um, excited to get to the pool. and admit that even through the warm up i'm usually grumbling about swimming. sorry, but i just will never love it.

but.

i will do it. and do my best at it. yesterday i fell short. on the workout was sets of 200s on 2:xx pace. actually under that pace. i swam my ass off. each one. and came up slow each time. 2 seconds, 1 second. but never securely below that pace. dang it.

but.

six months ago i couldnt make the 200 interval on a time that was 11 seconds slower. so there is progress. thats my motivation.

i like to think maybe i'm a little like this guy.

doing something each day to get just a little bit better.

(*humor me people. with another step AWAY from a 2011 nfl season i am desperate. am wishing DWTS would last just a little bit longer. )

BARON BATCH
i fumbled (yes another football reference) onto this blog. he's the steelers 7th round pick. a running back. but this kid has alot more to offer us than just yards. all i can say is WOW.

about time

2011-05-13T15:06:00.014-04:00

last weekend i went down to whitelake. here is the recap in photos.

driving into white lake is like taking doc browns delorian right into 1972. not much has changed. including our motel. the town is kinda like summer camp. with a hint of dirty dancing movie thrown in.

our room had this couch in it.

with a pattern that gave us deja-vu

upon arrival the first priority was to eat cake.

then we stayed up and talked like 12 year olds before falling asleep. or sort of. it was one of those night where you only knew you slept cause you had dreams but you really didnt feel like you slept. up at 430 am to race. not me though, i was sherpa-ing that day.

my goal was to out sherpa bri. i was doing GREAT until this happened.

drat.

the swim was cancelled so we set up camp right at the bike exit and caught everyone running out.

with some time to kill we chatted up some friends.

after everyone came in off the bike we headed out to the turn around on the run. i had a difficult time choosing the right spectating outfit.

how cute are they.

we hung out by the lake and had pizza

then we got up the next morning and did it again. this time i raced.

good swim (though please tell me it was long!), good bike (stupid penalty dropped me to 4th), and then didnt get it together on the run. come on noggin, gotta get in the game!

good fun weekend.

my grandpa

2011-05-05T09:56:00.002-04:00

is turning 99 this year. imagine. just for a minute. the things he has seen in his lifetime. the changes. the firsts. the no mores.

he built the panema canal. graduated from carnegie mellon (in pgh) in 1933. drank beer on warm afternoons with his neighbors. actually finishes the crossword.

this is my little bro, mom and me visting him in tampa last christmas.

my mom shared a little story with me the other night and well i just loved it. wanted to remember it. maybe you will like it too.

my grandpa loves music. the old stuff. the big band stuff. the kind of music that guys would ASK you to dance to. he plays CDs on his BOSE all the time. recently he has been added to the activity schedule (PSA- dont worry about getting old. you will get to live in these retirement communities that are utopian.) on sundays at 1 pm you can attend 'easy listening with forrest'. thats great i say. apparently its a packed room. BUT the side note is - the nurses suggested he be put on the schedule because they had found on more than one occiasion a congregation of people in his room listening to his music. most of that congregation being female.

scraps

2011-04-29T13:58:00.003-04:00

we joined a CSA. i'm super excited. its a farm just out side of raleigh. and the lady who runs it is amazing. can you imagine...a fresh from the ground basket of stuff every week. and fresh flowers too. awesome.

this week has had some intensity to it. workout wise. but its been good. at the track on tuesday i ran 400 splits i havent seen in a very long time. so that is encouraging. i did screw up my back - likely from crappy formed parallel dips... and have had some limited movement in the pool but it seems to be coming around OK now.

i would now like to point out an example of the principle difference between me and 99% of the female population. instead of waking up at 5 am to watch the royal wedding i stayed up till midnight to see who the steelers chose in teh draft. my priorities are totally on straight.

and finally. The Office. Steve's last episode. i actually cried. he is the heart of that show and i cannot see it staying funny. when sabre bought them it got a little rocky. but they hung tough. maybe i just am not a will farrel on tv fan. guess i'll stick to the reruns.

weekend update

2011-04-25T10:38:00.006-04:00

this weekend was easter. (keep reading for more things you already know). we took off mid day friday and headed to the beach. we put my bike and golf clubs in the car then shoved the dogs in next to them.

"its only three hours. they'll live" says bobby. easy for you to say. your head is not poking in a butt the entire time. anyway, they were fine. unharmed and fed well along the way (bananas and rice chips). the usual at the beach. nice meals, long walks and some good riding. the roads are generally pretty quiet down there, and most drivers are respectful. tends to be more running after you dogs than one would like, but a little speed work never hurts.

my little bro was down at myrtle on his spring break. as a teacher, not a student, BIG difference. they got drunk at a piano bar vs a tiki bar. see, classy. we met them for dinner.

good times. i went running sunday morning. and felt like i was in hell. it was HOT. and no one was near me to get me a glass of ice water. see hell. for sure.

i ate these all weekend. they are like crack. i will need an intervention in the immediate future. weening myself off of them is such a lie. cold turkey is the way to go.

and now its back to work. my excitement is surely palpable. oh what a feeling.

a decade

2011-04-21T10:45:00.002-04:00

ago. on this day. i went to a celebrity golf tournament with some guy i just met. at a bar. when his (drunk) friend fell onto our table. an auspicious start. and a very unlikely place for a first date. jim mcmahon was the big draw that day. superbowl shuffle past his prime. i guess it all turned out ok. proves you never know which day will be the game changer.

falls lake race report.

2011-04-18T10:23:00.005-04:00

second year doing this early season race. second year i cursed myself (and mother nature) at the start. swore off triathlon and wished oh so dearly i was back in bed. a year ago temps were in the high 40s. it was COLD. cold enough that the 60 degree water felt awesome. this year the dopplar called for intense storms, hail, torrential down pours and oh yea, tornados. not only should we not have been outside, we should have been huddled in a closet with a week worth of water and canned goods. anyway.
turns out we got lucky. the winds were certainly gusty and quite ripping. but only spurts of rain and no thunder.

i am a scare-dy cat on the bike. i get frazzled easily and dont trust myself. something i'm working on this year. and this day was my worst nightmare. but on saturday morning i decided to buck up and stop being such a pansy. and as a friend of mine told me "fucking ride kari". haha (sorry if that offends you).

anyway - i triumphed on the swim. only mildly panicking for the first say 2-3 minutes. but unlike last year, i was able to at least keep moving forward while i controlled my heart rate and shallow breath. once i got going i felt so good. (WTF good on a swim, who am i ?) but i was moving well, and started passing the guys in the wave before me. my sighting needs work, but i navigated the chop pretty well. the swim HAD to be short as i was surely not setting a PR that day, but still moving in the right direction pace wise.

the bike. oh the bike (i'll skip the part where i couldnt get my wetsuit off and didnt recognize my bike...). so out on the course. i just wanted to start passing people. start racing. i wont lie and say i miraculously became this awesome tour rider. no way. but i did put my head down and rode. i was in aero when i could and sat up when it got too hairy. i think i spent about 60% of the time wiht one arm in areo and the other grabbing the handle bar. so i call that a win. i learned that singing dumb songs to myself actaully make me feel safer.. or maybe they just take my mind away from the task at hand. wanna know the song that got me thru being blown across the road? "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands". yep. say what you will. some of the sketchy parts i thought were sketchy last year didnt bother me so much this year. again. progress. i made up some time on the bike.

coming into T2 i was just so thankful that nothing went wrong, i rode OK and was ready for the run. however my legs were not. maybe i was so tense on the bike they were in over drive.. but i shuffled for a good bit (Too long!) on that run. finally i was like - enough! start running. ha! and i did. kind of. first place was pretty far ahead, but at the turnarounds i saw there were several girls coming fast! it was NOT a pretty 10k at all. but got the job done. ended up second. its early. and now i know i have some work ahead.

it was a good day out there (who knew!) and i was happy to be racing in my ETTT uniform for the first time. people on this team are so NICE and supportive. i really love it.

after the race we were walking back to transition and the skies opened up! yikes!

here is me and alysia getting our post race grub on.

some teammates... it was all we could round up - the others were smart enough to go home and get warm and dry!!

action, action, we want action.

2011-04-13T15:00:00.005-04:00

so i finally got around to downloading my movies from africa. with a brand new camera...only took me about 4 days to learn how to use it properly. most of the early stuff was footage of bobby's leg or the truck seat.. lovely. i did manage two great clips of the safari (thank god!) the first is the baby zebra, just born, you can see how shaky his legs are..
the second are some african (really? DUH) elephants. so beautiful.
now a little peek into my life. and well you all know that i go on these crazy trips for work and i think about half of you actually believe i work on them. here is proof. this is about the 8th take of me trying to do a sound byte for our moisture management technology. the reason for the trip. (imagine me trying to coach others on what to say ... didnt happen very well...) keep in mind this was taken at 15000 feet, i havent showered in about 4 days and i obviously have no professional acting career ahead of me.
and finally. my only footage from the summit. you can hear me panting. trying to breathe. it was gorgeous though. just before day break. on top of the world.

its a beautiful day

2011-04-07T14:36:00.005-04:00

and i tried to capture it... not so easy (or safe!) in a moving vehicle.. just a little bit of cheer up in the day. always a good thing :) but everything is good. i was reminded over an awesome dinner at bonefish last night (bobby's parents were passing thru - YUM and thank you!) how lucky i am. no, no one said to me "you're so lucky". that would be awkward, unless i had just found a twenty on the floor...but more so me rolling things around in the noggin... i've got a great family and friends. a roof. two dogs who act like i'm justin beiber. and i had just shoved an amazing piece of salmon and a beautiful Ste. michele white in my mouth. life is good my friends.

B*tch, please

2011-04-01T10:15:00.016-04:00

quite the title, eh? when thinking back on tucson tri camp 2011, that pretty much sums it all up.

our first day, we all met at Trisports to start our ride. We had a great group and headed over to Madera canyon. put 80 miles on the bike that day. a bit of a *ahem* climb in the middle (can you say 15% grade for 3 miles. YIKES!). here we all are at the top-

we were so lucky to have the truck sag the whole ride.i spent some time next to Seton, the owner, and heard some great life stories, some great tucson stories and well learned there is a VERY large mining crater along with a disarmed missile just yards away from the road.nice.

after a little T run we all grabbed some food (grabbed, shoved, inhaled its all the same....)and set up camp in the Trisports garage and had a little chat with a guy named Jimmy. for me, being relatively new to the sport i honestly didnt know who this guys was, even after he introduced himself. i took the opportunity to google him for you. Jimmy Riccitello (if you need to cheat too.) he was hilarious. telling stories about riding with some guy named lance...(not to name drop or anything..) bunny hopping him up a mountain while de-pants-ing him with his chain ring. priceless. he's the one who gets credit for said title. back in the heyday all these top guys used it as the word du jour. its very funny when he says it. trust me.

sunday took us to sabino canyon for a long run.

lovely place. lots of trails and some fast feet to follow around.

on the way home we stopped for some fuel.. diet coke and lattes. YUM. see you dont need to recover properly with protein and carbs.. sometimes you just need some carbonation and caffeine.

some nice R and R out by the pool and some lunch! and of course a little bit of gossip thrown in for kicks. then off on a 2 hour ride. good to stretch out the legs a little bit.

next up.. jen's favorite torture chamber, cleverly disguised as a gorgeous aqua colored oasis...the U of arizona pool.

just shy of 5k later.. i am famished and tired. we hit the local pizza joint and call it a night.

next on tap is lemmon. the quintessential ride of tucson. this would be my third time up the mountain.

this is us, getting ready to roll out. it was the perfect temperature. didnt even need arm warmers in the early morning air. so lemmon was my toughest day at camp. my body was fine, but the noggin decided to "have a moment" about 19 miles up. but coach jen was there to curtail the derailment and got me back on track. gracias amiga.

after a T run back at the house i had a stregnth training/assessment. learned some new stuff on the TRX and ways to get the core fired up... and that i suck at the plank. suck.

we stuffed our faces that night with tacos and mexican beer. mmmmmmmmmmmm.

our final morning took us to a hidden trail right near the house. it was quiet and the views were amazing. after shoving gear into any available crevice of the suitcase (why it it it never fits on the way home?) we headed to the pool for one last hurrah.

afterwards ben and i treated ourselves to some sushi. errr ALOT of sushi. i told ben to order..and we just kept ticking off things on the menu. i think the waitress thought we were crazy. wouldnt be the first time i've gotten the stink eye for endulging...

camp was good.

like it? steal it.

2011-03-22T12:46:00.003-04:00

i was reading another blog today and saw something that really struck me. and made me think. credit it to jillian from biggest loser..

i love it.

old school

2011-03-18T10:02:00.013-04:00

so a little while ago me and neo and kern all got together on a random weekday night to just hang out. we made pizza and watched love actually. talked about nothing in particular and just had a good time. Somehow the night took on a nostalgic focus and well ... you dont really know someone until you have seen them grow up, heard all the embarrassing stories, seen the school photo disasters, tried on the prom dresses...childhood!! an amazing and likely awkward time.. and for most of us it was captured on VHS.

SO-we dusted off the VCR and at first attempted to hook that up to a brand new samsung.. apparently 2010 isnt speaking to 1986. time to bring out the serious stuff. a tv that was purchased circa michael jackson still a black man. when leggings actually were cool and well, most of us had *bad* perms. (or was that just me?) all it took was one little cable (and a lecture from me about the difference between VHF and UHF) and BAM! we are watching ****** i better not say... i'd like to keep my friends!

in other time traveling news, i have finally approached march shape. after a less than lackluster start to the training year (though i do admit a pretty adventerous one in other regards) i have had some pretty good workouts lately. that just kind of hint at a glimmer of the athlete i want to be, or was, or CAN BE :) that and the amazing weather.. well who can beat a 75 degree sunny day? those of you still knee deep in snow.. i promise to bottle it up and sent it north. though keep in mind in a matter of weeks carolina and most of the south east will first be covered in thick yellow powder and unable to breathe or keep anything from becoming tinted gold.. and then suffocate in undescribable humidity for the remainder of summer.

suck it airlines

2011-03-15T10:51:00.003-04:00

so i am trying to plan a trip late this summer. and its getting more expensive by the minute. literally. each time i check back on the fares they have gone up in "good dinner out" increments AND the best price is still a 6 am departure. AND to top it off, i emailed customer service and got this auto-response:

*** Please do not reply to this email as this is an unmonitored email box. *****
Hello,
We have received your email and are working to respond as quickly as possible. Our current response time is 10 days.
Sincerely,
United Airlines Customer Relations

TEN DAYS. are you kidding me? that is really customer service? maybe i will just stay home.

i got nothin....

2011-03-10T10:48:00.003-05:00

that is pressing in my work like so why not do what everyone else is doing? with a Little twist....

A: Age I best represent – 24 - i'm somewhat responsible but still tend to make very rash decisions and like to do crazy shit. and sometimes am quite immature.

B: Bed – Queen. currently investigating a new mattress...it is also worthy to note that bedside is the messiest place in my house. piles of magazines, slippers, socks, sweatshirts, cremes to make me look younger!.. EWWWWWW!

C: Chore you dislike – i kind of like chores. i like cleaning. call me weird. i'm not anal enough to need to see vacuum lines in the rug... but something about things being wiped, swept or brushed is somewhat settling.

D: Dogs – 2. Smokey. (i came home from work one day and bobby says "look what i got". around the corner darts this little black ball. she is very shy. and named for her brindle coat and NOT for the UT mascot as some might think.. but my how convenient that is....). Madison. (we got her on the side of the road. she is part goat and will eat anything that doesnt run from her. really.)

E: Essential start to your day – a noon time wake up. i HATE mornings. HATE.

F: Favorite holiday - labor day or memorial day.no frills. no fuss. just good food.good friends and (usually) really great weather.

G: Gold or Silver – none. i hate jewelery. (i seem to hate alot of things..) but i dont wear any. at all.

H: Hate - things i dont hate: yorks, sunny days, the beach, my bike, diet coke, modern family, flights to take me to vacation places, home made cookies, getting emails from people i love.

I: Instruments - i played the clarinet when i was little. errr i pretended to play. everyone else had a cool sleek black case. i had my grandpa's old school basket weave one. i wasnt cool growing up.

J: Job Title – oh lord. lets not even go there. i've had 5 in 5 years - and yes all with the same company. apparently i am the flavor of the month.

K: Kites - yep fun to fly.

L: Live – Cary, NC (someone mentioned its known as the Containment Area for Relocated Yankees... as if thats a BAD thing... just cause you cant get over a war that happened hundreds of years ago. build a bridge people!)

M: Mom’s name – cheryl. and its funny that people over pronounce the CH sound.

N: Nicknames – Redilla. K2 ( i lived with 2 other carrie's durning college. that was fun).

O: Overnight hospital stays – just one.

P: Pet Peeves – people who have one subject to talk about. people who only use buzz words (or words that appear on my lingo bingo card).

Q: Quote from a movie – have fun storming the castle.

R: Righty or Lefty – Righty

S: Siblings – two brothers, i'm in the middle. yes i got beat up. ALOT

T: Time you wake up – as late as possible. the only thing that gets me up before 6 is a flight or a race. have to be at work at 8? get up at 745. looking cute is not a priority for me.

U: Underwear – yes i own some. no i dont fold it.

V: Vegetable you don’t like – well since i'm vegetarian you'd think this would be a no answer for me.. but.. okra, those weird little corn things, artichokes (please dont order artichoke dip!)

W: What makes you run late – me. i'm always late. usually for not a good reason. time seems to stand still at the most boring of moments (can you say cotton conference?) and zoom by when i'm trying to get ready to go somewhere. like the other night when i had to pack up a pizza stone and a VCR...

X: X-treme sports participated in - sadly none really. no sky diving. or bungee jumping... i would say "couch football" but that would take too much explaining...

Y: Yummy food you make – spinach dip. that is ALL i make. i hate cooking. when asked to bring something to a party, its my go-to dip or drinks. Holly home-maker i am surely not.

Z: Zoo animal favorite – i love zoo's. but after being on safari a few months ago they will never be the same. i could watch the lions for a very long time.

best day... EVAH!!!!

2011-03-08T09:40:00.003-05:00

yesterday i took a vacation day. i didnt go on vacation. i didnt have the flu. heck i really didnt even have plans. but i NEEDED a day. just a whole day to do what i wanted. a day that didnt include laundry and cleaning and WORK! yesterday was perfect. here is what i did.
got up and went to masters. swam 90 minutes (yep thanks marty for making monday mornings now LONGER ha!). joked around and watched neo do belly flops off the blocks.
went home and made eggs and toast and juice. watched good morning america. played on ipad.
went for bike ride with 2 fun friends. in the gorgeous sunshine. at a manageable pace. for two hours of chatting and more jokes.
drank chocolate milk. drank more chocolate milk.
made lunch and sat on the deck and read. then i read some more. then i took a nap. mmmmmm nap....
then bobby came home and we went to the gym to lift. came home, ate some amazing salmon and sweet potatoes and watched brad and his harem.
went to bed.

oh yes. it was a beautiful day of mostly nothing. and yet it was amazing.

not only is it hump day.....

2011-03-02T15:07:00.005-05:00

i hearby mark today as the tail end of my FIRST full week of training completed this year (the year of the rat i believe if my Chinese is up to par). considering i've been in the eastern time zone for a mere 24 days in 2011, i'd say that is something to celebrate.

there are also some really great spring days to look forward to:

my focus through all of this turmoil of travel and corporate woes has been my friendships. my awesome amazing friendships. when you have something (or someone!) positive in your corner, it makes all the difference.

pardon the interruption

2011-02-23T09:26:00.012-05:00

in the chaos that is my life i took a trip to hong kong last week. the weather was shit. cloudy. foggy. rainy. so instead of the usual tourism photos i decided to document my trip in beverages. here goes. note - i am pretty hyped up on thera-flu.. so this could be nuttier than usual. the travel bug has kicked my ass and punched my ticket to misery.

this was probably the best day i was there...at the time i though - wow it can only get better. i was wrong. my first day spent walking around Kowloon and the harbor. (ok not a beverage shot.. but necessary proof i was actually there)i've gotten pretty good at just wandering around a new city and finding some good stuff. no guide book required!

the second day i was joined by one fun coworker. it was pouring rain so we mastered the metro and went to a nunnery (where i got yelled at for touching a wheel that said "turn for luck"- not sure what happened there) went to the history of hong kong museum where i found it more fun to make up the titles of the exhibits than to actually read. then we took the star ferry (a 50 cent bargain. YES it cost just 50 cents) over to hong kong island and went on the world's longest escalator... not as fun as one might think...then stopped for a beer. and then another beer... you get the idea.

it reminded me of being with some of my old friends who used to say "lets drink about it."

monday morning it was over to the office to put in a few days of work. yes maybe i actually did work. well between the office pranks and the lunch breaks...

the staff at our office there is amazing. A-mazing. it was a really good week.

we went for lunch at some really good places.. for dumplings and rolls and noodles and some other interesting things... i was happy with the veg selections, but trust me - everyone was eager to point out the pig intestines and the gooey duck (google it) they were ordering. much appreciated.

after walking down a back alley, up to the second floor and thru the cleaning supply storage room, i had some of the best indian food ever. some sort of ceaser salad concoction and matar mushroom and of course loads of naan bread. all washed down with a pint.

one of my favorite dinners was at a 'western' place where they had these on the menu.

add in some sweet potato fries = HEAVEN. really. i went back.

we had a big staff meeting the last two days and it was fantastic to have the time to chat to people with (we counted) 7 different passports. our group lunch served up some lime soda. it put sprite to shame. and helped cool down my lit up taste buds. they were on FIRE.

on the last night a small group of us (read: the lush's) went out on the town. first stop was Aqua bar. a lovely mojito with a pretty good view.

and then back on the ferry to lan kwai fong - a "happen'n" place. we headed directly to the russian bar.. the ICE bar. where vodka was the beverage of choice. vodka that none of us could pronounce. vodka that required a series of blackberry messages to a friend in another country to figure out what exactly we should to get. vodka that was tasty but stung nonetheless. vodka that kept on coming....

yes the bar is actually a freezer. yes i'm wearing what appears to be a snuffalupagus jacket. after that on to a place called Insomnia. and a Filipino live band. you havent lived till you've heard a cover of Beyonce in an asian accent. YAHOO!

all in all a pretty fun time. but man the travel KILLS me.

these boots are made for walking

2011-02-07T10:31:00.001-05:00

**BTW thanks to everyone for checking on me yesterday as if i was on suicide watch. yes sucked the steelers lost, but i promise i'm not crying in the corner or unable to eat. trust me on that one!***

i full on admit i did a shitty job packing for this part of the trip. i totally blame it on my fiery hatred for said task, and the fact that i did no research and paid only a passing bit of attention to the suggested item list. i ended up continuously throwing "just one more" thing into the suitcase, because honestly you never know when you might suddenly NEED to wear a hot pink tank or desperately wished you had your cozy fleece pants.

fast forward

so monday morning comes and we are kind of running around the hotel courtyard not sure exactly what we should be doing but not exactly doing anything that needs to be done. there will be 6 of us climbing together. and just cause i feel like it, i will now do a little profile of those involved: (and hope to god they dont read it).

ME: the lone chick. the one who thought that being a recreational triathlete would translate into success in oxygen deprived situations. also the one with a smart ass response to anything. (have you met me?)
BOBBY: the one who made a rash decision 5 years ago "for better or for worse". he's the moderately tempered, easy going, sometimes cynical guy, who YES does wish i would shut up (sometimes)- but he's been around the world with me and i THINK enjoys it!
BRIAN: the contest winner (you may remember this whole trip was the result of my company running one). he's a mild mannered HS math teacher. and probably one of the just plain NICEST people i've ever met. he brought a pink bandanna to wear because one of his daughters insisted he take it. he's 6'4". big huge guy.
SHAUN: brian's brother. a 3:20 marathoner who was at first a bit quick to point out the shortcomings of the african culture (WHAT?!?! no oatmeal?) deathly afraid to fly, he made his first journey across the atlantic. that takes balls. he was also the one who succumbed to the porridge..
MIKE: the intellectual one of the group, as evidenced by his choice of scrabble words. he was quiet, thoughtful, and easy to coerce into posing for promo shots.
MACON:kind of the ringleader and celebrity guide if you will.. this was his 18th kili climb. he's bold, and sarcastic and blunt.

*disclaimer* we also had about 12 porters with us. who carried the cooking stuff, tents, food and a little of our stuff as well. these guys were amazing. let me say that again. amazing. they climb about 2-3 times per month and when i say climb i really mean RUN. they huff it up so fast you wonder if they actually are catching cabs or something. the hike was so good and positive and soo much easier because of them. just didnt want you all thinking i was huffing 90 pounds of gear up this sucker. more like 40, but still....

so we had a heck of a morning. trying to shove all of our gear into this truck and then well all of us (we had two guides). it was kind of like when you were 7 and going on the annual family vacation to the beach. if you were like me you were put in the WAY WAY back of the station wagon with your little brother to share about 2 cubic feet of space along with bags that would dangle precariously and then fall at maximum speed onto your head, that you would then have to shove (using your puny 6 year old arms) back to their original spot. over and over and over...

thats brian walking back toward the camera.. and me carrying the HEAVY duffle.. thanks bobby....

so off we go.. sort of.. errands - lots of errands. someone needed a paper. someone was dying and needed a coke. (a warm coke...) someone wanted bananas. at long last we made it to the gate and started our trek (note that there are actually 6 different routes to the top, so you can choose your poison.) ours was the road less traveled. we saw only 2 other groups along the way. i was happy to avoid the "kili freeway" as some paths turn out to be. it made the journey that much cooler to feel like you had the mountain all to your self. it was kind of odd though starting out. no fan fare. no photo op (think disney). no big gate you cross under that says "point of no return". just a little trail that you might miss had you been moving too fast.

DAY ONE: we had a moderate hike though some pretty dense vegetation. for the first hour we had three little tag alongs who lived in a hut..

it was a nice easy day. we stopped only once to rest and refuel. that was our first into to the facilities provided along the path. as we would later learn, they are quite primitive and likely to smell worse than death. it quickly became evident to me that my best bet was to find a little spot amongst the trees.

we spent the day chattering about topics i cant remember and remarking (probably too often ) that we could not believe where we were and the task ahead. we reached camp late in the afternoon. just that first time we were all pretty polite about which tent to choose. "you pick first", "oh it doesnt matter".. etc.. later in the trip we would be tossing our stuff into the first (and closest to the meal tent) and possibly muttering "sucker" under my (errrrr OUR breath).

because i had not been camping in oh about 5 years, it was a bit of a challenge to figure out what to do while IN the tent. lesson number one was to keep your boots outside... EXCEPT at night. morning dew on your boots, well sucks. the other fun and exciting part was sleeping. on a hill. the trick was to position yourself that would allow the least amount of blood flow in the wrong direction, while simultaneously keeping your oh so slippery sleeping bag atop the mat. oh and this all had to be done by scooching yourself around in the dark with no hands - it was COLD out and not worth and blasts of cold air to exude an extremity from the depths of a warm sleeping bag. i'll be honest. i did not master this. ever. from about the second night forward, i was cold. and damp. and sleeping at an angle on hard ground. but that was just something to deal with. no biggie.

we were treated to real popped corn (not the redenbaucher stuff with the fake butter) for a little predinner treat.

you would have thought we had just been handed a gold nugget. we were that happy. but the REAL winner of the trip turned out to be this stuff: MILO

it was kind of like nestle quick, but you had to put a heaping load of sugar into it. BUT at 9000(and above) feet, when you are cold, and hungry, and well cold, this was heaven. so good in fact we went through both our canisters in 3 days and had to barter for another.

so we are in good spirits. enjoying the climb and the company. shoes are holding up well. no malfunctions to speak of. the night was probably the crazy part. its DEAD quiet. and then well you hear rustling... and i swear i herd grunting... some buffalo? and the stars. well the stars are just wild. for the first time in my life i saw the milky way clear as well day, and thought i could reach out and touch it.

you learn quickly there is little you need to be comfortable and be well here:

Day two. i think we all kind of woke up with the sun about 6 am. you learn that if you want to see the mountain you gotta play by its rules. there is about 20 minutes in the morning when the sun is just coming up that you can see it (otherwise its covered by clouds). so eager to see how much closer we had gotten we all got up to take a look. crap. still soooo far away.. but man it looks good.

we had our first breakfast on the mountain:

eggs, toast, butter (how the hell they got butter up there i dont know), milo, tea, porridge (not shown here, but an interesting concoction.. you wonder how goldilocks really ate the stuff...). and we got our stuff together and back on the trail for anther day of hiking.

one really neat thing was how the vegetation changed as we went up. officially you go through forest, moreland, alpine desert and then ice cap. quite drastic. and the weather changed so quickly. one minute its sunny, then cloudy (like you are IN the clouds), then precipitation - hail, sleet, snow..(closer to the top) or other things i had yet to encounter in all my years. but sure kept things interesting. ever so often our guides would stop us and point out things, animal tracks, ant houses, flowers, plants you could steep for tea, etc.

little side note about our guides. have i used the word amazing lately? Joseph was about 55 years old and insisted i call him papa joseph. like your grandpa. he would sing and tell us stories and make these great accompanying noises and motions that made me feel like a little kid. he was so fun. as the hike went on we all kind of looked out for each other, joseph included. always asking how he was, did he want a cliff bar, etc.

Edwin was the leader.we'd be hiking up and i'd hear "KAAAAAAARI". in this rough gruff voice. its him. we soon learned to just yell back "ED-Weeeeeen". part way through the trip he started calling bobby "simba". and he also is the reason i made it to the top. but thats later :)

so anyway, day two ended up at camp in pissing rain. it was miserable. we all crawled into tents and just tried to get dry! once it finally stopped we got out and explored around camp a bit. there were some cool caves.

we got this great view just at dusk.. mt munzi

the best part so far. nothing had been hard. yes we walked a long time, and up some steeper patches, some rocky parts, some heat waves, some freezing winds. but nothing too crazy. i think we got a bit of a false sense as Macon kept saying how hard this climb was. we were like whatever old man. we were eating pretty good. sleeping ok. no sickness or injury. i thought we were sitting pretty... HA. HA HA HA i say to stupid me on the mountain at 12000 ft. just wait.

"kari- this isnt disney land."

2011-02-02T09:53:00.000-05:00

hmmm so where did we leave off.. oh yes. we had just arrived at the springlands hotel in moshi tanzania.

some things to note about our accommodations: they still used keys. the reason became evident when we learned the power goes off quite frequently. there is a switch next to the bathroom that turns on the hot water heater. in most cases this was actually a large barrel on the roof that was heated by the sun. there was a mosquito net above the bed. we had been warned of maleria so attempts were made to use the net. for about 18 seconds. bobby immediately complained he could no longer breathe and i could not keep from getting tangled up. operation BUG OFF was immediately canceled. we would take our chances. the food was really good. fresh produce etc was delivered daily. the staff was phenomenally nice. and so accommodating.

we enjoyed a great evening sitting outside, drinking some good beer, some great wine and well just talking. people who had just come off the mountain. people who would head up in the morning. it was definately the HOT topic.

our first morning (after, yes, i locked my self IN the room) we set out on a 2 day safari(it had to be modified a bit due to our Ethiopian diversion). the scene at the hotel was crazy! there were a few different groups heading out to climb, a few heading out on safari and a few trying to just get out of the way!

we met up with our driver and climbed into our truck. awesome.

and off we went. as we drove out toward Lake Manyara, - about a 3-4 hour drive - we passed alot of interesting and "OH WOW" moments. our driver was awesome, as i peppered him with questions for the entire ride...about religeon and govenment, and herding cattle, and kids in school and unemployment, and highways, and what he ate for dinner, and what he thinks of obama, and music and americans. and he was so patient. and didnt once (that i could see) give me the evil eye.

some of the things that went whizzing by...at least when we werent stuck behind a huge truck (or cows crossing) on the 2 lane highway...that also became subjects of my unending questions..

we arrived at the national park and had to do some official paper work kind of stuff. when we first pulled in we saw this huge family of baboons and immediately went "oh wow you have to stop". our driver obliged but kind of laughed.. saying you'll see a hundred more. and he was right.

we had a chance to get out at the entrance and walk around a bit. i had to use the facilities...and well, i'll be honest. this was my first experience with a hole in the ground (with four lovely walls for privacy). dont worry. i survived and actually by the end of the trip was quite skilled.

so we spent the afternoons driving around. it was awesome. you would turn a corner and BAM!

we had to stay in the truck (just like they tell you at disney - keep your arms inside the vehicle), but at one point we could get out. there was a huge swamp with hippos. it was just the perfect scene, with some zebras grazing behind them, some unidentifiable birds hanging around.

here's one of those funny little monkeys.

did i mention it was HOT??

we had a good day.

that night we drove UP, way UP to our hotel. and went down this muddy, rutted, roller coaster of a road that our 4wd had some reservations about. our hotel was on top of a hill, over looking the farms that supplied all their food. it was beautiful. peaceful. and revealingly COOL. temps in Moshi (where our home base was) were above 100.

we had an amazing dinner. and then sat out on the hotel porch and drank wine. yep. good day.

the next morning we set out early to see the ngorongoro crater.

we learned that a main "highway" goes thru the park connecting the towns of Arusha and Nairobi and other Kenyan destinations.

this is it.
and yes big buses travel this road. it doesnt go down into the crater where we were headed.. but can you imagine this is the BEST way to get from point A to point B?

we had the amazing opportunity to visit a Masai community.

that was unreal. walking through and being able to ask questions and see their daily life. wow. i asked the one guy who spoke english what they ate. he replied 'four things. goat meat. cow meat. cow milk and cow blood." yikes. i would not last 6 seconds here. he said no fruit or vegetables, but didnt elaborate on the reason. i also didnt know they were a polygamist group. he then pointed out the little "kindergarten" and said we could go over and take a look. the kids were fantastic and counting.

that was cool. they wanted to know where we were from and all kinds of stuff.

so after that we moved on to the crater. wow.

so we just drive around. its HUGE and well you just never know what you are going to come across.. it was just amazing. i mean that word is so over done in this post but ...

and this guy:

he was maybe 10 yards from us. just snoozing away with his lady lion friend. they would kind of pick their heads up and look around then go back to sleep. and YES i did make the comparison to madison and bobby rolled his eyes..

anyway.... we kind of happened upon this little situation... and it really burned up the reality lightbulb.. that this is really the food chain up close...

so lots happening in this pic... see the baby zebra? just born.. barely able to walk.. and maybe you can see the vultures still chowing down on the birth mess (ohh yes yum!). on the right is a hyena - literally salivating at the thought of a baby zebra appetizer.

that was cool.

one last little bit. we had been checking off in our heads all the animals we wanted to see. the one with the little asterick beside it was the elusive white rhino. not too many of those guys left.anywhere. so we werent putting high expectations on that. BUT as we were kind of deciding it would be time to head back, we caught a glimpse of this BIG thing a ways away. we stopped and just waited...

wow. we had such a good time out exploring. and still to come was the big climb.

The African Adventure. part one. scene one. take four (immunization shots).

2011-01-30T18:47:00.000-05:00

so i thought it would be good to share a little bit more about our 2 week trip to Africa. It was such an epic experience that one post, and a lame regurgitated email post at that.. doesnt quite do it justice..and well lets admit it.. my tri training is close to nonexistant so i have very little in the way of swimbikerun to muse about... so all you creepy people out there that i really do love so much...here is some more stuff to keep you from spending too much money on Amazon, or entering data in to an excel sheet, walking the dog.... :) at least temporarily...

so right.. we were SUPPOSED to fly - over the course of oh... 24 hours.. from Raleigh to Kilimanjaro (which by the way for those of you who, like me, failed geography, is located in Tanzania in central eastern africa on the coast.) much to our disappointment before we could even leave DC, we found out we would be spending the night in Ethiopia because we would miss our final connection. unlike when you get stuck in atlanta and there is a flight leaving every 47 minutes or so to seemingly every po-dunk town in this country, there is but ONE flight to kilimanjaro per day.

SO fast forward. 16,17,18 (who knows i lost count) hours later we land in Addis Ababa (yep took me a while to pronounce that with out sounding like Apu from the kwikimart. hey i never said i was PC and YES i know he is not african).. so right. after an ordeal at the airport about our hotel for the night (no need to dwindle on that) and an eye opening bathroom experience (again better left unsaid) we made our way out of the *ahem* airport. i had not taken 4 steps from the building when i saw three donkeys (burros? or is that only in mexico?) grazing nearby. i did a double take. for the next few moments i kept muttering to myself "donkeys. what the hell are donkeys doing here." and that my friends was not even the most jaw dropping moment of the DAY. we made our way to the hilton and after going through a gate with about 9 armed guards (though seemingly with little to do besides chew on toothpicks..)we entered the actual hotel, through a metal detector. maybe not your typical holiday inn experience but didnt phase me. what did get my attention was when we were promptly wished a "merry christmas". i suddendly felt like marty mcfly and wondered when i had jumped back 2 weeks..they had a tree and everything.. were they like those annoying neighbors who leave their lights up till february? later i would realize (stupidly) that not everyone is on the same calendar.

view from our hotel.

we dropped our stuff and decided to pay a cab driver to drive us around the city. some quick math (for bobby not me), it cost us about $35 for 3 hours tour. i had no idea what to expect, but he seemed nice enough and when he reminded us to put on our seatbelts i thought for sure we would return to the hotel with minimal damage. he took us to 2 churches, and found us some really nice local guides that took us through and explained everything. one thing they mentioned numerous times so that even an ADD person like myself got the message- they were the only african country that participated in the league of nations in geneva - this fact was depicted several times in the church. so much for seperation...and there were beautiful stained glass windows (why white people in the art i ask? made in europe.. ohhhhh). lots of old silver stuff and thick books dedicated by this emperor or that religious icon. i kinda got a bit lost trying to keep track of it all. bottom line. church is where its at.

he also took us to the market... which seemed to go on forever. i say that only because once we found our way in, for the life of me i would not have been able to get out. this is when it got a little bit.. ummm interesting. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. everywhere. not a single traffic light. no rules. no regard for anything. at one point people started banging on our cab and it got a little dicey. i just couldnt stop staring at the ladies so nonchalantly carring around dead chickens by their feet. the men auctioning off goats. the kids selling bananas and fruits. the random animals just walking through the streets. little packs of goats, and dogs and cows and chickens who had not yet met their match.

ok. so after that little afternoon fun, we went back to the hotel. they actually had a pretty nice thermal pool. soooo nice in fact... a super quick dinner and then the jet lag and lack of sleep hit. we had a 9 am flight to catch.

we took a bus to the airport in the morning, which i honestly thought they were going to kick bobby off of and leave him on the side of the road (with the donkeys).. long story... not due to his bad behaviour or anything (have you met him??), but we had bucked the rules the night before and snuck him into the hilton... (the behind story is we each flew on different ticket classes, so he was put up in a different hotel..) anyway crisis averted and we arrived at the terminal. as we got off the bus and made our way along the sidewalk some random guy checked our passport. (for what i dont know.. he seemed a bit more interested in all of the other stamps...) we went through some really sketchy security - im not sure they were in fact actually paying attention to the contents of our bags. then seeing only one option that might take us to a terminal, we walked past a lady who then asked "are you leaving the country?" i said YES. she had no reply so we went on. i suppose that was customs?

anyway the only other eventful well.. event.. in ethiopia was that our flight was delayed. by 4 hours. now likely most of you have spent that amount of time in a US/european airport terminal. there are restaurants, TVs, bars, internet connections etc. not here. here we watched the workers on the tarmac. watched them load up all of (what we suspected was) our luggage onto one plane... only to remove it all about 20 minutes later... hmmmm. the one shining moment was when they brought out cokes and what i think was french toast to all the people waiting. that was nice. finally we are on our way. phew!

we landed in kilimanjaro, immediately were engulfed in the most oppressive heat i've ever felt (110 degrees), were rejoicing (thank you jesus!!) at seeing both pieces of checked luggage and met our guide who then drove us to the hotel. that night we caught our first glimpse of the mountain. WOW.

our hotel is about 26 (yep i automatically thought. wow marathon.. ha!) miles from the base of it.

more to come. we go on safari next!

slowly, slowly.

2011-01-25T14:46:00.000-05:00

thats how you get to here.

the top of the world.

it was amazing. it was exciting. it was EXHAUSTING. quite frankly the hardest thing i've ever done in my life.

do i have stories? yes.

do i have pictures? yes.

do i have thoughts on things i saw that i didnt think existed? you betcha.

but for now i must still ask people what day it is, and even hesitate when looking at my phone wondering if its been reset to the correct / currently occupied time zone.

but here is a little snippet from the first part of the trip... when we spent a day/night unexpectedly in ethiopia (addis ababa) and then went on safari. (sorry no pics yet. i'm at work. they are on the camera at home. use your imagination for now.. or google i'm sure will give some good stuff).

***NOTE this is an email i sent to a friend just after arriving. its messy and may not make sense. but if you read this blog with any regularity its nothing new***

Addis ababa- sheer chaos. They wished me a merry xmas upon arrival. Utter confusion. Saw people carrying around dead chickens and auctioning off goats. SO. MANY. PEOPLE. An electronics store selling boom boxes from 1984. And more mentions of the league of nations in conjunction with god than mentionable. their one and only country olympic gold medal is in the museum of a church. Oh and a facist italian invasion. Twice. Flight delay here means you get free french toast. french toast on an average day would be well, average. but 4 hour flight delay made it golden crusted.
Saw kili for first time at dusk last night. Wow. Just wow. i'm gonna climb that sucker. Celebrated arrival in tanzania with large beer and bottles of wine. Made many new friends in span of 3 hours. Then locked myself IN my hotel room this morning. that my friends takes a special kind of person.
On safari today. On the way saw a huge coke billboard (dont get the wrong idea.... there is NOTHING for miles, then ONE billboard. COKE seems to be the only thing thats made it this far) with maasai person standing under with goats. Such contrast. not many cars. people walk for MILES just to get a days worth of food and water. Close enough (but not dumb enough) to pet elephant,giraffe and ugly babboon. Hotel is on top of mtn in middle of nowhere, down the muddiest, bumpiest road that ever existed. and the pool I swam in (using that term lightly as I piddled about like a 6 yo in a wading pool) is nicer than the one I swim in at home. The most beautiful sunset ever. i've seen poverty like i could not imagine. yet people persevere and remain happy. dont ever for one second take what you have for granted. having a roof over your head and running water is more luxury than you could ever imagine.

one pic of me on the hike.. :) more to come. i need to remember it all first.

packing makes you realize you have nothing to wear

2011-01-03T15:17:00.000-05:00

so lots going on. lots means the blog goes unattended. lots means lots goes unattended.

after our little trip to pittsburgh, which by the way was so much fun!... things settled down for oh about 3 days then back up to warp speed. we traveled down to the ATL for a merry weekend and saw about an inch of the white stuff, much less than our yankee friends who were literally knee deep. i kinda missed the chaos, but temps were freezing enough to make it feel like home. ha.

from there i went farther south, to the vast stripmall lined city of tampa. well actually more out on the coast, we stayed at indian rocks beach. i met my mom and littlest brother there for a few days - and some quality time with my ninety eight year old grandpa. yep he was born in 1912, graduated college in 1934 and wow... the stories i could tell you. he worked on the panema canal as an engineer and to this day knows more about politics than i could ever dream. he tells me "kari getting old is hell, dont ever do it". or "she's nuts i tell you, nuts. crazy old lady is 102". we taught him how to use google earth. amazing to think of the things he's seen in his lifetime.

now back home for a quick stopover (thats what raleigh has become lately, a place to do laundry and maybe catch a few nights sleep) before heading here on wednesday.

africa. i'm excited. and nervous. and excited. the plane ride will be sheer torture. i am not one who can sit still and watch movie after movie. or read. or stare straight ahead. ugh painful. so why africa. well why not. but actually its a work trip. all in the name of promotion, and telling the story of performance cotton.

after 2 weeks its home again for one day then out to salt lake city for a week. looks to be an interesting january for me.

on the training front. its haphazard at best. i literally tried to swim about 4 times in the past 2 weeks and have encountered pool closings for way to many reasons. so we'll just have to see how things turn out.

later.

da burgh.

2010-12-14T15:52:00.001-05:00

Hello, my name is Kari, and it’s been 13 days since my last blog update.

2010-12-07T13:35:00.000-05:00

yep. called out. that, my friends, is the new version of hand in the cookie jar.

so whats been happening? besides being burried at work, and we all know what a great status update that makes...here are some rumblings..

i swam last night in 70 degree water. Bobby's reaction was "wow thats warm!" till i reminded him that wetsuit legal is 78. it was cold, to put it mildly. perhaps the gentleman in the next lane put it best when he said "YIKES!" and jumped out, never to return.

we had a little send off party for a friend on sat. very sad. she is leaving us for greener pastures - and probably better friends.... but we will for sure miss HER.

i got to play photograher yesterday. maybe olan mills was my real calling.. but i admit the power the camera holds is scary. i can yell things like "look over here" or "move to your left" or "get off your hiney and move that trainer out of the way"... etc.. its kind of fun...

the good news in all the grumble is my trip to africa is booked and confirmed and cemented and finalized.... now just all the little details. i admit i'm excited, but its one of those things that hasnt gotten a fair chance to rise to the top cause of all the other mundane things that take place. really not fair. somehow a safari should be kicking ass. it will. soon.

we got in a nice ride on sat. finished up right as the snow started to fall. yes. snow. in nc. in dec. wild i know. but we got a good inch +.

yep it was cold. but we lasted 2 hours. likely because our chatting was creating a warm air pocket that we continuously rode into. hmmm...

big trip this weekend. back to the burgh for sports fest 2010. (i made that up). but it consists of basketball at the new consol center and foot ball at heinz field. sweet.

that is all.

today's post is brought to you by the letter F, bojangles and the people of botswana

2010-11-25T14:27:00.000-05:00

wow. thanksgiving already. where does all the time go? i'm guessing its the same place all of the blog updates i think up in my head go...and all the good kashi oatmeal cookies go....

with so much emphasis on family during the holiday season it got me thinking about me and bobby and how utterly different we really are. take this past weekend for example. we wnet to see the new movie filmed in pittsburgh. i liked it. he hated it. saturday he spent the afternoon at the gun show and i was on my bike. sunday i ate fish tacos he had steak. he's upstairs paying the bills, i'm downstairs buying online. but somehow it works. and i'm so thankful it does.

i've been spending quite a bit of time in the pool over the past few weeks-enough to know when the old guy doing pull buoy backstroke and the indian kid who wears holey boxers and the wanna be super star show off are doing their laps. the chlorine induced party is partly due to a heel that wont cooperate and partly due to the fact that i more resemble a drowning cat than anything amphibian like in aquatic situations... and wouldnt you know betterment (is that a word?) is beginning to show. i swam my fastest 100 ever. it hasnt quite translated to longer distances - say of an olympic nature- but patience.. right?

work has been work. nuf said. BUT i will give it props for the mere fact that they are sending me to climb kilimanjaro in a month. sweet.

a super special thanks for my adopted big sister who sends me her hand me down clothes :) and a begrudged sigh as i await yet another package in the mail...perhaps i need to lessen my trash talking or learn to keep my mouth shut all together.. (not likely)

so i was talking to my 98 year old grandpa today. his first question to me. not "hows work" or "hows bobby".. its "are you expecting anything?" lovely. and btw the answer is NO. ha.

happy holidays to my creepy internet friends.

training.. huh?

2010-11-16T09:03:00.000-05:00

the past few weeks have really flown by. i've been traveling quite a bit for work and have been lucky to visit some great places. the grove park inn asheville, new york city (ok that one was a disaster) and this place - ranchos palos verdes CA. - just a stones throw from the most heavily strip malled area i have ever seen. really. not even orlando can match this place.

this was the view from my villa. yes i said villa. granted i had to share it... thats alwasy fun...

i was out there to work. and while the place was gorgeous, we did work. from 8 am till well past midnight. i did manage to squeeze in a few swims here:

an out door 25 m pool. saltwater. nice.

one afternoon i snuck away to the beach. just me, a book and a nice beverage. well needed after some ridiculous drama. who else has this much drama at their job. really- its worse than days of our lives- the stories i could tell would knock your socks off:

i was thrilled to escape a week long sequester and head to knoxville.

notice the REAL smokey here.

i did get some good news on sunday. i was accepted on the elite tri team for 2011. guess that should up my motivation to train or something.. ha.

i'm filing this under the most boring post ever. thank god for pictures.

the bet

2010-10-27T10:14:00.000-04:00

my good (and highly delusional friend) DAMIE is a saints fan.

I on the other hand, as you may know, am a steelers fan.

so we made a bet. halloween night showdown. i cannot wait.

PS- hey roberts - doesnt cayenne look better in this??

crazy. party of one.

2010-10-22T09:44:00.000-04:00

wondering what i've been up to? admit it. you know you have.

here's a few things:

i went to the state fair with neo and alysia. within 4 minutes of entering the gates we each had our first TASTE of the fair. Alysia walked by the "fried frito chili bowl" and actually did a double take. 'whoa wait a minute guys'.... it had everything a girl could want, fritos, cheese, chili and a cup full of sour cream for dippin. Sold. just down the path bri and i grabbed up some fried mac and cheese. dipped in ranch. yep. its good. really. (side note: i too once turned up my nose and utters words like 'gross,blah,what the hell is that, are you really going to eat that, they took what and put it in what and fried the whole thing? BUT after my first bite of a fried oreo last year i was smitten. you would be too).

our mission that day was to find the produce. unfortunately the map provided did not do us any good. so we wandered. stopping to try some honey cotton candy. stopping to ask directions from an old man who was trying to play coy with us. stopping to see if a man correctly guessed another man's weight (he did). stopping to ponder when a good act might actually come to the fair. eventually we found the veggies, culminating in the 865 pound pumpkin. somebody's mom is very proud of them this week.

next up, carnies. we allotted $1 to see what we deemed the most interesting/amazing/not to be missed attraction. last year it was the spider lady. if you remember, she was none to happy with us doubting her real existence and trying to figure out if she was actually a hologram.... this year we passed by the 18 foot horse, the 2 ton snake, the spider lady (yep back for an encore) and stopped in front of this barn (type, -ish looking building). a 6 legged lamb? a 4 horned goat? a pig with an elephants snout? a zebra donkey? our eyes got wide. BUT the price was $2. twice our budget.

dilemma.

after probably too much debating we decided it was a must see. we were not disappointed. immediately checking to be sure there were actual real live animals.. we were pleasantly surprised to see they were the cute barnyard kind. albeit with more limbs/extremities/protrusions than a normal animal, but none the less quite cuddly. i may have talked to them a bit to much but they seemed to like the attention. we fed them and bonded over "its not easy being me"

here's (the three armed kern, a wild beast rarely sighted outside the wild) with the zebra donkey.

here's me with the 4 horned goat. he was pretty cool. madison would like him.

after a thorough hand washing, we went in search of more food. next on the menu was fried cheese. wow.

oh and then home made ice cream.

the rest was a bit of a blur. i think there was a fried ho ho in there somewhere. possibly because of the inordinate amount of crap coursing thru my veins. possibly because of the ever growing crowds that continued to pour into the gates. possibly because i (GASP!) was becoming immune to the mullets, the beer guts, the jeff gordon tattoos (and those were the ladies..). we decided to call it a night. good times.

in other news... (if you are not a football fan you can go ahead and log off now). the big story is all about the hard hitting nature of the game. did i miss something? has it only recently become hard hitting? ummmmmmmm.... anyway as you may know from past posts, i'm a bit (just a wee bit) of a steelers fan. you may remember this photo from superbowl 43 (the troy palamalu bowl).

so to get to the point - my boy james harrison took out two (yes 2) browns players on sunday. (yes i cheered, duh. its the BROWNS!) he's an animal. and while YES they were freight train caliber hits, he was NOT penalized during the game. yet the commish decided later in the week to slap a 75k fine on harrison. so what happens. steeler nation happens. over 12000 (yes twelve thousand in just 2 days!) have joined the "pay james harrison's bogus fine" fan page. not only that, but hundreds are sending in one dollar bills to mr goodell himself with some of the most hilarious letters. google it. makes you proud to be a fan. anyway - i could not NOT get in on the action. here is my dollar and my letter i'm sending. call me crazy. i'm a fan.

O is for OMG this is soo good.

2010-10-18T16:16:00.000-04:00

So needless to say that since 10:22 or so on Saturday September 26, I have been on the off season and have, with reckless abandon, gone wild. Well after I got over the need to puke feeling.
It’s been one long sugar parade. Seriously. Here are a few real life examples:
On a recent trip to the mall to see a movie with neo, hunger struck. A decision had to be made. Instead of a rock and a hard place, we were stuck between toll house and marble slab. Ice cream for dinner. Check.
While perusing the grocery for tortillas (I took a chance on a new food lion near my house) I came upon an end cap (oh yes bask in my vast retail term knowledge) of little Debbie products. Such a thing of beauty. And reasonably priced I might add. Without even a millisecond of hesitation they went straight into the basket. Swiss cake rolls? Check.
Good morning mr coworker. Oh you brought in krispy kreme doughnuts in order to bribe us all into liking you and actually answering the phone when you call? Sure I’ll have one. But darn it if I don’t let it go to voicemail. Second and yes THIRD breakfast? Check.
“GRRRR get him!!!!” or “Flag. Flag! Where is the flag?” or “YEA!!!” will typically be my verbal contribution to conversations Sunday afternoons at the local bar. Oh and most recently “YES” when the waitress comes by and asks “do you….?” Beer? Check.
So hello off season. It’s nice to see you. hope you stick around for a while. meet you at the state fair tomorrow?? woo woo!!

BUT there is developing news. With the help of my LOVELY friend (she loves being called lovely) I am working on an early xmas present. Early meaning NOW. ha. love it.

worlds. budapest. wow.

2010-10-11T11:51:00.000-04:00

ok everyone. lets call up to doc brown and see if we can generate 1.21 gigawatts of electricity - yep we're headed back in time.

i made the decision to race in budapest late last year. it seemed to come up pretty quick on the calendar as most stuff usually does. By now I’m a certified (by me) expert at packing up my bike. I tend to go overboard with the bubble wrap, but you’ve seen those baggage dudes tossing stuff around like the weather channel reporter during a hurricane (“yes Stan, its REALLY windy out right now. whats that? yes Stan that was a cow that just flew by me”).

ok so lets get this party started:

the madness began before we even left RDU. Our flight was delayed. First by 20 minutes, then by 2 hours. WTF delta? So the nice young (I stress young cause he looked 12) man at the counter offered to fly us through Detroit (umm isn’t that the OTHER direction) or Atlanta. I chose Atlanta and insisted that bobby be upgraded to business with me. (why kari are you flying business you ask? I had to work in paris the week after the race so work paid for my ticket. Sweet. And NO paris is not awesome or amazing or worth OOOOOing over. And no I’m not a brat.). OK so despite having an extra flight leg we managed to make it to Budapest only about 4 hours later. The fun part now was we had NO luggage. None. I had my bike but nothing else. a bike without a seat or pedals i will also mention. Apparently the plane from de gaulle to Budapest was small and they put the bikes on and had no room for luggage. Shit. So we trek onto the hotel and I realize that I made the cardinal mistake of packing completely useless things into my carry on. Smart.
I had met Wendy in the bathroom in paris. She was from Wisconsin (not a favre fan!) and we ended up pal-ing around with them for some of the week. after a quick trip to the grocery (that is always my favorite part of visiting a new country. You learn SO much!) we met wendy and her husband bob to go to dinner. They asked “oh do you know a place?” I said “yep our guidebook noted a place about ½ mile away”. OK. Turns out the place was closed. Lovely. we ended up at this other place where the waiter kept asking me if I wanted ‘fruit soup’. I said no a bunch of times but then he finally just brought it to me. its exactly like you are imagining..
We were staying in the host hotel for team usa so it was ALWAYS crazy. There were huge poster boards in the lobby with all the race info on it, people were constantly pouring over them looking for new information or trying to take in everything. But it was kind of a cool feeling to see the red white and blue everywhere.

The next day (still without luggage) had us buying a few things (change of clothes!) and then heading out to sight see. here are some of the hi-lights.

When we got back to the hotel still no luggage. Depressing. I did the next best thing – put my bike together – err well actually I drug it down to the bike mechanic (Jack from jack and adams in Austin!!) and he fixed it all up nice (minus a seat post and pedals but really who needs that stuff?). anyway enough of that. we were meeting Sandor that night to go to the opening ceremonies. Sandor is marty’s cousin. Or well kind of (no time to draw a family tree). He lives in budapest. And is honestly one of the nicest guys on the planet. He claims his English is bad. (its as bad as my French is good). anyway he showed us how to use the tram (not as easy as it sound folks!) and off we went to the festivities. Sandor was truly a saint as it was total chaos. He showed us around the old university (where he went for engineering) and told us some stuff about growing up in hungary–

Anyway after all of the hoopla….we headed out to wander around and came across a GREAT place to eat. Had the most amazing roasted vegetables and honey salmon. Wow. Full bellies definitely make up for missing t shirts.
Friday was found luggage day. oh man. Never been so happy to have to lug 2 suitcases up steps before. We headed over to the national history museum for a while.
That afternoon back to the race site for my first official workout of the week. a practice swim. In 55 degree water. Yes it was like an ice bath. Yes I hyperventilated for the first 2 minutes. it never really got tolerable, just numb. It was however hilarious to hang out by the entry and watch/listen to all these people jump in and cuss in different languages. From “oh bugger to crikey to ##@%***!”. Too funny.

here is how talented I am – I fully changed out of my wetsuit/swimsuit to street clothes in the registration venue – along with about 100 of my new friends. What can I say. It was 50 degrees outside and raining and I had just come out of frigid waters. There was no waiting to get dry clothes on!!! We actually ate in the hotel that night cause it was so nasty out.
Saturday – we went to the house of terror museum. A little side note – if you’ve traveled with me you know it takes me a bit to get my lay of the land, but once I do I’m pretty good with directions and where we need to be going.. bobby isn’t. but he thinks he is. We for some reason throughout the week ended up in the same general area at least once per day and he would always start walking the wrong way home. Anyway the museum. Amazing place.

It contains exhibits related to the fascist and communist dictatorial regimes in 20th century Hungary and is also a memorial to the victims of these regimes, including those detained, interrogated, tortured or killed in the building. (thanks wikipedia!) but you can imagine what a wild place this is. The way it was set up was pretty amazing. Each room you went into was a total sensory experience, music, lighting, even the way the “props” were set up, an experience well worth the admission price.
Saturday also meant bike check in. one of the team coaches was leading a ride over to the race site and since I had not been on my bike all week it was a good opportunity to make sure it was good to go. Problem is, there were about 40 of us riding, on narrow traffic filled streets, on sidewalks (!), over a bridge and thru construction. It took us 40 minutes to go 3 miles. Not kidding. so much for working out some kinks and getting the VROOM going… bike check in was sort of a disaster. The U19 race was happening and we had to wait for them to get out on the bike, and then imagine 1800 or so athletes trying to go thru one gate. Not to mention once you got in transition it was a mud pit. And about a mile walk from end to end. No exaggeration. Anyway I never understand how people can spend so much time in there at this point. I mean drop your bike and go. I went for a short run, felt pretty good and we headed out to dinner with new friends wendy and bob.
Back to the hotel. I was under the covers by about 9 PM. But then sleep would NOT come. I’ve never spent an entire night awake, and the night before a race was not the night to try. I don’t exaggerate when I say I slept for an hour. Lovely.
Up at 5 and on the tram to the race at 530. My wave went off at 8 am I think… but we weren’t sure about everything so better to get there early. usual morning, set up transition, ooogle over the fast people around me, get bike envy (!) and try to relax.

A little side note – I had been thinking all week about having a GREAT swim. Having my best swim. Going after the swim. Suffering on the swim. Sucking it up on the swim. So when we lined up and were getting ready to jump into ice cold water I still had that laser focus on the water. I got in as soon as I could and immediately started dunking my head. Up and down. Up and down. Deep breaths, relax. Take in the cold. I was fiddling with my watch when I heard GO. Shit. Off I went. I cant lie. It was freezing. Even with a full suit on I was only warm under the rubber. Head, feet and hands were numb. BUT I can say I motored on. Sighting went really well and I felt so good in that water. Powerful even. (what??). I exited the swim (and heard from bobby later he was shocked to see me toward the front – maybe even top 15- out of the water. That is crazy).
I huffed it up the hill and thru the tall wet grass and mud pits to transition. Getting the suit off was mostly OK, and I was ready to trek the million meters to the mount line.
I got on the bike and was ready to roll. Immediately in the mix with three other girls. We played the requisite game of catch and pass for a bit then I think one of them got pissed off and took off. The course was relatively crowded – it was a three looper so you can imagine. At that point I made my first mistake. I let them go away thinking I would make that up later. There is NO LATER. Dumb kari dumb. I didn’t have the ride I should have. I was flat and making excuses. I had also not pumped my tires to the usual 120 because of the wet roads – another should’a could’a.

I did have one advantage in that I actually knew where the dismount was and had my shoes off and ready to go. So many saw it too late and were forced to run the entire length of transition and back to their spots with shoes on. Brutal.
I came out of T2 with 2 girls. The first part of the run was along the river and a slight down then up. I passed the first and started to work on the second. My next mistake came in the form of LATER again. I should have gone after her sooner. We made our way up to the castle and turned onto the bridge for 2 loops over and around st stephens. This is where I truly LOVED the race.

so many specators and such a great atmosphere. How can you not love running around a 1000 year old castle (ok the cobble stones kind of hurt!) and hearing go usa. That’s pretty cool. I turned the full motor on a bit late and ended up 12th. BUT I have to say the whole week was fantastic. budapest is truly an amazing place. Some great lessons learned in racing and a nice bottle of wine to celebrate  duh.

rest is making me weary

2010-10-04T15:58:00.000-04:00

i just tried to go to the vending machine, ok i didnt try, i went. the choices are rather interesting - a zero bar (huh?), garden salsa sun chips (tried these at subway, not a fan), fruity cheerios cereal bar (why not just use fruit loops?), a fiber bar (yep no thanks) or almond joy. (i loathe coconut).

after unsuccessfully trying to use euro coins (dope!) i stared directly at the animal crackers (iced) and pressed c3, despite the fact they were labeled c5. aaargh! i ended up with some crappy nutty raisin yogurt thing that was not tolerable.

yep, so goes the off season.

now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

USAT nationals

2010-09-27T12:08:00.000-04:00

i could have also titled this "Angels in Hell". perhaps that is better. anyway on to the report. and yes still have one from budapest coming. but this one is fresh and well its my blog so suck it.

the plan for nationals came together in early august. bri, marty, alysia and i decided to hoof it on south to compete. we owe major thanks (like keg size thanks) to marty for driving our bikes. airline fees are stupid high to send your bike.

here's the daily tattle:

thursday - our flight left at maybe 11 or so. we all rode to the airport to gether. i had already given death stare #1 to bri and we had not even gotten out of the parking garage. note: sarcasm was already running rampid. we had booked our tickets together so i was able to check us all in under my delta gold status (go ahead be jealous, i get a yellow sticker on my bag that basically tells them to go ahead and lose it). and our stuff actually flew for free. AKL was too cute when she went up to the delta counter to give them her bag and the lady asks "umm did you pay for this?" and AKL says "no i'm traveling with her". like i'm brittney spears or something. ha! anyway - no major issues on the plane. though i will say we turned into those annoying people who talk to loud. or was it jsut me. i guess i was just so excited to have a friend on a flight that i got out of control... hmmm.

ok fast forward - get car, stalk laura bennet, see stupid "cycling girl" as she became known (who travels in full cycling kit with complression sleeve/glove? i mean the race was 2 days away. loser. side note - we saw here again on friday in SAME outfit. ) drive to hotel, (get sort of maybe lost), check in and realize that there is a very distinct odor to our hotel. we would later realize that the entire city smelled very, uh, pungent. lovely.

headed to olive garden to meet up with bri's dad (on the board of usat and a pretty cool guy- HI bri's dad!! i hear you might be a blog stalker...). spent about 4 hours waiting for them to boil water...we even had to forgo dessert cause our glass slippers were fading.. that is a sad thing.

FRIDAY- we got up and headed out for a little bike ride. just to make sure the wheels were on and they actually worked. check. we did notice it was quite warm. as in "holy shit its hot and its 9 am". crap. back to the room and AKL and i watched sports center then the price is right. have you seen this lately (of course you havent) but drew carey is super skinny. they played plinko. we cheered. they bid on a boat.we boo'd. even i know a boat costs more than 25k. we mused about bob barker's whereabouts...pretty soon it was lunch time and then head over to pick up packets and drive the course. **now a little note i had raced nationals here last year and had been peppered with questions for weeks about everything. not being the most observant i merely relayed my impressions. however, i will admit the bike course IS HILLIER than i remembered (but this is possibly due to the fact that last year i was sooo pissed about my swim i was riding out of control) and they did change the run course this year so it was alot more winding around... anyway got to meet up with some friends while dropping our bikes off - err well actually this is more how it happened.i was walking down my rack and this little tornado comes out of no where. i immediately know its damie. love it. then mary comes thru. uber swimmer mary who has twins and still looks like she steps out of a cover girl commerical:

we were in bed by 9 on friday night. living on the edge. i know. try to keep up.

SATURDAY: race day
started at 430 am i think. we had to put number tattoos on this year. a little added stress as this is new and a little intimidating. i mean your arm is not really long enough and messing up meant scrubbing off 2 layers of skin to start over. we met cari in the parking lot and also ran into marty and his head lamp. the usual pre race stuff. set up. bathroom. warm up. nervous chatter. there was talk of the current. and knowlege that there would in deed be one. against us. for a moderately OK swimmer like me thats death. BUT i was ready to just roll with it. here's how the race unfolded for me:
swim: seemed really long. perhaps because i am slow. i had a bit of trouble sighting on the front half and wasnt really in a good groove. but i just kept my head down and tried to pull on every stroke. it was a pretty uneventful swim. getting out was kind of awkward as i kept trying to stand up and it was still deep water. i swear it took me a full minute to exit the river. hoofed it up to T1 and tried to guage how many bikes were still on the rack. its pretty hard to tell but the fact that there were still bikes there made me happy.
BIKE: so my heartrate for some reason was about 462 on the bike. i felt like i was hyperventilating most of the time. not going to lie. it was a tough ride. but at the same time i kept going hard figuring at some point i might get a little break on a down hill. actually the break came when ii burped up all the river water. yep i said it. i rode most of the way with a 46 yo guy. i would pass him up he would pass me down. but it made things interesting and with all the people out there you always had someone to go after. the bike dismount was chaos. it was a short steep hill with a sharp turn that seemed to defy gravity. the fact i was using my bike for support was probably not a smart move.
RUN: my plan was to just tackle this sucker. my T2 time was super flash, i'm getting good at slipping on the shoes and popping my head sweats visor on while moving! the first 5k was pretty tough, hilly, and then it flattened out to the finish. i went out of T2 with a girl and we were prettymuch stride for stride the first mile. when we went thru the water stop right after that i decided i needed to pick it up. i thought - you're gonna have to try to stay with me. i didnt feel great on the run but i didnt feel horrible. the hills were brutal. the heat was excrutiating. but everyone had the same. i had a decent run time, in comparision and was able to really push the last mile or two.

ended up 5th AG. so that was good. it was definately a tough day out there for everyone and i know we each had our baggage coming in.
post race was pretty much carniage. with only gatorade chocolate recovery and tacos... not pretty. come on USAT!! wtf? we girls ran into marty eating a MONSTER burrito and as if on cue we all spewed "ewwwww marty!!!" he loves us. we pretty much hauled ass out of there as fast as possible. well actually wasnt that fast as moving was pretty tough at that point and only barely audiable grunts would pass for communication.
fast forward to our hotel room where 5 stinky sweaty girls sprawled out (yep dont ever use the comforter in your room cause people like us are all over it!) and did the post mortem.
here is how our day got even sadder. so we get cleaned up, SCRUBBED our numbers off. and though entirely feeling pathetic we turn on the sunshine spickets and make plans to go to FIG. this is a restaruant we found that has a very famous 'chipwhich'. oh yes. 2 melty choco chip cookies around creamy vanilla ice cream. oh and some good lunch stuff too. so we google and head out (we had skipped it up till now knowing we could not resist the lure of the chip which and well the food is pretty rich itself. but PERFECT now!). so we find this place and there is a sign on the door. it reads "we are closed to watch the football game." ARE YOU KIDDING. now i know SEC foot ball is somewhat of a religeon, but you are closing down your business to watch the game? i was pissed. ready to kick in the door pissed. i already hate the tide. we ended up in some cafe and i ate grilled cheese like a woman scorned. we also had some chocolate cake that the lady said was to die for. she was right. i wanted to die after tasting it. jen called me at some point during this ordeal and i literally could not put a sentence together. i think she thought i was drunk. i was just so DONE.
but save the day bri came by later with cupcakes for my b day. wow. nothing like publix. and a sugar high. woowoo.
we headed over to the awards ceremony and caught the tail end of the town hall meeting (and the open bar. sweet). while some old people were bitching about being swum over and knicked on the bike (umm its a RACE) we made two trips. got to see mary and jenny!

sat night we went to mellow mushroom and pretty much comondeered (yea my spelling is wrong but sound out that word. it makes sense) a corner at the bar. about 12 of us from NC inhaled pizza and some good beverages. including the now aptly named "shot heard round the world!". ask me for a personal version of this story. its good. even better when i explain the origin and confusing nature of the name. great way to end the day.

SUNDAY-
our flight left birmingham at 1055am so i thought (and well we all did) that it was a pretty easy less than one hour drive to the airport. so leave at 9. sure. we actually got on the highway at 915 (after bidding bye to marty, tassie and the bikes) and i realized SHIT the airport is actually about 60 miles away. hmm. and its pouring. i looked over at alysia - who was driving an SUV for only the second time (the first was mine at lake logan 4 weeks ago) and told her she HAD to drive fast. if she wanted to see jimmy (her husband) tonight she had to gun it. she looked at me as if i asked her to spend an evening listening to phil collins...we quickly realized that time was NOT on our side. and started to rationalize in our heads how much time the FAA would actually allow us to check in pre flight....oh and we had to stop for gas. the plan became that alysia would drop us off at the curb and me and bri would dart in and check in and then meet alyisa at security. here's how it actually happened:

AKL swerves into the rental return garage on two wheels. B and I jump out and i yell grab the black bag. actually i probably said something like this "lets GOOOOOOO NOW" and didnt look back. the two of us sprinted each carrying a full back pack, my helmet, purses and toting rather heavey luggage (seriously sub 5k pace people). i knew we had to get to the second floor so found the escalator and we ran up the stairs. we are huffing and puffing and moving like crazy thru the airport (ala OJ) and people are beginning to stare. of course the delta counter is the farthest away it could possibly be. but we made it by 10 minutes. so now that we are checked in but sweaty as all get up we call alysia to tell her. bri has a text. it says "WE'RE FUCKED". its from alysia. "we gotta go get her- there are 20 cars infront of her and she's not moving" know how the military never leaves their own? well we hit MAN DOWN status and booked it back to the garage. we are literally darting thru the garage yelling her name trying to spot the SUV. we finally get her and yes its a mess. there are cars everywhere. some moving some parked. she finaly makes some progress and i tell some old guy that he HAS to move his car. but the problem now is alysia is scared to death to drive thru the small space. i look her in the eye and tell her "you have no choice". i think she might be having a melt down. pull up to the thrifty counter and i yell at the lady - lets make this snappy we are missing our flight. at that point we all three looked in the car and saw it. the cupcake that Alysia had saved to eat. we had to make a decision. it was her or it. we had to leave it. the sacrifice was excrutiating.

book it upstairs AGAIN and get in line for security. once standing still the sweat starts to pour and we suddenly look like gnarley pigs. sweet.

sitting at the gate i hear alysia say "are they boarding priority yet?" how quickly she becomes used to the 'special' treatment. ha.

we spent a few hours in the ATL airport watching football.

i will now present a list of my food choices over the past 48 hours: grilled cheese, nachos, 1/2 a mellow mushroom pizza, beer, cupcakes (2), krispy kreme, oreos, nutty buddys, pancakes, oh and real cinnamon toast for breakfast today. the kind i made wheni was 6. white toast with tons of butter, then you sprinkle on real sugar (enought to make a paste with the butter) and then cinnamon. WOW that is good.

can someone say OFF SEASON!!!!!!!!!!

carmen sandiego

2010-09-13T13:18:00.000-04:00

i am here-

i was here-

doing this-

stay tuned.

good morning charlie

2010-08-31T15:56:00.000-04:00

so yes. lack of posting. whats the reason? stuff. good stuff. bad stuff. stuff. care to keep reading? just dont ask me for the next 10 minutes back once you spend them here.

last week i spent exactly 35 hours away from my house on an "international" business trip to canada (tell me you've seen that office episode where michael goes to toronto?) anyway of that time, 12 hours was in the hotel where i presented, including sleep time... so needless to say it was a bit of a nightmare. i was in 5 airports, got the full body security scan 4 times and didnt eat (or actually SEE) a vegetable for the duration. lovely.

saturday morning i woke up feeling way out of gas. on the docket was a 10 mile "getting faster" run. i thought i could muster it, but when my warm up pace and my get going pace were the same, and i could not will myself to go any faster.... i called it a day. a very disappointing day.

i swam the Nuclear swim. one mile. murky waters. weedy waters. still not feeling super sassy.. more dizzy and lackluster... i went early to help with registration. everything went off pretty well. i was hoping for a decent swim and actually for a little while thought i was having one - i was swimming alongside angie who usually beats me.. so i thought hmmm better. turns out she's been on vacay and had a few glasses of wine still in her. translation: crap swim. nice.

i watched shutter island. decent movie. not the same caliber as inception. but the same leo performance. really. could have done with just one movie. it did remind me alot of our trip to alcatraz and then last year drachau. some of those movies you wonder if half way thru they realize its not goign anywhere and they sure as hell better start to figure things out so it all kind of wraps up way to fast...

the lawyer who helped us to refinance our house lives next door to bill cowher. not sure if thats a good sign or a sign he makes too much money. but regardless it was interesting to get a perspective on the family, or well the family sans bill, as he traveled most of the time up until recently when he got his cushy tv job. god bless the chin.

in other steeler news, if you have yahoo as your home page you may have seen the story about troy's hair and the policy. my job is full of people who think they are funny (most arent as evidenced here).

a little shout out to the angels who keep me sane and laughing. cheers.

i would

2010-08-20T16:18:00.000-04:00

like to go here please.

Red Cross 10k RR

2010-08-17T16:50:00.000-04:00

running this was entirely my idea. and i'm still not sure if it was a good one..

here's how it all went down.

saturday morning we got up at 430 (yep that makes 2 saturday's in a row PRE 5am. that is wrong...) got our stuff together and drove about 80 minutes south. yes i did realize i was driving almost 4x as far as i would be running (time wise..) that little fact didnt really sink in.. but a little sports talk radio fixed all that.

after a little bit of confusion as to where to actually go, we saw some tents and a huge finish chute. must be the place. bobby (smartly after too many morning races with no spectator provisions) had brought a cooler of food. i too have upped my game day intelligence and brought a change of clothes. that was my best move of the day. (after sitting around logan last weekend smelling like river sludge... fresh stuff was oh so nice).

so - get number. warm up. right before heading to the start i chat with this guy-and not to stereotype (but i will) he was fast looking and had a kenyan flag hanging in his car. enough said. anyway i asked if the course was hilly and he said "not sure. i'm not from around here.". hmmmm

head to start. make my way toward the front and scope out the ladies. i see one wearing a "marathon.com" shirt who looks like the above guys sister.. lovely. i'll just go ahead and say she won it for the ladies.. there were some super FIT looking people out there. no surprise as the race was taking place near a very large military base in NC.

my strategy. get out and hang on.

BANG

first mile - i'm running comfortably hard. 2 girls (above mentioned and one more) shoot out ahead and my goal it to keep them in sight. i end up running the first 1/2 mile with an 8 year old and after checking my split, i wonder if that kid is some sort of phenom... (but later learned like so many, he went out WAY too fast). so mile one. rolling. nice. had a great split and was thinking.. hmm feeling good this is going to be a PR race for me. **insert something about chickens before they hatch**
we are humming along and have to make a right turn. UP. and UP some more and then it went UP. i said (out loud) are you kidding? anyway the hills just kept on coming. lovely to run down one and lose all your momentum in a turn around. i some how missed mile marker 2 and 4 so not sure of the splits. i did notice that this race had ads along the way. guess bright colors and pretty pictures still grab my attention.
so my thought - besides OH LORD this HURTS- was to jsut keep my head up and get going. work to pass anyone i could and not to slow down. mission mostly accomplished. i did get a little pissed when the guy i caught for the last mile was runing all over the course giving hi 5s. i almost b*tch slapped him, but couldnt actually get close enough. how the heck are you running all over creation when i'm dying to hold myself together? oh and some loser out sprinted me at the chute to beat me by 1 second. really? you just HAD to beat a girl?

here i am at the finish working my A$$ off still.

anyway great race. FS does a stand up job always. and how fast were these guys? top 3ran 33 minutes. up and down everest. thats impressive.

i somehow managed 3OA. mainly because i was running scared the whole time of people catching up.

clothes changed. car packed. back on the highway. home for a nap and then a fun night with some great ladies in chapel hill.

except for the fact my legs did not function all day sunday, lovely little saturday.

30 days

2010-08-13T12:09:00.000-04:00

till kickoff. hurry please.

and yes i know the words to this.

AND for those of you who care - here are the reasons i DO NOT play fantasy football:

1- i hate people emailing me saying that a player has a bye week and i have to make a switch. i hate it even more when people email me saying YOUR PLAYER HAS A BYE WEEK YOU HAVE TO MAKE A SWITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

1a- i also cannot stand smack talking for this *not real* game. serioulsy?

2-i cannot root against the steelers. i'm sorry. how can you be a true fan yet want some running back to gain 100yds against your defense so you get points.

3-its a stupid concept. if peyton manning was meant to be on a team with anquan boldin then so be it. figure out how the colts can cough up some draft picks to make it happen.

4- football is played by teams, not all stars.

5- there are many players and teams in the NFL that i hate with a passion. under no circumstances would i want them to do well. just so i can beat someone who named their team "falconsallthewaybaby".

6- most girls who play pick their team based on A- hotness of player B- recent media news about said player or C- ratings given by the computer. who knows.. i bet guys do that too...

7- just cause you played football in highschool.....please. just dont even go there.

thats my football post for now. hate me.

blah blah fast blah blah crazy blah blah poop

2010-08-11T10:56:00.000-04:00

yep that about covers the race report. if you need more details keep reading.

we had been planning a 'get away race' for a while and logan looked like a winning venue. to round out the mountain experience we rented a cabin out near waynesville. here's the recap.

friday alysia and i set out on the 4 hour drive west. we loaded our bikes and mountain of sh*t into the back of my truck and off we went. we sort of had directions, a garmin that i think had some power left and my crackberry capable of telling you where you are within 2000m. lovely. no worries.

we covered the gammet of topics. unless you are a 30something woman you would probably find your ears bleeding. but we had fun. Alysia and i laugh alot because we are truly polar opposites. and it is RARE we actually find something we have in common. really. so far the list is short - triathlon, coffee (well anti-coffee), little debbie snack products, and football. yet somehow the friendship grows. amazing. ha.

anyway we somehow found packet pick up. no kidding this is the conversation we heard in front of us.

girl #1: yea so the crispy creme challenge makes sense - you BURN CALORIES while you run. (for those of you outside of carolina - that race you run 3miles eat a dozen doughnuts then run 3 miles. puking optional).
girl #2: so i dont get the tobacco trail run. you BURN TAR OUT OF YOUR LUNGS. that is such an unhealthy race.

yes. i swear. said with a straight face, and then a bit of a perpensive look. she was wearing a nc state shirt so...HA!!

we stopped by subway to get some dinner and asked the cashier how to best get back on the highway. she said "i have no idea". i said but the highway is right there. she said - yea i dont know. UMMM are you kidding. how the F did you get to work today. get to a place that is literally 50 yds from the highway we want to get on. and you have no idea? ok.

now onto the cabin. after a few turn arounds we finally found out place. at the top of a ski slope. really. the grade on this driveway had to be 25%.

cabin- A+. hopefully pictures to come. i was not the official photographer. very rustic. so rustic in fact while munching we heard some scrathing noises up in the loft (where we would be sleeping) and jumped.. umm squirrels in the house? good thing the gaals and tassie showed up. first thing we did was make marty and tassie go look under the beds for critters. PHeW all clear.

dinner made. stories told and wake up call determined for race morning. it was a 7am start so out of the house by 5. good god.

sleep. no ac. just open windows and the sound of crickets. foot ball fan crickets.. like when you go to carolina and one side says TAR the other side HEELS. over and over and over and over...

race morning. some grumpiness. some lube. some peanut butter. some more lube. "got all your stuff?". shrug. ok lets go.

arrive at the site in total darkness. pumping up tires in said darkness is not desirable. they should make guages on pump glow in the dark. AKL has special tires so she hit up the bike guys (and they hit on her.. shocker!). anyway chips, set up T, the usual trips to the john.. and woods.. and well.. warm up done. wet suit (sweet!!!) partially on and over to the swim start. we missed the first wave and spent some time trying to figure out where the turn buoy is. got in the water for a short warm up. it was blissfully cool. even with the full suit. what a welcome feelign that was.

found cari s and we lined up for our start. BG and AKL had started in another wave. i knew cari and i would somehow end up bumping into each other at the start of the swim. swimming over each other several times (my fault) and then seperating. only to come out about 4 seconds apart at the end. that pretty much happened. my thoughts on the swim. water was calm. cool. clear. at one point you could see the bottom. i swam pretty well. kept thinking about my elbows. and my arms actually kind of started to hurt so i guess i was actually swimming for once. about time.

exit the swim by hauling yourself up onto a dock. yep thats NOT easy. especially when there are about 15 others trying to do the same thing. we were the last wave so the entire race was ahead of us. lovely.

had a bit of trouble getting the WS off. bugger. then for some reason i just kind of freeze up and think ok what do i need to do.. oh right get the hell on my bike. running out of T1 there was a small aisle to get thru. people ahead were walking. i was angry. i yelled. they slowed. i yelled again. they stopped. i ran over them. oh well. on the bike. i felt great. really strong and on top. i even think i handled some of the techincal turns pretty well and came off them faster. win for me. the last half of the race is into a head wind and is a constant uphill culminateing in a pretty steep long climb at the end. i just put my head down.

came into T2 and was ready. the run was 5k up hill and then 5k down. the BEST part was the run was shady. wow. compared to running in 110 this was heaven. i didnt even have to drink any water. nice. so anyway. good run for me. probably slacked a bit too much on the up ... but decent over all run.

we all ended up having good races. saw some friends and enjoyed the post race and awards before heading out to lunch in waynes ville. ** side note. if anyone knows the RD he is a jerk. he hosed alicia p out of $100. loser.

back to the cabin to just sit on the porch all afternoon. pretty nice way to spend the day. we finally got all cleaned up and headed over to asheville and tupelo honey. one of my fav restaurants there. since we had an odd party of 5 we had to wait for a bigger table. an hour later i think the grumpy had returned and we started talking (a bit too loudly) about this retarded family that was souvenier shopping and taking up our table! evil eyes were literally popping out of my head.
finally dinner and then cupcakes!! and then bed. yep we lead life in the fastlane.

up on sunday morning we wanted to do a 'recovery spin'. not so easy in the blue ridge so MBG mapped out a route around maggy valley. turned otu to only be a few killer climbs.. and really pretty. nice to get out and get a little blood flowing again. AKL had such a fun time racing that she wore her aero helmet, race wheels and numbers. what a competitor. ha!!

on the way home we stopped in asheville again for lunch. salsarita's. wow. good stuff. try the plantains.

time to hit the road. of course we are chatting and following marty.. well i miss the 40 east exit and we end up on some weird road. turns out he missed the exit and got on 40 west. guess we were more tired than we thought.
anyway
GREAT weekend.

another one in the books

2010-08-09T09:54:00.000-04:00

great weekend update soon to come. (meaning the weekend was great. the update may or may not be.)

OIB eating camp

2010-08-03T10:54:00.000-04:00

so a bunch of us went down to the beach house this weekend. seemed all talk centered around food. shocker. but it was nice to spend three days relaxing, laughing, and of course training. here are some high-lights and no doubt low lights...

yes there was a photo without tassies butt, this one is much more fun.

alysia and i had done all the grocery shopping since we were there first (jimmy's answer (her husband) when we asked him about coming with was : NOPE i'm going to the beach. ha!) anyway shopping was good. but mainly consisted of "hmmm i like (pringles, star crunch, skinny dip, swiss cheese) so lets get that". we also put on the holly homemaker hats and made dinner on friday night.

we headed out early on saturday to ride. changeover traffic is a b*tch if you wait too long. found some great FLAT country roads and man can these guys roll. 50 miles flew by. no real issues on the ride, except a loose dog...

at one point during the ride someone pointed out "wow look at all of our cervelo bikes! we could be TEAM CERVELO!!"

or not. team scott represent!

a great day at the beach. some attempts at body surfing, some lovely beverages, and a few conversations on topics of epic importance.

bobby was nominated to cook dinner. (cue Tim the Tool man Taylor and his "man" grunts).

YUM.

the child prodigy lives on. though unwilling to self proclaim as a NERD ("there's a difference!") perhaps the dork category is still open.. :) (yes i make fun of smart people. people who have conversations about things i have no idea about. its just easier that way).

some played poker. the legend of Jimmy Rivers was born that night. he took all the money.

NOTE- we also played SCENE it. you might remember this game from a while ago.. there are questions about movie clips on a DVD... due to pending litigation i'm unable to comment much on the game. the surveillance video is still under investigation and being analyzed for fraud. an actual winner has yet to be determined.

it stormed most of sunday morning so once the clouds started to break we headed to the beach for a swim. if you look closely you can see how thrilled we all are. woo woo. swimming.

the water was soooooo (oooooooo) much more choppy that it looked. we swam down to the pier (about a mile with the current) then turned around and immediately got walloped in the face with water. wow.

a great weekend. and one that pretty much tired us all out. here's smokey on the way home smushed up between the golf clubs and my bike.

no follow through

2010-07-26T11:39:00.000-04:00

so i've started a few posts over the past few days and havent finished any. here they are in order.

Girls Rule, Boys Drool.
So the long and short of it is… a bit of a recap of the ride last night.
NOTE this takes place exactly 24 hours after a blissful, yet tough, girls ride that 4 of us did.
Picture this- its 6 pm. Traffic is just picking up and the sun has lost a bit of its unforgiving burn for the day. I rolled up on the BUS (yep that’s the name of my bike. Some of you will get the reference. Some won’t.) I meet the cast of characters for the evening:
Leader guy: actually named eric and very nice.
Race wheels guy: also know as heart rate guy or shirtless guy cause he was wearing and not wearing one. for some reason he is very anxious at the start. Refuses to stop circling on his bike.
Grumpy pants: named by his wife. no way I would ever make that up on my own.
NEO: named by her husband. Its her new secret alias.
Rider one: plays a very small part. Would only get the $20 pay reserved for extras who walk thru the scene one time in the movies
Softride guy: or red shirt guy, or jerk as he will soon be called.
Soft ride guys friend: enough said.
Me: the heroine. (ha)
Scene ONE:
The warm up. All is pleasant in rideville. There are several small conversations occurring at the moment – some centering around ironman, the deuce, or bagels. There is also a secret exchange happening unbeknownst to many of the participants.
Scene TWO:

....bottom line is dont talk smack on a ride unless you can back it up. getting dropped after you make this evil plan to smoke everyone on the ride makes you look like an ass.

the big deuce
so i swam the deuce on sat. got there way early and helped with packet pick up. i will note that someone else was even more grumpier than me. AHEM! but the race went off well. i swam exactly twice as fast as i swam the mile one month before. guess i have one speed. lovely. i will note that i got beat at the end by a 13 year old. afterwards a few of us headed out in the scorching heat for a 50 mile ride. hot winds, a cup and cone ride full of riders we had to dodge, and heat radiating off th pavement.. lovely...i got to stick on alicia parr's wheel for a while. if you know her you will agree that its NOT easy. but all was good... well until i almost made her crash...twice...call me a loser...

here is a picture of some of us after the swim. these are the GRUMPIEST, most pessimistic, whiney bunch of girls EVER! so yes i'm posting this AGAIN.

oh one note on the swim. i'm famous. or at least my suit is. i had a bunch of people ooooh and awe over it and even one photo of my butt. lovely. i may not be the fastest swimmer but i'm the best dressed.

party planner
i think this could be my calling. the next two weekends will be super fun! but working out the logistics is proving to be somewhat of a challenge.. getting multiple people from one place to another, feeding them and finding shelter, not so easy. you think it would be, but when the options look like something kurt's dad (yes i KNOW you watched ali's show! and by the way- i'm still not sure if its kirk or kurt) would furnish...BUT regardless some good times to come. much needed if you ask me.

one sheep. two sheep. three sheep.

2010-07-20T14:49:00.000-04:00

nope doesnt work for me.

i read one time that abraham lincoln only slept 4 hours a night. every night. that is insane.

especially to a person like me who probably could go 10 hours a night. so when things start to go awry and mess with that, its not a pretty picture. i've got the usual suspects - early morning masters, late nights of debauchery (no comment) and well just general things like nights spent listening to the dogs bark at thunder or bobby snoring or getting up to pee. BUT lately i've had to deal with something that i thought i had under control. my sciatica. ugly word that i'm not always sure i spell right. basically it feels like there is acid running thru my legs. sometimes its a bit like what they call "restless leg syndrome" where you have this uncontrolable need to move your legs- just like a bunch of pins cruising up your entire body (literally) daring you to stay still. makes for a tough night. anyway if you're wondering why i'm grumpy (more than usual!) or delerious or zombie like there's your answer. its because i've been up half the night, icing my back (thats where the epicenter of this whole thing is - where the nerve is messed up- which by the way i think i may have traced back to my paper route i had when i was younger.. carrying around that HUGE sack of newspapers on one shoulder.. hmmm)... moving from bed to couch to other bed and back again...its not fun. so wish me some sweet dream please!

a tale of two races

2010-07-14T11:30:00.000-04:00

the look on my face pretty much says it all. i raced local on satuday and had a hellish day (evidenced by the lobotomy i am attempting to give myself). so i said "F U triathlon I want another go". and went out and did the same race on sunday with much better results.

here are some observations:

pre race nutrition is paramount even for a sprint.
my swim is progressing, not quickly but is better
i havent found that pain locker yet. still working on that
taking a michalob ultra out onto the run was one guy's winning strategy. not sure how that worked out for him.
heed still sucks
it is possible for me to make un-human noises at a very loud volume while fighting pain on the run. noises that i think alarmed those around me.
raleigh triathlon is filled with some very fast people. and some really nice ones too. great to make new friends each time out.
i'm learning how to race by myself. being in O vs AG is a whole other story. when you are not passing people all the time on the bike your head goes to a very different place.
i was proud of myself for not flipping out in the mass open start. even with many male legs kicking and churning - they do not stop to say "sorry".
i am guilty of tea parties in transition.
short cool downs are a very good idea.
race wheels cant help you if they are flat.
even when i think i'm pushing i need to push more.
i took the hills in aero. thats HUGE for me.
as much as i think they wouldn't, my dogs would hate coming to a triathlon.
water with a GU is your best bet.
always just stick with what you know works.
black isnt always slimming.
i love this sport.

over 2 min off my swim from last year!

forgetting that even though i entered the park its still part of the race course...

just click here

2010-07-10T13:38:00.001-04:00

lots to talk about but first.. PLEASE click here and vote for Tunica MS to get a no kill animal shelter. even if you dont like dogs. even if you dont like mississippi or cant spell mississippi. even if you dont really care. i care. do it for me. and damie !!!!

thanks

yikes

2010-07-08T11:50:00.000-04:00

its HOT out. but yes summer in carolina tends to be that way. what can you do. happy to report my ankle has responded very well to ingested drugs and is feeling pretty ok. we had a tough track workout on tuesday night.. well tough because it was sweltering and somehow we decided to run really fast. BUT that said, when it was over I was happy with the results. maybe 2 weeks off your feet really does help. who knows. so last night i went out on our usual ride, but this time it was just me and brooke. sometimes its really great to have that Q time with a good friend. makes for a great ride. anyway 20 minutes in my bike sort of broke.. err well the left cable is probably very stretched and decided enough is enough and it refused to switch gears. poor brooke was stuck riding with me for 30 miles in my small ring. in other rivoting news i'm racing local this weekend. should be fun. lots of familiar faces. i was looking at my times from when i did this race last year and honestly i'm not sure if i was even in the race. for example - in the 750 m swim (drum roll please) i swam 15+ minutes. perhaps i was wearing floaties, maybe i was just caught in a rip tide, maybe .... who knows! but plans for saturday in clude a very big improvement there.
wow. thats all i have to say and its not very exciting. my apologies. now go watch the tour.
oh and i did find a "bridge to friendship" with my carniverous friends...

a little bit country and a little bit... ghetto

2010-07-01T10:51:00.000-04:00

i'm the first to admit i'm not the posterchild for classy. trust me. and when it comes to triathlon, i am definately the step child:

my first jersey was a gift (thanks MCL) because i didnt own a proper jersey. my second jersey was a gift because someone thought i needed a second jersey when that one was smelly. i now own 2 jerseys.

i have been wearing bobby's old (empahsize OLD) helmet since day one.

i rode his TREK road bike for my first year of triathlon. it weighed about 47 pounds. (and his shoes, and pedals and yes i admit even one of his tri shirts. he used to be skinnier)

i normally get stuck at the inner most possible transition spot and someone inevitably over stays their space.

people forgot to tell me you go commando in your bike shorts. i think it was intentional.

i get swum over and dunked in the swim. (absolutly nothing to do with my swim skill set).

anyway- whats the point here? yesterday i got a brand new helmet. and for some reason it makes me feel like i'm starting to belong. maybe because it actually FITS me. probably a key factor in safety. its nice lookin too. thats important.

lightening does strike twice

2010-06-25T14:19:00.000-04:00

so i wont go into the details, but i find myself at my desk with my right leg propped up and surrounded by ice. lovely. this is the same ankle i busted while running across the parking lot carrying dirt 2 years ago. no need to cover that story either. BUT i have managed two pretty good swims over the past two days and keeping some hope that a bike ride is possible tomorrow. we'll see. in the meantime i'm conning people at work to go and get me stuff though i think the charm in that wore off at 10am when i needed my oatmeal made. and said that the water in my bottle was warm. oh well.

anyway finally signed up for the rest of the races for the season. nothing like waiting till the last minute. but lots to look forward to.

im working on a denim brochure at work and honestly it slow goings. there are not alot of ways to make this particular denim sound all glamorous and awesome. really. i've tried. it either comes off sounding like an SNL skit (a bad one) or an old lady on QVC selling her bedazzled sweat pants. today i am not good at my job.

so i'm also finding it hard to believe its been ONE year since MJ died. really? one YEAR?? i'm kind of feeling like it was only a few months ago.. funny how my time flies reference comes from a dead 80s pop icon, and by the way - i did happen to see a preview for his monkey's dateline special. really. do we have nothing to talk about besides a primate who cant even moonwalk. though i am enjoying the montage of jackson singalongs on the radio today. RIP mike.

real world: boone

2010-06-22T11:46:00.000-04:00

this past weekend a bunch of raleigh/durham folks headed west to boone, nc. or really i guess we were closer to blowing rock.. anyway both are nestled along the blue ridge parkway. the Gaals put together a great plan including a house and all you can eat 24 hour buffets. (that was lovely). since i'm still pretty wiped from the weekend, here's a quick recap and some photos.

thursday- i picked up alysia and bri and we drove the three hours west, stopping on the way to get some "cold stuff", which as it turned out, we guessed wrong on the chocolate:regular milk ratio. we also picked up some swiss cake rolls. that was a good move. arrived at the house. ran thru it yelling and screaming "ooo look at this". then welcomed the other campers as they arrived. dinner and bed. oh and beer.

friday - early wake up call. blah. rode about 45 miles - lots of ups, more ups and some crazy downs. scenery was amazing. did a little T run. all 12 minutes of it.. our house was at the top of the steepest hill you could imagine (about 20% grade) and well we were tired. ha. lunch and rest time. then we all went to a local park for an easy 5 mile run. we actually found some relatively flat paths to run. nice. then dinner, more drinks and bed. whew!

sat- more early mornings. (** note there was some drama here where bri and i almost ended our friendship...) headed over to bass lake for a 10 mile run. 5 up and 5 down. great bridal trail though.. minus the horse dumps... then into town for some goodies - ice cream, coffee, muffins.... wine... home for lunch and nap time.. errr sort of... then off to the pool. a 25 m saline pool. crazy. then home for dinner and well more drinks. and dancing. lots of dancing... oh and a very intense game of pictionary that i think may have resulted in some four letter words... (**note there was some more drama here that almost ended another one of bri's friendships.. yes i had fun this weekend..)

sunday - up early once again..some of us feeling better than others. but 4 of us struck out on a 45ish mile ride over to grandfather mountain and the viaduct. really great ride! then the ride home and some major crashing.

we were down one VS member.. but she was not far from our thoughts :) missed you!!

**and dont worry.all drama was in jest, and after a few minutes in the confessional all was good :)

THE OFFICE

2010-06-17T10:58:00.001-04:00

yes on a day when i'm leaving at noon to go to boone (WOO WOO!) and have a bizillion things to do.. we still manage a little fun around here.

just in time

2010-06-16T10:43:00.000-04:00

so the word of the day is OPPRESSIVE.

Tuesdays are track days. heading out there last night i heard this:
"kona hot"
"i cant get any air"
"this is why i dont use the sauna, i get it for free"
"i am drenched and its oh 4 minutes in"
"we are doing WHAT tonight?"
"i'm moving to alaska"

so needless to say it was pretty um, uncomfortable. But we got the work done. thanks mostly to my speedy friend who led us sweaty folk in circles. I know she loves it when i run directly behind her and pant heavily...and sometimes look at her butt. ha. Afterwards and after once again ringing out my clothes - contributing to the 6 liters of sweat i personally left on the track last night, i headed home, just as the monsoon hit. lovely timing mama nature. could you not have rained just 30 minutes earlier when we were screaming for releif?

so despite the weather some good numbers on the track. AND I come home to this:

we all know how much i LOVE getting mail. so i was estatic to open it up and find a bunch of goodies from the great folks at headsweats. nice. and it all really could not have come at a better time! i love this stuff! now.. what to wear first...

and this is just madison. she was sleeping till i snapped this..you can see her fuzzy feet...

I'm melting

2010-06-14T10:11:00.000-04:00

seriously. when you are sitting outside at 8 am and already sweating, FROM SITTING you know its too hot. summer rolled into carolina this weekend and PHEW its brutal. here are a few ways I know:
- i have to ring my clothes out multiple times during a run.
- the water in the pool is no longer refreshing, but rather a luke warm repreive
-the weatherman tells old people to not go out side
-there is forever a chance of thunderstorms
-a 2 liter of ice cold regular coke at the end of a HOT bike ride looks like nectar of the gods.
-a woman at the OW swim yesterday got over heated in the water and thought that taking off her top would cool her down
-i am forced to dress everyday for 2 entirely different climates - the indoor arctic winds of the office and the outside oven set to pre-heat for toll house temperatures
-i would rather park under at tree in the far corner of the lot than in the direct sun near the door
-realize that yes i can steer my car with just one finger
-ice cream is a valid choice for any meal

despite the ahem, conditions, it was a good training weekend. long run and ride on saturday (carrying around about 6 extra pounds of sweat makes for strong hill running!). sunday was the open water mile - i swam about the same time as last year, but without a wet suit so thinking thats progress..right?. then a ride with the gaals- a very hot ride, where the sun was beating down and the heat from the pavement was radiating up. lovely. follow that up with shopping (that my friends could warrent a whole other post as i've now officially quit that) and a trip to the saucer. some good story telling and some good laughs.

oh and i got to try out these bad boys on sunday. the guys at inside out let me walk out the door with them.. love it! well until i realized that i was riding on like 3 grand or something ridiculous like that...

stay cool. i've got a fresh bag of ice pops ready to go in the freezer!

and a special salute to the world cup for bringing such loveliness to the world stage. lets start with the aussies.. :)

finally to end this ridiculous ramble.. i found this and would immediately like it incorporated into my training plan (ahem jen??!?!?). i mean why am i spending 60-75 minutes in the pool when its apparent that much less is all it takes!

2010-06-10T12:07:00.000-04:00

The new TAF store opened up in Cameron village this week, well officially this Saturday…. But since I run with their race team, I got a great sneak peek on Tuesday night before our track workout. WOW. It even smells new! Talk about a kid in a candy store! It’s a pretty sweet set up with a whole separate training area downstairs. While we were down there Coach Sean had some words of advice for us. I paid attention. He said something that John Wooden used to tell his kids –

Practice makes Permanent.

Good stuff. And actually pretty relevant to my little noggin situation lately. He said that if you go hard and have confidence and put your best out there every day in practice, come race day that is what your body will know what to do. If you cut stuff short, go out too fast, don’t follow the plan, well we all know the word BONK. It kind of hit home for me. NOT because I’m sandbagging workouts. But because I know that this applies not only to the physical side of triathlon, but the mental side. I’m working a lot lately on finding that little voice inside of me that says “GOGOGOGO- this is YOUR TIME”.

I’ll get there. With a little help from my friends. And a little bit of “retrain the brain” (thanks MB). One race at a time I get closer. One workout at a time I find my voice inside getting stronger. Soon I’ll be roaring. You just wait.

first they were cheering, then they shook their heads and said "oh"- I'm forever THAT girl..

2010-06-07T15:59:00.000-04:00

my recap of this weekend's oly...

4:30 am- wide awake. Calculating how much longer I can stay in bed and still make it to race in time. re-set alarm for 4:50.

4:47am- get up anyway. Bobby is already up and trying to coerce the dogs to go outside. smokey literally lifts her head, rolls her eyes (unconfirmed since it was dark, but chances are..) and drifts back to sleep.

4:56 am – make the strategic move to only put race suit on half way. Have learned my lesson that fully disrobing in a port o john is not strategically favorable.

4:57 am- throw on the team VS shirt from the doughman hoping that some of that good race vibe will still be in it. it was also the most easily accessible item out of the laundry bin.

5:00 am- finalize new bike bottle mixture. My own secret concoction... based on weeks of research, market testing, nutritional analysis and a hunch. (ha – ok really it’s just coconut water)

5:06 am – in the car, oatmeal in hand, semi clear map to race site, a front bike tire that won’t fully inflate and a trusty wet suit that I am praying gets used.

6:18 am – arrive race site. There is exactly one bike in transition.

6:27 am- I have my packet and am set up. Hmph. Apparently my time calculations done at 430 am were a bit off.

6:35 am – begin people watching. Pre-scouting the race I knew there were a few fast girls here, but also knew that I had a good kick on the run. Key was to not get killed in the swim.

6:40 am- might as well take advantage of no lines….

6:50 am- bobby is getting restless and walks back to the car. Women walks by with a cannondale 613. I suddenly feel nostalgic. When I raced here in 2008 that’s what I was on. I secretly wished her a good ride on a trusty steed.

6:52 am – dreaded water temperature announcement is made. 79.5. crap. Begin to wonder how I can make myself more buoyant. Have visions of plastic surgery to create webbed feet….

7:05 am- begin warm up. Jog out to car and around the run course. Am feeling good. hmmm.. shove thoughts of that “feeling good” out of my head. (note: last time I felt this good warming up I ended up in the medical tent.. weird but true). So I just continue to run. light springy fresh. That’s what I thought instead.

7:35 am- head down to the water for a little swim. Get in and right away notice the chop. Crap. I’m a bi-lateral breather. Realize I will be drinking an inordinate amount of dirty lake water today.

7:50 am- bobby tells me to get going on the swim. That I need to be out of my comfort zone. That if I feel good I need to go faster. To concentrate on the kick. I salute – aye aye captain

8:00 am- first wave goes out. I head over to the starting corral.

8:02am- in the water. Lined up second row. I KNOW there are fast swimmers out there. my goal is to find feet and stay on them. Swim in a straight line and GO.

8:04am- we are off. Immediately I am hit in the face with waves on my left side. I know I am struggling to stay straight as I am going on and off someone’s line. Crap (yes lots of 4 letter words come out of my mouth. A lot).

8:?? am- still swimming. have moved into the first wave and am passing some silver caps. I see some purples still around me (that’s my wave color) so I’m doing my best to try to get ahead. Not so successful in drafting. And my googles are so fogged I can’t see buoys. I’m sighting off swimmers. Not good. I make the final turn and have to stop to clear my googles. There is no way I can find the finish without it.

8:32 am- out of the water. Yes folks that was a 28 minute swim. I can say it was long and choppy and perhaps be partially correct. But the fact is I have work to do here. Lots of work. somehow I was 14th out of the water (overall). So perhaps some others had rough days.. but doesn’t matter if the leaders are out in 22.

8:33 am- rolling out of T1. Great transition. A little congestion at the mount line, but right away I got moving. I do love scotty… my goal for the bike was to go hard and beat my time from 08. I was rolling along great, got passed by 3 guys (and the VROMP VROMP of their discs..) and actually passed one of them back. sweet. I like to pretend I’m on a mission. Hunting down girls. I always want to believe they are just around the next turn and I need to go and get them. Trouble is they are usually great riders.

9:-- am – math is not happening right now. but I ended up just a bit faster (less than a minute). There was a pretty strong head wind the last 10 or so miles that was tough to get thru. I will say my new little drink was awesome. It was HOT out. Carolina hot. And I stayed hydrated and fueled.

9:-- +47 seconds – out of T2 – ok but first I must say – I had the most amazing perfect dismount EVER. Folks really, it was a thing of beauty and perhaps my shining moment of the day (knowing whats to come I can for sure say that now!).

Ok running. I didn’t know my place coming off the bike but I had seen 3 girls already on the run course. My mission was to run as many down as I could. Goal was to just start passing people and eventually I knew I could find them. Again with the games… I swear I hear mission impossible sometimes in my head! Ha. so the run is HOT. No shade. Asphalt. Full on sun and humidity. (ok as soon as i get out of ths shade tree there was no shade. really) BUT I felt ok. Bike drink was super.

Right before 3 miles there was a turn around. at a corner. I was focused in on a guy ahead of me and kept following…. Right past the turn around… I didn’t even see it…. I knew it was coming and I thought that it would be a huge cone and timing mat (to make sure you didn’t cheat) and saw some arrows on the ground saying second lap pointing left.. so I ran left… all the way to the finish chute.. CRAP. I realized I totally missed the turn around, but honestly still had no clue where it was… really maybe the heat was affecting my brain.. so I yelled some choice words (sorry kids) and headed back out. I then saw the turn around…. a phone pole off the road to the left with a little sign on it. (the guy was one of the leaders and actually WAS finishing..yep the winner came in at 2:02 phew!)

At this point I figured I had put about 2 more minutes between me and the ones ahead and wasn’t sure I could make that up. I just kept going along hoping for the best. but honestly I know it wasn’t my best effort. There was just something so deflating about making a mental mistake. Different than mechanical. This was ALL me (mary you totally popped into my head!).

ok so i put this photo in for 2 reasons - one both my feet are off the ground.. isnt that a good thing?!?!? and well notice the children in the photo. this is where i realized that i ran too far and had to go back out and there were lots of not so nice things coming out of my mouth. apologies to the parents..

I ended up 4th overall. Less than 2 minutes from 2nd and 3rd. and about 4 from the leader. Disappointing yes. But what can you do. I wasn’t especially proud of my run for the misdirection or the effort. Just makes me want to get back out there stat.
BUT the bright side is I took 5 minutes off of my time from 08. So over all happy with that. I will race again

congrats to all the great finishes at kansas! so proud of you guys!!

the hangover

2010-06-03T19:31:00.000-04:00

yep marty called it. he said "you know how people do an ironman and then afterwards go thru withdrawal...doughman is going to be worse". know what. he was right. DRAT. so - no better cure than the hair of the dog that bit you. right? (good thing its not gin and tonic this time.. ) so with that in mind i've jumped into an OLY this weekend. just north of here. 2 years ago i raced it and ended up 4th OA, (on my trusty cannondale!) so hoping to better that this weekend. its a super fast bike course so scotty is on high alert. rumor has it the lake temp is still hovering pretty low so the batman suit is all ready to go. swimming while encased in rubber is so not over rated. i quite welcome it.

and - sh*t its summer. how can you not be happy when its summer? lots of stuff to look forward to - bike camp, beach weekends, bonfires (ok those mostly happen when the grill goes awry..), beers on the deck, baseball games.. hmmmmm good stuff. oh and jack johnson will be here in august. fantastic.

on of my favs.

anyway - lots of other racing this weekend.. i'm kind of sad not to be heading to kansas.. had originally planned to go and race with julia and mary and renne... but it wasnt in the cards this year (and hell. lets face it the HIM wasnt appealing to me right now!). so ladies - may the wind be at your back and the spring be in your step!!! i'll definitely miss seeing all of you.

in other not so newsworthy news.. seems as if all of the stars of my childhood are slowly.. well.. dying. first corey haim (license to drive - GREAT movie), gary coleman and now blanche from the golden girls. makes me want to go and watch Nick at Nite all weekend! famiily ties anyone?

so now that i've written a most engaging, educational and i'm sure thought provoking (ha) post, time to go eat some fish tacos. home made fish tacos. fresh salsa.... wow.

ummmm have i mentioned the doughman? (the doughman quadrathon officially!)

2010-05-31T15:10:00.000-04:00

i'll just do a quick preamble before the actual recap - i could not have had better (or faster!) teammates. really. these girls are the best. saturday we celebrated our one year friendship anniversary - whatever, we are girls. (it happens to coincide with the doughman and bri's bday. yes last year on that day i met alysia and heard her tell the 'eating a monster burger then sprinting 2 miles' story. i was like WHO is this girl. she then made me do jello shots. ha! and brooke - "this is my friend brooke. she just won ironman arizona". WOW. and of course bri. lightening fast bri. with the big heart - who literally walked me thru my first masters :) ) we've had the greatest time planning and strategizing and practicing these last few, well MONTHS! and it all come together on saturday and i can say we had a blast! and of course will be back next year to take the title. we already started talking smack... thanks team VS. you girls rock!

ok the race.

we all met bright and early, and along with our manager matt- AKA the biggest nc redneck we could muster- headed over to the race start. a few notes:

1- we had the BEST support crew. marty, nicolai and shana on their bikes all around the course and matt and bobby in the SAG vehicle. it was awesome hearing cheers come from all different directions.. oh and matt had a whistle.. ha!

2- we took great pride in creating our uniforms. and at the start, when everyone saw 4 girls in pink underwear and ribbons.. well i dont think anyone took us too seriously. were they in for a surprise..

3- there were some GREAT costumes. 70 total teams competed and most had a pretty good theme going. some were more aerodynamic than others.. and some a little easier to figure out..

our favorite team photo - matt was in character the WHOLE day. so many people did double takes. it was fantastic!

ok so GO time
we had a quick last minute pep talk/group hug and it was time to dominate :) we may have had lots of pink hearts, but we were putting some serious effort into this thing!

first leg:

Brooke- eats a yogurt parfait at Local Yogurt then takes off and bikes 9 miles. here is where it SUCKED! brooke is not your average biker. she is not your above average biker. she is f-a-s-t. but with a 9 mile ride thru downtown durham, on open roads with stop signs and red lights and a freakin train!, a pack formed and she could not get away. ugh. so she rolls into Hog Heaven and inhales (yes she got ahead of alot of the guys) a plate of BBQ and comes into tag Bri in about 6-7th place.

Bri darts around the corner to Broad St Cafe and has to eat 2 slices of pizza - side note: we practiced this leg - like we did the others.. and i have to admit we were a little worried about her eating abilities (sorry bri!).. in our dry run she took twice as long as alysia and i to eat three slices.. AND there were rumors it was a whole pizza.. ruh roh... BUT bri put her game face on and dove into that pie. she passed people eating. yes let me say that again. she PASSED people, including guys, eating. now she had 1.5 miles to run to the pool. have you ever seen bri run. i mean really run? holy shit. she is fast. some dude tried to keep up with her and she smoked him. love it.

ok so she gets to the pool and has to cross it in an intertube.. the guy next to her is Dain - who own's one of the restaurants on the circuit....i think they let him cheat a little... ha. she didnt even take off her shoes. yes, we were in it to win it. :) no time to waste!

she put us in second place. now alysia heads off on a TOUGH leg of the race. she has to run .8 miles to Dain's place and eat a rather large, ok it was HUGE, goat sausage hoagie. but she nailed it. here she is working hard.

now with that in her tummy - she has another 1.6 mile run - she worked so hard on that run! but some stupid collegiate miler (this dude runs sub 5s on a slow day) and some other long legged guy passed her. but not for lack of a great pace on her part!

i was super excited to see her coming around the corner in 4th place! first was pretty out of reach at this point (not to be sore losers... but there is a pretty good chance their biker ran some red lights... just sayin!). second place took off from eating right as she came in and third was mid meal.. so she tags me and i run over to the table to get my plate of mexican. now you may have seen below in another post the lovely dish that they advertised us eating. let me tell you the slop on my plate was nothing like that. it was very slimey scrabled eggs and very soggy thick buckwheat like tortillas. ugh. it was absolutely disgusting. but my grubby little hands shoved it in as fast as i could. about 1/4 thru, 3rd place finished and took of. shoot!

i kept working on my plate trying to convince myself this was not the worst thing i had ever tasted... BAM done. time to run the 1.6 miles. i just took off like a bat out of hell and focused in on the third place guy. he was about a minute up on me and i caught him about 3/4 mile in. i went by him and in my head thought 'later dude' and kept on truckin. reaching the DAP and seeing my three teamates was awesome! we all had one more thing to eat - 2 loco pops and 2 cupcakes between us. i was sucking wind and when the guy told us we could share the desserts i shoved my pop at brooke who took a huge bite. here is the MVP moment of the race.. so she took that bite and a piece about the size of one dice dropped to the ground. she picked it up and threw it in the trash. one of the doughman officials said "oh no, thats not going to work" so without skipping A BEAT! she reaches into the trash, grabs it and yep, pops it into her mouth.

we then had to WALK, ugh so frustrating, down the steps of the DAP and even on part of the warning track. it was soo long till we were allowed to run. we could see second place just ahead and i swear if we had about 1/4 mile more we would have got them! BUT we came in third out of 70 teams. and 2 all guy teams beat us and really no other girls, even teams with one girl on them came in the top 10 :) so we did GREAT! we were all soo happy with our finish. we really represented well.

we even got bronze colored marshmellow and noodle necklaces - that proceeded to melt as one by one each marshmellow took a dive.... oh well..

After the race, the local abc news interviewed some of the finishers. we convinced them they needed to interview Matt. the reporter was laughing so hard at him - im' not sure if he knew that matt wasnt normally "like" that... At the end of the interview, the reporter said, "Well, Coach, your team finished 3rd today. What are you going to do differently next year?" Matt answered without missing a beat, "Side stretches. Lots and lots of side stretches."

here are the top three teams. yep those guys can eat but they had some steller runners too. we werent afraid to talk some smack up there. i think they were a bit scared.. ha!

so i have to say one thing.. coming into the race we were pretty confident in our foot speed. we knew we could compete there. but we were a little worried that the eating would slow us down. i have to say that all four of us KILLED IT. seriously. i think we made up as much if not more time eating!

for some great video of the day check out bri's blog: http://briblog.martygaal.com/

i heart cot-ton

2010-05-27T14:41:00.001-04:00

ok so yes when i wake up in the morning the last place (ok maybe second to last place besides the pool!) i want to go is to work. i'm just not sold on the whole 9-5 for 40 years of your life thing. BUT truth be told, even though i do spend an inordinate amount of time cutting, pasting, hauling, and shopping (could be the root to my retail angst!) i really dont have but so much to complain about. i mean, office politics are everywhere right. all across the world adults are acting like high school sophomores, or maybe worse. I'm mostly left alone to do my thing, which i admit starts and ends with a lot of web surfing...and there are some (few) cool peeps here who make lame jokes and participate in lame pranks. (i have a box of jello sitting on my desk just waiting to be made into a stapler mold..) SO why the work post? seems like all of this is pretty standard stuff. well i found out today there is a 92% chance that in Jan of next year i get to go here

for work. which means paid for by work. that is pretty sweet. and in case your geography skills are at or below a 5th grade level.. (ha) that is mt. Kilimanjaro. and i will be summiting it in 2011. woo woo.

1234567890

2010-05-25T10:49:00.000-04:00

no, thats not the winning lottery ticket on LOST. i quit that show. because honestly i was lost. and not dedicated to my tv every wed nite. and i'm not always good at paying attention and getting those little references from 3 shows ago and the made up airline site.. oh well. a few hours of my life probably better spent. now the batchelor.. THAT my friends is good tv. ha! nothing like a group of girls all huddled around the boob tube talking trash. you can easily count on multiple train wrecks, play drinking games with words like "amazing" "journey" and "love", and you can wonder how your boss would react if you told him/her you were leaving your job because the man/woman of your dreams is being flown in from kansas and you have to go weed her out from 25 other crazy b*tches... so i digress. (btw recaps and fantastic commentary of this show can be found here - http://www.ihategreenbeans.com/ ok so yes i have no clue how to do that link a site thing.. shut up.

training is all about numbers. time in the saddle. beats per minute. foot strikes to the ground. calories in that cupcake. readings on the stopwatch. lets STOP there for a minute. lately my little pink ironman watch has been very good to me. showing me numbers that perhaps i have not seen in that particular order...for a while.

in fact, i dont think anything, not even the end of the set, has caused me to grin in the pool. unless i've just come off the waterslide and am in hawaii.. perhaps yes, then there will be a big one! but again, the digression.. so what is already a long way around to the point, my best ever 100 pr time came at the end of a set last night. OK wait. let me clarify. i have swam 2 seconds faster, BUT it was on a super long rest interval in a short workout. so this particular PR was off little rest and at the end of a long set. SO yes I do have multiple category PRs. maybe even a PR for each suit i have or flavor of nuun i was drinking. something wrong with that??
ha.

anyway. last night was birthday 400s at the track. woo woo. and tonight a great ride followed by our last and possibly most important victorious secret strategy session. i think we are all getting pretty excited about this race. me? i'm already having doughman dreams. yes.

perspective

2010-05-21T14:28:00.000-04:00

so i had planned to write about the training week and some other stuff.. but came into work today to find out that a past co-workers wife had passed last night. she was only 48. with 4 kids. there's not a lot you can say, words just sometimes dont fit or have the right meaning or the ability to convey.

reminds us of how precious life is and how lucky we are. lucky to have friends and family. lucky to live in a country of opportunity. lucky to be healthy enough to get out of bed each morning. lucky to have the means to participate in a great sport. i'm taking some time to remember that today. in honor of a fantastic family who lost a member much too early.

training for FUN races

2010-05-17T10:42:00.000-04:00

right. so after the little hiccup in knoxville i'm back on the wagon. the fun wagon heading out on a hayride to roast marshmellows and sing. the wagon that has a cooler on it jam packed with yummy beverages.

but first i must say - this post could come off a little sour. i'm quite grumpy this AM as i forgot my breakfast and had to eat animal crackers out of the vending machine. blah. oh and i have to give a presentation tomorrow that i have zero motivation to practice. lets hope my "on the fly" rendition turns out better than rihana's live performance of the moonwalk...

ok back to fun times.

here is example #1. Thursday called for a group ride. perfect. round up the girls and off we go. BUT we do have a doughman race to train for so this ride was a little different.. Brooke is our ringer bike leg. so she actually has to eat TWICE. we did the perfect simulation scenario...(YES we are serious about winning this race. i say this because most will find the remainder of this story quite odd and well.. possibly gross)

first food is yogurt parfait. she inhaled it. and learned a valuable lesson along the way about granola...but i will not share that lesson until after doughman. no need to lose our competitive edge..

we all then hopped on our bikes and rolled around the 'hood for a good 80 minutes. back home and BBQ was waiting.

here is alysia and brooke working hard on the BBQ. (i ate hushpuppies and a sandwich).

immediately brooke hopped on her bike and zoomed off for a few quick miles and alysia and i sprinted a mile. gotta get that tummy ready to lock and load. errrr... at least not get all upset...

next up. Pizza run.

in other news. there is a big 10k and half here in raleigh that was happening on sunday. the RD emailed me on Wed looking for a logo and in my reply i mentioned that i might try to sneak in the 10k for fun. he comped my entry. nice guy. anyway. my plan was to just go out and have fun and run hard. i rode about 60 miles sat and felt pretty good. tired and hot and sweaty, but good. i was excited to run on sunday. it had been too long since i just went out to run and had no pressure and no expectations!

sunday morning we headed over to the race and it was great to see some old friends and very friendly faces. (side note: not that triathletes are not friendly, but i've known and volunteered with some of this crew for a few years and they are truly NICE people. so it was sort of a little homecoming for me and that made it special). ok so fast forward to the race start. my goal was to go out hard and just see. for the first 30 seconds i was in 4th place. ha! 2 guys out ahead were running 5.12 pace to start (i found this out after the race.. eavesdropping...) yes it was a down hill to start- though the winner ended up sub 36. so 5.12 is not that far off. he was ridiculous.

so i caught my goove and then the first hill came. and then the second. and so on. good lord. i was fortunate to have some guy encourage me to stay on his hip. so i had a goal to just stay with him. i was running in the lead the whole race and i kept waiting for some other girl to come roaring by. maybe running scared is a good thing. ha. and mostly i felt good. there was one point about 3/4 of the way thru (hard to tell as there were no mile markers) that i lost concentration and started to feel like this was HARD. and my mind wandered and i slowed. i didnt know the course and had no idea how much longer we had. and i started to doubt a little bit. dumb mistake. but after a final out and back i got my mojo back and finished strong. ended up winning. best part was coming thru the finish chute the RD is on the mic and says something like "just coming out for a run huh? pretty convenient when money is on the line" anyway good day. and lesson learned. go out. have fun. and good things can happen.

proof i wasnt smiling... !!!

shiny happy people

2010-05-13T10:07:00.000-04:00

its been a great week. bobby got a job on monday. one he is super excited about. madison is back to her little (i use that word in the affectionate sense cause she is NOT little) Gung-ga-lung self. work is lovely. no really. the pic was taken this morning. we had to do some staff directory so - me being the resident "graphic artist" (again a term i use in the broadest sense, kind of like when they ask is there a DR on board and a podiatrist raises his hand and they say 'good enough'- thats me!). so anyway photo shoot turned into who had the worst GPA in a college semester and who had the best Hillsborough Hike story (most folks here went to nc state and thats some big DIY pub crawl) (oh and FYI the girl who slid down the bowling alley in a skirt and stole a pin was tough to beat). good times. AND i am racing a local 10k this weekend. WOO WOO! my first open 10k in 2 years. crazy! and i got a comp entry. sweet. pays to know people in high places.

last time i did this race cotton sponsored it and i was a little distracted during... waving to all my co workers at the water stops!

promise JPH i wont do that again :)

AND team VS begins our serious doughman team training tonight. really. on the docket is a yogurt parfait then a tough ride, then a BBQ platter and a short 2 mile TT. look out. we will win this. (yes coach this is my weekly group ride!!)

REV

2010-05-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

here begins the fastest race report ever to hit blog land.

swim - shortened my normal deficit from about 4-5 mins to 1-2 mins. good improvement
bike- hilly and cold. flatted at mile 20. 30 mins to change. used heat of cops motorcycle to warm up. borrowed supplies from SUPER NICE guy who got hit by car at same intersection.
run- found the desire to finish but with a less than steller 43 min 10k.

grieved the mishap for about 12 hours and am back ready to roll.

madison had gotten really sick the night before and hearing that call from our sitter was pretty tough being 6 hours away. she's better though. back to her crazy self. THAT makes me happy.

water related topics

2010-05-06T10:32:00.000-04:00

so starting with the obvious- my swimming. its getting better. (i will give you a minute to make a skeptical face). but i promise it is. as evidenced by a recent set of 40 x 50 where the 50s got progressively faster culminating in a last set of sub 40s. thats Guinness territory for me. (record, not beer). i also had a bit of a DUH moment - after realizing that when i swim i literally have claw hands (pretend you are a tiger, look at your hands) when i am pulling. not so good for grabbing water. so a slight adjustment there and BAM. hmmmm. wonder what else i do?

there will be NO water falling from the sky this weekend for my next race. one i'm pretty REVVED up about actually. its a bit of a hike heading west, but should be a good one. wet suit river swim. all i see in that is CURRENT. sweet. its actually (they say) 1/3 against and 2/3 with.. so figure about a solid 500 fight then cruise control. planning on getting in early sat for some practice and hopefully avoiding the beaver dam issue...wish me luck.

TEAM VS - thats Victorious Secret - will be guzzling some agua tonight as we test out food #1. here it is -

Chilaquiles - A delicious tortilla casserole with green sauce, scrambled eggs, and cheese. Ole! (yes its VEG)

think that looks tough to run on? try the Goat Meat Italian Sausage Sandwhich ... WOW!