5 months from today

I'll be sweating out my latest and greatest Ironman. It'll be my 5th. I should have this whole "training for an Ironman/kind of a badass" routinedown by now, but this time I'm legitimately nervous. I haven't completed an Ironman-- nay, a triathlon-- since I began law school in 2007. I have the bar exam (Job 1, as those who like to use awkward phrases might say) in seven weeks. I'm overweight, an overstuffed sausage version of my old Iron self. And worse yet, I'm embarrassingly out of shape. I know that once I get to the starting line I can handle whatever race day offers; I am nothing if I'm not tough. But this time, whether I arrive to race is a larger question mark than I'm used to.

Sounds like a good time to start blogging, right? I could use some help or support, and I miss Houston and my tri community something awful. I'll never understand why I miss a place that was never meant to be home-- I daresay it's the people I left behind there. But I digress.

Today I went on my first run in 6 weeks, and it was ugly. About 2 minutes in my chest tightened, and I wanted to turn back. I look ridiculous, I thought. Fatties shouldn't run in public. People are you going laugh at you as you waddle by. But no one laughed, of course, and a few more minutes in I relaxed and enjoyed a nice (though slow) jog along the lakefront. In two weeks I'll be able to handle anything without that fear of physical discomfort (or is it failure?) rising up; right now it's just a question of getting there.

And with that, let me explain my plan. I am going to study for and pass the bar. I am going to take the next 22 weeks and get my ass into shape. I'm going to fundraise for my Janus Charity Challenge beneficiary and my old volunteer gig, the Greater New Haven Cat Project (before that, I'm going to finish building my fundraising site). I'm going to lose the 8 pounds that kept me from winning my Law School Bet (weight in = weight out --> new bike). I am also going to blog about it-- and in that order. Some things I want to accomplish in a less formal sense (more of guidelines I suppose?) include trying to curse less and not describing my training as a journey, an epic metamorphosis, or anything else ridiculous for the daily life of a normal human.

Now, about the blog. I've been here before, but dropped off the face of the planet when I started school and struggled with life, though I suppose not triathloning anymore didn't help, either. But now that I'm back, I'm not sure I'm going to stay... let's see how this trip goes before extending it, eh? I will warn you that unless you email me at my ever classy hotengineergirl at yahoo email by July 15th, you'll find my page blocked from your curious eyes. On July 16th, I'll be switching to a invite-only blog to prevent my getting any stalkers. So, let me know if you want to join. I'll post a reminder closer to the date, of course-- no need to worry about doing it this second (unless you want to).

Alrighty. I'm back to bar study (yea.). Catch you in a few days once I pick out a gym to get back in the pool!

Don't believe me if I say I'm 27

No cyclocross last week... I couldn't unbury myself from schoolwork, which is slightly more important than learning to remain vertical on my bike. Sam assured me that I wouldn't have been the slowest chick there though, so it's definitely something to consider. Of course, not this weekend. Craig's in town!

Perhaps of more interest is that I'm doing my second annual candy-free November. You may remember that last year Craig said that I was addicted to candy, so I took a month off to prove him otherwise. Here it is, 9 days in and I'm just posting about it-- it should give you an idea of how much easier it is to do the second time around. And unlike last year, I'm not substituting candy with 2-4 Toll House kiosk cookies this year (could that be how I got fat last year?). Instead, I'm eating fruit bars and granola bars, with the occasional super-delicious sweet... such as birthday cake.

Perhaps of more interest than that is it's my birthday today. Thanks to USAT I've been telling people all year that I was 26, my USAT age (don't worry, I'm not still bitter... much). My gut reaction is to say I turn 27 today. This may be cute now, but it won't be in three years. I've been robbed of my perkiest-sounding age of 25! You might as well just start calling me a hag now.

I am totally stealing a birthday idea from TriBoomer and am taking up the ol' b-day tri: 1 mile swim, 22 mile bike, 3.2 mile run (the .2 is for the 2 days I have to wait to do it. I'm sure I'll still be filled with birthday spirit on Sunday). I know the distances are a little, um, off, but dammit I can swim a mile in my own tri if I want to. Is it a sad reflection on my life when I can't plop down for a couple hours to work out? Yes. But life is what it is, and quite frankly, this may be my happiest birthday yet. That pool isn't going anywhere.

But I am. Enjoy the day-- I will. :)

Lazy = Humiliating: The end of (Sun)days

Sunday morning found my butt kicked--by Saturday’s ride. My legs weren’t sore at all, but my butt was. I couldn’t sit on my bed/broken couch, let alone my horrific mountain bike seat. I bailed, self-conscious about the lameness of my excuse. A visual inspection confirmed that I indeed bruised my butt again. But what do I do? Dare I get a new seat? I’m afraid of investing any money into my mountain bike. And after I did a little cyclocross research, I got super intimidated. I’m an out-of-shape noncyclist with a 30 lb mountain bike. The guys in the cyclocross tutorial pics are on sleek bikes with no suspension and pretty cycling jerseys and with what I can only assume is a healthy interest in riding without constantly braking. What was I getting myself into?

Perhaps the more accurate question is what AM I getting myself into--because I promised to race next weekend, and so help me if I wuss out again. Here’s what I’m thinking: I have a week to ride (every other day at least) the course in Forest Park and gain some confidence and pick up a teeny bit of CV fitness I lost. Cyclists generally poo-poo the triathlete mentality of buying new stuff all the time, so my mountain bike (which is a respectable if inexpensive Specialized) shouldn’t draw too much criticism. If there’s a ton of people there then there’s a chance someone else will be slow like me; if there aren’t who gives a shit if 40 people see me get destroyed? My only concern is getting in the way of other riders. Oh, and genuinely sucking at something besides basketball (helpful hint: pick me last in any ball sport. I’m wretched). But how am I going to get better if I’m downright afraid of biking? There’s a reason I tossed my tri bike on the trainer instead of pulling on a pair of tights to hit the roads, and it’s not just laziness or a disdain for spandex-clad butt jiggle. There’s no better place to get some handling skills down than on the more forgiving terrain of dirt and grass, and once I get some cycling confidence I really think I’ll be in a different world than the one I’m in now. And I think it’s time I had a public dose of humility--since school isn’t keeping my ego in check (that was 100% sarcastic).

I’m convinced. Are you? If not, don’t tell me. I’ll give you the story next week... who knows, maybe I’ll be looking for a cyclocross bike in a few months. Or maybe my I’ll buy a unicorn or a pair of designer sunglasses. Same thing really. *gulp*

Lazy = Humiliating: The Friday-Saturday version

Last weekend Greyhound called me with a swimming drill question. As I listened to the message, it occurred to me that I hadn’t swum in almost a month, so Friday I hit the AC pool for “at least a 2000.” The good news is I made it a happy 2400 m (2640 yards!!). The bad news is I was sore before I got out of the shower; the 8x75 IM order 50/25 set (my very favorite--50 fly-25 back, 50 back-25 breast, etc) nearly killed me. What was breathtaking butterfly (I’m sure!) my first 25 was undoubtedly mistaken as a blue-red gasping whale floundering down the lane on my last 25. But did I stop? How could I? Gasping whale or not, I was finishing my favorite set-- the lifeguard was watching after all.

Saturday my back and arms were ridiculously sore, but I was determined to work it out. I decided to go for a quick 30 minute run, and instead of going the flat way around Forest Park I went the other direction, which has a .75 mile-ish-long incline. Given that I live a quarter mile from the park and I was turning around at 15 minutes, this was going to be the meat of my out leg of the run. It wasn't exactly fun, but I made it without walking and held a not-horrifying-not-awesome 10:00 pace. At 15 minutes I turned around, and soon after I passed a walker who was heading uphill. He looked utterly ridiculous--a silly hat, huge purple jacket and the stride that refused to be constrained to the right half of the path. He was smiling, so I said hello. His response? “Keep it up! You’ll make it!”

Excuse me? Am I the one walking here? Aren’t I going downhill? I know that I never look like a runner, no matter if I’m running 7:30 miles or 12:00 miles. I’m okay with that. Sure, I’m leading the pack on the “most noticeable bowling-pin shaped body” award [thanks to that mirror by the pool entrance--and the jerk who put it there-- which made me very aware of that fun fact on Friday]. And yes, my heartrate was an obscene 165 bpm. [ another fun aside--on the first half of the trip I considered what kind of headlines I could make if I keeled over: “25-year-old Ironman has heart attack on 3 mile jaunt.” See? I’m great to have around at festive events] But still--I couldn’t have looked that bad; the cat didn’t say anything to me when I got home, and he would have mentioned it if I'd looked like I was going to puke.

No? Okay, not another cat joke ever. Happy?

After I ran I volunteered raking leaves for three hours. Let me tell you, that was great for that sore back/arms thing I had going on. Then I showered. Ha! Yeah right. I really pulled out my mountain bike to go for a ride with Sam. Remember him? He’s the one I crashed with going 1 mph last month-- I actually still have a mark on my thigh from our little joyride. He hadn’t called me since then (can you blame him?), but he wanted to recruit me for a cyclocross race on Sunday. Determined to look less like an idiot on a bike, I took him up on a Saturday practice run on a cyclocross course in Forest Park so I could decide about Sunday’s race.

Within 1 minute of riding away from my door I fell over—my bike went left, and I went right. Thankfully I was wearing a longsleeve t-shirt, so nothing was hurt but my shriveled-up pride. Seriously, who falls on their own street? On a mountain bike? In my defense, though, I just put my old spd's on my mountain bike and it's the first time I've been on them. Interestingly enough, that was the only time I fell the entire 2ish hours we rode. Sam showed me how to get off my bike while running, then hop back on. (I guess in cyclocross you’re off road and you ride a loop that has obstacles in it--you have to hop off your bike and carry it over the obstacles.) At some point I tried to hop off my bike and my right foot refused to come out of the clip. It turned out I’d lost a screw on the bottom of my cycling shoe, and it was hell getting my foot out since a mere twist wasn’t doing the job. After that I rode with only one foot clipped in... I don’t recommend it, especially if you want any hope of keeping your weight on your feet and not 100% on your hiney. But even riding all funky half clipped in, I went from ultra-awful to just plain bad at riding the course. Yess! After riding to the LBS to fix my shoe (for free--which was good because I didn’t have any money to pay them), I was pretty psyched to race on Sunday. I went home to shower and run some errands, already sore from the day’s work but uncharacteristically comfortable with trying something new the next day, even with the promise of an almost-certain butt whooping.

Lazy = Humiliating: The Thursday version

It’s been awhile. I could have written before now, but the truth is I’ve been busy with school and not training, and is there anything lamer than a law school blog? No. Law school is what it is, and is remarkably similar to what it was 40 years ago. No story there.

I’ll start with the first bike story. It finally turned cold here, so I could justify putting Lucy on the trainer rather than hunt for excuses not to ride around town. After a fun dinner with the new “girls” on Thursday I came home, did a tiny ab workout, cracked open a beer, and went to work on “winterizing” my bike. I took off my back wheel, and proceeded to change the tire to an old one-- no sense in ruining my new ones on the trainer, right? [I had a little trainer debacle in 2005 where I shredded my tire and it nearly exploded from what I assume was the wrong amount of pressure on the back rubby thingy... admittedly, it would have been a much better story if it had exploded. Maybe next time?] I took off the black (new) tire, which was harder than I remember, and put the red/old tire on, which was also harder than I remember. Here I committed mistake #1-- I put the wheel back on the bike before inflating the tube. Of course there was a pinch (mistake #2), and of course it flatted. Wheel off the bike, tube out, new tube in, check for pinches-- for real this time-- inflate, wheel back on the bike. About the time I was putting the trainer spindle (?) through the wheel I heard dripping. What was that? It was my handlebar spilling my beer all over the windowsill (mistake #3). So much for drinking on a schoolnight! But I was sure the hard part was over. All I had left to do was throw Lucy on the trainer and rearrange my closet-sized apartment to fit the new piece of furniture.

I clearly overestimated my trainer and furniture-moving expertise (mistake #4). I couldn't get the bike to get on the trainer because I had the rubby thingy all the way jacked up from moving it to Saint Louis and didn't realize it. The cat was playing with the front wheel holder. I was frazzled, and it wasn’t pretty. After some time, a broken futon (and a broken bed for me!), and lots of cursing, I had everything worked out. It was shameful how much of an ordeal it was-- and we shall never speak of it again.

Are you ready for Friday?

Master Plans

Today is my very first day of law school. And what am I doing? Reviewing my reading? Fretting about classes? Nope.

I'm blogging.

The truth is I'm sitting pretty with my work this week and I only have one class today. I'm nervous, and I have hours til class to get progressively more so. Yeesh!

This won't be too long (I actually do want to get some more reading done before this afternoon...) but it is important. I have two plans I want to share in hopes of being more accountable for them in the upcoming year/years. Plan 1: the don't get enormously fat plan. Last winter I beefed up to 12 pounds over my racing weight from Wisconsin and Arizona. I think that's simply revolting from a 24-year-old, and I don't intend to do it again. Here's my plan: leave law school at what you came in (152) and you can have any bike you want, Mishele. I can't be sure of my financial situation of course, but that's not the point (I suppose I don't have to buy it the minute I graduate). The point is to have the permission to get whatever the heck I want.

I told the plan to K first. Her response? "If you're the same girl that's going into law school, you're not going to buy a $6,000 bike." And she's right; I believe you have to earn your toys. So maybe I'll just get a little step up and sell Lucy to a newbie. Maybe I'll buy a decent road bike. Doesn't matter right now does it?

The only problem with the plan is I've lost 4 pounds since I moved here. I don't have as much time to eat as I did when I worked, though I suspect I'll start eating again soon. In the short term I'm chilling out with the workouts and am down to 2 mile runs because I want to take it easy and make time for some physical therapy. My feet just haven't been the same all year and I'm afraid. I'm looking to do a half marathon in January-February and maybe, if all goes well, the St. Louis marathon in March. StL was my first marathon (untrained of course, but that time it was on accident), so I'm hoping to break my time of 4:52 from 2004. If the plan works as well as it should I hope to break it by an hour... we'll see.

And Plan 2:
IM Louisville. Hey you Cincinnatians-- get your hineys down to watch me race. Just once. Please? I signed up and had to pay with my debit card, which was strangely more painful than paying with my credit card. Maybe it was just stressful because I don't know the card number and was worried about some 2-minute sell out craziness like Lake Placid (like Louisville would ever be as cool and popular as Lake Placid). I don't know. Anyway, I'll see you kids back in Ironform on August 31, 2008... hopefully I don't gain 10 pounds of muscle in the meantime. ;-)

Woo hoo! Off to study/learn/be humiliated? :)

It was a very good year

I'll be MIA over the next week because I'll be on vacation. Before you get jealous, it's supposed to rain during the meat of the cruise, so I'm not sure what that'll mean for our trips. No matter what I'm having fun though; I'm kinda glad I know about the potential crappy weather so I can mentally prepare to have an awesome time anyway. How's that for positive?

Here’s the 2006 list of Shele schtuff. Lists are easier than actually thinking about the ending year and what it means to me. Or whatever. Here goes...

Kittens acquired: 1
Jobs lost: 0 (count your blessings, eh?)
Moves: 0!
Pounds gained: 11 (ew!)
Months without candy: 1
Trips taken: 12
06 World Series won by the best team ever (in my heart at least): 1
Totally sweet sponsorships acquired: 1
Watches purchased: 1
Watches broken: 1 (curses!)
Marathons: 1
Tri Sprints: 2
Half IMs: 1
Ironmans (ironmen? Irondistances?): 2
Ultradistances: 1
DNFs: 0
PRs: 3 (10k, sprint tri, ironman)
Bikes purchased: 1
Bikes owned: 2.1

Not a bad year if I may say so. I've made some new friends—in fact, all my non-work friends are brand spanking new thanks to triathlon; Houston Racing changed my life, and blogging has been surprisingly encouraging. Who knew? May I keep my new buddies in the next year despite being a grumpy ol’ fart. What next year will bring is still more of a mystery than I'd like (case in point: no tris planned after Arizona. What shall I do? Where should I go? I can't decide!), but it's pretty exciting nonetheless. Life is good.

Happy new year to you guys! Go 2007! Woo!

Oh bother

Let me take a moment to tell you about my Thanksgiving Day Race, which I entered as an Athena thanks to some non-holiday second helpings of late. In years past, a finish of 59:00 in this 10k would result in a top 10% finish among Athenas, so my goal was to break an hour since I haven't been running much. My last 10k was 50:04 in February but that was because I was doing a lot of speedwork and in full IM AZ training mode-- not a reasonable goal for my recent activity. Besides, ConocoPhillips is pretty flat with only 2 hills while T-Day had one steep short hill and three bridges to cross. How can a race cross the Ohio three times and still end up on the Ohio side of the river? MAGIC!

The race was at 9 on Thursday morning, and race day registration (what? haven't seen this recently since tri's sell out and long road races don't offer it), the post party, restrooms, etc was in Paul Brown Stadium, where the Bengals play. This totally rocked because you could warm up/relieve yourself in the comfort of a warm toilet-filled restroom rather than a cold dirty port-a-let. I got there early (free parking too!), goofed off for awhile, and then headed to the start line. I was about 5 feet behind the 9:00/mile sign, thinking that 9:30 or so wasn't out of my range. After standing there for 20 minutes the race started right on time. My first mile felt awful since my feet had gone numb in the shadows of the other folks waiting at the start line. I also got really hot and removed my gloves, headband thingy, and rolled up my long sleeves within five minutes. I don't run in much more than a cotton tee and running shorts til it gets below 40, but I was afraid I'd become a cold runner wuss. I hadn't. Anyway, my first mile was a painful 9:45, so I decided I was just going to have a nice comfy slow run the rest of the way. Then my mile splits got awesomer: 9:00, 9:24, 9:24, 8:58, and 8:30. I finished up in a respectable 56:37 (and with a nice negative split), 175th of 750ish 25-29 year olds. And in the Athenas? I'll never know. I thought it was weird I didn't get to weigh in when I picked up my packet, but I expected to still have an Athena division considering there were 12,000 competitors out there (and the guy I started with had registered as a Clydesdale). I was wrong. The results came up with me in my age group and the awards list contained no weight divisions. I think there's a valuable lesson to learn there: lose weight.

After I finished I headed to the post race party. I finally took off my hot wind pants (which I had over my tights), tied off the ankles, and got in the feast line. First I got an ice cream cone, a bottle of water--then I got to work collecting sunflower seeds, apple dippers (McD's was a sponsor) cookies, string cheese, granola bars, and orange juice. There were also bagels, but I really don't care much for them (especially because I'd had one for breakfast). I left with carrying my booty-stuffed pants and feeling good about my run.

So if you're ever in Cincinnati on Thanksgiving, well, I'm sorry about your luck. But if you can dig yourself out of your dismay for being here, head out to the Thanksgiving Day Race. It's cheap (you don't HAVE to get a shirt, which is a relief to anyone with 183,307 race t-shirts), fun, accessible, and has a killer buffet of food afterward. Hard to beat that with a stick.

Now I'm gonna go hit Donatos like it's going out of style-- which you could argue it is since I can't find the stuff anywhere but the 'Nati. :)