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.