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HA! There will be no lists! We have delivered everything to the caterer, I have a Dark and Stormy in my hand and I am off to celebrate the joy and happiness of my first born and her true love.
Stay tuned for pics early next week!
The airwaves have been rife with the notion that Triathlon chooses us - that we resonate so completely with the sport that it feels like a calling, a destiny. Well I'm here today to tell that I'm like the last kid standing in the 'unchosen' line in P.E. class. The one nobody wants on her team but who plays anyhow for whatever reason.
To give credit where credit is due I first read this 'chosen' notion on Stronger's blog where she was referring to what Kahuna said. When I couldn't remember where I first read that notion I did a search and found a similar post by Daniel Clout on Beginnertriathlete.
I'm glad other people feel chosen. They probably feel competent, too. Not me. I'm a great example of how you really can cram a square peg into a round hole. Of course if the diameter of the hole is bigger than the diagonal distance across the square it's no contest but I'm not very big. And I'm not very strong. And I'm not much of an athlete. I'm tenacious and I persevere but it is definitely a brute force effort and I don't love it. I love me a little bit for doing it but I don't love the sport.
This weekend was a painful reminder of why that is. Saturday I had 22 million things to do so instead of going out riding with my friends I just went for a short ride locally. I went to the road with the hill that tried so hard to kick my a$$ a few weeks ago. It kind of kicked my patoot again but having just climbed the Berkeley hills I knew I could do it so I did. When I got to the top of the hills I could only marvel at my prior accomplishments. What happened to the Queen of the hills? She abandoned me and left me yearning for a leg transplant.
My run yesterday was also a total bust. Of course my Garmin has started lying through it's non-existent teeth about my pace and that just really gets me down but still - I felt heavy and slow. I did take the opportunity to run up a big old nasty hill because Wildflower is pretty much all about tackling hills but my pace overall stunk. It's the first time I've run 11+ minute miles in a long time. No joy there.
I will not be denied, though. I will not lose confidence. I will love myself no less. I'm eternally grateful to every single couch potato in the world because next to you I look like an athletic Goddess but I'm no goddess. I'm not even very good. All I can do is set my goals, train and try to make them and when it doesn't work out just move on to the next thing. I'm really glad I do it, too because I'm in the best shape of my life and because I meet great people both in real life and on the internet and I will soon meet a bunch of internet peeps face to face - good times!
Triathlon, you may be a reluctant date but I'm not letting you go just yet. I will keep coaxing you and whispering sweet nothings into your 3 ears, ignoring your scorn of me because I'm sure that if I do this long enough we'll find mutual love. Please stop being so recalcitrant and tell me you have feelings for me, too.
Thanks to Bold for pointing the way to this poster:
That is what I a call smokin' hawt athlete. Click on the image and you can see more hawtness - all of it with an appropriate athletic focus (and I have every confidence that you mens are thinking ONLY of her abilities as a triathlete, right)?
I really like this one. She has that "I'm an a$$ kicking athlete, any questions?" look on her face. Of course the no-helmet-flowing-hair thing is a little suspicious but whatever - it's all about the bike.
ps - you know you are tired when you fall asleep sitting at your desk and wake up choking on your saliva. I really MUST get to bed early tonight but...but.. but... Grey's Anatomy is on from 9 - 10.
UPDATE - It's official - Nancy Toby is a genius and she knows everything. Her comment to this post was "I know some of these Performance trainers were recalled because of problems with the attachment for the axle " so I looked it up via Google and found:
Fall Hazard Prompts Performance Inc. to Recall Bicycle Resistance Trainers for Repair
My exact model is on the list and what's worse is I'm pretty sure they sold it to me AFTER that recall notice came out. For once I wish I had kept the receipt forever. In fact, I probably JUST threw it away a couple of weeks ago.
If you have a problem just ask Nancy. I'm pretty sure she can fix it!
--- Original Post ----
Today I went and swam my usual 2100 yards. It actually wasn't quite the usual as we did 'monthly 200s' where you swim 4 200s descending (those are yards, not meters) with your starting 200 at the pace of your #2 200 from last month (the coaches keep your times which you record in pencil on a tile). It's hard and I don't do 'descending' but today I did! 3:55, 3:50, 3:47 and then the coach let us off the hook - huzzah! So I'm slow but whatever. I got it done.
When I got home I was very proud of myself for popping in a Spinervals DVD and getting on the trainer. It is a DVD with 3 short routines, the first of which is 90 second interval training. During interval 2 my trainer fell over and I ended up under my bike. "DAMNIT!", I thought, "I was sure I had the thing kicked out all the way and stable. I got up, put the bike back in the trainer, got it all nice and stable and started again. Right after interval 5 as I was cooling down - BAM! there I was on my side again.
WTF??? Why is my trainer doing that? It was beyond annoying and I quit, 4 intervals short of a full load.
So - Shelly, TriMama, Carrie, Momo, anyone??? I know all of you ladies use your trainers a lot as do some of you gents out there. Do YOU ever just fall over? What am I doing wrong?
I have one of these 
A Centruy Fluid Trainer from Performance Bikes.
Today is Blog for Emergency Contraception day. This is not about abortion. This is about not needing abortion. This is about birth control.
I'm sure that a lot of people have no idea that Plan B or Emergency Birth Control (same thing) do not induce abortion. I know that people confuse EC with RU-486 which does, in fact, induce an abortion. They are 2 different things but because of this misconception (no pun intended) they are sometimes treated the same from a political perspective.
Plan B works by preventing ovulation. That is, if the egg has not yet hatched and you take EC it will probably not reach maturity and it will stay put in the ovary and then be resorbed. No egg = no pregnancy. This is really key for women who for one reason or another have unprotected sex. Or maybe their partner uses a condom and it breaks. Or maybe they are raped. No matter what, if a woman wants to do everything in her power to avoid a pregnancy under those circumstances she can, if she is over 18, go to the local pharmacy and purchase Plan B OTC. If she is under 18 she can get a prescription for Plan B. If she goes to the hospital (in the case of rape) they are SUPPOSED to offer her EC.
This doesn't always happen. Some hospitals, particularly those run by religious organizations, refuse to dispense Plan B. This is bad. This is very bad. Furthermore, minors are not allowed to buy Plan B without a prescription. This is also bad. Trust me when I tell you if the girl wants Plan B the whole sex thing is over and done with. You can't protect her from sex by denying her Plan B and she isn't likely to have health issues from taking it.
Don't believe me? Just read this site here. They make it all very clear.
I got a little email from my daughter explaining that I hadn't gotten her reason for not wearing a white wedding dress quite right. I'd like to straighten that out by quoting the bride:
I'm not wearing white because there's no reason to. I think upholding traditions just for the sake of tradition is silly, especially when the traditions started based on silly reasons anyway. Women started wearing white not because it represented virginity or purity, but because Queen Victoria wore white when everyone else was wearing their best blue/green/brown dress. I look at all these wedding magazines and to me it's just like girls wearing Ugg boots because Angelina started wearing them . It's just celebrity worship, gone amuck. And nothing is less feminist than not thinking for yourself (especially when you allow yourself to get duped into spending $1000 on a ballgown you'll never wear again. I'd much rather spend $600 on Manolo Blahniks I'll wear every New Years for the rest of my life). Plus white is really not that flattering. And Uggs are OUT.
Indeed they are and you, my darling, are way smarter than I can ever hope to be.
Although she isn't wearing a white dress in the wedding we decided to go try some on just for fun. Just for my fun, that is. I think for her the fun factor rated about a 2 on a scale of 1 to 10 but she loves her Mama so she was a sport about it. And it might have been a little bit fun.
(click to see larger image)
Getting back to me and triathlon.......
I did zero training Saturday, Sunday and today. Horrors! The problem is that I had a soreness issue and didn't know what to make of it. Friday I got a serious, serious cramp in my calf at the pool. I often get cramps in my calf when we do a lot of kicking or I'm swimming hard. It happens when I push off the wall on a flip turn. I can generally stretch my foot and keep it from getting too bad. As per my coach's suggestion I take electrolyte drink to the pool with me to try to keep the cramps at bay. Anyhow, on Friday I was having these issue and then when I tried to get out of the pool by hoisting myself up on the deck and putting my foot on top of the gutter I got a hideously painful, super hard cramp in my calf. I fell back in the pool screaming 'OW! OW! OW! MY LEG! MY LEG! OW!" (which was pretty damned funny except for the pain.) The life guard told me to grab my toes and stretch my foot to get rid of it. That worked. I used the ladder to get out of the pool and limped into the locker room. When I drove home I had to use both feet on the brakes because my leg was weak and quivering. My calf was so sore all weekend that I was limping.
That was weird. I've never had cramp created prolonged pain and I really didn't know what to make of it. It totally screwed up my weekend, though. I was planning to do a brick on Saturday and then either just ride or just run on Sunday. I did nothing. I've done nothing today although I expect I'll get on the trainer this evening.
I'm back in the saddle now but I'm getting terrified of Wildflower. I really only have 5 good training weeks and then a week of taper. I'm trying not to feel like I'm toast. April will be interesting.
One other pain point - I didn't see the latest Wildflower newsletter until today. It listed a Wildflower training camp that took place this weekend. grrr... not that I had time and if I had registered for that and had this pain I don't know what I would have done but be that as it may I feel like I missed something important.
Did I mention I'm terrified of Wildflower. Oh yes I am!
In my last post I forgot one of my favorite things of all that feminism has given the world and that is the right of Dads everywhere to love their little kids openly, to make them a priority over work and to even stay home with them while Mom goes to work - all that and rightfully keep a man card in their wallets.
That is a huge, huge benefit to the family in general, to children's health and to the Dads.
I'm pretty sure the feminist movement for gender equality is largely responsible for that very key change in society. That and men taking the opportunity.
Stronger tagged me for
"What five things can I thank feminism for?"
Anyone who reads this blog or sees my comments on other blogs knows I'm an ardent feminist so I am happily responding.
1). Laws that protect women from predatory bosses who tell them they have to submit to unwanted sexual advances or lose their jobs. There was a time when a woman in that position was helpless.
2). Title IX - Every woman who does anything athletic is grateful that there is a law that demands that girls get the same benefits as boys when it comes to sports. I posted an inspirational video on the Complete Running Network and it features clips from a Rocky Movie juxtaposed against girls track. It's a beautiful thing because it looks quite natural.
3). Freedom and support for abused women. Feminism is responsible for the growth in battered women's shelters and laws to protect women against abusers
4). Laws that protect women from employers who won't hire or promote them because "honey, you'll just go get knocked up and quit". The fact that the men they hire and train and promote might take all that investment and go to another company or might have health problems in the future is never a reason not to hire and promote men so there is no reason not to hire and promote women who are capable. I ended up a single mother with 3 kids and I am eternally grateful to be living in a time where I could earn enough money to support them.
5). A growing awareness that sexually forcing yourself on a woman under any circumstance is not okay. Date rape is a huge problem in this country (1 in 4 women have been the victim of rape or attempted rape and in 84% of the cases knew their attacker*) and women are taking all of the blame (they shouldn't drink so much, they shouldn't "Hook up", they shouldn't wear sexy clothes", they were 'asking' for it). No woman ever 'asks' to have a pen1s (have to thwart icky searches) forcibly shoved in any of her orifices. I have faith that over the next several years feminism will successfully launch campaigns to encourage every man to feel a sense of disgust and shame at the very idea of taking advantage of a woman under any circumstance. "Doing a chick" because she is too drunk to have consensual sex will lose some appeal and you will still feel like men.
BONUS ROUND! - Feministing.com - I love this blog. It is staffed and primarily read by the next generation of feminists and I love them all and I love it that there is a next generation of feminists. Rock on.
I'm tagging all of you male bloggers for this. Any takers?
* See this study
Minor update - I must have been really tired because I published this entry twice. I 'unpublished' one of them and some comments got 'unpublised' at the same time. I did get your comments, though. Also - I'm updating my little friend's name so it is spelled correctly.
Business travel is always full of interesting *cough cough* experiences. For some people that means drinking too much alcohol and drunk blogging. For me life is not so colorful.
For one thing, I always forget something and for another I get CNN disease and end up watching too much TV. And I never, ever get enough sleep.
Here are some highlights of my last 2 trips.
1). Last time I was on the road was when the Coulter/Edwards fracas was in full bloom. I was watching the news in my hotel room and discovered that what she was referring to was the Isaiah Washington/T R Knight dustup in which Washington hurled the 'f' word in Knight's direction and was ordered to check in to rehab. Oh - you hadn't made that connection? Neither had a single other person on the planet. Anney it really is time to STFU.
2). I shouldn't know stuff like that. I really shouldn't. It's a hotel room disease
3). When I checked in to my room last night I was greeted with a noise that sounded a lot like a cricket coming from the bathroom. It went on and on for a while and it was LOUD. I looked around and there was no bug and it only sounded sort of like a cricket. I called down to the desk to ask if I could be moved and the woman told me they were sold out. Exasperated, exhausted and terrified by visions of being woken up all night by this noise I replied with more cynicsm and anger than I should have, "are you trying to tell me this is the LAST room in this hotel? I just checked in 15 minutes ago." That went over well. She responded, "Ma'am I'll have to talk to my manager and get back to you and HUNG UP! I.was. steamed. The noise stopped and then started again so I pulled the phone into the bathroom, called down again, got a different person and said, "do you hear that?" and held out the phone. She didn't hear it. I explained the situation and she said she'd send someone right up. The engineer came in - 20 seconds after the noise stopped. I described it to him and said, "but I'm pretty sure it's the plumbing - I don't see a bug. But what can I say. There's no noise now". There was nothing he could do so he left. I called down again and asked to be moved and they were really not helpful. I was furious. I was writing a letter to Hilton corporate in my head that went something like, "I'd rather sleep in a muddy gutter than give your chain one more DIME of my business. I WILL NEVER STAY AT A HILTON AGAIN!!" It was 10:30 at night and I was really tired.
I went in the bathroom and lo and behold - who should saunter across the floor swinging his little umbrella and singing, "You've got to accentuate the positive Eliminate the negative Latch on to the affirmative Don't mess with Mister In-Between" but my buddy Jiminy Cricket. Holy crap - I really did have a cricket in my bathroom. I caught it in a glass, called the desk and reported my findings and they offered to send housekeeping up to fetch Jiminy and to comp me a breakfast. I ripped up the letter I had written in my head and hit the skids.
4). I got up at about 5:30 this morning to run and remembered it was too dark so I decided I'd go to the hotel gym. I opened my bag and got out my cool max shirt, my sports bra, my shoes and socks and...and... and..... no shorts. NO SHORTS! I momentarily envisioned myself on the dreadmill in jeans and then decided to stay in my room and do some crunches and stuff. It was a reminder that I need to memorize a few good core routines for just such emergencies. It wasn't much of a workout but it did confirm that I always forget something.
I have a long list of things I wanted to write about but alas it is 11:00 and I am blogging when I have to be dressed and on the way to my client site at 5 AM. Like I said, I never get enough sleep on these trips. I just hope you-know-who doesn't find me. I really need some shut eye.
I sprang forward yesterday with one of the most spectacular bike rides I've ever been on. 45 miles of gorgeous scenery. Well, maybe 40 miles of gorgeous and 5 miles of neighborhood but still - it was amazing.
The most amazing part about it was that I used to see people biking up the Berkeley Hills and think ,"They must be crazy! How can anyone DO that? That's gotta HURT!" So now I'm crazy, too - crazy cool and crazy strong and crazy in love with that ride.
The day was perfect - PERFECT! We left at 7:30 from our respective homes and rendez-vous'd (you French speakers didn't know that was an English verb, did you??! ) at 8:00 to start the real ride. I was excited because I finally felt ready to tackle what I thought was 'the hill' - going up Wildcat Canyon Rd. When we got to the top I felt like such a stud because I DID IT! Little did I know that the real hill still lay ahead of us. First we got to go down and I was sure that was it - we were going down the other side of the hill but oh no. We got to a stop sign and after hanging a quick left immediately had to start going up again. 'WHOA! I yelled. WRONG GEAR!". Cindy called back, "I was going to warn you but getting a reaction from a first timer is too much fun." ha ha!!
I dropped the gears and started climbing. At this point we were back in a neighborhood where they had spectacular views of the San Francisco Bay. We all live on the other side of the hills where our view is of the back side of hills we had climbed (duh!) so we got all excited and started yelling "OH MY GOD! LOOK AT THAT VIEW!" and then realized it was 8:30 on Sunday morning and we were probably waking everyone up with thoughts of 'for the love of God be quiet - so what?" Well people who live in the hills please do NOT take your view for granted. You are very lucky people indeed!!
After climbing for what seemed forever we got to go down the back side in heavily wooded areas with wildflowers popping out of the undercover and the smell of eucalyptus and pine filling the air. I can't tell you how beautiful it was - you just had to be there. I took one picture with my phone but it hardly does the scenery justice so these photos are all culled from the internet. Trust me when I say they are representative.
More Pics including an elevation map ('cause I loves to look at those) after the jump.
Elevation Map
The Vistas... ahhh the vistas....
A piece of the road:
but not far enough.
Today is International Women's Day - a day to recognize the strides women in some parts of the world have made in gaining some semblance of equality and to make everyone aware of how far we have to go. If you don't believe me look at what the Taliban has done to the women of Afghanistan. Look at the bustling sex slave industry in Asia. Look at the exploitation of female workers in most third world countries. Freedom is definitely relative to where you live.
Just focusing on the first world, we suffer increasingly from a lot of spurious, unscholarly press about the Mommy wars, about women dropping out of the workforce to attend to their families, about women 'giving it all up' and tossing those professional degrees to stay at home and get back to traditional family values or on the flip side, stories about how 2 income couples are mercenary and how that second income costs more money than it generates and about the terrible stress working women put on themselves and their families. The numbers behind those stories don't hold up but that doesn't stop anyone from publishing them because those stories have real value in the stands - they sell. We want to pin the ills of our culture on women working for a living. Never mind the steady diet of violence coming out of th entertainment industry. Never mind study after study that shows that kids who have full time working parents (both or just the only one they have) do just as well as kids with stay at home Moms. Never mind the growing trend toward stay at home Dads. It's so much easier and more comfortable to spew a lot of garbage about how the traditional family model is the only way to go and about how women who work are giving their children up to someone else to raise and destroying the very fabric of life.
Don't you believe it. I had to work full time for almost the entirety of my life as a full time Mom. I was fortunate in that I worked mostly from home but I had full time baby sitters and I expected the sitters to keep the kids away from me while I was working and they did. The kids were mildly annoyed by that but we worked it out. I now find myself intimately attached to 3 of the most stable, loving, fun people in the world - and they call me Mom or Mama.
I am very, very proud to be a feminist and to have raised a flock of feminists. My son has taken the longest to come around. He openly admits that he would prefer to just enjoy his white male privilege but he isn't that guy. He's an egalitarian at heart. My youngest is feminist right out loud which is a risky proposition on today's college campuses where many girls start sentences with "I'm not a feminist but... [I think I deserve equal pay for equal work...I don't like men staring at my boobs..... I don't like being portrayed as stupid just because I'm female]"
My Humbly Anne is getting married in a few weeks and you can't get much more traditional than that and yet she is doing it on her own terms. She will not have her Dad walk her down the aisle and 'give her away' because she doesn't 'belong' to him and she won't 'belong' to her husband. She isn't getting married so that she can be taken care of by a man but she loves the way he takes care of her and she loves to take care of him. She isn't getting married so she can have kids but having children is clearly on the horizon. She's planning on getting pregnant fairly early in life, probably while she's in graduate school and she is planning on having a career. If she changes her mind about that and can afford not to work then that's what she'll do. She'll do what she does because that is what she wants and what is best for her family, not because someone says that's the way it is supposed to be. She won't get married in white because she has been living with her guy for a couple of years and she isn't about to pass from virgin to non-virgin, from daughter to wife. She is creating a partnership with a man she loves and it is all about happiness and love and family and not at all about ownership, duty and subordination. She is a feminist.
To those of you who think 'feminist' and then think 'ugly woman in overalls who can't get a man' please join the 21st Century and recognize that feminist means 'woman who is master of her destiny, who is open to the life style choices of others and who wants to be respected for who she is, not what she looks like or how well she can cook and sew". Feminism is what allows your sister, wife, daughter, niece, neighbor and friend to fully engage in life on her own terms. Feminism is responsible for the fact that women have choices and that they can make a living either because they want to or because they are forced to due to circumstances (widowed, abandoned, abused). Feminism both sets us free and allows us to participate. Feminsim is good stuff.
I was just reading Cameron Brown's IM New Zealand race report on TriFuel. He won this race for the 6th time in spite of having suffered with an intestinal bug for much of the week before. He concludes his report with this:
I was absolutely exhausted at the finish line and needed to be stretchered off to the medical tent for oxygen and 2 litres of IV fluid. I think my body was still feeling the effects of being sick, and pushing myself to the limits for the entire race only added to this.
So that's how it's done, folks. Talk about leaving it all out on the course. Congratulations to Cameron for his 6th IM New Zealand win.
Ann Coulter, that spawn of Satan with a mouth that just won't quit, is quoted as saying "I was going to have a few comments on the other democratic candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word "faggot" so I'm kind of at an impasse. Can't really talk about Edwards" I didn't make that up - you can find the clip on YouTube. It's her, and those are her words. Sadly, there were people in audience who laughed and clapped. What a bunch of yahoos.
But getting back to little Annie, I would just like to suggest that if she can't talk about a man who was the first guy in his family ever to go to college, who got an undergrad degree in textile technology (because his Dad was a mill worker) and went on to law school, who made partner and then became a successful senator, who endured the loss of a child to a car accident and who supported his wife through breast cancer rather than serving her divorce papers at the hospital (like Ann's buddy Newt Gingrich) without using inappropriate and nonsensical epithets then maybe it is time for her to back off the stage and shut the F#@%! up.
I rather like the way Henry Rollins put it some time ago. I wonder if he'll update his open letter to Ann Coulter. (Warning - the audio no this clip is neither work nor child friendly)
*** Updated with long overdue attributuion to the photographers who took the pics I used (and an apology for being lazy about it to begin with) ****
When I left for my ride this morning I was excited but not confident. The plan was to ride the famous 3 Bears, so named for 3 pretty substantial hills - Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. I managed this ride 2 years ago on my old Schwinn but hills have not been my friend lately so I was at the least concerned and I was pretty sure I'd be bringing up the rear by quite a margin.
NOT!
I was the Queen of the Hills. I was so far ahead of my riding partners that I had to stop and wait at the top of the first hill because I was sure someone had flatted or dropped a chain or something. Not so. My new love machine just has some secret turbo booster thingie that kicks in when I least expect it.
The ride was short but beautiful and it did wonders for my confidence. I got a definite case of butt munch at the end but I think the distance was just right for that. I might even go for another ride tomorrow. That's how much love how I feel right now.
Here's the elevation map but it has a definite artifact. That spike at the beginning of Papa Bear is all wrong. Just figure the hill is continuous, which it was. I think I need a handlebar mount for my Garmin.
Here is an elevation map from another source:
Imagery from along the way (this is for you, Juls!)
I didn't take any of these shots - I found them on the internet but they are all things that I saw this morning. click the picture to link to the originating websites.
Aerial shot (click to see site to get 3D "Magic Eye" type images)
February just whizzed by, now didn't it? And what happened to my training? It got lost somewhere in the dark cold mornings and in the rain.
Training Log for the Month:
Swimming - 10x for a total of ~14 miles (~25,000 yards)
Running - 3 x for a total of ~20 miles (gulp)
Cycling - 3 x for a total of ~46.5 miles (double gulp)
The swimming wasn't too bad but the running and riding totals should be per week, not per month. I'm not sure what happened but I do know that I just keep waiting. Waiting to get stronger without strength training. Waiting for more light. Waiting for more warmth. Waiting to feel like it. Waiting for inspiration. And I know better. I know that there is no waiting - there is only doing and I know that the inspiration comes from within - it comes from riffing off of the achievment and dedication and performance of others and leveraging that as a personal call to action. It means just doing it.
Oh yeah- there was the part where I was sick for the entire last week of the month, too. Thanks to all for the well wishes. It worked! I'm back and now IT'S HAMMER TIME! Really - it really is. If I don't hunker down to a plan I will totally humiliate myself at Wildflower so here's the plan: There are 8 weeks to WildFlower. I'm going to spend 2 weeks building a base (hee!) and then I'm going to adhere to a 6 week training program. That's it. I'm all in. No more waiting. No more hoping. No more wings and prayers. Time to get some Drive.