A Farewell to Blue Hair

Well, the blue hair enjoyed a two-week stint atop my head. At the end of the second week, I was starting to look like a little old lady due to the fade factor, so I had a colored back to its regularly scheduled blonde hue. Sigh.

On Thursday we had an inspirational sports psychologist guest speaker to get us mentally prepared for our races. Many aspects of this lecture were valuable, one of the most important ideas I came away with is that I need to have one mantra each for swimming, biking, and running that I can use when (note: not IF, but WHEN) I am fatigued and want to give up during each leg of the race. I spent a lot of time this week figuring out what my mantras would be, and fortunately, I came up with all three.

Yesterday was my first foray into the mighty (and mighty brisk!) waters of San Francisco's very own Aquatic Park. Wow! That is some cold water. I am SO GLAD I bought the wetsuit bonnet, but I wish I had something to cover my hands and feet with! After the first ten minutes, they went numb, but then after about thirty minutes they started to cramp. That was when I tried out my swimming mantra, which worked like a charm. In the spirit of this blog's rating, I can't reveal the whole mantra, but I will give a clue. It's from a Snoop Dogg song, and it starts with "G's up." I will say no more, but if you know it, you know why it's a good swimming mantra. Here I am after a successful dip in the Bay...don't I look delighted?



We ran from A(quatic) P(ark) to the S(ports) B(asement) afterwards and it was surprisingly enjoyable!

The Wildflower race is next weekend (haha, camping for those folks...Hyatt Honolulu for me!) so our bike today was nothing major. We rode 25 miles down in San Mateo. The day started off blustery but ended up being a sunburn day. Rats. It was a beautiful out-and-back to Woodside. All in all, I've gotta say it was a good day.

Spaghetti Legs

We are in peak training right now. Things have gone way beyond eleven, so to speak. On Saturday we swam a mile at Redwood HS and then ran eight more. Luckily, the weather was cool and calm. It rained later that day.

Today, we biked forty-two miles, again beginning at RWHS. I was pretty much KO'd at the turnaround point, at twenty-one miles. Hahaha. It was really a beautiful day to be out riding for four hours. What a long bike ride! Doing twenty-five miles on race day will seem like a stroll in the park. When I got home all I could think about was food, glorious food! Indeed, I didn't care what it looked like. Three banquets a day, my favorite diet. Ok, ok, I'll stop.

What an Amazing Week!

Here are some photos in backwards chronological order: 1. Wow! It's really raining! 2. Looks pretty overcast... 3. Starting to cloud up. 4. I see some blue sky! 5. Here is my blueberry head.





Wow! Where to begin with this week! First off, I met my fundraising goal, which feels great! Really awesome! True to my word, I let my donor students vote on which color I would dye my hair and the winner was...blue! Yikes! I'm Smurfette...for a couple of weeks. Even the worst hair day has got to be better than the best hair day on chemo.

On Wednesday night we ran the Alcatraz run course. It was rather strenuous, to put it mildly. At one point, climbing up off the beach, I realized I had actually ceased running and was walking. And was it ever some agonizing walking! I felt like I was climbing out of the depths of hell. Every step was laborious but I knew it was putting me closer to being off the climb. Those people who signed up for the Alcatraz tri are hard core!

On Saturday it was very rainy, windy, and cold. We had a practice tri on Treasure Island. It was my first open water swim, and I was fully prepared to have a freak-out, which I had. Temperature-wise, the swimming was the best part because compared to the wind and rain, getting in the ocean was no big deal. I had a lot of trouble putting my face in at first because it was cold and disorienting. When I finally did, I just couldn't swim regularly. About a third of the way in, I relaxed and got my regular rhythm. Go me!

The biking basically sucked because we had to do a zillion flat loops in our wet tri suits in the wind and rain. Gaaaa. The running was a little better once it got underway. It felt really weird at first to be running with numb feet. I felt like I was running on two leg stumps or maybe two brick feet until they un-numbed (I hesitate to say they every "warmed up") and then I was able to feel that, yes, they were in fact still soaking wet.

Yay! I did a triathlon! I bet it will be a lot more fun in Hawaii.

So far this blog has been rated PG but the name of the workout we did today will probably bump it into the PG-13 category. We did a bike-run-bike in Fairfax called the Alpine Asskicker. Within the first short mile, said anatomical region was duly and truly kicked, and there were still 15 miles of biking and 40 minutes of running to go. Fortunately, the vistas were breathtaking (hint hint we were in major hill territory) and the weather was awesome! Nike was surely watching over us from Mount Olympus today. I forgive him for all that cruddy weather yesterday.

Well, I'm beat. Go Team!

Live Free or Die!

I was a member of the Keene Family YMCA all week and what a week it was. I was swimming in a yards pool rather than a meters pool so I overcompensated and got my mileage up near two miles! Yes! I also ran for 90 minutes one day (in the snow, might I add. Might I also add that everything was done in the snow...) which is my longest run to date. Not sure of the mileage on that one. I did the stationary bike at the Y, which was not ideal, but it will make me all the more appreciative of my own bike when I pick it up tomorrow from its head-to-toe (or is that handle bars-to-back tire?) service at Palo Alto Bikes.

Letter from the Eastern Seaboard

The TNT SF team is training this weekend at the Wildflower course but I am visiting my sister in New Hampshire. I am fully prepared to do OYO training all week, and to accomplish this, I had to bring an extra suitcase (albeit a small one) full of gear. Nate was appalled that I would travel for one week and need two suitcases. However the other thing taking up so much space besides the gear was a bunch of student work I brought to grade. My plane was delayed several hours out of Denver and I had plenty of time to grade as well as lugluglug that work around. It's shaping up to be a good week for training out here.