Inane Rambling

I don't care about the Royal Wedding. Good for them, and I wish them the best, but it's seriously ridiculous the amount of coverage it's getting. I care enough to look at a few pictures of her dress and then say, "eh, that's pretty...next" Also, I guess she married 'up' since she is marrying the future King (uh, whatever that means, by the way) but let's face it, William definitely married up in the looks department! Good job there, lad!

I also don't like American Idol. There, I said it. I get very bored watching people sing. I also don't like any show similar to it, like Dancing with the Stars or whatever new one that is out. Anyways, American Idol is on my mind because apparently some girl that went to my high school before I was there is a good musician and she has been in the 'horn section' on American Idol the past few times. I know this because I'm part of my high school's alumni group on facebook and we get LOTS of updates telling us she'll be on there.

Easter was nice. We went on a bike ride and ended up at an intersection when the IOSDT group rode by. So we turned and went with them for awhile. The ride went so fast because all I did was chat with Erin the entire time. Before I knew it, Marty and I were turning around to head home. It was sunny and hot and many got burned (not us, because Marty is sort of nazi-ish about sunscreen. too much time spent in the Florida sun without any has made us both more conscious of it)

Then we cleaned up for Easter lunch at the Lovgren's. It's becoming tradition - the Lovgren's, Ledford's and Gaal's get together for Holiday feasts. Here we are at Thanksgiving this past year:

Marty in the mirror taking the picture

And Alysia taking the Easter picture - she did a better job of making sure she got in the picture.

And here are the girls, I was squatting a bit so I didn't look like a giant.

After Easter lunch we met more friends for dinner - and Tassie came too! Unfortunately, it was windy and the awnings above our table were blowing so of course Tassie was scared. Crouched and trembling...scary awnings!

Are you tired of me talking yet? I would be remiss if I didn't mention St. Anthony's. This is the first weekend in a long time (not counting the year we were overseas) that we won't be down in Florida racing. Like I mentioned in a previous post, I'm actually quite glad about this. It was nice not to have to worry about hardcore training early on in the year. Everyone shows up to that race in incredible shape and it was refreshing not having that hanging over my head this time. I will miss seeing all of our friends and family down there, though.

Okay, I'm done.

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Triangle Orthopedic Sprint Triathlon

My first triathlon of the year was on NC State's Centennial Campus - the Triangle Orthopedic Sprint. This was a short little race: 750 meter lake swim, 10.5 mile bike and a 5K run. This is typically a time trial start; one person going every 5 seconds but this year they switched it up just a bit and had mini waves of 5 people every 15 seconds. The lake was chilly! 65 degrees, which no one could ever convince me that this is 'not bad.' I forced Marty to buy me neoprene arm sleeves since I have a sleeveless wetsuit and they were awesome. They stayed up, kept my arms warm, and were easy to come off.

We knew a bunch of people at the race so that's always a lot of fun. Several from our Master's swim group including my archnemesis Erik who would be starting :15 behind me. I started with another fellow master's swimmer, John, who took off way faster than I can, but I ended up exiting the lake just a bit behind him. I passed him running up the brutal hill to transition, where I then passed Erik (yup, he passed me in the water and I had no hope of even trying to draft off of him! archnemesis no more -- he'll have to find a new superhero to fight).

Off on the bike and I passed a few girls right away. There's really no way of knowing where you are in a race like this since people are starting all over the place. The bike was hard - it was hilly right at the beginning and difficult to find any sort of rhythm. Then it was rolling but before you knew it, it was over. I never felt all that comfortable or that I was pushing super hard, but that's what you get when you aren't doing a whole bunch of intensity at the moment.

Off on the run and I felt pretty good. Again, not much intensity in my training leads to semi-slow runs like this one. The course also had a fair number of hills, which I normally wouldn't mind when I'm in good shape, but right now so early on it was hard. So I backed off a bit :)

I ended up 2nd overall and had a really fun day out there. I do love racing! Pics to come if I get any sent to me from friends on the course. I debuted our new OSB one piece kit.

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Racing!

Marty wrote a great little race report about his and Tassie's Umstead 4 miler race. I love this picture! This is right at the end and she definitely gave me a look that said, "uhhh, can I stop running yet?"

I was going to also run this race, but then a glitch in the registration site was fixed after the price went up and I decided not to. Of course, at the race I was thinking, wait - why didn't I race?! But it was all good. I got to watch Marty and Tassie and then I wasn't stressed about going right from the finish line (literally) to the house to drop her off, right to the pool for our swim clinic.

We were about halfway done with our clinic, reviewing the pool footage onscreen in the downstairs classroom that is made out of cement blocks, when a lifeguard poked his head in and said, "We may need to start moving people in here because it's one of our designated 'safe rooms'" We were all like, uh what? Then we heard the commotion -- hail, wind, rain, thunder and realized there was quite a storm outside! Luckily, we didn't have any damage to our house (well, maybe lost a shingle or two) but not too far away there was A LOT of damage. We were lucky.

This weekend I get to race! I'm doing the Triangle Orthopedic Sprint at NC State. I'm feeling pretty good but definitely haven't been doing much intensity so not sure exactly how fast I can go - but it will be fun regardless :)

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Weekend Ahead

Big weekend for Tassie - she has her annual run at the Umstead Coalition Run tomorrow morning. Last year she was first doggie and 2nd female overall in a time of 28:45 (it's a 4 mile hilly bridle trail run). Hopefully the weather holds out because right now they're calling for showers and storms.

Right after that we're putting on one our quarterly swim clinics. Busy Saturday, for sure.

This week was monumental in that we bought a new car! We traded in my Xterra, which I've had since 1999. Great car, but it was time to put it to bed. Marty got a quote from Carmax for the Xterra earlier in the week and we were shocked at what they were going to give us. Lucky for us the quote is good for 7 days because not 2 days later the ABS light came on!

Here I am saying my final good-byes to my car.

It's sort of hard to hug an SUV:

We got a Kia Sportage, which feels like a Lexus compared to the bare bones that first year model of the Xterra was.

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Doughman Fundraising

Many of you may remember the epic race me and 3 of my girlfriends participated in last year - The Doughman. This is a running-biking-sort-of-swimming relay where each participant also eats a plate of food from one of the local restaurants that sponsors the race. We finished in 3rd place last year - only 2 all boys teams beat us. Team Victorious Secret is back again this year to claim the 'W'!

All team members will be participating this year - even Brooke who will be flying in from Boulder, CO the night before. Yes, we are serious folks.

The Doughman race is put on by volunteers and proceeds go to two local charities:

Seeds: a non-profit community garden whose goal is to teach people to care for the earth, themselves and each other through a variety of garden-based programs. Doughman helps support their Durham Inner-city Garden program.

See Saw Studio: A free after school studio teaching design and entrepreneurship skills to creative teens. Yeah, these aren't the Red Cross, but these are small, local organizations that help the youth of Durham, and they need support just like big charities!

What I'm getting at is all the teams signed up for Doughman are encouraged to raise money for these two charities, so if you feel so inclined to support them and Team Victorious Secret, please click the 'Donate Here' button below. You'll even get a receipt for tax purposes. There may be some time bonuses involved for teams who raise certain amounts. Go Team VS!!

DONATE HERE

(this is a totally legit paypal account - Kari Redilla is Kari Mayhew, one of my teammates!)

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Swim Meet Recap

Like I mentioned a few weeks ago, I signed up for the NC short course championship swim meet along with several other of our master’s team members. It was SO MUCH FUN!!! I had no idea how much a fun a swim meet could be! Although, I believe a lot of it was due to my teammates (some at the meet may have thought we were obnoxious, but I say we were just really excited).

It was held at the Hillsborough Sportsplex, which was about a 40min drive from our house. Heather met us to car pool over and we couldn’t stop talking about everything swimming related, from starts and turns, to relay configurations and seed times. Yep, we were big swimming dorks.

I did a triathlon at this pool a few years ago and remember the water being freezing, but luckily they turned the heater on because it was really quite pleasant. They had a ‘warm down’ pool which really was warm and perfect to slide into after a race. Plus, it was situated so that you could stand in the water and watch some of the races if you wanted.

Okay, so we get there and Marty had written down a warmup for us to do, then we all watched Alysia who was in the first event of the day, the 100 butterfly. I was so nervous for her! She did great and I’ll never forget the look on her face on her final turn – which was a cross between ‘how much air can I get and how much time can I rest on this wall' with 'oh shit what have I gotten myself into?’ She did a smokin’ 1:07.

My first event was the 200 girls medley relay. I was the anchor doing freestyle since all my strokes suck. We had a minor goggle debacle as Heather’s broke right when she was getting on the blocks. It all worked out as she got Marty’s on her head with about 2 seconds to spare. I did well on the anchor leg and even passed a girl to get us 3rd place! My dives were all smooth and I didn’t have any goggle problems. Although I did use two caps and had those goggles on so tight that I couldn’t move them…so I may have been walking around with my goggles over my eyes for quite awhile before my events ;) I am such a pretender!

My first real event of the day was the 50 freestyle. Here is a video of it – I’m in lane 1, closest to the camera. I won my heat with a time of 28.56! They seed all the heats based on the times you submit, slowest to fastest with the fastest swimmers in each heat in lane 4 & 5. Lane’s 1 & 8 are usually the slowest in the heat, so it was neat to win from Lane 1. At the end of the day, they tabulate the results based on your age group, so even though I was usually in one of the later (faster) heats, I was almost always last in my age group for the results (there were usually only 2-3 people in my age group in each event, and apparently they were mostly ‘real’ swimmers). But we won’t dwell on that…

Then I did the 200 free which was quite painful. I unfortunately didn’t hit the pad hard enough at the end and the backup timer didn’t push her button either, so the time they got for me wasn’t correct. Marty thinks I did a 2:17, they had me listed as a 2:19. That was it for me on Saturday, so I got to cheer everyone else on for the last few events. We have some really fast people on our team (Marty included) and it was neat to see them all killing it out there.

Afterwards, a bunch of us celebrated at Tyler’s Taproom in Durham.

Sunday morning we were back at the pool, and this time I had the first event of the day, the 50 butterfly. And I was in the 2nd heat since my seed time was slow. I hardly ever do butterfly and was honestly worried I wouldn’t be able to finish it! But I did fine, finishing in :35.01 and winning my heat again. Here is video of this race if you’re interested (my sister really wanted video of this, I think to tease me, but my form really isn’t that bad. I’m just slow). I’m in Lane 5 in this one, in the white and black suit.

After this we did a mixed (men/women) 200 free relay. Then I did the 100 free and was happy with my 1:02.7. That one really hurt, too. Alysia did 1:00, even though she stopped halfway through her first lap to fix her goggles! Stud.

I ended with a girls 200 free relay – thank you to Jennifer for coming out on Sunday so we could field a girls team! The relays were a blast.

Marty had some crazy fast times, but I think the best/funniest was his 100 free. He was all the way in lane 8, and unfortunately the next 3 lanes all scratched so he really was by himself over there. He did a 53.5 which we were all super impressed by and then we were all laughing because he could barely move when he got out of the pool – he was all hunched over and barely shuffling. I thought he might need a med tent or something! He rallied and did a great leadoff leg in the guys 200 free relay (24.9) then survived the 500 free where he averaged under 1:05 per 100 yards. Freak.

But you know, we had a bunch of triathletes on our team so what do we do after a 2 day swim meet? Go for a 46 mile bike ride! I found a great course that had some rolling hills and very little traffic and several us finished the day outside in the sun.

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