Beach Weekend!

Towards the end of vacation the other week I was all, 'poo, vacation is almost over.' But then I realized - in two weeks it's beach weekend! We've been planning this forever. It's so hard to get everyone's schedules in the summer synched up to find a free weekend.It's me and my girls (and the husbands will be joining us) in Ocean Isle Beach, NC, which is south North Carolina - is that confusing? Just a bit above the border. Of course, we will be...

Read More

Temperatures

Last weekend and most of last week was almost unbearably hot. All days reached close to 100 degrees and the 'feels like' temperature was well over that. It gets hot here in NC, but that was way above normal for us. It was reminiscent of playing basketball in an un-air conditioned gym in the summer during high school in Florida. Those games were so hot and humid that if you ended up on the court you would slide for 10 yards before coming to a stop. Fun times.Anyways, it's really hard to feel good working out when it's that hot - particularly in...

Read More

Master's Showdown at the Big Deuce

At the Jordan Lake Open Water Challenge we put on about a month ago, me and fellow OSB Master's swimmer, Erik, were only separated by one second. The men and women started in different waves so it wasn't like we actually swam together (the men started 5min ahead), but when I saw the results I milked it for all it was worth. See, Erik is a MUCH faster swimmer than I am in the pool - we don't even swim in the same lane! And because I'm so endearing, I said to him (at least once a week): "Hey, Erik. 1 second." And then I would smile. He knew I was...

Read More

The Big Deuce is Here!

You can't help but smile about doing a race called the Big Deuce! This 2 mile swim will be in the balmy waters of Jordan Lake (86 degrees - yikes!), but don't worry as we have an intrepid volunteer who will be out there on a canoe giving racers gatorade if needed. After the swim I'll be on my bike with a bunch of other folks in the 100 degree heat and then later on we'll be at a pig roast. Definitely a full day plann...

Read More

Marty took this video on the first day of our bike tour. We had just stopped for a coffee/cupcake break (guess which Gaal had which) and then got back on our bikes and immediately had to thread our way through a big pack of cruisers and recumbents. Then Marty missed the turn onto the canal but instead of us both having to thread our way through again, I just soft pedaled until he caught back up. Apparently, that's not how he saw it. I didn't even hear him comi...

Read More

Here's a quick day-by-day recap of our vacation - no pictures yet, but will post those soon!Friday - July 9We left Cary around noon - much later than planned but we had a bunch of stuff to take care of and also didn't want to kill ourselves trying to get out of town. About 30min into our drive Marty turns to me and says, "Do you have Beth's key?" Cue stomach drop. We were planning on stopping in Pittsburgh Friday night on our way to Buffalo and Beth & Oscar had so kindly agreed to let us stay at their house -- EVEN THOUGH THEY WOULDN'T EVEN...

Read More

Updates coming soon!

I haven't updated at all while on vacation, although Marty has and I did put a few pics up on facebook, but other than that I haven't had a ton of computer time. Plus, it's freakin' vacation and I don't want to really be on here that much! Vacation updates coming soon once we get home (tomorrow night, boo).Here's a pic from the first day of our Erie Canal bike tour. It was a very, very good ti...

Read More

A Tale of Two Gaal's

One of us smiles too much in races, and the other doesn't smile enough.Yay! I'm on a new bike!Grrr. I locked my aero helmet in the hotel.Yay! I'm running!Grrr. I'm h...

Read More

Vacation!!

Vacation - I need one! After the past few weeks of work I'm ready to get the heck out of dodge and enjoy some time off.Reader's of this blog will understand, but I received a lot of strange looks when telling people what we were doing for vacation. Most people here head to one of the NC beaches for a week. Not us; we'll be doing a bike tour along the Erie Canal.After Master's practice tomorrow morning we'll be driving to Pittsburgh, where we'll stay...

Read More

Too Busy to Blog

This past week was jam packed with way too much stuff. I had a decent week of training, a very, very busy week at work, and this weekend Marty and I have been boxing stuff up and deep cleaning our house. We've been wanting to sell and buy a slightly bigger house for awhile now, and we've finally started the process. And what a process it is.Marty did a July 4th (actually July 3rd) run, and I went from planning on racing it on Tuesday, to not racing but watching on Thursday, to not even going on Friday night. Marty didn't mind that I wasn't going...

Read More