Cary Roundabout 5K

I was contemplating doing The Battle at Buckhorn so I could try and win the very prestigious belt buckle, but after last week's "I'm so tired" and another busy week that flew by, I decided to stay home and run the Cary Roundabout 5K.

One of Marty's belt buckles

The start was around 2 miles from our house, so the 3 of us loaded up and jogged over. Then we waited in line to pick up our number.

I'm a faker. I didn't push Logan, Marty did.

The race was fun, and one of the flattest 5Ks I've done here. Just some slight inclines and one short nasty hill towards the end. I surprised myself almost breaking 19min (19:04) and finished 2nd overall for the women.

Marty is a total stud pushing that stroller with a 30lb kid in it. He ran a 20:46! Afterwards, we cheered on the rest of the runners.



Logan yelling, "Go Go Go Go!"

The 5K was put on because they just completed 2 roundabouts into our little downtown; they kind of bookend the downtown area.  Let's hope people figure them out. A few days ago I went around one (and half of it wasn't even open!) and the dude in front of me came to a complete stop, turned his right blinker on, then proceeded to drive 1/4 of the way around before coming to ANOTHER stop and turning his left blinker on to finish going the remaining 1/4 of the way.

Sunday, Logan had a playdate with one of his friends from his old daycare (he's doing well at his new one, no more crying when we drop him off).  Lizzy is sooo cute and kept putting her arm around Logan and then kept wanting to hold his hand. Logan wouldn't have any part of the hand holding and would yell (a very parent embarrassing) "NO!"



Feeding the ducks at Bond Park

   

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Just Tired

Today is gone. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day,
from here to there,
funny things are everywhere.

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish - by Dr. Seuss

That's the last page of one of Logan's favorite books right now. I also like the end because it has the children going to sleep on their pet Zeep, which reminds me of the Irish Wolfhounds I grew up with. I thought it was an appropriate little rhyme that also describes our lives right now.

I painted our guest bathroom all day on Friday. We had new tile put down and a new vanity put in a couple of months ago, but have been slack on painting and putting up a new mirror. Putting our house on the market is always in the back of our heads but it just seems like such an enormous undertaking! Anyways, since I was off on Friday, it was a good day to try and check that task off the list.

The next morning we got up at 4:30am to drive to Burlington for the Mission Man triathlon. Here are results. It was a nice venue, but overall I just felt tired. It was one of those days where there just wasn't any spark in the legs. I was the only open female signed up so that meant it was me and 9 or so guys in wave 1 (I've talked about it before but geez do I hate it when I don't get to actually race anyone).  There was lots of jokey-jokey before the start.

Me: Ken, I'd like to draft off of you, but don't start off too fast, m-kay?
Ken: Well I was going to draft off of Marty & Dave
Dave: But I'm going to draft off of Bri!
(hardeeharhar)

The swim was fine, albeit very warm. At least it wasn't quite as warm as the Triangle Triathlon's water temp (90.5!!)  I drafted to the first turn buoy (sadly, not off of Ken, who started off too fast for me). Approaching the first buoy I could see two guys off to my right who I just knew were going to make a beeline and clobber me at the turn, so I opted to pull up and let them go. And I was right, I would've gotten hammered. But the one guy breastroked around the buoy which slowed me up -- seriously, dude?

The bike course was nice and would've been more fun had I felt better. But I didn't and the only people I saw were guys I had beaten out of the water who proceeded to zoom by me like I was pedaling backwards. Other than that, it was lonely and I kept thinking this was the longest 15miles of my life. Even a half-hearted Jens Voight "Shut up legs!" didn't help.

I liked the run course, but in keeping with the theme I just felt tired. Cruise tempo effort it was through the off road rolling terrain.

I liked the race and will hopefully do it again at some point.  We hung around for a little while but opted to go get a yummy breakfast instead of sticking around for awards before relieving our babysitter.

Up very early again on Sunday morning for the Big Deuce and Little Uno swims. I once again had awesome volunteers helping me at check-in, and even some that weren't swimming so I got to swim this time.  I did the Little Uno as my swim volume is too low to even think swimming 2 miles straight would've been remotely fun. I was going to cruise the entire thing but having people near me released the competitive juices and I ended up really picking it up the backstretch. Dang, my lats were tired afterwards.

An easy ride after with some OSB'ers before a funfilled afternoon of Junior Awesome.

And yeah, right now -- TIRED!!

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Upcoming Races

Marty and I have decided to race Mission Man this Saturday as opposed to the slightly more local Triangle Triathlon. We've done Triangle before and don't necessarily love the course, and we've never done Mission Man, which everyone says is really nice. We are both able to race because we have a babysitter coming over at 5am!

Sunday morning is our Big Deuce and Little Uno open water swims. A different babysitter will be coming to our house for that early morning. We spend a lot on babysitters - it hurts not having family close. And these aren't even for real dates! Although one could argue that our race on Saturday is a date...

Next weekend I'm trying to decide if I want to do The Battle at Buckhorn, and try to win my first belt buckle, or just stay local (very local, like 1/2 mile away local) and do the Roundabout 5K with Marty and Logan. I've never raced Buckhorn before; one year I was going to but one of Marty's athletes tore her shoulder labrum and couldn't do the swim, so I did that portion for her so she could still compete. Marty has won 3 belt buckles from this race, which are on our mantel. It's quite a unique award! But I would have to go over solo and I'm not sure I want to do that.

The following weekend I'm doing the Lake Logan Olympic distance race - one of my faves. It's on Saturday, and Marty will be doing the sprint or the aquathon on Sunday. Logan gets to go to both...we'll see how that goes!

Logan says hi, bright and early this morning!

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Logan update

Logan will be 19 months old tomorrow. And I'm about ready to be done counting his age in months. When you start to have to calculate it (12 months + huh = how old?), so from now on he will be 'turning 2 in December' then 'almost 2' then from there on out 2, 2.5, 3 etc, etc, until he can tell everyone his own age. "I'm 6 and 3/4!" Do you remember doing that?

He can say a lot of words, and he says a lot of other things that we have no idea about (was that Yiddish?!) He also gets very frustrated and screamy when he wants something and we can't figure out what exactly that thing is. We had one of those rounds yesterday morning where he ended up shoving everything off his high chair tray (Tassie said thanks for the watermelon, buddy). Marty, who was in no mood - or actually, was in his morning mood, ended up taking him out of his high chair and gave him a 'so don't eat then, have fun with that' while I continued to try and mollify him with every type of food possible. I finally hit jackpot with a chocolate chip granola bar and he went from screaming/crying to taking it and giving me a simple, "Tank Too" and then walking away like nothing had happened.

W. T. F.

He cries everyday when we drop him off at daycare which is no fun at all. The only Spanish word I have heard him say so far is 'hola' but I spoke to another couple who's kids are at the same daycare and they said their 3 year old is fluent (and the parents don't speak Spanish at all). I hope he is liking the daycare all right. I do miss the teachers at his old daycare. And he does seem fine when we pick him up.

Mud day at daycare.  Logan has clumps of mud in his hair! But he came home clean.

Parade at daycare for the 4th of July - they made their costumes, so I think his class was a Statue of Liberty procession

He has a wicked reaction to mosquito bites which has prompted us to get a professional company to come out and spray. I hope it works, or at least helps cut down on our enormous population in our back woodsy yard.

Like many kids, he LOVES Elmo. He doesn't watch much tv, but if we happen to put on Elmo he drags his chair over and gets in a trance. It's really cute to see and Elmo saved us from a meltdown this past Saturday so we also like the little puppet.

Elmo, bitches!

One last little story, while I was riding my bike last night, Marty was in charge. And by the way, Marty is a fantastic dad - and Logan gravitates toward him more than me, still.  Anyways, Logan goes to bed around 7 or a bit after and will sleep 11-12 hrs. They did the night time routine and after reading a couple of books Marty tried to brush his teeth but Logan started pointing at his crib and whining, "nigh nigh!" After some negotiation "come on, let me brush your teeth"...."nigh nigh!"  Marty put him in his crib where Logan rolled over and yelled, "Bye Bye!!"  and was out.  I really wish I could go to sleep that easy.





Playing in a little splash park



Another day, another injury

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Old School Aquathon

We were only able to put on one Old School Aquathon this year, so we picked the 4th of July since that was our biggest turnout last year.  A few weeks ago we were worried because we didn't have many sign ups, but as it got closer we got a bunch so it was a go.  Then Marty put the t-shirt order in, THEN a bunch more people signed up. And we had a bunch of race day signups - this was great for our participant list, but not so good for not having ordered too many extra shirts.

I tried to explain profit margins and t-shirt orders to one competitor who was pretty upset about not getting one, but I don't think she was very satisfied. Always with the t-shirts!

Aquathons are fun and they are HARD! (as a side note, if you happen to like the Old School Aquathon and want to do another next summer, feel free to let Jason and Marc know at fsseries.com.) We keep this very low key and it's a nice atmosphere for a race/awesome workout. I truly believe sprint triathlons are much easier than sprint aquathons! You go from breathing hard out of the water and through transition -- right into a 3mile run! There's never a chance to catch your breath, unlike on the bike where your heartrate always comes down a bit.  Then you go back and swim - with your heartrate still through the roof, your entire body tired, and you want it to move without much oxygen? Let's just say that THAT swim is always super challenging, no matter who you are.

Pre-race instructions. See that sign? Yeah, we break all the rules.

Sporting the OSB onesie and looking as cool as ever.

The race was a 400 meter swim, 3mile run, 400 meter swim -- ISH.  Nothing's really measured but I actually think it was fairly close to those distances. We had two waves since the swims are so short, and the men went first.  When we started I sprinted! I was in 1st/2nd for about 75 yards, and then the real swimmer took off and I was wondering where everyone else was. Probably they started off at a more reasonable pace because when I got to the first turn buoy I was tired and decided to ease up. Much to the dismay of Mary, who was drafting and started touching my feet, and then just simply went around me. Sorry!

I got out of the water just behind her, Super-Swimmer was in first, and Jenny-from-Va got out behind us but did some sort of voodoo magic and was in transition for around 2 seconds.  I was able to pass everyone within the first few minutes of the run and my goal was to put as much time on them as possible because my overall goal was to absolutely not have to swim too hard on that second swim. Did I mention how hard that swim is? Yeah, no way I wanted to get into some sort of sprint on that one.

I forgot how rolly the trail is at Harris Lake. And because of all the recent rain, very muddy, too.  The run was hard and although the temperature wasn't super hot, the humidity was very high.  I tried to cheer for everyone I knew but I was sucking air out there and missed some people. It was a two loop course so there were people always around.

 

Making the turn for the 2nd loop.

Jenny-from-Va is no slouch so I couldn't back down at all. She and her husband have come down for all of our aquathons and between the two of them have won most! I probably had about 30 seconds on her heading into the last swim (but knew she would cut into that in transition!) but we seem to be similar speeds swimming-wise so I was able to swim/gasp my way through.

Marty took pictures from our SUP.

I held on for the win :) Although you wouldn't know it at the awards, because Marty "forgot" to call my name.  This is how it went:

In 3rd place for women - Mary R!
In 2nd place for women - Jenny! (from-Va)
And now for the men! In 3rd place...

I thought he did it on purpose, like sort of weird to call my name since we put them on and I'm handing out the pint glass awards.  But he promises he didn't mean to. But it got me thinking that maybe I shouldn't do our own events. Is it weird?  You can be honest.

Junior Awesome had fun with Rita during this, and then later we went into downtown Raleigh for 4th of July festivities.  It was full of vendors and fair food and performers and kids stuff (but big kid stuff, not Logan-age stuff, unfortunately), but it was still fun to be in the scene.

Trying out some ice cream.

Quit smiling at the camera, lady, and gimme more!

After downtown we stopped at Pullen Park on our way home. Logan loves trains and he wouldn't even play on the playground because he wouldn't stop pointing and saying 'choo choo! choo choo!' at the little train you can ride that goes around the park.  But once on, he was totally stoic. I could not get him to crack a smile.

I love trains. Really, I do.

Then we hit the old fashioned carousel which goes really freaking fast!! Logan was not going to let us put him on one of the horses, but he was content to sit with me on the benches that don't move.

Marty on a horse next to us. Actually, he was on a donkey. haha.

All in all, it was a great 4th of July!!

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