Last Week

Me with my beautiful TT bike.


The swim-to-bike transition.


All of the bikes on the rack, including mine, #189.


The running leg of the sprint triathlon.


First off, I just want to say that my thoughts are with Jen.


Ted was in Chicago last week, visiting his parents and his grandmother. While he was away, I continued settling into my new routine as student, and also tried my first sprint triathlon. Mom and Dad came up to watch and take photos, and the weather could not have been better.

I did not train for the running or swimming portions at all, and I wasn't optimistic about my time since I was sick for 10 days beforehand. But, I figured it would be fun, so why not? A guy I have worked with is an avid swimmer, so I asked him what sort of time I would do for a 500 yard swim (they seed you by your swim time). He estimated that I would swim in the range of 7 to 9 minutes, so I put down 8:15 when I registered, which put me in the final swim wave, of 6. I shared a lane with 3 other women, swimming within our lane counter-clockwise. It did not take long for me to realize that I had WAY underestimated my swim time, as I was lapped 3 times! Oops! I guess someone needs to work on her upper body strength, eh?

Anyway, it ended up taking me over 12 minutes for my swim, and I was the absolute last person out of the pool. I was so relieved to hop on the bike and be back in my element. I did not realize that my transition times would end up counting toward the splits of my individual legs, which is something I wish I had known since I was not fast in the transitions! I ended up catching a ton of people on the bike, putting me back ahead of all the women I swam with, and giving me the course record for women.

I decided to run at a decent, but not overly hard pace, with hopes of avoiding too much soreness. It turned out that it didn't matter, as I woke up the next morning to screaming Achilles tendons. I wound up finishing 2nd in my age group and 5th overall for women, with a time of 1:05:00. It was definitely fun for something new, and triathlons are a hard effort!

We still have not solved the garbage problem with Hitcher, so we have stuck to our temporary plan of putting the garbage in the "cat room" every time we leave the house. We no longer even have baby locks on anymore, as he completely snapped them off last weekend. Suz suggested putting the garbage in the tub since dogs don't like to get in the bathtub. Of course, my dog absolutely loves to get in the tub, climbing in several times a week. He once even peed in there! Yes, he's weird. He's also the only dog on the planet who won't touch peanut butter.

I am going to be doing a wine project for my masters degree, starting next year sometime. I am doing the wine processing lab on Fridays, which is going to be really fun. Now if I just didn't have to take organic chem...