The Alcoholic Post

Left: Shane, Meg (of AIDS LifeCycle fame), and I have fun with the camera as we get wasted in late December 2006.
Today makes one year since I quit drinking. One year, the amount of time seems unbelievable to me. If you asked me a year ago if I thought I would make it a year, I would have been lying if I said yes. Then again, I lied a lot back then. I lied about what I'd done last night, I lied about how much I drank and with whom, I lied about where all my money was going, I lied about why I was shaking, and I lied about stupid shit that I didn't need to lie about because I was so ashamed of myself that I didn't know where to draw the line at what was acceptable and what wasn't. But hell, if you ask me today if I could make it another year, I'm still not sure. It sucks. It sounds so trite, but you really do have to take it one day at a time.

Left: Celebrating getting my TEFL certification, getting positively wasted and having a smoke with one of my students in Barcelona (March 2006).

You would think it would get easier with time, smoking sure did. After a couple of weeks it doesn't even cross your mind to have a cigarette, after a couple of months the thought grosses you out. But not with alcohol. Imagine you had to go completely vegan, give up all meat, fish, dairy, eggs, and anything that had those things in it. No more chocolate (or all but the most disgusting, unsweetened, bitter stuff), no more pizza, no more milk in your coffee, no more steaks, no more cake, or bread (because most bread has eggs in it), or cheese, or hamburgers, or ice cream. All your friends can continue to eat normally, but you can't. All the restaurants' menus will stay the same, but you can't eat anything but the salads. Could you do it for a day? Could you do it for a month? Could you do it for the rest of your life? That's a bit like what quitting drinking was like for me. I hadn't gone a day in months without drinking, I loved beer and wine. I drank more than I ate. When I quit, bars didn't stop serving alcohol, liquor stores didn't disappear, my friends didn't stop drinking, the world went right on as it always had, but I had to somehow cut out this integral part of my life.

Right: Already so drunk we can barely

stand up, my friend Blair climbs on my shoulders

before we hit the bars in January, 2004.

I heard an interview with Todd Crandell, the founder of Racing for Recovery once. He said that he doesn't like to tell stories from back when he was using, because it glorifies it and makes it sound "cool". I can see where he's coming from, people just want to hear about the lowest points in your life just like they enjoy watching the same gruesome unraveling of someone's life on TV. Hey, it's why Lifetime: Television for Women is so popular. The fact is that I don't have many gruesome stories. I was what they call a "functional alcoholic". I liked to write when I drank, and some of the best papers I ever wrote in college I wrote while trashed. I got a 4.0 GPA the second two years of college -- the two years when I was able to actually purchase alcohol (legally). I didn't like drinking with other people because I would get too drunk to handle myself, but never wanted to stop at that point, so I would just drink alone. And I would write, and write, and write because there isn't much else to do when you drink alone. Most of my old No Wetsuit Girl posts were written while I was drunk off my ass or as I was getting there. I don't have any interesting stories of getting arrested (although I should have, who knows how I avoided a DUI with the frequency that I drove drunk), waking up in crazy places, or anything like that. Mostly I just stole shit from my friends (drinks and money for drinks), slept around, and urinated inappropriately (and not the cool kind of inappropriate urination that I'm proud of like I do now).

Right: I pretend to make out with my friend

David to make his boyfriend jealous while my

girlfriend takes the picture. You think these

things are funny when you're wasted.

(September 2006)

I threw up a lot. Not necessarily because I was drunk, but because I had no stomach lining left. By the time I left Spain my muscles and liver ached miserably and I had a stabbing pain in my spleen and a splitting headache every morning. I would get the sweats and hit by waves of nausea at the strangest times and need to go outside for some fresh air. I could barely eat, but I kept drinking. If you ever woke up feeling like I felt every morning, you wouldn't think twice about calling in to work. I wasn't just hung over, I was sick. But since I'd done it to myself, I got up and went to work feeling like that for months on end. And then people wonder how I'm able to endure some of the long workouts that I do. When you have done things that fucked up to your body, things like forcing it to process a 12-pack and a pack of Marlboro Reds a day for 2 months straight, or forcing it to throw up just to make the dizziness pass so you can get on to more drinking, sitting through a 12-hour exercise binge doesn't seem quite so bad. If you've ever had to stumble home 3 miles when you're so drunk that you're seeing double and falling over with every step, shuffling the last 5K of a marathon doesn't seem so bad. Sure, it hurts, but at least you know which way is up.

Left: I ham it up while Jamie tells me how much he loves me.

The aprons were for the "birthday boys". My birthday is in May, this picture was taken in August 2007. It remains a mystery how I wound up with an apron that night.

Addiction is a funny thing. You look around you and say, "God, my life sucks, my body feels toxic, and I hate my life," but you still can't stop. You wake up every morning and say, "I'm never drinking again," but by the time you finish your first cup of coffee you're already planning how you're going to get your next drink, if you haven't started already. You know you have a problem, so you go to great lengths to hide it so no one else will try and stop you. By the time those around you pick up on it, you're too out of control to be able to do anything about it, no matter how much you want to. To this day I still have a coffin-sized storage container sitting under my bed filled with empty beer bottles from three weeks I spent at home last summer. They were all my "night caps", and I still haven't figured out what to do with such a huge number of bottles without drawing someone's attention and having to come up with an explanation for it. It could have been much worse, but I'm thankful that I was able to catch myself when I did, before really bad shit started happening. I was one of the lucky ones.

Right: I now pee in these, most of the time.

When I quit I had to start my whole, entire life over. I broke off a relationship, quit my job, left the country, left the continent, and moved back in with my parents in Boston, a place I hadn't lived in more than 7 years. I didn't call any of my old friends (still don't) and started from scratch. But I needed something to keep my occupied during all that time I would have spent drinking. There is a lot of time to be filled when you quit drinking, time I didn't even know existed. What the hell does one do when one is awake and alert at 9:00 on a Sunday morning? Go to church? I dreaded nighttime, because what in the WORLD is there to do after sunset other than get shitfaced? I had to write myself a note to put next to my bed that said, There's nothing to fear about going to bed sober. And who does one spend their time with when everyone else their age spends all their free time drinking?

So I threw myself headlong into training because, what else was there to do with my time and energy? It was a reason to tell friends that I couldn't go to bars ("Aw come on, you don't have to drink... Just have water!" - as if that were possible), because I had a race in the morning. Also, if I had a big race looming, something just slightly out of my reach, then it would force me to stay on the straight and narrow. And as my fitness grew, so did the challenges and it kind of took on a life of its own.

When you've done such shitty things to your body as an addict has, you develop an ability to disregard your limits. I've had enough alcohol to kill me at times, and still made it home to my own bed. When you've survived that, you take other kinds of limits with a grain of salt as well. An epic training week isn't all that different from a binge anyway. All it takes is too much time, a little bit of money, and a little push to get you started before you get past the point of no return. Then you wake up one morning and think, "Fuck, my body hurts. What the hell have I been doing the last few days?!" You even get that, "I am never, ever doing that again... until next time," feeling.

This week I rode 330 miles, as a celebration of my year back in the land of the living. I rode 4 23-mile commutes to work, then 100 miles on Saturday with Mindy and a 145-mile ride on Sunday (I rode a century ride, plus rode the 20-miles to and from the start/finish). I wanted to get to 365 miles, but it would be silly to ride around in circles for 30 miles just to reach a silly number. This year was about building up a tremendous base, but I think I've proven all I wanted to prove. Next year I don't think I'll be doing as much crazy volume. But I have to say, if I hadn't been such a hopeless alcoholic, I wouldn't have been mad enough at myself to do some of the amazing things I've managed to beat out of my body this year. If you don't mind, I'd like to take this moment to reflect back on some of the highlights:

Over 936 miles run (my training log only starts in mid-November so I'm sure I'm well over 1,000), including 5 races of marathon distance or longer (I will have done 7 in a calendar year come Halloween).

Over 3,000 miles of riding, plus an additional 100 hours on the trainer, including a 7-day ride from San Francisco to LA, setting a course record at a 12-hour ultracycling event, and 10 rides over 100 miles. Probably the best part of this year has been discovering a love of cycling and a talent that I never knew I had.

Swimming about 258,000 yards in 2 oceans, 2 rivers, and 4 lakes and not discovering a single dead body in the process.

I've done over 30 races in 8 states, setting personal records in a 5K, 10K, half marathon, marathon, sprint distance, olympic distance, and half ironman distance as well as completing my first 50K and ironman, and winning the first prize I've ever won for more than just showing up, then winning hardware 6 more times.

At the risk of sounding cheezy, this year has been a real gift, and every single day that has gone by I really do stop and take a moment to remember that I almost stayed home and had a beer (or 10) rather than seeing all the cool stuff I've seen. And I've met some pretty cool people all over the country and the world.

--- --- ---

I've decided to dis-allow comments on this post, because I just don't think that "courtesy comments" are appropriate here. If you do have something meaningful to say, feel free to e-mail me. We'll be back to your regularly-scheduled nonsense soon, maybe with more detail on my 250-mile weekend. But before I go, I just wanted to thank everyone for reading my stuff and humoring me with all my race reports. If it hadn't been for this blog, I wouldn't have gotten to share my little (or big) adventures with anyone!

The Before and After pictures: (Left: August 2007, Right: August 2008)

Suffering – It ain't pretty

Suffering has been something I've spent a lot of time thinking about this summer. It all started with a desperate email to Mindy and Mary, two of the fastest runners I know under the height of 5'3", where I begged for running advice. I was told that to become a more competitive runner, I needed to learn to suffer. I was familiar with this concept, but I'd thought that I was already suffering. When the student is ready, the teacher will present him/herself, and suddenly I started seeing evidence everywhere that faster runners were just willing to suffer more than I was.

Slowly it began to dawn on me that maybe, just maybe, I just wasn't working hard enough on the run. What solidified this was Anne's 15% pace increase overnight, just because Michelle told her to "run like she stole something". I'll be damned if I'd let Anne beat me just because she was willing to suffer more! So starting sometime late in the summer, I made the decision that if that's what it took, I was going to SUFFER on the run. I was going to suffer like the best of them.

Suddenly the meaning of speed work made sense. Suddenly I understood the value of different training paces for different distances. Suddenly it made sense why someone would bother to run a 5 or 10K. I attacked running with a new abandon (and maybe even a bit of enjoyment). And slowly I realized that a willingness to suffer isn't necessarily enough.

See, for me, lacing up my running shoes is already low-grade suffering. Okay, that's not true. I talk a lot about how much I hate running, but it's not like I'm skipping my running workouts. Clearly I get something out of it. What exactly that something is still eludes me, but I'll admit that I don't HATE to run. Still, I don't enjoy running. From the second I start, I can't wait for it to be over. Just the act of running is so much effort that I can suffer to a pretty high degree with very, very little extra effort without actually going much faster. Which is not to say I'm not trying. I've been diligently putting in the hard work (maybe too much of it). See my training log in the sidebar if you don't believe me!

And then there's my bike. I love riding my bike, but we all knew that. Recently I've been riding my bike across the city at rush hour to get to work rather than taking the train. It means dodging car doors, out-sprinting buses, darting between cars, playing chicken with pedestrians, shooting through red lights, and fish-tailing my bike when someone decides to pull over without signaling. Stressful? Maybe for some, but for me it's like a video game trying to get through tight spots and beat lights. (Hmmmm, someone should invent that game, perhaps with a frog trying to cross a busy road...) There are 65 traffic lights in my 11.5-mile commute, 63 of which lie in the 8 miles that go through Cambridge and Boston. This means a lot of clipping in and out, a lot of hairy bike handling, and most of all, a lot of accelerating. The other evening I was waiting at a light when this guy pulls up next to me with an all-carbon bike, matching kit, and a Tour de France ass. I sized him up, and decided he had to stay behind me. I clipped in, stood up, passed him, and then HAMMERED. I pedaled as hard as I could on my shitty commuter bike with my big, fat backpack on my back. I pedaled so hard that my bike was squeaking. I upshifted, but it was one of the gears that wasn't working, so I upshifted some more and pounded even harder on the pedals. My legs burned. I didn't look, but my guess is that I was riding roughly 24 mph. When I finally hit another red light about a mile later I was heaving for air, my heart was going like a jackhammer, sweat was pouring out of my helmet into my eyes and mouth. I hadn't even noticed how hard I was working while I was riding. Mr. Tour de France Ass was gone, which was a shame because I really wanted to race some more.

Hmmm... burning legs, pouring sweat, gasping for air, heart racing... All those things sound like suffering, don't they? But not on my bike. On my bike it's fun.

See? That's the difference. I love suffering on my bike, and love putting the hurt on someone else. I love dropping the hammer and saying, Catch me if you can! I always get to work sweaty and gross, because I can't help but ride my bike as hard as I can. In all the times I've ridden to work, only one person has ever passed me. One. Running? Not so much. When running I'm always looking for a way to make it easier, always hoping that everyone else will slow down so I can slow down too. When I get home on my bike, I'm sad to see my house. When hit the mailbox on the corner at the end of my run, it's like walking out of the office at the end of the day: relief!

BUT, in the race this weekend, I may have been disappointed with my result relative to other runners, but no one, but no one suffered as much as I did. Let's compare my finishing photos to Anne's:

Running like she stole something... and got away with it.

Grimace of pain and suffering

On the verge of tears perhaps?

Running like I stole something... and got shot in the back.

The kind of suffering that stays with you... (Please ignore the cold runner syndrome)

In other news, look at the fucking helmet I had to wear!

Feel free to sing the Super Mario Brothers theme song to yourself as you look at this picture.

I should correct one thing I said in my last post. It turns out I was 7th woman on the bike. I had only counted the women ahead of me because I found it inconceivable that someone could be a stronger cyclist (if only marginally -- less than a minute and a half separated me from the fastest female bike split of the day), and an even WEAKER runner than I am. But it must be so, because there were 3 women who rode better than I did and came in behind me. Maybe they're shitty swimmers. Then again, look at the mushroom sitting on top of my head! That thing must have been worth at least a minuet over 40K!

Showdown!

IntroductionLobsterman promised an exciting who's who of my training buddies, all in one day, in the same place, doing the same race. It was the showdown I'd been waiting for all summer. I will do my best, but I'll warn you now that this will not be a short race report. Sorry. First, let's introduce the cast of characters:

Mary, aka Iron Matron: Most of you know her. If you don't know her, you should go read her blog and get to know her. She's blazing fast, and the only one that I knew I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of beating to a bloody pulp.

From left to right: Michelle, Alison (hey, if I had abs like that I would never put on a shirt either!), me, and Anne (who does not ALWAYS have crazy Einstein hair like that!)

Alison, aka the best swim buddy in the whole, wide world. If you've been stalking me on my training log, you may have heard of Alison. We swim at almost exactly the same speed but in adjacent lanes, so every freestyle set turns into a race. At first it was just about raw speed, but then pacing and tactics worked their way in, and there's always an exciting sprint finish. No one looks better in a bikini than Alison, and she'll charm your swim cap off, but swimming back and forth across the pool she will set a blistering pace and she will not let go. Alison completes me as a swimmer, and any swimming gains I've made this year are from trying to beat her to the wall.

Michelle, training partner and accidental running coach. I told you guys about her that day she made me run so hard I pissed myself, then she made me keep running. Michelle is a fast runner and a strong cyclist. She can tear up hills like a woman possessed, and makes me see stars trying to keep up with her.

As Margaret Cho says, in every group of friends there's the sweet one, there's the smart one, and then there's the ho. "Look around. Which one are you?!" If Alison's the sweet one, and Michelle with her PhD from MIT is the smart one, then that only leaves me and Anne to be the ho. In this case, let's define "ho" as "cut-throat bitch".

And then there's Anne. Anne appeared in my life at the beginning of the summer at our regular Friday morning open water swims in sewage-infested water. She was one of Michelle's co-workers and a friend of Alison's from the outside world. I painted a mental target on her forehead the first day when she violated two of my major pet peeves:
1. She tried to turn our good-natured, everybody-swim-to-the-buoy-and-wait-because-we're-all-friends-here swim into a race. At each buoy she would comment on who got there in what order and how far apart. Strange, because at the time she was usually turning up last.
2. Michelle introduced me and mentioned that I had just gotten back the week before from riding from San Francisco to LA. I refuse to brag, but I believe that when a third party mentions my impressive and astounding feats of strength and daring, that all should nearly faint in the sheer blazing glory of my awesomeness and superhuman achievements. Anne did not do this. Anne said, "Oh, I'm training for the Pan-Mass challenge". Like it's the same thing?! The Pan-Mass Challenge is 192 miles over 2 days, LifeCycle is 550 over 7 days. Pan-Mass goes across Massachusetts, an iiiiitty-bitty little state, LifeCycle crosses half of California, a great, big state the size of Italy. Which is not to say that the Pan-Mass challenge isn't a great achievement. It's just that, well, I'm better and everyone should bow before me.

And things with Anne progressed. One day she was talking about a work friend of hers, "He's a really good cyclist," she said. "You couldn't keep up with him..." How dare you?! I thought. You've NEVER seen me ride hard, because I'm waiting for your sorry ass all the time! But the real moment when I really set her in my crosshairs was on a regular Tuesday night ride. There's one hill in town, and we were riding up the shallow back side of it. I'm riding along, twiddling my thumbs and enjoying the company when Anne rides by me singing:
"One way, or another, I'm gonna get you,
"I'm gonna pass you, pass you, pass you, pass you..."
"Aw no she di'in't!" I said to Michelle, who I think was riding next to me. Then louder, "don't you piss me off, Anne, or I'll lay the hurt on you!" I then clicked up about 4 gears and rode to the top of the hill as hard as I possibly could.
"I'll get you on the downhill!" she yelled after me. So I waited for her. At the top of the hill I softpedaled for about a minute until she caught up. And then I went. She never caught me on the downhill. It lead to a whole downhill war, though. For weeks we were trying to set speed records down that hill: 40 mph, then 40.9, 41, and I finally called an end to it when I hit 42.

Anne wasn't a very talented runner, either. She'd never been a runner and was coming back from back surgery. She routinely held about 10-minute miles. Then she signed up for a 4-mile race an Michelle advised that she "run like she stole something". That's all Anne needed. Overnight she dropped over a minute and a half off her average pace. She ran that 4-miler in about 8:25 miles and hasn't slowed down since.

It was infuriating, not only had her run made tremendous progress, but also her swim was back up to where it had been back in her competitive swimming days. When she got a wetsuit, she became untouchable in the Friday morning sewage swims. And every time she got to a buoy faster than someone who used to be ahead of her, she commented on it, "Wow! I must be getting faster, Denise used to be so far ahead of me, and now I have to wait for her for a whole minute!" Every time I hit a major benchmark in my training, she seemed to have surpassed it on the same day. Eventually I stopped updating people on my progress, but I would still come home from a good workout only to find an email in my inbox that I'd been outdone yet again.

This. Was. War!

I'm an extremely competitive person, and I'd finally met my match. I cut off the shit talking entirely, but I started telling EVERYONE around me about how this chick needed a big ol' slice of humble pie, and I wanted to be the one that shoved it down her throat. I don't usually talk about my races outside my blog, but I told people at work about my war. I told my parents. I told the guys at the bike shop. I told what ever friends I have that AREN'T associated with work or the bike shop. Every workout I tried to find another way to get just a little bit faster so that I could beat Anne to within an inch of her life at lobsterman.

Pre-Race

Mary came and picked me up Friday night and we had dinner and drove up to her parents' place in Maine, where we would spend the night. We talked about the usual things that girls talk about when they get together: which cake recipe was best, lipstick and nail polish shades, the joys of childbirth and motherhood, the latest issue of Redbook, which presidential candidate was more of a hunk... You know, the usual. I hope I don't embarrass myself or Mary by saying this, but she really is such an inspiration. Every time I talk to her, she says things that leave me thinking for weeks afterwards. I believe she and I see the world through a similar lens, and she somehow she knows exactly what to say and how to say it to make me see things in a totally different light. She is such a fierce competitor, such an amazing runner, such an impressive athlete, and I can learn (and have learned) so much from her. So if I link to her all the time in my blog, it's not because I'm in love with her (well, not really), it's just that the things she says are always on my mind. It was great to get so much one-on-one time with someone so much wiser and faster than I am and peel back even more of the layers of what makes such a driven, successful woman. Also, she won my everlasting admiration for using the word "scuttlebutt" in a sentence.

After a shitty night's sleep (which was not entirely due to the grandfather clock outside my room that chimed every 15 minutes, I promise!), I woke up, showered, and got my stuff ready. I had wanted to put my hair in 2 braids, since the ear flaps on my new aero helmet have a tendency to make my hair fall in my face and look like shit, but I forgot a brush. I did the best I could to braid it with my fingers, but it was not holding up to drying. Before we got to the start I must have bitched about my hair about 10 times. "Would you shut UP about your damned hair already?!" Mary finally yelled. "If you don't I'm going to tell everyone in the blogosphere that all you could talk about was how worried you were about your damned hair!" But I beat you to it, Mary! Now they know.

Putting our two heads together we managed to find the race site early enough to get good parking, I changed my hairstyle for the third time that morning. We went to registration to pick up our numbers. When the volunteer heard my 4-syllable last name, and Mary's hyphenated last name she said, "What would happen if you guys had children who had to have all those last names?!"
"I'm pretty sure we couldn't have children," I said. What a weird thing to say. Then I left Mary to go set up transition.

I had a bit of trouble figuring out how the numbering on the racks was supposed to go, and as I was moving my stuff from one rack to another, this stocky little troll of a man came up to me. "First of all, your bike is facing the wrong way. 313 goes here."
"But I AM number 313."
"But your bike is facing the wrong way." He pointed out which way my bike should be hanging on the rack and picked up my helmet condescendingly like I'd just tried to pull a fast one on him, and that I'd have to get up pret-ty early in the morning to outsmart this cat. "Second of all, you can't ride in this helmet."
"What?! What's wrong with it?!"
"It hasn't been approved by the WXYZLMNOP." He looked inside the helmet, and then put on an ah-ha!, just as I suspected expression. "Yep, no sticker. I bet you didn't buy this in the US."
"No, I bought it from a UK-based online store. I don't have another helmet. What happens if I ride in that one?"
"Then you'll get DQed."
"Well, I don't mind if I get a DQ next to my name, just as long as I can see my splits." But alas, he didn't think that I would even get that.
By this time Michelle had come over and was staring at the guy with me, stupefied. "Why don't we go down and talk to the expo people," she suggested. All the helmets up for sale were too big, so I settled on the cheapest one, a giant castle to sit high atop my head, and we snipped off the yards and yards of extra strap that hung off the clip when I'd adjusted it. The helmet-seller guys were sympathetic, I'd love to give them a plug, but I wasn't actually paying attention to the company name.

I was ripshit about the whole ordeal, but then I saw a guy walking into transition with the same helmet. "...But I rode 112 miles with this thing and didn't die..." he was saying. Turns out he'd paid more than twice as much for his than I had for mine in Austria the week before, and they'd promised him in that he could use it in the US. Tough luck all around, but at least I didn't have to worry about my hair anymore.

Anne and Alison turned up, I went for a very brief ride to make sure my bike was in the right gear, and then Michelle, Anne and I went on a short warm-up run. Anne had her garmin on her wrist even for our 1-mile warm-up jog, and thank god she never got satellite reception, because I would have killed her if she'd insisted we run an impressive 8:15 pace for our warm-up jog just because she couldn't stand to see a slow number on her screen. Then everyone suited up and went down to the water. "We've swum in colder," I said to Michelle, who swam with me on my birthday when the sewage was about 55º. I waded in up to my waist, just enough so that I could relieve myself. Mistake. I had the feeling that it never really drained properly, and I was standing around on dry land with a urine-filled wetsuit while 5 waves left in front of me.

Standing around with Michelle, Alison, and Anne, and Mary and Ange only a few feet away I started to get nervous. Really nervous. I hugged Alison and begged her not to make me swim alone. I grabbed Michelle's hand and held on for dear life. I... wished Anne luck, and meant it. Every time I looked at Anne's face I got nervous again. What if she won?! She'd made up some song about "I'm going to drop you in the swim," and I already had a fire lit under my ass, which just made me more nervous. But eventually all the women over 30 had to leave, and I was left all alone in my green cap as Alison, Anne, Michelle, and Mary all started without me.

The Swim

The water felt way colder at the swim start than in the warm-up area. According to the race organizers, it was 61º. They set us off, and I found myself in relative calm right away. In fact, I felt alone. I checked over both shoulders, and there were people on both sides, so I wasn't off-course, but there just wasn't anyone around me. What usually happens is that the "real" swimmers pull ahead in one pack, and the "fake" swimmers (triathlon-only swimmers) form their own pack with a widening gap on the first one, with all the non-swimmers trailing behind. I'm almost always at the front of the pack of "fake" swimmers, and this was no exception. In no time flat, I had no one over either shoulder to gauge off of, and I zigzagged quite a bit before we finally caught up with the tail end of the wave in front of us and I was able to follow a line again without looking up every third stroke.

I used my I move for no one! strategy, and just swam on ahead, no matter who was in front of me. I'm beginning to find that after one punch, most people are gone anyway. I had trouble finding the second buoy, but at least I was warmed up now. I started checking in with myself every couple of seconds thinking, "What could I be doing right now to go faster," and then really focusing on pulling the water hard or keeping my head down. In the final stretch I imagined that it was one of those days that I had to make up a bodylength on Alison in just 25 yards. I swam like hell. By the end of the swim I'd passed a few of the jackrabbits in my wave who had gone out too fast, but I was disappointed to note that they were all men. My hard swim had come at a price though, I had a sharp pain around my left kidney, and I was really drained running into transition. I got out in the middle of a big clump of slower people from waves before me, and wasn't very aggressive about pushing them out of my way.

Swim time: 19:32, which may have been short, or there may have been a current, or I may have been Michael Phelps.
Pace: 1:11/100 yd or 1:18/100m, I AM Michael Phelps.
Swim Rank: 72/458 Overall, 16%
Time compared to Anne: 1 minute, 22 seconds slower

T1

"Way to go, Claire!" I heard from a couple of racks away. There was Alison, smiling at me.
"I missed you so much out there!" I yelled. Yes! One down! I thought.

Couldn't get my wetsuit off. Socks, garmin, shoes, fuck, this is taking forever. I ran out of transition, mounted just feet behind Alison, and wished her luck as I rode by. She was gone before I even hit paved road.
T1 time: 2:10
Time compared to Anne: 13 seconds faster, now down 1 minute, 9 seconds.

The Bike

The course starts riding up a mile-long, slow hill. Passing people is easy at the beginning of the bike, since most people go so slow that it looks like they're about to tip over, but I didn't feel like I had my legs yet. Then, up ahead, there was a woman in all black, charging up the thing and passing people like they were standing still. Michelle! I rode as hard as I could and caught her right at the crest of the hill. "Don't you dare let me catch you braking, Michelle!" I yelled as I came up behind her.
Tchssssssss went her brakes. "What? Like that?!" she yelled over her shoulder. She cheered me on as I rode away. Damn, I thought, I was hoping I'd pass her later so she could catch up and pace me on the run.

I rode hard up the hills, but actually didn't ride as hard as I might have liked. I felt like my legs were running out of gas before my lungs were running out of air. (There were several hills reaching from 7-10% grades). Still, no women passed me on the bike. I attacked the hills and made sure to keep pedaling on the downhills. It seemed like every time I came into a turn I was stuck behind someone who couldn't corner to save their life and would have to come to a near dead halt to be able to get around them. Seconds wasted. I can't wait till I'm old and get to leave in the earlier waves. Every race I've done this summer I've had to push my way through shitty swimmers and crappy bikers from earlier waves through the whole race.

I was trucking along, checking out every woman and trying to find Anne. In race time she was only about a minute ahead of me, but in reality it was 3 more than that since she'd left in an earlier wave. I wasn't used to seeing her ass, I wouldn't know how to spot it. Good thing she's white and pasty as a ghost. I passed one pale girl, and almost yelled something, but as I went past her I saw there weren't enough freckles. This wasn't Anne. Finally, at about mile 13 I found her. I reeled her in, and as I passed her I yelled, "Get out of the way, Anne!" She cheered and I meant to yell something encouraging back, but she was already gone when I thought of something to say. To hear her tell it, she could see me for awhile afterwards, but that was a relatively flat stretch of road with no turns in it. I was gone.

Around mile 18 a couple of guys passed me with aero helmets and race wheels, and then when they were by me, they slowed down. It was one of those things where I had to actively slow down to get out of the draft zone. I surged and passed them back, dusting one of them, but the other came back again and slowed me down again. I laid off a minute, trying to figure out how to pass him. It would have taken a tremendous effort to get by him (and he would have made me work for it in 15-seconds bursts all the way to the end), but I had to consciously slow down to not go into the draft zone. I wound up lurking behind him for the rest of the ride, not having enough to make a move, but frustrated that I couldn't ride at my own pace. I fucking hate guys who do that, I hope he grows man boobs as karma. I rode the last 5 miles considerably easier that I wanted to, and lost over half a mile per hour off my average speed in the last 10 miles (which were predominantly downhill).

For the whole second half I thought I'd be passing Mary at any minute, but I never found her. Turns out she'd had a low-speed crash and still managed to hold me off. I shudder to think of what her bike split would have looked like if she hadn't fallen and dropped her chain.

Bike time: 1:09:23
Pace: 21.5 mph
Bike Rank: 67/458 overall, 14%, 4th woman overall
Time compared to Anne: 6 minutes, 16 seconds faster, now up by 5:07

T2

I ran through the sopping wet grass in my socks and my feet were waterlogged before I even crossed the mats. Don't they usually have carpet at these things?! As I ran past the racks I saw Mary, "Hey there, purdy girl!" I yelled. Damn, she's going to beat me by HOURS, I thought. She gave me a bemused dirty look.

I couldn't seem to get my shoes on. I grabbed my visor, race belt, and water bottle to put in place as I ran and looked around. Where the hell do I leave from?! I spun around for a couple of seconds trying to figure out which way to go, and then dashed out. Mom and Dad were standing at the exit and cheered for me. Mom looked happy to see I was still alive, and Dad tried to take a picture. They declined to tell me that I'd put on my number upside-down. As I crossed the mats I heard them calling out Mary's name over the PA system. I wouldn't see her again until the end as she would go on to run about 10 minutes into me.

T2 time: 1:19
Time compared to Anne: 50 seconds faster, now up by 5:57

The Sad, Sad Story of the Run

It wasn't that I rode too hard. It wasn't that my legs were tired. It was the hills. I did not feel "in the zone" for one single second of that run. In fact, I felt like shit from beginning to end. There was the matter of that mile-long hill to climb out of transition where I started breathing like an asthmatic, and I just never recovered. I was wheezing and coughing the whole, entire time. The run was gnarley hilly, and about half way up each one my legs would just... give out. I felt like I was actually lifting weights, with that second-to-last rep feeling in my legs that just wouldn't pass, even as the hills laid off. I kept asking myself, What can I do right now to go faster? and my only answer was, Just don't walk. Whatever you do, don't walk.

Women passed me, men passed me. I didn't even want to look. It was too demoralizing to be passed so easily by so many people while I plodded along at my pathetic whatever-I-was-running, wheezing like a fat girl in gym class. I pulled my visor down so that I wouldn't have to see the people coming back in the other direction, and I tried to give myself tunnel vision so I wouldn't notice the people passing me. Still, I noticed enough girls who looked under 30 to know that I wasn't going to place. You cannot imagine how much I hated my life for those 54 minutes and 54 seconds of it. I felt so sorry for myself, and there seemed to be nothing I could do to ease my suffering. And if I dug deep, intensifying my suffering wasn't getting me there any faster.

I hit the turn-around and started back in the other direction. It felt like I'd been climbing the whole first 5k's, so this MUST all be down hill. But there were so many hills on the way back too. Michelle passed in the other direction and cheered for me, then Alison went by and cheered for me. I didn't even react. I was busy dying. On the last hill, a steep motherfucker, I walked. It was probably only for about 5 seconds, but I still walked. And the blood flowed back into my legs, and for 5 seconds I felt better. Then I went back to running and feeling like I was inches from death. In retrospect, I don't think my decision to take my bento box off my bike was a good one. I burned between 1,500 and 2,000 calories this morning, and only had about 12 oz of Accelerade on the bike and about 8 oz on the run. I have never seen pee so dark as I saw in the restaurant bathroom a couple of hours later.

Accumulated pace. Even though the second half was more downhill, I still slowed down.

I ran down the 1-mile hill into transition, still wheezing, still being passed, and not giving a rat's ass about it. We had to run a full lap around transition, and at the 6-mile mark, everyone started sprinting. Pat Benatar's Hit Me with Your Best Shot (thanks to Damon for correcting my error) came on the PA, which was one of my war songs that I would listen to get myself psyched up before a "Beat Anne into the ground" workout and I tried to sprint, but soon it was clear that I'd puke if I tried. I didn't want to lose a minute just because I was tossing my cookies under a tree 1/10 of a mile from the finish. In fact, just the thought of accelerating smacked me with a wave of nausea. I actually slowed down in the final stretch. As I rounded the last corner and came in to the finish line, I was wondering if I was going to have to stop and yack before I got there. Mom and Dad were on the other side of the barrier smiling and waving. "I'm gonna puke!" I yelled.
Mom laughed. Mom's an easy laugher. "No, I'm serious!" I said, and slowed down more.

And I finished. Somehow, I did not puke.

Run time: 54:54
Pace: 8:51 min/mi (not as slow as it felt, considering the hills)
Run Rank: 284/458 Overall, 62%
Time compared to Anne: 2 minutes, 20 seconds slower
Overall time: 2:27:15
Rank: 139/458 Overall (30%), 5/23 Age Group (22%), 23/158 women (15%)
Time compared to Anne: 3 minutes, 38 seconds faster

Afterward

When I came out the other side I saw Mary, who had finished 10 minutes before and interrupted her conversation to have someone to commiserate with. She hugged me, even though I was all sweaty and gross, and it felt good to hug someone after what I'd been through, even though she was so sweaty and gross too. One by one Anne came in, then Michelle (who had had horrible stomach issues on the run), and then Alison. As we walked down to the water to soak our tired legs, we shared war stories. "I'm interested to see how I stacked up to your friend," I said. "Several months ago you told me I couldn't keep up with him and I got all pissed. I'm curious to see if it's true." In fact, I rode 15 seconds faster than he did. It's not much, but enough.
"I said that?!" said Anne. "I can't believe you passed me at mile 13." (she was the one that noticed the mile, not me) "I was hoping I could keep you off until at least the end. I couldn't even stay with you for a second. You don't ride like that when you ride with us."
"No," I said. "Of course not."
She stopped and she just looked at me. There was a glimmer of understanding in her eye. FINALLY! After all these long months of suffering through her heckling and haranguing every time I rode with the group she finally realized that, on the bike anyway, she may have been racing every training day, but I wasn't. And then, just for a second, I saw it. For just a moment she nearly fainted in the sheer blazing glory of my superhuman strength and awesome power. My overall win hadn't been too stellar. She'd swum and run faster than I did, but I think she might have gotten a tiny, itty bitty taste of that humble pie. She'd underestimated me, and the first commandment of Clairedom is that you do not underestimate a Claire!

I'd achieved my main race goals of 1) beating Anne, and 2) breaking 2:30, but as time went by I got madder and madder, and madder, and madder. I could have ridden harder. Only about a minute and 20 seconds separated me from the fastest female bike split of the day. It had been a very competitive field, but just as always, I'd fallen in the top 15% overall of the swim and bike, and plummeted to around 60% in the run. Whatever I may want to say here, I've said in other race reports 100 times, but FUCKIN'-A! I'm SO SICK of being such a shitty runner!

¡¡¡Adivinad quién va a México!!!

¡¡¡CLAIRE va a México!!!

I just signed up for Ironman Cozumel!  I'll be bib number 1076.

And what the hell is up with all those questions?  Home paper?  Home news station?  This is required information?!  I wanted to put the London Mirror or some foreign tabloid or something. Significant personal achievements?  I wanted to say Peeing into a Mountain Dew bottle without spilling a drop. Why are "Nationality" and "Nation you're racing for" different questions?  I suppose if you're Basque or Palestinian it would be significant.  I was tempted to race for Azerbaijan or something.  Why is "do you wear contact lenses" a required field, but allergies to medications is optional?  And yet they don't ask your t-shirt size.

WTC, I am NOT impressed.  Nor am I impressed with the $525 registration fee, or the $26 processing fee.  What the hell do you have to PROCESS?!

In other news, to answer the poll question: Is it possible to look cool in an aero helmet?

The answer: No.

Too bad blogger's being a bitch so I can't show you a picture.

This weekend Michelle, swimming buddy Alison, training partner/rival Anne, Mary, and I all go head to head at Lobsterman.  Stay tuned.  It should be an interesting race report.

Foolhardy = Fool + Hardy, or just Fool + Hard

Now that I think about it, I might have guessed that when I had to push my planned ride in the White Mountains back a day because Tropical Storm Hannah (downgraded from a hurricane somewhere between South Carolina and here), I should have known that weather might be an issue. I had been checking the hourly forecast like it was my job for days, watching as the rain moved later, and earlier, later, and earlier like tides. Finally it looked like the forecast had settled on a cloudy morning for Sunday, getting progressively sunnier throughout the day, so I got in my car with my bike and I went up to New Hampshire.

The first flaw in my planning was not thinking that maybe, possibly, with a tropical storm, there's a chance for winds. There is no worse place to be on a windy day than between skyscrapers or between mountains. The second flaw in my little plan was realizing that when one planned to ride 120 miles, that there might be a variety of climates in different places along the rout, especially when one planned to be riding through big, weather-blocking things like mountains.

Or maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind the idea DID occur to me. But I did what I always do and dismissed it. I can handle it, I always assume. "Foolhardy" that's the word you're looking for. But the funny thing is, I always DO handle it; begrudgingly maybe, but I always manage somehow (more on this to come). Hey, I'm not dead yet, am I?

Speaking of which, my mom thinking I'm going to die every time I step out the door is really getting old. She's not scared of the very real dangers of getting hit by a car, or losing control of your bike on a high-speed descent. She thinks that I'm simply going to become so "tired" that I'm going to just keel over on my bike and drop dead. I think she thinks that the "tired" you feel at the end of an endurance event is just like the "tired" you feel when you need a nap, and that my demise will be something akin to falling asleep at the wheel, or handlebars. She knows nothing of bonking (I tried to explain it once and she got alarmed like it was something that one would have to be hospitalized for a week over), or even "soreness" of the variety that is immediate and purposely inflicted.

So last night when I said I was excited for my trip, she asked, "How far will you be riding?"
"A century," I lied. I thought that maybe she wouldn't put the word together with its real distance.
"You're going to ride 100 miles?!" My mom only drives 100 miles once or twice a year.
"Really, mom, it's no big deal. 100 miles really isn't that taxing for me anymore." It's true.
She rolled her eyes like a mother does when her child says something exasperating like, 'It's not my fault that my room's a mess because an elephant just ran through,' or 'If you make me clean my room I'm going to run away to the circus!' "But what if it IS harder? You'll be in the mountains, maybe you'll get more tired than usual..."
"Well, you know, that's kind of the POINT."
Dad snickered signaling that he was on my side and it was the end of the conversation.

But still, I hate it when people (especially Mom) do that! They think it's a crazy idea, and they doubt you, and pretty soon you begin to doubt yourself. Where 2 minutes ago I was totally sure I could do this ride, now I had a little voice in the back of my head saying, 'and what if you can't, stupid?' I knew it would be a tough day, but now I began to wonder how I would get back to my car if I wasn't able to go on?

Great! Now my ride was ruined.

Not a picture I took. If anyone wants to donate a nice digital camera, please e-mail me for mailing address.

I woke up early and was on my bike riding past Loon Mountain and up the Kangamangus Highway ("The Kank" for short, a nickname that evokes all kinds of fun imagery for me) by 8:45. I got the biggest climb out of the way first, climbing over 2,000 feet in the first hour, and when I got to the top the clouds cleared and the sun came out as I blasted down the back side of it.

Left: Riding uphill on the Kank.

There are days for speed records, and then there are days when you have to just knuckle down and get to the finish any way you know how. I'm a confident descender, but the roads were slick and my brakes slippery, and I decided to just enjoy the ride down. Then, around mile 30, I turned north off The Kank and found myself in the face of a stiff, stiff headwind. I had no way of knowing how hard it was blowing, but it definitely felt like over 20 mph, and wouldn't have been surprised if it were over 30. Either way, I was riding through the wake of a tropical storm, so use your imagination.

Right: Near the top of the Kank; Below, Left: Sign at the summit. One of these days I'm going to go back on a sunny day and ride like a bat out of hell down that road.

And the wind stayed that way for fifty miles. It was stronger in parts, gentler in others. It would let off going up the steep uphills, and then pick up again on the flats and downhills. Have you ever been riding slightly downhill, pedaling hard, and only going 14 mph? That was me yesterday. Every time the road turned, I would hope for some relief, but the road would twist, and the wind would still be there. When I turned a 90º corner into Gorham at around 70 miles I thought for sure that the wind would be over, but somehow it was dead on here too! It felt like I was riding with a 500-pound gorilla on my back. It was like I was dragging a manhole cover behind me. It was like I was pushing a brick wall with my front wheel. "GET OFF ME!" I said out loud. Because when you're alone on the bike no one can hear you. "LAY THE FUCK OFF!" I liked the sound of that last part. "FUCK OFF!"

But the wind did not listen, and I found myself having to dig deep mentally just to keep going. Physically I was feeling fine, but there's something that's just so draining about working that hard and still moving that slowly, especially when you're on hilly terrain full of false flats, and a road that, just when you think it's over, just seems to go up and up and up around every turn. It took me about an hour to get from miles 50 to 60, and I must have looked at my watch 10 times per mile.

If you start feeling sorry for yourself in a situation like that, you're cooked. I knew that. So I just kept yelling at the wind and pushing on, and repeating inane mantras like "Just keep spinning", or singing a single line from My Fair Lady over and over to myself, not because it meant anything, but just because it popped up there. People would be so disappointed if they knew what I REALLY think about when I'm alone on the bike. I passed some really pretty views in this part of the ride, but I was too tired and demoralized to stop and take pictures, so I'll share some of the great photos Google has to offer instead.

I wished I had someone else there to take turns blocking the wind. Originally I hadn't planned to do this ride alone. I'd planned to do a shorter 80-mile version with less climbing so that others could come along. But in the end people bailed because of family commitments, or because they just weren't sure they could hack the distance over the terrain. Because of the conditions, I was kind of glad that people who weren't used to long rides didn't come, not because I didn't want them there (I REALLY could have used the company!), but because I was having such a hard time holding it together myself, I don't know how I would have managed to remain upbeat enough to coax someone else through the experience. It got me thinking...

I had promised Mindy that if she came along, I would make sure she got through the ride. I am a firm believer that, especially biking, people can go way further than they give their bodies credit for. In the end, I think Mindy made the right decision staying home and not push her luck with her injury, but if she had come along there is no doubt in my mind that she would have made it. Same goes for everyone else I invited. But I can't guarantee that they would have had a good time of it. Hell, I certainly wasn't having a good time of it.

Which brings me back to what I was saying before about doubt. Until my mom gave me that look, I had never doubted for a second that I could do this ride. I've ridden farther, and I've ridden similar terrain. But as I sat there pushing into the headwind for the third or fourth hour, I began to doubt myself. What were you thinking, you stupid lunatic! This is horrible. You're going to poop out. You're going to have to quit somewhere north of Mt. Washington and then you're going to have to sit there alone on the side of the road for 3 hours while you wait for someone to come pick your sorry ass up. And then you'll NEVER be able to live it down. This is a fine mess you've gotten us into. Sure, I didn't FEEL pooped, but I was convinced I would... eventually.

It sounds a bit cheezy, but when I started to get a bit nervous, I just reminded myself that this may be one of the hardest rides I’ve ever been on, but I’ve been on hard rides before, and I’d gotten through those alright. And for the moment, I still wasn’t feeling the worst that I’d ever felt on my bike. I decided to try to catalog my five hardest workouts and compare how I was feeling now to how I'd felt then, and also remember the doubts I'd had going into them. In typical latenight fashion, here they are:
5. My solo ride from Barcelona to Girona and back (the first 100 mile ride I ever did).
4. My solo ride in the Adirondacks where I was feeling so sick and tired (the longest ride I’d ever done at the time, and some of the hilliest terrain I'd ever done as well).
3. The marathon I did on almost no training whatsoever.
2. Tres Nacions, when the weather sucked, we climbed the highest peak in the Pyranees and I wasn’t particularly conditioned (still the most climbing I’ve ever done in one day).
1. The 51-mile overnight hike I did in Barcelona (which was the only time I’ve ever actually FOUND my limit). I should have gotten medical attention at the end.

I think about those days all the time as points of reference. I figure that if I could get through those days, I could get through anything. I guess that’s the thought that’s in the back of my mind when I set out from my car on days like today all by myself. I plan out the rout purposely so that when I want to quit I’ll be far from my car. That way I’ll have no choice but to finish. Because if I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Left: I purposely set out the rout so that I would pass the only shortcut before I got tired.

And because I still had a long way to ride, I began to think about a concept that I heard about on this podcast (Edit: No!  Stop, wait.  I mean it was THIS episode!) They were saying that for everything you do, you relate it to experiences that you’ve already had. For example, if you’ve tried to run a 24-minute 5K in the past and you never quite made it, then every time you go to try to achieve that goal, then something in you tells you that you'll never be able to do it. You fail, because you believe that you're going to fail. On the other hand, if you try something and are successful – let’s say that you run a seven- or eight- or nine- or ten-minute mile for the first time – then you can build upon that experience. You can begin a whole chain of success based on past experiences. Sure it hurt to run that first fast mile, sure it was tough, but you did it and you survived. Now you are more likely to run that pace in the future, and continue to build on it because you know that you can. Alright, I'm paraphrasing it all wrong. Just listen to the podcast, alright?

Right: Does anyone know why my photos keep getting cut off like that?

I’m not sure that I was any better trained for that ride than anyone else that I invited along. I simply don’t do these superlong rides often enough to make major physiological adaptations to that kind of riding (pro riders ride several rides of that length a week). Probably the only difference was that I do this stupid shit to myself all the time, and I have that confidence that I can fall back on knowing that I’ve survived my own stupidity before, so I can survive again. This mentality has gotten me through some pretty tough weekends this summer, and whatever hasn’t killed me has made me stronger. Well, mentally anyway.

Still, you wouldn't want to be sitting next to me on those days. I'm crabby and snappish. Grunt and groan and scream and blame others for my discomfort. I want to go through my day doing exactly what will make life easier for ME, and god help you if you get in my way. Maybe it's better to find those mental barriers alone...

Once I finally popped out of the wind somewhere around mile 90, I was feeling pretty happy again. I was loving riding my bike again and was pretty sad that my day was drawing to a close. Okay, not that sad. The last stretch was a 10-mile bike trail through the woods in Fraconia Notch. It was twisty and filled with little tunnels and bridges. The woods looked like something out of a fairy tale or a ghost story. After a short, steep climb the trail shot me down, down, down around thrilling corners, through tunnels, and over wooden bridges. It was great! I just coasted and hung onto my brakes in case there were clueless hikers around the corner. Finally the trail spit me out next to the lake at the bottom of Cannon mountain where the Old Man in the Mountain used to be before one day he just slipped away… literally.

By the time I got back to my car after 118 miles, 7 hours and 11 minutes (I think), and between 6 and 8,000 feet of climbing (depending on whether you trust the Garmin or Zone 5/SportTracks software), I was even thinking about continuing to ride. Maybe I’d just ride back to the top of The Kank before going home... Well, I didn’t think about it too seriously. The point is, I was pretty sure I could have gone further.

Anyway, I want to go back. Viable biking days through the mountains are limited this time of year, so it's gotta be soon. There's talk of trying to arrange a ride up Mt. Washington (only about 7 miles – straight up – and then catch a ride or a funicular or something back down), maybe in 2 weeks? Just google images of the Mt. Washington Auto Road and TRY and tell me it doesn't look thrilling! And anyone who wants to ride 50-100 miles or more with me through those mountains any time in the next couple of months, e-mail me. Seriously. I'm going with or without you.

I hate passing up free beer.

Dear Furry Man with Fuzzy Shoulders,

Please do not wear tank tops or running singlets anymore. Especially to events where you are going to sweat. It is not sexy. In fact, it is pretty gross. It makes the rest of your fellow runners uneasy at the crowded starting line because we are afraid that you will inadvertently touch us. And, by the way, I know you're the man who gets all nasty sweaty at the gym and then doesn't wipe off the weight equipment when you are done with it. That's gross too. You're gross. May I suggest you find a skilled hair removal specialist in your local yellow pages? Thank you.

Best,
Claire

Question: When was the last 10K I ran?
Answer: Sometime in the spring of 2006. I was living in Barcelona. I still smoked. I had a hangover. Joolie and I got lost on the way to the starting line and missed it by 8 minutes. Once we got close and realized that everyone had started already, we just started running. I set a PR somewhere in the high 50's.

If I signed up for a 10K I was pretty much guaranteed a PR. No matter that I'd already ridden over 130 miles this weekend, there was pretty much no way I could miss a PR. So I decided to switch out my Thursday tempo run for a Sunday 10K PR at the Malden Irish American 10K. I didn't even have to drive far to do it. Malden is only 2 towns away.

The race started at 11 a.m. How different from the races I've been doing the rest of this year! There were kids walking around with race numbers; also different from my usual trend. Most people were standing around in cotton t-shirts. Refreshing. I only paid $20 to enter (what a welcome change!) at the coat check of the Irish American club (a place that smelled like it had had a few too many Guinnesses spilled on its function hall floor over the years), and then wandered around watching everyone smiling, laughing, checking out the giant course map (a mapquest map printed out on a huge piece of butcher paper), doing cartwheels, anything but warming up. You can find more Massholes at an Irish event than pretty much anywhere else in Boston, and the Boston accents don't get much thicker than the ones I was hearing around me. Usually serious runners tend to be a dweebier, more white-collar crowd and don't tend to have the accent. I don't know if I heard an R all morning.

I showed up early. I got bored.

Half an hour before the start I went for a short warmup. I felt sluggish. I let my body pick the pace, and the pace it picked was 11-minute miles. Eight tenths of a mile later I was back and still not feeling warmed up.

I saw a chick stretching out wearing a pink top, pink shorts, pink socks, pink shoes, and a red Red Sox cap. I vowed to beat her. She looked stupid, and she didn't look that fast.

After some confusion over where exactly the starting line was, we lined up and they set us off exactly at 11:00. I was impressed at the organization, how they were able to set us off at the right time, and that the mile markers were dead on.

Running I felt like hell, but I figured I'd try to fake it. I'd set my watch to beep if I went slower than 8:00 miles. I might get tired, but I'm tough, I could handle it. It was only a 10K, a distance so short it almost seemed silly to run it. I followed the people around me, and after a couple of blocks I looked down to see that I was running roughly 7:15 pace. Oops. Better slow down. But it's hard to slow down when everyone around you is going so much faster than you're supposed to be. I consciously let people pass me, but I was still running too fast.

The majority of the first mile was uphill. I ran it in 7:44.

The next mile was mostly downhill, and I did a little bit of a better job of controlling my speed, mostly because it was already catching up to me. This was going to be messy. I ran the second mile in about 7:56. I'd hoped to run 8-minute miles, at least I was on the right track.

The third mile was flat, and I finally managed to get my speed somewhat under control. This was mostly because the first couple of miles, and all the miles on the bike this weekend were really starting to catch up with me. God, it was hot. It felt like it was about 95º (actually, only 80). I felt like hell and felt like I might shit my pants, but it was only a 10K. I could fake it for another 3 miles. I ran the third mile in 7:58, right where I wanted to be.

And then...

KER-PLOW!!!

Pieces of Claire went flying everywhere as I blew up into a million tiny little pieces. No matter what I WANTED to do, my body was going to make me slow down. NOW! No faking it anymore. We were running on a flat out-and-back section, and I saw the stupid-looking chick in the pink. She was about half a mile in front of me. Fuck.

I hit the turn-around and felt the wind in my face. I was thankful for it, since it was cooling me down, but did it have to be so damned STRONG?! For most of the back half of the course we had a 14mph headwind that gusted at times up to 22 mph. I ran the 4th mile in 8:23, exactly enough to undo all the extra seconds I'd bought myself with my overzealous start.

The 5th mile came and went. I alternated between yelling at myself to hurry the fuck up and wanting to go back to those 11-minute miles that my body wanted to run so badly. I ran it in 8:38. It was a compromise.

The sixth mile was more of the same. I ran it in 8:54. The red shirt that I'd been trailing since mile 2 pulled away and I felt like a failure.

In the last .2 miles a bunch of stupid punk 8-year-old kids decided to run out and run right behind me. Nothing makes you feel shittier than a bunch of 10-year-olds sprinting around you like you're a joke. I wanted to punch them. I wanted to push them under a car but there were none around. Then a lady that didn't LOOK like a runner passed me and I couldn't pass her back. And the stupid kids started saying to each other, "Are you still running?!" "My legs are tired." Stupid fucking kids, you've only run 3 blocks. I hope your legs are so tired that you DIE! Right at the last turn they had a bagpipe player playing a song that sounded like a hysterical dying duck. I felt like I was dying too. I averaged 8:00 miles for the last chunk. THAT's what I call a final kick?!

I came into the finishing chute all by myself in 50:37. My garmin said I had only run 6.13 miles for 8:15 pace; they say I ran the full 6.2 in 8:10's. I was over 5 minutes behind the bitch in pink. Whatever, I bet I look better naked than she does. She was kind of chunky and I don't think she had enough neck. At the end of the chute they took a look at my face to try and figure out if I looked over 21 and then held out a couple of drink tickets for me. "No thanks, I don't drink," I said. The last thing I wanted right now was a beer, I thought I might puke.
Then she said something like, "Oh, SHE'S the picture of health," that could have been taken as a compliment or an insult. Whatever, bitch. We're both here because we got the Irish drinking gene. The difference is that you come here to drink, and I come here so I won't.

I went to my car and changed into some flip flops (I still have gaping, raw sores on the backs of my ankles from my unfortunate sock malfunction last weekend - it's hard to take pictures of the backs of your own ankles, by the way) and came back to check out the results. Wow. I'd made the first sheet of paper! And somehow I'd managed to pull off third in my age group. I was going to get hardware in a road race! Alright, there were only 10 chicks in my age group, but I beat 7 of them. I got 6th woman overall, which sounds impressive until you see that only 23 women participated. Clearly the really fast girls didn't have the Malden Irish American 10K on their race calendar, but it was their loss. No free beer for them. And if those other two chicks had stayed home, I would have won.

It took them almost twice as long as it took me to run the race to begin to hand out the awards. I listened to the bad Irish band do jarring covers of Johnny Cash and Jimmy Buffet as well as some traditional Irish drinking songs. I seemed to be the only one getting irritated by the wait, since most of the freckle-faced participants, volunteers, and spectators were enjoying the $1.00 cups of Michelob Ultra made available by the race's generous sponsor. The race was to benefit the American Lung Association, and it kind of made me snicker to see how many people were lighting up once they got a couple of beers in them.

I got my medal, and then I went home, and that was it.

The end.

Anti-climactic? Yeah.