I knew it!

I fucking knew it.  The weather really IS worse on the weekend.  And it's all your fault!!!  Anyone who lives west of me, park your damned car!  I'm sick of sunny Tuesdays and rainy Saturdays.

Reason No. 421,964 to wear a helmet

(Are you listening, Judi?)

I can't afford a new train ticket, so I'm back to riding my bike to/from work.  Now that school's back in session and everyone's home from vacation, there are even more wackos out on the road. More cabs with non-functioning blinkers, more trucks making deliveries and parking wherever they damned well please, more of the no. 77 bus, more Berklee School of Music kids stepping out into the street without looking, more drivers talking on cell phones swinging in and out of the bike lane, more insecure drivers hugging the right side of the road, more everything.  

But this morning was bad.  I won't even try to figure out why a lawnmower was driving down Mass Ave at rush hour.  I don't even pretend to know what divine power gave him the right

 of way to run a light and cut me off.  That was weird, but that wasn't the most frustrating part of my ride.  No, the most frustrating part was when, 3 blocks from my office a school

 bus mysteriously stopped (without signaling).  Was there a light up there?  I couldn't see what was going on ahead of the school bus, so I went to the left of it to go around.  Next to the school bus was another semi, so it was a tight spot.  I'm rolling on through the 2-foot channel be

tween the two giant vehicles, hearing the screams of little children inside the bus, when suddenly, about 10 feet in front of me I see the little stop sign that sticks out when the bus's doors are open

 start to swing out.  A second later, now about 5 feet away and too late to stop, I realize that the stop sign is right at face level.  I ducked my head.  The stop sign grazed the top of my helmet, and then I heard a THUNK as my backpack smacked right into it.

Also, I would like to address Fellow Chick Biker's comment on my last post.  She said,

"yeah, yeah, you are so talented, blah. enter a real road race and we'll see if you can hang."

First off, that is just exactly the opposite of what I was saying in my last post.  If she'd actually read the whole post, maybe she would have seen that.  I know I tend to go on a bit (these race reports are more of a scrapbook for me than for anyone else), but if you're going to say something that confrontational to someone, I believe you should find out if they've at least addressed the topic in the post that you're commenting on.  Then again, maybe she can't read. What I was saying was that I haven't competed in a real road race, and it isn't fair for me to think much of myself because I don't know what the riding is like in a real road race, and I don't know if I could hang.  Other people are telling me I'm good, but I've learned the hard way to never underestimate the competition till you've toed the line.

Still, in my defense, I am not a triathon-only rider.  I have a fair amount of experience riding with serious road riders.  What Fellow Chick Biker does not know, and would have found out if she'd taken the time to ask is that I rode in Europe for over a year, WITH a club, and in several races.  I won a climbing preme in one of those races. I was the first chick overall up that hill.  The rides I did were not super competitive, but still, I have seen the inside of a peloton in my day. Another thing that Fellow Chick Biker would not know unless she had asked is that I still ride with road riders.  There is a competitive group that leaves from the local bike shop on Saturday mornings.  I don't know what category they are, but they are active racers and strong riders. There is a "deliberate" group, a medium group, and a "fast" group.  I go with the faster guys. And I can hang with them.  I'm one of the few chicks who ever has been able to ride with the fast group on the Saturday morning rides.  So, Fellow Chick Biker, you're right.  I have never entered a real road race, and I don't know if I can hang, but I never said that I could.  I never said I was the next Lance Armstrong, or even the next Kristen Armstrong.  If I ever say I'm a strong cyclist, it is only in comparison to my swimming and running.  Maybe you're faster, maybe a lot of people are faster.  That's fine, whatever, I don't care.  I just enjoy riding my bike.  I'm not the one saying that I'm going to take the cycling world by storm when I get into cycling seriously next summer.  I'm just going to ride my bike hard and let the cards fall where they may.  

And as Grouchy Co-worker Caitlin says, "Haters, go fist yourselves."

How to REALLY wear the skin off your butt in 2 days

Remember way back in May how I rode 154 miles in a weekend and thought I was such a badass? Well I've built up a little bit more confidence and endurance on the bike since then, and this weekend more by chance than suicidal tendencies I planned myself back-to-back centuries. I was cognizant that I was coming up on my 1-year anniversary of sobriety and maybe I should do something big to celebrate, but that was more of an afterthought. Mostly, I just wanted to ride my bike as much as I could before winter forced me inside (or at the very least into a pair of running shoes).

So on Saturday I packed up my bike and set off for Lake Winnipesaukee (don't expect me to try and spell that name again!). It was a brisk morning, and Mindy turned up dressed like she was ready to climb Mt. Everest in snow gloves, arm warmers, crampons, and the shiniest pair of tights I've ever seen. Okay, I'm lying about the crampons. The only concession I'd made to the cold was a thin long-sleeved jersey to go over my regular jersey. Turns out Mindy was right. As we rode I lost feeling in my hands and feet and the cold really sapped my energy.

Know what else sapped my energy? The hills. Now you might think that doing a loop around the perimeter of a lake would be flat, because all water is level, and therefore the land around it should be level too, right? You would be wrong. If there was a flat inch on that course, Mindy and I must have missed it. We climbed roughly 3,000 feet in 60 miles, all broken into tiny 2-3-minute chunks. We were constantly either climbing or descending.

The scenery was beautiful. When we started the sun was out and mist was just coming off the lake. The trees started to change colors in New England this week, and there were bursts of color all over the horizon. Not far off we could see the White Mountains, and everywhere there were cute little towns and back country roads. And of course, there was the lake. Poor, poor drunk people who are sleeping in and hung over this morning, I thought. And they call me crazy?

The only blemish on the rout was the McCain signs we kept seeing everywhere. What the hell is up with New Hampshire?! It's bordered by Massachusetts and Vermont, arguably two of the most liberal states in the nation, with the third bordering state being Maine, whose politics are only slightly to the right of the far, far left. But New Hampshire is like our own slice of the Bible Belt right here in New England. I've heard it suggested that it's part of the "Live free or die" mentality that they have up there. They don't want taxes, they don't want anyone to tell them to wear a seatbelt or a helmet, and they don't want the damned government in their damned business, thank you very much! Mindy and I must have seen around 200 motorcyclists, and on all those heads I only saw one helmet. You know where it was? Strapped to the back of the motorcycle. And THESE are the swing votes that are deciding our fate?!

Anyway, the traffic prevented Mindy and me from talking much over the course of the ride (which I was, of course, disappointed about!), but we got back to the cars without major incident, then we parted ways and I turned back around to ride another 50 miles on my own. All was going great as I rode down a beautifully-paved road with the widest, cleanest shoulder you ever did see, until my directions told me to take the freeway. Damn. So I turned around, rode back to the car, and called it quits at about 97.6 miles.

I hadn't brought enough cash with me to buy snacks and liquids, and I'd kind of skimped on my nutrition, and by the time I got home at 5:00 (11 hours after leaving) having only ingested about 1.5 liters of Gatorade, a bag of gum drops, a Baby Ruth bar, and a small bag of Chex Mix, I was kind of seeing stars by the time I came in the door. But I drank as much as I could and ate some broccoli (which I'm convinced cures all ills) and got my shit ready for tomorrow: the Charles River Wheelmen's Fall Century.

But here's the problem: shipping my stupid aero helmet back to the UK had cost me way more than I expected, so it was between paying for the century and paying for the gas to drive there. I looked at a map and saw that the start was only 20 miles away, just beyond Concord where many of my training rides go anyway. So I figured, What the hell, I'll just ride to the start.

So I did. I hopped on my bike at 6:30 in the morning, went to Starbucks and filled one of my water bottles with iced coffee instead of Accelerade, picked up $1 worth of candy at 7-11, and rode to Acton. All was going well until I took a wrong turn on a rotary and found myself on the freeway. It was only 7:30 on a Sunday morning and I was going to stick it out, but the debris on the shoulder got so thick that I eventually had to turn around. It's a good thing, too, because it turns out that Rte 2 and Rte 2A are totally different roads going to different places. I just turned myself around and rode the wrong way back up the freeway, back around the rotary (the wrong way), past the State Police station and the State Penitentiary, and on my merry way.

I arrived at the start as most people were already leaving, which was just fine by me. I didn't want to get stuck in the trap of trying to stay with the big guns for the first half of the ride only to find myself 75 miles from home and bonking. Also, it meant that there was no line for the porta-potties. This wasn't my first rodeo, and I knew that I'd catch up with the middle of the pack before long, then I could leapfrog up as I saw fit.

I passed a group of riders right out of the gate, and one woman with super high handlebars and clip-on aerobars (that doesn't work, by the way ) tried to keep up with me. She couldn't, of course. When we hit the first stop sign after about a mile I was already far enough ahead to have crossed the intersection before I heard a scream behind me and I turned around in time to see her go down. There was no one around her, she hadn't been moving very fast, I hadn't seen her wheel go out from under her, what the hell happened? "Are you alright?" I asked.
"Yeah, just couldn't get clipped out in time," she said.
I said what I could to make her feel better, things like, "I won't tell anyone," and "Any blood?" but I swear, that has never, ever happened to me. How incompetent do you have to be to just not clip out in time? (By the way, this is TOTALLY different from, Rocketpants' experience: Rocketpants' fall: unfortunate sequence of events, this lady: incompetent.)

Before long I had fallen in with some Straight Men Over 40 and predictably, they loved me. Then we caught up with an even bigger crew of Straight Men Over 40, and they were tickled pink to have a girl in their midst who was keeping the pace and making old man jokes like, "This is the weirdest-lookin' downhill I've ever seen!" when we were going uphill.
"Hey, didn't I see you riding to the start?" one guy asked.
"Yeah."
"I told my friend Mitch that you were riding to the start, but he didn't believe me. He thought you'd have to be crazy to ride to something like this."
"I've been known to make some pretty bad decisions..." I admitted.
"Hey, Mitch, this is the girl we saw riding to the start!" he yelled to another guy in the pack. "I told you she was doing this thing!"

It was encouraging to have the adulation of so many Straight Men Over 40 marveling at how I'd ridden to the start and I was still keeping up, so I felt compelled to show off a bit. Where normally I would let myself drop back a bit on the hills, I rode hard to keep the pace. I made sure I stayed in the front third of the pack, and made excuses to take pulls and push the pace. Then, at about mile 20 (which was mile 45 for me), I ran out of liquid. I hadn't ever really caught up on my hydration from yesterday, and replacing one of my bottles of sports drink with a diuretic had had a double-whammy effect.

And that was when we hit the hills. Steep, terraced fuckers that just went up and up around every corner, and when you thought they were over, they went up some more. "Do you guys know where the first water stop is?" I asked.
"At about mile 50," one of the guys told me. Fuck! I was going to have to ride another 25 miles, over an hour, without any liquids, and it was starting to get warm. I hoped it would be downhill, but is it ever downhill when you need it to be? I could feel that I was fading a bit, and it was taking a little more effort to stay with the group. We climbed about 750 feet in short jags over the next 15 miles, and I tried to be cheerful, but my good mood was rapidly disappearing. I couldn't be fucking around with a group right now, I needed to get to food and water as fast as I could. On a steep, 20% grade I took advantage of the 50-pound advantage I had over most of these guys and dropped the group. I went on ahead as fast as I could, I didn't want to be messing around braking on the descents and I wanted to be alone when I inevitably got grouchy.

I reached the top and had a beautiful, expansive view of the foothills of the mountains in New Hampshire to one side, and the farms and rolling hills of Massachusetts to the other, and even more fall colors as far as the eye could see. But I had other things to think about. I sped down the hill, and with 75 miles on my watch, I was worried that I had missed the food stop. I interrogated the next guy I came to, and probably wasn't too polite about it, since I thought we'd missed it and was getting ready to blame him for it, but he told me we still had 5 miles to go.

When I finally hit that food stop with my mouth phlegmy and sticky from dehydration, I had one and a half bottles of water, two bananas, a bagel, a cookie some pretzels and maybe some other niblets. The Straight Men Over 40 thought it was hilarious that I'd dropped them. I was just surprised I'd made it 75 miles on such little food and water.

Now recharged, I saddled up with the Straight Men Over 40 and we started to climb right out of the aid station. I dropped them in the first quarter mile, and decided that I wasn't obligated to wait for them, so I rode the next hill alone. On the descent I was caught by an overweight guy who felt the need to talk about all the centuries he'd done, probably to compensate for what people might think of his weight. I was happy for him and the eighty-something pounds he'd lost, but I found it an obnoxious way of bragging, and couldn't wait till the next hill to drop his fat ass.

Then I picked up another Straight Man Over 40. When he passed me and couldn't drop me he asked if I wanted to work together. He was about a foot taller and had almost 100 lb on me, so I said sure. He had the kind of big, curly hair that you can tell he would talk a lot, but I was too lazy to drop him. "You can save like 30% of your energy by drafting..." he started to explain. I hate it when people try to explain the basics of cycling to me, because there's no way your can tell them, "Dude, I know," so I just let him talk until he was spent. Then it was my turn to pull. I hopped in the front and set a stiff pace for him to keep up with. I was feeling really good again after my feast at the last rest stop. "You're riding pretty good for mile 70," he said.
I looked at my watch, "Actually, 95," I corrected him and smiled. His face was pretty priceless.
"My god, you're ready for the Tour!" he said when it came out that I'd ridden 100 miles the day before (I forget how, I know I didn't bring it up).
"Yep, if they'd let women in," I joked.
We talked about the tour, about cycling, about races, and he got increasingly flattering about my riding. "Man," he kept saying, "I can't wait to tell my brother about you... making me hurt like this after 100 miles!" then an I can hardly believe it chuckle. His brother was apparently an even bigger cycling geek than he was.
He was more and more flattering about my riding, and he boosted my ego so high that I continued to ride hard. "You should get into racing," he was saying. "You could be a Cat 2, at LEAST!"
I know I'm cocky about my riding, but I'm conservative about expectations about where I'll stack up against real cyclists. I may be strong in small-town races, but I know that there are women out there who ride like beasts. I figure that if 18 mph fitness is like running a 10-minute mile, 19 is like a 9-minute mile, 20 an 8-minute mile and so forth, my skill is about equivalent to 7-minute pace: pretty good for an age grouper, but that's warm-up pace for a champion. The best women in the world can do 40 km time trials at 23 miles per hour or faster, I don't even know what their speeds look like in pack riding. There's nothing I would like more than to be paid to ride my bike, but women don't get paid to ride their bikes. While even the lowliest male domestique gets paid $60,000 per year, even the best women in the sport are riding for little more than free bikes and smalltime prize purses. It makes me angry.

At the 75-mile aid station (roughly 100 miles for me) I ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a handfull of pita chips, the Straight Men Over 40 caught up and joked about how I'd dropped them, and so they wouldn't offer me a ride home anymore, and then Curly and I set off again. He now had me competing on an international circuit and I was getting a bit tired of it. Anyway, I was dropping him on hills, and he was having to ride pretty hard to catch up, my drafting advantage was gone. Then 3 riders sped by, lead by a woman, and I took off after them. Ain't no woman going to pass me!

They were riding a pace that made me work my ass off, but I was keeping up. When it was my turn to pull I rode till I was slack-jawed and breathing as hard as I could. I was going so fast that I hardly had time to point out the potholes before we were over them. I kept going for longer than anyone else had been pulling just to prove a point, and then the other woman took over, keeping the pace high. As I drifted back I heard one of the guys say to the other, "Where did these chicks come from?!" Those final 10 or 15 miles were the fastest I rode all day, holding an average of a little over 21 mph. We were riding so hard that we missed one of the turn markers on the road and everyone had to stop and figure out what to do. Thankfully, after that we slackened the pace, we were already at about mile 97 (122 for me) and it was time to cool down anyway. Curly was dropped.

Unfortunately, this group seemed to have a pretty abominable sense of direction. We found the course again, but before long the woman yelled out for us to make a right turn. I hadn't seen any turn signals. I was second-to-last and slowed down for the sharp turn, but the guy behind me didn't see us slowing in time. Suddenly his brake hood was up my ass and he was pushing me down the road. "HEY!!!" I yelled. The brake hood got out of my ass, and then rolled right back into it again. "HEY!!!" I yelled again. We made the turn, and immediately the front two started saying, "Wait, this isn't right!" I didn't even stop, I just turned around and rode right back out again, alone. They caught up and the guy who'd hit me apologized. "If you wanted to grab my ass, all you had to do was ask..." I said, trying to be nice about it, but now I wished I could drop them. I rode the final few miles with them, and then they sailed right past the high school. "It's over here, guys!" I yelled after them. They kept riding, and I just stopped and turned my bike right around. They never turned up in the parking lot, and I wonder what happened to them.

I shoved some chips into my face and made myself a sandwich before Curly rode in. He gushed a little bit more about my ability to drop him after 125 miles. It made me a bit nervous, half the people sitting around at the finish were women, and not the kind in pink fashion jerseys riding Bianchis either. Letting Curly talk me up was almost like bragging myself, and you never know who's listening. "Well, we'll see next summer," I said at a volume level with his (loud). "I've gotta work my way through the system first... There are lots of talented women out there." Then I made an excuse about not wanting my legs to cool off too much and hopped on my bike and headed for home.

There wasn't much skin left on my ass, and I had a generalized fatigue deep in my legs, but I had no problem riding the last 20 miles home. In fact, the biggest pain was the one in my ass riding over rough pavement, so I just clicked up a gear and stood up. Biking is easier on your joints, bones, and muscles than running and as long as I kept eating, I felt like I could have gone on forever. I pulled into my driveway after 146 miles, and got off my bike.

This week my legs have been tired and heavy, but not exceptionally sore. Still, I've been taking the train into work.

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.