Last Visit to the Farm August 21, 2008

Tuesday was not the best farm day for us. I hadn’t talked to Sara before leaving, so I assumed I’d just be picking up the boxes and letting the kids hang out for a few minutes. When I got there I found out Sara had left with ALL the deliveries, and she wanted me to hang out while her boys and my kids played. This was not such a bad idea, but it kept me at the farm about an hour later than I’d planned. It was hot, the kids were hungry, and I had not dressed them or myself appropriately for an excursion on the banks of the Rhode River. Both of my kids cut their feet, and as a group the kids were just not getting along well. When Sara wasn’t back when she said she would be, I called her and told her I needed to leave, thereby foisting her kids onto an employee there.

Next week school starts, and with the extra work I’ve got over the next month or so, I really couldn’t work in farm trips. I’m bummed that our summer on the farm ended on a negative note. I wanted the kids to have these glowing Rockwell-esque memories of their time there. But if their memories include lessons based on fighting with friends and how to work through that and how to pick and choose your friends based on how they treat you, then maybe that’s even more valuable than pastoral landscapes and catching tadpoles.

Count Down to Iron Girl! August 8, 2008

Iron Girl Columbia is just over two weeks away and I am pumped. Last Friday was the dress rehearsal, and approximately 600 awesome women gathered at Centennial Park to swim in the lake-grass infested waters of Centennial Lake, and run around the park’s shady but hilly trails.

I was not as well prepared as I probably should have been for such an event, in that I hadn’t been hydrating enough over the previous days, and my prerace dinner consisted of turkey chili dogs and chips. I also slept poorly, probably out of fear that I wouldn’t wake up when my alarm clock went off at 4:30am. Yes. 4:30am. I shudder just to read that.

Anyway, after getting Lost In Columbia  twice (cue industrial echo to mimic Lost In Space theme — Columbia is a planned community, as in, they planned for you to never know where the hell you are), we found the park entrance and waited in a very long line to get to parking. The line frightens me a bit as to what race day will look like.

There was still a lot of blah-blah-blahing by race officials as we set up our own little transition area, but by about 6:40am, the first group took to the water. Let me just applaud right now for Auntie Margie, the 70-year-young woman who has been running triathlons since she was 50. You go Margie. I want to be you when I grow up.

I was a little nauseated getting into the water, not surprising giving prerace jitters, and lack of sleep, and nasty fructose/caffeine goo thing I swallowed just beforehand, and the rather green tasting water I was getting into. The swim was crazy. It’s just disorienting to get into water your’e not accustomed to, can’t see through, and have thirty other people swimming in the same three square feet as you. About 300 yards into the 800 yard swim leg, I caught my rhythm, and things went smoothly unless I needed to pass someone.

The run started out alright, but I quickly was exhausted. And, frankly, quite frustrated that I was having so much trouble with a stupid little 5k. Yes, it was hot and humid, but come on, 800 yards of swimming and 3 miles of running is like an everyday work out for me. I not only walked, I walked a lot. I was embarassed and feeling lame that I couldn’t run the whole thing.

We got back in the car to come home, and that nausea I felt before the race was still there. Hmm. That’s not prerace jitters. Apparently I’d been on the verge of a GI bug, and the dress rehearsal just pushed me over the edge. I spent most of Friday and Saturday in bed.

That all seems to be overwith, but Monday I got on the treamill after a spin class and my hamstring started to spasm. Ugh. I have been training for this race all year! Must not let stupid illness and injury get me now!

I’m trying to balance my bricks and practice triathlons with taking care of myself. I’d like to finish Iron Girl somewhere around 2h 15min, but if I have to walk the damn thing I will. I want to finish dammit!

A journey of a thousand miles… July 13, 2008

My friend Earl is in trouble. He’s overweight and underfit, his blood pressure is misbehaving and his doctor is not happy at all. Richard and I have been encouraging him to join us in our boot-camp style workouts, knowing that the former college football-player in Earl would enjoy the commaraderie and mental challenges.

So at 7am on Saturday, Earl dutifully showed up in front of the gym. I had stressed to him multiple times that there were plenty of people who walked in the group, that he didn’t have to try to keep up with the marathon runners. Testosterone kicked in at least once and he reportedly ran a few times as our group moved through the trails near the gym.

B wanted to know if I’d taken out a life insurance policy on Earl. He was pale and sweating profusely and had inexplicably left his water bottle in his car.

I’m not at all convinced that Earl will join our group of crazy fitness nuts. I’m not even convinced that he’s really motivated to make the changes necessary to transform himself to a healthier and (I presume) happier Earl. But in that proverbial journey of a thousand miles, he’s taken that first step, tentative though it may be. I’m proud of you, Earl. And when you’re ready to finish that journey, I’ll be by your side the whole way.

Ending Vacation With a Bang…Literally July 1, 2008

 

We had a lovely week in Nags Head, and the challenges presented by having both small children and the elderly in the party were minimal.

On Saturday, we closed up the cottage, had a big breakfast at Grits Grill then headed north to Norfolk to visit our old friend, Scott. The drive to Norfolk was uneventful, and as we drove about three blocks from where Richard and I used to live in Ghent, we were tapped by a vehicle running a red light. That tap caused us to slam into a telephone pole sideways at about 35 mph.

We are all ok. Our car, on the other hand, will likely be a total loss. Scary, but now the logistical hurdles are to be crossed. For example, I called our insurance company today to check on the status of our claim, and when the adjuster called back and left a message, she said that nothing had been done with the claim so far and they were missing information from us, and was the car driveable? If so, why was it towed? Grrrrrrrrrr…….

I was incensed, but still able to leave a reasonable message with all info I could offer and stating my expectation that the claim move forward no later than noon tomorrow. We’ll see.

No Vacation From Training June 24, 2008

Iron Girl is in 60 days. That means I have roughly 8 weeks of training left. So even though I’m on vacation, I’m still in training. When we booked the trip, I was excited about all the training I could so easily do here in the Outer Banks — running on the beach, open water swims in the sound, and biking with the ocean mist on my face.

Well, the bike rack I recently acquired didn’t quite make it onto the car, so I’ve got no bike here, which is a bummer because that’s the most difficult training for me to fit in logistically. I may have childcare at the gym for running on the treadmill and swimming in the pool, but I need a husband or babysitter at home to go on an actual bike ride. This week I’ll have tons of relatives who could have watched the kids while I rode, but now, I have no bike.

What I do have is the Nags Head YMCA. Tomorrow morning I plan to spin to finally get some bike training in. Yesterday Richard and I took turns running on the beach, a route we figured was about 3.6 miles. Not too shabby with a little calisthenics thrown in afterward.

Today I swam at the Y, and let me tell you, it was an effort to stay on task. My mind had definitely gone into vacation mode and wanted to take my body with it. Is it possible that the pool water here is any harder to pull through than the water in the pool at Big Vanilla? And the difference between 25 yards and 25 meters starts to add up after a while.

After I’d finished my warm up, a little girl who was about eight years old came into the pool with her dad. He was coaching her along, consulting an index card for her workout. I huffed and puffed my way through a 500, and was trying to figure out how many sprints I could force myself to do before moving on to an iced coffee.

“Mom said 20 minutes!” the girl shouted at her dad.

“Four fifty sprints,” he said ignoring her.

“Four?”

“Go.”

I caught the dad’s eye and smiled. “She sounds like me. I don’t want to do my sprints either.”

She was on vacation too, but she’ll be competing in a state swim meet at home in a few weeks. “You can’t just not train at all,” dad said.

She was in the pool for less than an hour, and probably didn’t miss much of whatever the rest of her family was doing, but I know she just didn’t want to be there.

I wanted to tell her that when she was older she’d be glad her dad made her get in that pool. When she was older, she’d be glad she got in that pool even though she didn’t feel like it. Just like me.

Sunflower Massacre May 29, 2008

Damn squirrels.

I bought six little sunflower plants at the farmers’ market on Saturday and planted them — more for Madeleine’s amusement than any thoughts of their actually thriving in our heavily shaded yard.

Monday we had five upright plants and one leaning over which I initially blamed on Dax and the dump truck. That is, until I picked the leaner over and saw its roots had been gnawed off. And a tomato plant was gone. Grrrrrrrrrr…….. Voles, said I.

But then I noticed a couple of squirrels looking drunk, frolicking about the golden blooms.

Tuesday, four sad sunflowers left.

Wednesday, three.

Today, no flowers, one stalk.

I think I need to break out my grandmother’s recipe for squirrel stew.