Happy birthday, blog

Today marks the one year point since I first created this blog. (Granted, it took me another 8 days between the first post and the second, so technically the 10th is a more accurate milestone.) It’s always funny to look back a year, and now I have a record of that process. There have been big changes – a new job, a new city, living close to old friends, signing up for an Ironman so I feel like I’ve made some progress. I will probably still have posts bitching about running in the rain, but I’ll try to keep the forward momentum going…

Thanks to those of you who actually read this thing, it’s always nice (and a little bit surprising) that people read these random musings. I’ll try to keep year 2 as entertaining as the first (or make it entertaining in the first place, whatever… )

Seven years…

This my first year of having a blog on the anniversary of the attacks, so I feel compelled to comment on the thoughts and feelings that always swirl around my head on this date. Every year I’m surprised by what emotions come to the surface and how raw I still feel about it all. I can’t think of another day I can remember with such picture-perfect clarity. It’s been seven years and I still feel the sadness and the fear and the sheer disbelief of the atrocities of that day.

I try to focus on the positive that came out of the tragedy. As always, I’m soooooo grateful that my friend Heidi took the day off of work to celebrate my finding an apartment. Had she not, I don’t even want to imagine what might have happened. I will forever thank whatever divine being/cosmic entity/random force that governs our world for having one of my closest friends with me when the world seemed to be coming to an end.

I also credit watching those towers fall with a lot of the positive steps I’ve made in my life. I would never have lost the weight, started the exercising, gone through therapy, gone back to school, started a new career and done triathlons, had I not seen first-hand what can happen on a random gorgeous sunny Tuesday in September. How many office temps/actors/directors/writers died in those towers? How many people spent their last minutes alive at a job they hated?

So, while every year I fight back tears at least three times, get mad at the media for treating the deaths of 3,000 people like it was the latest Die Hard movie and remind myself to be patient when I hear yet another person telling me their 9/11 story from the perspective of 3,000 miles away – I try to hold on to that faint glimmer of positive.

Thanks for listening. Blog-therapy rules!

Pre-race jitters

So, tomorrow is my first race of the season and as much as I keep telling myself that this is a “B race” (a lower priority race in the training plan) and I’m just doing it as a preparation for the big dance at Lake Stevens in three weeks, I’m a little nervous about it. I think it’s mostly because I did this event last year and had a terrible race. The weather was gray and drizzly, which didn’t help. But I certainly did my part.

I kicked things off by deciding to wear my brand new wetsuit for the first time (turns out it was too small) – huge rookie mistake. It was like swimming in a corset. Every three strokes I’d have to stop and pant for a bit, which made my goggles fog up. Rinse and repeat. As you can imagine, this did not set me up for success in the other two events. As I wheezed my way onto the bike, the remaining five people who hadn’t passed me in the swim got their chance on the bike. Then leaving onto the run, I managed to stay in front of this other guy, who eventually passed me so that I could see that he was 77. And passing me.

I ended up being third from last and bursting into tears after I crossed the finish line, totally humiliated by how badly I’d done. It wasn’t like I hadn’t been training and I had a half-ironman in three weeks (sound familiar?) That race was supposed to build up my confidence and instead it completely shattered it, which is what I think is triggering my nerves today. So, I’m using this blog for a little free therapy and self-confidence boosting.

This year’s training has been much better than last year, both in consistency and the amount of training I’ve put in. I’m better prepared than I was last year and I’m much more capable than I give myself credit for. But I have always had a mental block when it comes to actually racing. I always seem to be holding myself back and am a little scared that I won’t be able to finish if I go too hard. So, here are my goals for this year:

Push myself harder and actually race – push harder on the swim and the bike, then run the whole thing. This race is half the distance of Lake Stevens, so there’s no reason to worry that I can’t do the distance, even while pushing the pace.

Beat last year’s times. (Preferably by A LOT!) Here’s what I’m up against:

Overall time: 3:46:03
Swim time: 0:43:46
1st transition: 5:17
Bike time: 1:35:40
2nd transition: 3:50
Run time: 1:17:29

There is lot’s of room to improve. I want to go under 3 and a half hours, by as much as I can. I know that’s not fast in the grand scheme of things, but it will prove to me that I can put all of the hard work to use in a race day situation, which will be a huge hurdle to overcome. Win or lose, I’ll post a race report tomorrow and see if I can get sleepy T to take some pictures that I’d be willing to show people (didn’t happen last year – yikes!)

Happy Saturday everyone!