Happy Halloween

I love Halloween. If i were living in the US right now I would be busy getting my last minute slutty outfit(s) ready for one of several Halloween parties going on this weekend. I had a costume closet when I lived in Hawaii that was downsized to a costume box here during the move, but I still dont have any excuse to open it since we dont have Halloween here. I thought about getting dressed up anyway, but then I saw someone at the grocery store dressed up in purple carrying a witch's hat, and noone (except me) knew whether or not this was her normal attire. People were sort of staring and asking each other what she was doing. I dont want to be the crazy lady who wears costumes to Costco. I did make a run to CVS when I was in Houston last weekend to stock up on Halloween candy. No, we wont have trick-or-treaters which means all the snickers and twix will get eaten by Chris and me, and I will probably go into next week's race 10lbs fatter than I am now.
So since we are only celebrating by eating candy and getting fat and not by dressing up, I decided to post some photos of past halloweens in memory of what is my second favorite holiday. Oh Halloween how I miss you.

Bono and The Edge. We went to see the concert the night before so these were last minute costumes.


There was the year Nola was Yoda. I think this was her first Halloween and she probably is not happy that her new mommy likes to dress her up and make fun of her.


There was the slutty angels costumes. You cant really tell how slutty they were in this photo.


There was the year Nola was Yoda for the second time. Yes she has obviously outgrown the costume and was not happy that I dressed her up, laughed at her and took her photo for the world to see.


And who can forget the pumpkins. This was one my friend and I did at work - cannibal pumpkin. we didnt win the contest.


Lance and Sheryl (pre break-up)


I couldnt find photos of my absolute favorite costumes when I went as Anthony Kiedis, tattoos and all, or Britney Spears in her KFed days (I had a KFed too). If they ever turn up I will post. Because I like post drunk halloween humiliation to haunt me - even years later. And even when I am humiliating myself.

Katy Triathlon Race Report

This past weekend I made the trek up to Houston again to do my first sprint triathlon in longer than I can remember. I went to packet pickup on saturday and I heard some of the volunteers talking to someone about whether or not it would be wetsuit legal. I was shocked. I was standing there sweating my ass off in a summer dress and thought there was no way the water would be cold enough. After living in Hawaii and before that racing all of my races in Houston in the summer, I had never worn a wetsuit for a swim. I had just the week before received my first wetsuit - a zoot fuzion - and I wasnt expecting to try it on until I got back to Mexico. I quickly fired off an email to my coach to tell her that I was going to try it in the race instead if the water was cold enough. After that it was off to stuff myself with some Texas BBQ - ahh the pre-race meal of champions. We were laughing that I would be burping/barfing BBQ the whole race the next day.
I got to the race and set up my transition area (we had a great spot for the bike in and out which made it that we had about 4 steps before the mount/dismount line). This is always helpful for those of us who are not coordinated enough to put on or take off the bike shoes while riding. We got the word that the water was 72, so I put on my wetsuit for the first time ever. Yes, this dummy forgot to try it on the day before. Thankfully it fit! I will post pictures in a few days of the race.

The swim - it was a water start and I have to say, I LOVE WETSUITS! I was just floating around with no treading until the gun went off. I was at the front in a realy good position, and by the time I got to the first buoy I couldnt see anyone else around. I came out of the water in 1st and ended up having the 3rd fastest swim time of the day - thanks coach! After the race when I washed out my suit and wetsuit I realized how nasty the water was. I am now convinced I am going to get some sort of nasty disease.

T1 - going into T1 there were strippers and when they were pulling off my wetsuit my bottoms started coming off as they pulled me across the grass. The guys got a lovely view Im sure.

The Bike - I was fully expecting to hear on your left right away into the bike because I didnt think I had that much of a lead. Shockingly it never came. I was fairly conservative on the bike because we were on the shoulder of the highway and there were no lanes blocked off. This meant that if you wanted to pass you had to head into a lane of highway traffic. I have never seen this before, but I didnt want to risk getting hit by a car. Plus the shoulder had tons of gravel in it, and I kept feeling my bike slip. As we got to about mile 7 I saw to ambulances for two different people. Both were awake and on stretchers with lots of blood, but they appeared to be ok. This was another reminder to stay safe. Bike was 18.4 MPH and was third AG. I wasnt as fast as last race, but given the conditions, I am happy with it and happy I came out of it without an injury.

T2 - I didnt remember getting passed on the bike, but I figured it was becuase I was in lala land the whole time. I was sure it was a mistake. I have NEVER come into T2 first. But when I got there, mine was the only bike racked. Sweet! Time to run

The Run - all I can say is holy hotness. There was no shade or even a hint of that wind I felt on the bike. It was hot as hell and all I could think was that it better cool off by the half ironman in november or I will have some major issues. I tried to keep a quick turnover and just keep going. At the turnaround I could see the second place girl and she was moving. I picked up the pace a little bit, but she was faster. At the last mile she caught me and blew by. I tried to keep up with her but just didnt have it in me.

I crossed the line in 2nd, and with a lot more confidence going into the Half IM in a couple of weeks. Chris will make the trip to Houston this time and be my support sherpa since my mom is going to be in NYC watching my little brother run the marathon. I cant wait to have him there - he is
not as excited because he has been asking what kinds of restaurants and stores there are in the Woodlands. I guess he is preparing for while I am out on the bike. I will send him on an excursion to scout out the local area and report back for those of you that are coming out for the Ironman in May.

Swimming is going swimmingly

Even though it is my best event in triathlon, it is always good to see improvement. I started back up this past summer, so I know it is still early, but I am already getting faster. Back in July when I first started training for the ironman, my coach had me do 20x100 to get a feel for where I was fitness wise. I have no clue what to compare my times to so I wasnt really sure how I fared when I finished, but I got a chance to compare to myself on Wednesday. I had another set of timed 100s and this time my average pace was 4 seconds faster than in July. I still dont have anything to compare it to, other than my previous time, but I am gaining time on myself, so I guess that's a good thing, right? Then today I had a timed 2k swim, and again the last real thing I have to compare it to is my half ironman I did a few years ago. I know they are totally different (one was ocean swim, it was a race, etc), but I have nothing else to go off of. This time I was 4 minutes faster. I know the real tests are in the races, but this is giving me a little bit more confidence going into the sprint next weekend and the half ironman in a few weeks. And after doing these time trials (especially the 100s), I know I can push myself more in the swim without dying at the end. Im sure it is all mental, but every little bit helps right?
Now if only I could improve on the run, but I think that is going to take a lot more than a good coach. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Oye, Michael Phelps is here!

First of all, HUGE congrats to everyone who raced ironman this weekend. I tracked everyone all day (it was my birthday weekend so Chris couldnt complain!), and I am so proud of everyone. I know it was a rough day for a few of you, but finish or not, you are all heroes of mine!

In celebration of the Bicentennial, Mexico decided to recreate the Olympics. This sounds like a really cool idea in theory, so Chris and I went to check out the events on Saturday. It was a mess. There were over a million people expected to go (and stand together in a .5mile space of street), and walking was nearly impossible. Basically along the street the events were set up and you could walk by and see people compete. Problem was that the "arenas" were about 3 stories high with no bleachers, so you really could only see on the screens around the street. Mexico had the Olympics here in 68, so why they didnt choose to house these events in the old arenas is beyond me. I guess that would have made too much sense. Rumor was that Mr Phelps was making an appearance and I was excited to see him swim. But when we got there I quickly realized that he wasnt really going to be swimming. The pool was about 15 meters and he was in a relay with a few other Mexican swimmers and racing agains some past Mexican Olympians. Some were old(er) and none could compete with him. So instead of seeing a race I saw MP dive in and swim almost the full length underwater. Im sure he was thinking the entire time WTF am I doing here??. But then quickly realized the amount of money he was going to be making for showing up. After watching for just a few minutes, we left. The events went on today so I couldnt even have a good run. NOT happy with Marcelo (the gov) at this time.

This was the closest we got to Michael - he is on the big screen.

Here I am standing in front of the "Track". It was probably about 200 meters around. You cant see the people because we snuck into an off limits area by pretending we were tourists who didnt speak Spanish.

And finally, for your viewing pleasure....While many of you were staring at hot bodies in speedos in Kona, I was staring at my own athletes in diapers. They were competing in some event, but not sure what it was. I assume it is an ancient Mexican art form. Notice the socks - I guess that is their idea of barefoot running. Although I am not sure many of these dudes do too much running.

Now it is couch time while Chris cooks my birthday dinner and I rest up for another tough week of training. Have a great week everyone!

Same ol' same ol'

So they finally updated the results for the tri (after over almost two weeks) and instead of updating my swim time, they removed 20+ minutes from my run time. So now I am showing as 1st in the run and it looks like I had a near drowning in the swim. I thought about changing it, but the overall time is accurate, and it is the only time I will ever see that pace next to my name in an oly distance tri. Plus I dont really want to wait another two weeks for them to fix it.
Nothing new is going on, just a lot of training and working with a little sleep mixed in. Sunday is my birthday and to celebrate we are going to get crazy and go out to dinner on Saturday, and I may even have more than one glass of wine. But only if Chris can carry me home. The only other plans I have are to plop myself on the couch and watch eveyone cross the line in Kona this weekend. I know, I cant get over how exciting my life is either!
Last week was a recovery week, which means this week begins another set of hard work. It has all been going fairly well except yesterday I tried to wake up to swim, and just couldnt get out of bed. I decided to go after work and get in an extra two hours of sleep. Well at the pool there was one lane open for people who weren't part of the swimming class and there was one other dude in the lane. He was a weirdo and kept staring at me. I let it slide because I was almost done until he decided to stop at the deep end and rest. Ok, no biggie, he is tired right? Wrong! Every time I swam to that end he would drop under water and stare up at me. The first few times I thought it was a coicidence, but after about 15 turns, I realized he was a disgusting perv. I decided to go with the typical Mexican passive aggressive behavior to deal with this jack ass and not confront him directly, but do deep flip turns where I would "accidentally" push off of the wall extremely close to where my feet would almost hit him. After I hit him with my feet twice (not hard I promise), he got the hint and started swimming again. Then after he got out he stood in his towel at the end of the pool staring again for the last 15 minutes of my swim. At least now I have an extra reason to not sleep late and swim in the AM. Morning swimmers there are so much less perverted. Slow, but not perverted.
Good luck to everyone racing this weekend - I will be watching and cheering from home!