If it's good enough for Michael Phelps..

I finally uploaded some songs to my new blue ipod and in addition to my go to 80s hair bands, I added some Lil Wayne. I read that the fish listens to him before his gold medal races, so I figured he might get me through some harder workouts. It worked for my long run today and hopefully the fact that he is going to jail wont bring me bad mojo. I also tried out a new fuel. I went with something that Bree used to use - fresh squeezed grape juice and some sea salt. It. Was. Awesome. I have still been having some major issues with the nutrition during runs where I have to have something other than water, and have been trying anything and everything (sometimes more than once), and this really worked. I am going to keep using it and hope that it stays good to my tummy. Thanks Miss Wee! Today's run was a 2 hour run and as I got in the elevator my garmin decided to die on me, and I was too lazy to go back. Even though I knew it was dead, I kept looking at it to see how much time had passed or how far I had gone. Seriously, even after 10 times I kept forgetting. During the run I saw a new all time low. There was some guy running the 1k loop smoking a cigarette. Not smoking post run or pre run (which would have been gross too), but he was running WHILE smoking. I couldnt stop staring at him as he was running around the loop. I was dying to take a picture, but once again I left the house sin camera. Hopefully I will see this guy again before he has a heart attack.
Chris and I decided that our younger dog is getting too fat, so I made him take the dogs running. They made it two miles before they had to stop and when they got home they were in this position during my entire 3 hour trainer ride. Either they were really tired or the site of me riding for hours put them to sleep. Probably the latter as it almost put me to sleep. I would have passed out had my ass not hurt so bad. It is still not ready to sit in the saddle for that long.

In over my head

I have been severely ignoring the blog. I am only slightly less ignoring my training. Today I still feel a hint of calf ache so I can tell I have worked out in the last few days. That or they ache because I am totally out of shape. I will not be gone forever, but I am smack in the middle of budget season (like many of the rest of you out there) and work is killing me. Next week the division comes to town and after 4 days of straight meetings that most likely wont go that well, I will be free for another few months until our next meeting. It just so happens that this hell ends right before Halloween and Dia de los Muertos. And we have friends coming in town to visit so it will be a good celebration of budget season being over. Last week I started doing my trainer rides in the morning (usually 2 hours) while I watched whatever I DVRd from the night before. Side note- life has dramatically changed in our household with the arrival of cable and DVR. Can we say worthless saturdays and sundays watching football? I love it. Then at lunch I have been trying to get in my runs. Thankfully lunches here are long so I can actually run longer than I could in the US. By the time I am done with work at 8 or 9 I dont have the energy to do anything but eat, so the evening workouts were frequently skipped. The lunch and AM workouts have been going well and the long runs are left for the weekend. Although we had a tequila fest on saturday for the UT/OU game so sunday's long run was really a long walk to the zocalo to go shopping. This weekend will be better I promise. There have been some minor changes to the schedule for races, but other than that life is plugging along.
Hopefully I will have more interesting things to show next time. Like our friends in their first trip to Mexico City.

These just landed on my desk from my sweet boyfriend. He is in Canada freezing his ass off right now, and since he cant be with my on my birthday this is the consolation prize. I am not going to complain though. Hopefully they will still be this pretty on Sunday when I get back. My mom joined in on the birthday fun too by posting pictures of every one of my birthdays until I turned 8 or so when I seem to remember birthday parties stopped. I guess she got tired of making home made cakes for my brother and me (his birthday is 4 days after mine). I am secretly hoping that this cake is sitting on the counter at her house tonight though.

I woke up early this AM and got in an hour training ride. It wasnt long, but it was hard. This afternoon is an easy 4 mile run. This is my recovery week and I am back at it hard starting tomorrow. I have a 14 mile run through the city of Houston in the morning and a date with some queso for lunch. After that I will sit my butt on the couch watching football and Kona and looking something like this. I may even put on that snazzy outfit again.

And so I can be the first one, happy birthday little bro!

Houston round 2

I must have jinxed myself in my last post when I said I love food more than family because wouldn't you know it, I got food poisoning friday night and spent the entire weekend in bed. Eating nothing. Before the puking started I did manage to make in one trip to eat some mexican food and my love of queso is shown in the photos below.
Arriving at the table...

I am definitely the first to dig in. A friend once said that if queso and the Ryerson kids are at a party noone else stands a chance of getting any, and by the look on my face her, I dont doubt it.

Less talking, more eating

I can almost taste it!


Here are some friends who may or may not have been at dinner with me. I didnt really pay attention to anyone who was there or what was being said since I was eating my first batch of queso. This is huge for me since I usually have verbal diarreah.

And here are some other potential diners with my mom and me.

And that's it, that was the only meal I got. But I am going back for more this weekend. We did manage to get in a quick trip to a bar where we proceeded to run into one of our teachers from middle school (who was the meanest, yet by far the best teacher I ever had) and traded off being the poor sucker that had to listen to him. My dad and Chris were both sports and spent the majority of the time with him. He also proceeded to tell Chris how he is a nudist (this rumor ran rampant in my little private school, yet was never confirmed) and about all his nudist adventures. Not long after we got home the trouble started and I was puking until 9 and not eating really until last night. The rest of the weekend was spent on the couch watching reruns of project runway. No running, no swimming, no nothing. Saturday is my birthday and Chris is going to be in Canada for a wedding that I couldnt make it to, so I am making the little jump home instead. I wasnt planning on doing anything for the birthday (I am saving that up for the big 35 next year on 10/10/10), but it will be nice to hopefully see some friends and relax. And the free meal from mom is always appreciated. BONUS! since my birthday is one of the days I can have sugar, I will be overloading. I. CANT. WAIT. And since this is actually supposed to be a training blog, I hope to get in a long run and a little trot and maybe even a gasp swim. The weather there yesterday apparently felt like 109 but is supposed to cool off by the weekend. If it is still 109, the 14 miler is going to be on the dreadmill. In the few minutes that I am not running or eating saturday I will be sitting by the computer watching and cheering on everyone at Kona wishing I were back on the islands. Good luck to everyone racing this weekend, Kona or otherwise!

2010 Race on the calendar

Today my brother sent out an email to a few of his friends and me telling us to sign up for Timberman next August. The race starts in Gilford NH. I had to look that up on a map to really know where I would be racing, but I went ahead and signed up for serveral reasons. 1) I havent raced a triathlon all year and I am excited to start training for one again, 2) I have never raced with my brother since we have lived in separate cities for so long and that has made it logistically very difficult, 3) from the email strings of the jokers invited to join, it looks like the shit talking is soon to begin, and 4) I really want to beat my brother! I am looking forward to racing and traveling (especially post race) with this group of potential hooligans. Before then I have to find a pool to train in and a weekend bike ride route that is safe from narcos and crazy Mexican drivers, but those are just details.
I am still in Cabo headed to Houston tomorrow to eat some queso! I cant wait. I am excited to see my friends and family, but really I have been dreaming all week about Friday's dinner. And yes, my friends and family know where they stand in importance in my life - just one little step after queso. My body may revolt since I havent eaten cheese in forever, but I dont care. We land at 6 and will be sitting at a table with a margarita and a bowl of deliciousness by 7:30. I had a little bit of free time today to enjoy the scenery and dream about tomorrow's dinner. This is my view from just outside of my hotel room.


And here I am happy to be at the beach again.

Training has been going well this week and I have hit all my workouts, and my legs are screaming. Today was 6 mile repeats at 7:00 pace, tomorrow is an easy run, and saturday I have a 14 mile run. After that starts the recovery week, and I will be enjoying it stuffing my face in one of the country's fattest cities.

Salsa perfected

I have been here about 9 months and in that time I have tried to perfect salsa, and I have finally done it. Chris and I usually go through 20 vine tomotoes a week in salsa, which is about 3 batches worth. He can sit down and finish one of these bins in a matter of an hour. The good news is when you eat it with bell peppers it is a pretty healthy snack. I have no idea the amount of each ingredient I put in, but the components are: tomatoes, onions, cilantro, hot pepper (varies each time I make it), garlic salt, 1/2 cube of the stuff you use to make chicken broth (can you tell I dont cook often?), and chalula sauce. Blend in a cuisinart and it looks like this:

My next trick is to perfect green salsa using tomatillos.
Apparently the whole city of Mexico is sick. Our driver came yesterday sounding like he smoked a pack of camels and he told me that his wife and son were sick too. I asked him what they had and he said that his son caught the flu because he was at soccer practice and came home hot and drank a glass of water with ice, which gave him a sore throat. And he told me that he got sick because he walked around his house barefoot at night and the coldness of the ground seeped through his feet to make him sick (his words, not mine). He said his wife caught it because she was out in the rain. Gotta love the mentality here. Chris has a cold too and I am staying away, but unlike the driver's family, he actually inhaled someone's nasty germs. He came home from work last thursday and told me some guy came in hacking all over him and he was going to get sick. Sure enough he, along with 6 other poor infected souls, has a bad cold. The good news is he can diagnose online and head to the pharmacy without a perscription. My weekend was uneventful. Other than running away from Chris and his snotty germs, I ran a long run and a quick tempo run and had a nice 2 hour trainer session while watching the Sopranos. I didnt make it in time to sign up for the half marathon, but I did go run along the path during some of my run and cheered the runners on. They looked like they wanted to go back to bed, and I felt bad for telling them they were almost done when I really had no idea where along the course we were, so I headed to the park to finish off the run.

Another earthquake

I dreamed last night that I was on a boat, and then I woke up and still felt the seasickness feeling and still felt movement. I looked over and the dogs and Chris were sleeping, so I figured I was drunk. But then I woke up a little more and realized I had only had a glass of wine 3 hours before, so I thought it was the 2 hour trainer ride that did it. In my delirious state I finally came to the conclusion that it was an earthquake and rolled over and went back to sleep. I told Chris this morning we had an earthquake and he laughed at me and said it was probably the dogs scratching themselves. He also said that the dogs would have woken up and freaked out. I reminded him that our lovely Nola did wake up and then decided to puke all over her bed causing the room to smell like dog-vomit the rest of the night. After lunch I got this in my inbox from Chris.
Magnitude 6.3
Date-Time
* Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 07:16:24 UTC
* Thursday, September 24, 2009 at 12:16:24 AM at epicenter
Region OFF THE COAST OF JALISCO, MEXICO
Apparently the boy can admit he's wrong much easier than I can. I am glad to know the suspension on the house is so good that I was the only one who woke up.
Last week was the anniversary of the 85 earthquake here that basically destroyed the city. Every company was required to have an alarm practice that day and I found out some amazing things while waiting on the street. Like the fact that the metro here is built so that it is resistent to earthquakes and if you are riding it during an earthquake you will have no idea one is going on. And that the Torre Mayor has been labeled the strongest building on earth since it can withstand earthquakes up to 8.5.

I hope that I am in on the Metro or in the Torre Mayor if another giant one comes our way.
I am headed to Los Cabos on Tuesday and then to Houston on Friday. I know, I know, rough life, but I swear I will be working hard in Cabo. Not so much in Houston. Lot's of friends in town for a debauchery filled weekend. Before then are a few more runs and a half marathon. But come wednesday AM, my runs scenery will look like this minus the cheesy beach couple.