travels, races, and other musings

This year was not quite what I had envisioned my triathlon season would be like. I figured I'd be out last year, being pregnant and then a new mom, and then I'd be right back in this year. Ha ha ha. The realities of being a mom... Not only is my training time much much more limited, races are a lot more difficult logistically and my body just isn't the same as it was before. Two years ago I raced the IBM Uptown Classic 10k. It was a few weeks after Longhorn Half Ironman and I thought it would be a good race to get me back into the swing of things after some time off after my big race. Also, I figured it would be easy. We were trying to get pregnant, but it was early on and I thought we had missed our window of opportunity (about a week after Longhorn). So I ran the race. I never wrote up a race report because I had such a bad race. I felt crappy, never found my stride, felt a lot of nausea and just really didn't feel like myself. About halfway through I realized it

After last week's disappointing swim at the Rookie triathlon, I was hoping to redeem myself at the Red Licorice 1500 Meter open water swim event today. They have these open water swims with varying distances every month during the summer at Quarry Lake. I missed last month because I was sick (and Emmaline was up half the night as well) and the organizers were considerate enough to transfer my registration to this month. I haven't decided if I'm going to race next month. The race was at noon, which is awesome! It was nice not having to get up before dawn. Plus this time works out really well with Emmaline's nap schedule. They had an open water clinic at 11 before the race, but obviously I don't need that so we arrived around 11:30. At around 11:50 I went for a warm up swim. The water temperature was really warm - around 79-80. Not wetsuit legal, but there were some people wearing wetsuits anyway. I finished warming up and the race began. I had to swim two 750 met

It's easy to say, "I'm just going to go out and race for fun." It's another thing to actually do that and not get hung up on how fast you're going. I mean, it's a race, right?  I can't help but compare my current self to myself two years ago. I'm pretty much starting at square one. Pregnancy, childbirth and nursing have been hard on my body. Not to mention, it's hard to find the time to get in a workout. Add an extra 15 pounds of weight to the equation and I'm just not the athlete I was a couple of years ago. What has really suffered is my biking. I can count the number of times I've been on my bike since Emmaline's birth on two hands (literally, I've been on my bike 10 times since July). My swim workouts haven't been too much better (15 of those since last July). Running has been a little more regular, but mostly short workouts since Emmaline doesn't like the jog stroller for more than 20 minutes or so.  I