travels, races, and other musings

I did my first official duathlon event this morning. Not by choice, since the swim for my triathlon was cancelled. I had fun and usually I vow not to do races without a swim (since it's my strongest sport) but I actually had fun today. But let me back up a bit. We originally came to Corpus Christi so could do the triathlon, Roger would do the duathlon and we'd have a beach vacation. Roger's mom (Elke) and her husband Stephen flew out to meet us and have vacation with us and watch Emmaline during the race. On Friday I heard that there may be jellyfish in the bay. I sort of shrugged it off and on Saturday I was picking up my packet and heard again about the jellyfish and that there were actually a fair number of them. One guy said that they didn't sting much - more like a fire ant bite. I dunno, I sort of go out of my way to avoid fire ants. Plus the water was super choppy and I was getting really nervous. Then Saturday night we got an email. The race organizers had

I had been looking forward to Skeese Greets Triathlon as my first race of the season not just because it was my first race, but because I've been feeling really strong lately and I wanted a good benchmark for how my training has been going lately. I knew my bike was a little lacking, but I've been feeling so strong on the run, I just decided that my strategy would be do have a solid swim, hammer the bike and then put my running skills to the test. It's a short race and I didn't feel like I would need to pace too much.That was the plan anyway.  Pre-Race Before the race, things went smoothly and I found friends to hang out with. Emmaline was excited to be in her new (cheap) stroller for the event and was ready to ring her cow bell. I was in a new age group this year (35-39, even though I'm not yet 35) and I met up with Amy Bush, also in my age group and we lined up together.  As we waited for our swim wave, "Push It" (Salt N' Pepa) came over th