travels, races, and other musings

Pre-Race I was excited to race the Pflugerville Triathlon again this year. I did it in 2007 (which I think was the first year) and it was a good race. Nice and small (500 people) which I definitely like. We planned out when we would arrive based on the time transition would be closing, which, according to the race packet was 7:15. So we arrived, parked, headed to transition and just as I arrived, they announced transition was closing in 10 minutes at 7 AM! I went into panic mode, racing around trying to get everything done. I'm usually on auto-pilot and can get everything done efficiently and quickly, but things just weren't going well and I was goofing everything up. Add to that the fact that my rear wheel was practically flat when Roger went to put my bike on the car. It had been fully inflated the night before. My race wheels are tubulars so it isn't like I can just change out the tube quickly. We pumped it up and took the bike pump to transition (which I never do)....

I had a really great race yesterday at the Skeese Greets Women's Triathlon. In fact, I think I'm going to have to make sure it's on my race calendar next year. My goals were fairly loose. Really, I just wanted to be faster than last year at The Rookie Triathlon (same course, different event) which was 1:20:06. I was thinking 1:15 would be nice. Roger thought I should be able to beat 1:10. My final time beat all those goals with 1:08:47! Pre-Race 4:45 AM is too early. But that's just how it goes. We had gotten most things ready the night before so we were able to get ready and hop in the car to head down to the race (about an hour drive). We arrived, I got set up, waiting forever in the port-a-potty line and then it was time for the race to start. Swim I was in the second wave. Michelle Garel and I started right next to each other each of us joking with the other about drafting off the other. As it happened, we spent most of the swim next to each other. I knew in t...

Yesterday I ran the Texas Roundup 10k. I signed up for it for several reasons. First, I just really like the 10k distance and they're just not as common as 5k races. I also had a really good race 3 years ago when I did it and so I thought I'd go back. When we did it three years ago, it wasn't a HUGE race. It was big enough, but it wasn't ginormous. Also, they have a 5k course and Roger could push Emmaline in the jogger for that distance at the same time. So we signed up. I had a goal of 1:05. Three years ago my goal was one hour and I came in at 58:44 which is pretty close to my 10k PR (58:06). I had a really great race and felt really good three years ago. (Here's my race report.) We arrived about 30 min early, parked easily, walked to the race site, let Emmaline run around a bit, used the port-a-potties and then tried to find someplace to start. Roger was running untimed with the jogger so he started further back. I tried to weave my way up, but it was pretty ...

Texas State Aquarium and the Drive Home Emmaline generally gets up around 7 AM which is good and bad. It's good in the sense that we can get all kinds of things done in the morning. But, it's a bummer that we basically don't get to sleep in. Ah well. We got up, finished packing, checked out and headed into Corpus Christi for breakfast. We ate at a little country kitchen type place. We both enjoyed some eggs with all the fixins while Emmaline pointed at the toy trains that ran around the entire perimeter or the restaurant above our heads. Each time one came out, she pointed and signed train. It was fabulous toddler entertainment! After breakfast, we went to the Texas State Aquarium. We saw all sort of fish, turtles, river otters and some dolphins. Emmaline wasn't quite as into it as we thought she would be. She's generally really into fish, but I think some of them were a little big for her. They did have a really nice, large playground there and we took her ther...

Port Aransas and Back to the Beach In the morning, we headed north for the 20 minute drive to Port Aransas to see what that area looks like. On the drive up, we turned down a beach access road for a quick look at the beach. It was pretty empty, but a pretty beach, stretching on in both directions. There were a couple of cars, including a turtle patrol truck (looking for endangered sea turtles to protect).  Once in Port Aransas, we wandered around a huge souvenir shop and then walked around a dock a bit and looked at ducks and boats, then we were going to take a ferry, but on the way, we spotted a playscape that looked fun. We spent most of the rest of the morning at the playscape, letting Emmaline run around. We had lunch in Port Aransas at a Mexican restaurant before we headed back to Corpus Christi where we stopped and picked up some coffee before getting Emmaline down for nap. During nap, Roger went for a run along the beach while I goofed around on the computer. After nap...

Birds and Beach The morning was a little cool and overcast, so it wasn't really good beach weather. One of Emmaline's favorite words is "bird" (BUR!) so we started the morning by heading to a wildlife preserve that is a spot for migratory birds. She enjoyed the walk around the area and pointed at a lot of birds. We saw a couple kinds of gulls, some egrets and some assorted ducks and waterfowl. We walked about a mile and a half and at one point along the trail there was a cute little playscape that she played on a bit.  After that, we decided to head towards Corpus Christi to a little shopping area to do a little window shopping and have some coffee. On the way, we saw a HUGE (enormous, gigantic) play scape. So we pulled over and let Emmaline play for awhile. She had a really good time and it was a really neat area by the ocean. After playing, we got back in the car and headed for the shopping area. Everything was closed except the coffee shop so we hung out a...

Driving to Corpus Christi The drive from Austin to North Padre Island in Corpus Christi is about 3.5 hours. The plan was to get Emmaline asleep for nap, wait until she had a little bit of nap, then move her gently into the car and take off with her sleeping for the first half of the journey. Unfortunately, she woke up when we moved her into the car and never went back to sleep. So we were headed for a nearly 4 hour car ride with a toddler that had abut 45 minute of nap. Sounds like a recipe for disaster but actually, she did really well. For the first part of the journey, Roger drove and I sat in the back seat with Emmaline and we played. We had some toys that were brand new, just for the trip. We made a couple of stops for her to get out and run around. For one of them, we stopped in the middle of nowhere at a Wal-Mart and let her run through the toy aisle and try out some of the toys. They also had a little car ride thing out front and we pumped a couple of quarters into it. ...

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...