travels, races, and other musings

The Happiest Race on Earth... I awoke at 4:00 in the morning. I took a quick shower to wake myself up. I was running a little behind and feeling a little sluggish. I was going to meet Dru at the hotel's continental breakfast (which they were running early for racers) 4:30, but I didn't head out the door until 4:35 or so. My feet weren't as sore as the day before, but I felt a little tight in my muscles and draggy. I couldn't eat. I didn't really want to eat anyway. I ate a few bites of an apple and we headed to the race site. We walked along with a lot of people on their way to the race. Once at the start area, there were people everywhere and there was a huge screen showing people walking about and a very loud announcer. I'm sure people in the nearby hotels that weren't running the race were not excited about this situation. We found a port a potty line and got that out of the way, then made our way out to our corral. There were five corrals (A throug...

Tuesday was a fairly lazy and uneventful day and my last day in California. We hung around and caught up with one another. We also took the bug out for a romp around the desert. Mimi has a 1965 VW bug. It has the top chopped off so it's a permanent "convertible." My dad drove and we checked out the extent of the fire damage. We also drove into the nearest town, Yucca Valley, and ran a couple of errands. Later in the day I went for a short run. I ran down Mimi's "street" (narrow dirt road). It was nice running in another setting for a change and I enjoyed taking in the desert scenery. I saw the two houses burned down on her street. Well, I saw one. The other had already been removed and the site was ready for rebuilding.

Monday morning we were a little bit sore, but nothing too bad. We hopped on a shuttle back to the Disney parks and did a little shopping in the Downtown Disney area. Dru bought a shirt and I got a Mickey pen for my niece. I bought myself a shirt at Disneyland the day before (it's a Jack Skellington Nightmare Before Christmas shirt). We left Downtown Disney and headed back to the hotel to get Roger's luggage and take him to the airport. After a couple of wrong turns, we dropped him off at the Orange County airport. We headed back to the hotel, picked up all the rest of our luggage and made the drive out to the desert. We made good time to Mimi's (that's what we call my grandmother). My dad and his wife Kip (her real name is Karen but she goes by Kip) were already there when we arrived. Dru dropped me off and then she and Dave headed for Desert Hot Springs for a relaxing evening in the springs. Recently, there had been a large wildfire in the vicinity of her home. H...

Saturday morning we left my mom's and boarded the Pacific Surfliner train in Oceanside and headed for Anaheim. Dru picked us up at the train station in Anaheim and we checked into our hotel. After checking in, Dru, Roger and I headed to the Disneyland Hotel so Dru and I could pick up our race packets. The race packet was fairly disappointing, but the race shirt was quite nice - a white long sleeve technical (moisture wicking, breathable, etc.) shirt with the Disneyland Half Marathon logo on the front. The walk to and from the Disneyland Hotel was much longer than I had anticipated and we were already feeling a little tired when we got back to drop off our stuff. Roger and I soaked our feet in a tub full of ice water before we grabbed Dru's boyfriend Dave and walked all the way back to the area to go to Disney's California Adventure theme park. We began with a little lunch. After lunch we rode some rides. I have to say that California Adventure was sort anti-climactic. The...

Our flight left Austin around 9:30 in the morning. With the time adjustment, that meant that we arrived into San Diego around 10:30. My mom and her husband Steve picked us up at the airport. We headed up to north San Diego county closer to mom's house to have lunch. We ate in the harbor in Oceanside and walked around a bit. We went back to mom and Steve's place and Roger and I took a short nap. After that, we went down to Carlsbad where I went for a short run (about a mile and a half) on a paved walkway along the beach. It was a beautiful run. I really enjoyed the cool weather, breeze and sound of the waves. I watched the surfers and the kids playing in the ocean as I did my last run before the race. That evening we ate dinner and celebrated my mom's birthday (Sept 17th). All in all, it was a pretty low key day. It was nice to spend some time with my mom. Click here for Day 2. 

I had a really good race yesterday at Jack's Generic Triathlon. I did quite well on the swim, had a super bike and a nice solid run. Roger also did well on his first triathlon. He had a bit of a difficult swim, but he did really well on the bike and the run. I think he's decided he's more of a duathlete (bike and run). Pre-Race Dru, Roger and I woke up super early (I guess I'm getting accustomed to it) and headed down to New Braunfels. We arrived and Roger and I set up our transition areas next to each other. We then went off to get body marked and pick up our timing chips. (They didn't mark our thighs in this race which I thought was strange.) We went back to transition and applied some sunscreen (I've learned the secrets of spray on sunscreen - it doesn't rub the numbers off). We then lined up to use the port-a-potties. According to the website they would be using pretty much the same courses as the Rogue Women's Triathlon. There were two differen...