travels, races, and other musings

We started our morning at 4 AM. I ate my usual breakfast and we got on the road around 5 AM in the rain. It wasn't pouring rain, just steady so we headed to the race in the hopes that it would subside. Heading out of the parking lot, one of my Texas Iron friends, Emily, caught up to us and we spent the rest of the morning with her. Emily and I swim at about the same pace so we share a lane sometimes at swim. (She's slightly faster on the bike and run, however.) We arrived at the site and got body marked at around 5:30 (when transition was supposed to open). At that point we were told that the race was delayed 30 minutes (and thus transition was going to open late at 6 AM) so we slogged through the rain to find a dry place under the 1st Street bridge. We hung out under the bridge and 6 AM came and went and the rain got worse. It was literally pouring rain and water was collecting everywhere. Some people had signed up for text alerts on their cell phones and so we were waitin...

In case you haven't already figured it out, May is event month for me. I'm currently working on 6 weeks with an event every weekend. It's completely insane, I know. I started with a 10k several weeks back, followed by the Rogue Open Water Swim 1 in the 1 mile distance, last weekend was The Rookie Triathlon, this morning I race the Austin Triathletes Open Water Swim in the 1 mile distance, next Monday (Memorial Day) is CapTexTri and the following weekend I swim the Rogue Open Water Swim 2, again in the mile distance.  The two Rogue swims and the Austin Triathletes swim constitute a series if you swim the mile in each event, with awards at the end of the series. This morning's race was also an event in and of itself, with awards for the top male and female finishers and also 3 deep in each age group so I really wanted to do well.  They started the 5k people first (doing 3 loops of the mile course). Then the 800 meter folks were sent off in a big wave, doing a no...

I kept trying to tell myself I was participating for fun and not really racing, but it's hard not to race at a race. I was feeling sick to my stomach off and on yesterday and it carried over today, except it was more about the on than off today. (In fact, I'm pretty sure everyone around me at the race this morning got tired of hearing about me being sick to my stomach.) Overall, I'm happy with my times. I wouldn't have minded going slightly faster in each event, especially given that the distances were so short, but I'm going to use the stomach excuse. I don't feel like typing up a blow by blow race report so I'll just provide some random thoughts as they occur to me. 300 meter swim - 5:21 1:47/M 4/78 in age group T1 - 2:08 11.1 mile bike - 39:10 17 mph 13/78 in age group T2 - 1:41 run - 18:52 9:26/mi 42/78 in age group total - 1:07:15 15 out of 78 in my age group, 264 out of 701 overall, 51 out of 310 for women I really wanted to finish the swim...

I'm still in a slight state of shock at my performance this morning. I came in second place in the women's division and third overall (men's and women's)!!! I'm completely astounded and excited! Let's back up, though, and start at the beginning. I woke up this morning and my shoulder was feeling much better. I ate a couple apple wedges, some organic rice krispies with soy milk and a half a glass of juice, took a shower, put on my skeleton swimsuit and we headed out to the lake. At the race site, I picked up my packet and swim cap and we meandered around a bit. After a bit, I put on my wetsuit and we headed out to find a place where I could get in and warm up. The water wasn't too cold (a few degrees warmer than Barton Springs, I would say) and I felt good on my warm-up swim. The race started a little late as they got everyone together and explained the course. Some buoys seemed to keep blowing away. It was overcast and cloudy and I was a bit worried ab...

I'm so proud of where I am as a runner these days. I really never thought I would be able to run as fast as I did yesterday. It was a tougher course than I was mentally prepared for and there were several times where I really had to put mind over matter and just push through. The end result was that I made my aggressive goal. I really wanted to come in under 1 hour and I did. The time on my GPS when I stopped it read 59:01 and my official chip time was even better at 58:44. (There are always a few seconds of disorientation on my part at the end of a race where I remember to hit the stop button.) Roger also set a personal best in the 5k yesterday, so I'm pleased for him as well. My splits definitely reflect the course, but I'm pleased that even with a HUGE uphill for the entire second mile, I kept pretty well on pace. When I was between mile markers 2 and 3, I seriously thought the hill would never end (heading southbound on South Congress between Riverside and Oltorf ...

I thought it might be nice to put down some of my thoughts and impressions of Costa Rica as well as provide some information regarding some of the things we learned while we were there regarding the language, food, animals and more. Language I already mentioned that the Costa Ricans are often referred to as ticos. Evidently this stems from some language differences in Costa Rican spanish. They are said to frequently use a diminutive ending of ito (as in poquito - the word for small) on some words, as a term of endearment. I only heard this used once (but my spanish isn't very good so it might have happened more often and I wasn't aware of it). One of the guides for our canyoning group called another one seniorito which isn't really a word in spanish (there is of course seniorita which is a young woman). There are evidently other minor differences and sayings unique to Costa Rican spanish but I noticed very little. I noticed two things worth mentioning, first is their...

We woke up fairly early in order to get an early start on our drive back to San José. We were going to spend Monday night in the big city so that we could catch our 7 AM flight back home on Tuesday. We ate breakfast, got ready and finished packing and we were on the road by 8 AM. A little after 11, we arrived in San José and began the task of finding our hotel. Costa Rica is a little strange when it comes to street names and numbers. Some streets in the capital and larger cities have names or numbers, but most don't. Houses and buildings don't generally have numbers. How do they get mail? Generally by description. "The green house 100 meters past the large fig tree near the church."  This is fine in small villages, but it's starting to become a problem in the big city. Evidently, they're working on it. Our hotel was between Calles 30 and 32 on 2nd Ave (or something like that) but we couldn't find street signs so we were circling around for a bit. It wa...

On Sunday we ate breakfast and then hopped in the car to go to Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge. Caño Negro is in northern Costa Rica, almost to the Nicaraguan border. It is a refuge of forests and marshlands along the Rio Frio. The plan was to travel north to Los Chiles and catch a boat tour down the river to view the wildlife.  We had originally intended to visit Monteverde Cloud Forest (which is southwest of Arenal), but Felix, our tour guide for the bike trip said that Caño Negro was better in terms of wildlife. Caño Negro is also closer at about an hour and a half drive as opposed to three to four for Monteverde. The drive seemed to take longer and when we hit one of the towns where we were supposed to turn, we seemed to have come at it from the wrong direction. We clearly didn't make a turn we were supposed to, but we ended up in the right place. It just took us longer. A couple of hours later, we arrived at a dirt road turn off with signs indicating Caño Negro, however, I thou...

Saturday was another beautiful day. The weather was shining and perfect but the volcano had some fog around the top. We were leisurely this morning. We ate breakfast and then headed out to explore some areas we hadn't checked out before. We drove up around the volcano and explored another hiking trail we hadn't tried. We hiked through some forested areas awhile before turning around and going back to the hotel for our afternoon of canyoning (aka canyoneering or rappelling). We were picked up in a tour van and taken to the canyoning company's lodge where we ate lunch. It was a typical tico lunch of rice with vegetables and beans. It was quite good. After lunch, everyone piled into a couple of vans and drove on a paved road, then a dirt road. Then, when the dirt road became impassable by van, we transferred to four-wheel drive vehicles and bumped our way through the hills. Finally, we arrived at the mouth of a trail where we put on our harnesses and helmets. Then we w...

We began this morning with a mountain bike tour. They picked us up in a van with the bikes on top and we drove to a location near Arenal National Park. There was one other couple on our tour, the van driver and our guide, Felix. The ride was on dirt roads, all passable by vehicle so we weren't really seeing anything we couldn't see by car but it was rough enough that a mountain bike was required in terms of using a bike. It wasn't super hilly - mostly rolling hills and the steeper hills were fairly short. It wasn't overly technical (since it was on roads for cars). The entire trip was an out and back course with several stops on the way out to look at scenery and a top at the turnaround with pineapples, watermelon, cookies, water and juice. We enjoyed the ride, but we were tired when we got back and I decided that I'm definitely a roadie! Even on an easy course, I'm not very good at mountain biking. It was also strange riding without clipless pedals. I kept ...