Category: Uncategorized

We should all have one person who knows how to bless us despite the evidence; Grandmother was that person to me.
— Phyllis Theroux

Dear Mimi,

When you came to visit a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect.  You’d finished your chemo and had surgery but hadn’t started radiation, and I hadn’t seen you since February, before you started any treatments.  When you got out of the car, I was surprised.  Nate didn’t tell me you don’t wear your wig.  Your gray hair is beautiful.  I know it’s hard for you, but it really is so pretty.  It doesn’t make you look old, either, if that’s what you’re worried about.

I was sitting across from you at dinner, and it all of a sudden hit me that, one day, you won’t be here anymore. Not because of the cancer — you’re winning that fight — but because that’s true of all of us.  And in the car on the way home, I told David and I just started sobbing.  I’m 35 years old, and there’s never been a time when you haven’t been a huge part of my life, and I can’t even imagine a time when you won’t be.  I don’t know what kinds of relationships most people have with their grandmothers, but I think ours has always been special.  There’s basically nothing I can’t talk to you about, and I love talking to you.  You knew about David before anyone else in my family, back when he was just “this guy at work that I really like and who really likes me but has a girlfriend.”  And then you accepted him because I love him, even though he doesn’t like cheese or dogs, two of our favorite things.

My father, your son, once asked  me  bewildered, “How did you and Mimi get so close?”  I didn’t have an answer – it’s just always been that way.  Maybe it’s that you raised me for a time.  Maybe it’s that we’re both singers.  Maybe it’s purple tricycles and Strawberry Shortcake dolls at your office.  Maybe it’s dinosaur dishes at Fort Detrick.  Maybe it’s Paris and Nice.  Whatever it is, I want to hold on to it always, and I don’t think I’ll ever be prepared to let it go.  I love you.

Love,
Melly

Some people run a race to see who is fastest.  I run to see who has the most guts.
— Steve Prefontaine

You know I wouldn’t leave you hanging, right?  I did it. The Richmond Tri Club Sprint Triathlon.  I did it.  I can still hardly believe it, but it’s true:

I finished in well under my 2:30 goal, despite all my angst beforehand when I discovered there was a 2:30 cutoff time on the course.  And, I didn’t even come in last!  I came in 19th of 22 in my category (Novice Women).  My official time was 2:02:19, with this breakdown:

Swim (300 yards): 8:10

T1 (transition from swim to bike): 4:54

Bike (20k/12.4 miles): 58:06

T2 (transition from bike to run): 2:04

Run (5k/3.1 miles): 49:07

The swim situation cracks me up.  Remember this post?  Where I was worried because my “fastest 300-yard” time was just under 15 minutes?  And 15 minutes was the cutoff when I signed up?  Two nights before the race, I was lying in bed trying to visualize my race to calm myself.  And I was imagining the pool, up and back, up and back, up and back, up and back, up and back, up and back, up and back . . . and I thought to myself, “Wait a second.  They sent me a diagram of the pool swim, and there aren’t 12 lanes in it.  But 300 yards is 12 laps in a 25-yard pool . . . Isn’t it?”  Yeah.  Math isn’t my strong suit.  Somehow, very early in my training, I got it in my head that 300 yards was 12 laps and so I just trained that every week, and 20 laps on Tuesdays.  Really, of course, 300 yards is 12 lengths, and so I was actually doing 600 and sometimes 1000 yards in my training!  I have never been so glad to be bad at math in all my life.

This, however, led to another problem:  When I signed up, I gave my 100-yard swim time as 4:30.  Really, it’s more like 2:30.  This meant I’d been seeded with much slower swimmers; in fact, I was slated to start fifth from last.  This could cause lots of problems, so I managed to finagle myself a start time 20 minutes earlier, and I still passed two people.  Unfortunately, my earlier start coupled with my low expectations for myself caused my cheering section to actually miss me at the finish line – I told them to come around 10, but because I started early (and wasn’t able to tell them because who wants a text at 6:15 in the morning) and did better than I thought on the bike, that was too late.  That’s ok, though.  They were all super happy for me when they finally got there a few minutes after I finished:

David must have told me a thousand times how proud he was of me, and my sister-in-law called me her hero.  Ha.

I’m not going to lie: This was hard.  Physically, it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.  That I did it at my heaviest weight ever boggles my mind.  When I got off the bike and had to run to my station to get ready for the run, I nearly fell over.  My legs were like jelly.  At one point during T2, out loud to no one, I said, “Sweet holy Jesus, this is hard.”  I could barely run – my feet were numb from the bike ride.  I couldn’t figure out why, but then I realized that the water from my tri suit dripped down into my socks and then the wind from the bike ride made my wet feet super cold (it was not a hot day).  My ass was also numb, but that’s to be expected.

Everyone — other racers, volunteers, spectators — was so nice and super encouraging to everyone else.  Everyone who passed me on the bike (and there were a lot of them) all said “Great job,” or “Keep it up,” or “You can do it.”  And the run was out and back, so everybody I passed on their way in said “Almost done, don’t quit.”  There were lots of high fives.  As I came down the chute at the end, I was alone, so the whole crowd was cheering for me.  I cried, as you can see in the first picture above.  They were tears of joy, though, that’s for sure.

All in all, it was a great experience, and I’m so glad I didn’t punk out.  I would do another one, and I’d like to improve a lot.  I might also like to take on a sprint tri with an open water swim.  That’s going to have to wait, though.  We’ve got plans.

“For some moments in life, there are no words.”
— Willy Wonka, in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

That’s what I posted on Twitter earlier today:  “The world is upside down.”  It was in response to the news that my very good friend’s son died this morning; he was 11 days old.

Eleven days.  Fucking Wimbeldon lasts longer than baby Christopher got to live.

He was ten weeks early, and he was in the NICU, but he was breathing on his own and my friend and Christopher’s father had been able to hold him and everything. Just last night my friend reported that she was trying to keep up her pumping schedule so Christopher could eat as much as he needed to.  I thought the road would be tough, but that he would ultimately be just fine. In the first days, I told her I knew it was hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but that I knew it was there.  I promised her it was.

I don’t know the details of what happened this morning, but a friend told me this afternoon that when things go wrong in NICU, they go wrong fast and often without warning.

My heart breaks for my girl and her family, and everything I said to her in my message this morning seems ridiculously inadequate.  How can there be any words for this?  There is nothing anyone can say that can ease her pain, take away her sadness, relieve the anger she must feel.  Nothing.

I was looking for quotes to head this post and googled “quotes about the loss of a child.”  So many of them say, essentially, “God needed him more.”  Fuck that.  I know it’s just people trying to make sense out of something unfathomable, but I think it would be unbelievably insensitive to say that to a grieving parent.  I cannot imagine looking my friend in the eye and telling her someone — even God — needed Christopher more than she did.  What a shitty thing to say.

Because there are no words, this post is not coming out the way I meant it.  It turns out I’m nearly as angry as I am sad.  Eleven days?  He didn’t even get to BE.  And now my funny, amazing, beautiful friend will never be the same, and there’s nothing anyone can do to fix it.  No one can even make it easier for her.

A mother losing her 11-day-old baby?  The world is upside down.

“There’s always stuff to work on.  You’re never there.”
— Tiger Woods

Hey, it’s only two months past the end date – let’s talk about 101 in 1001, shall we?

I completed 46 tasks and started but did not finish 13 more.  That . . . is not so good.  And now I owe $110 to a charity, because I’m a woman of my word (I promised $2 for every uncompleted item). Oh well.

I really enjoyed the experience of putting the list together and trying to figure out how to accomplish the items.  It’s not surprising that I was pretty gung-ho in the beginning and then it, like the rest of the blog and a lot of things in my life, fell by the wayside for long periods of time.

Some of the items were pipe dreams from the beginning – spending a night at the Wigwam hotel in Arizona, for example, or going through the thousands of pictures on my computer to name them ALL.  Some of them turned out not to be right for this time in my life – our apartment is really too small to host a dinner party, and Aimee’s and my 20-year friendship anniversary was the month before my wedding when neither of us had spare time or money to go anywhere to celebrate.  At least one thing I was plain afraid to do – asking my grandmother to write down 5 memories of her mother is one of my favorite items from my list, but actually asking her makes my stomach do flip-flops because it means acknowledging she’s not going to be around forever, which just makes me so, so sad.

Number 95 turned out to be pretty cool – write a letter to myself at futureme.org to be delivered on the last day of 101 in 1001.  I’ll share a bit of my letter with you:

Dear FutureMe,

This letter should have been written on July 31, 2009, when you published your list of 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days, but that was kind of a hectic time for you and you never got around to it. So here we are, a week before Christmas 2009, and it’s finally time to write.

. . .

When you wrote this letter, you were happy and looking forward to Christmas – you have suspicions David might propose next week. If not, you know it’s going to happen by your birthday in 2010. You can’t wait to marry him; you’ve known that was the right thing since you first got together, and you’re excited to move on to the next stage of your life with him.

When this letter gets delivered, hopefully you’ll have completed all of the items on your 101 in 1001 list. As of today, you’ve completed 15 and have started on 14 others. That’s a good start in only 5 months. Even if you give up on your blog for a little while (you’re thinking of taking a break), you should do your best to keep up with the list. It’s kind of fun.

So what will your life look like in April 2012? Well, hopefully list item #101 came true approximately 18 months earlier and you and David have been happily married for a year and a half. Also, ideally, you’ll either be pregnant or a very new mom; you can’t wait to have kids with David. He doesn’t have any experience with babies, but you know he’s just going to take to it, and you can’t wait to see him with your children. Those are the two big things. The rest will work itself out. It always does.

I hope you are happy and healthy, doing work that you enjoy and living the kind of life you want for yourself, full of family and friends. I hope you learn to take care of yourself and accept yourself for who and what you are. Don’t kid yourself that you have control over more than you do; relax and let the universe unfold as it should. Practice being kind to others; it will help you be kind to yourself, and you are often too hard on yourself. Keep in touch with your family; you’re the glue. Say the things that need to be said before it’s too late. Remember that this life is all there is, and you have the power to make it be the best it can be. Don’t give up.

See you in a few years,
Mel

As it turned out, it was almost exactly one year later that David proposed, so everything on the hoped-for timeline is off by a year – we’d been married 6 months by the end of April, we’re planning babies for next year, etc.  I loved getting this, though the . . . part was difficult to read; I hate to remember “the hard part.”  That’s the thing about time, though – perspective changes so much.

I would like to do this again, but not yet.  There’s so much on my plate at the moment that I don’t want to put any more pressure on myself, even though it can be a lot of fun.  Any list I made right now would be full of cheating – paint all walls in new house; hang ceiling fan in master bedroom of new house; make wedding photo albums for our parents; run sprint triathlon; live tweet Olympic opening ceremony – stuff I’m already planning to do.

I will, however, finish Anna Karenina, damn it.

***************************************************************************************

Here’s how the list looked on June 29, 2012:

not started/in progress/completed

Start date: August 1, 2009

End date: April 28, 2012

Creative

1. Find a way to sing again – in public (done – joined a community chorus;  our first concert was 11/18/11)

2. Work my way through one quarter of  “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” (1/25) (started 2/26/10 with this post)

3. Start keeping a personal journal again (without the pressure of feeling like I need to “recap” everything that’s happened since I last kept one, which is the reason I haven’t started doing it before now) (I started again on 8/15/09 and have written several times; I haven’t decided how long I have to keep it up before I mark this one as completed.)

4. Make 5 more journals and give them away (3/5)

5. Draw something suitable for framing

6. Blow up and frame a photo I took

7. Blog at least three times a week for 3 months (0/12) (0/3)

Travel

8. Go to 5 states I’ve never been to (5/5) (West Virginia – 3/27/10; Washington – 8/28/10; Oregon – 8/31/10; California – 9/1/10; Maine 10/21/11)

9. Take a train somewhere far away enough that I have to book a sleeper car (done 8/26/10 – 8/28/10; we took the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle the last weekend in August; it was two overnights on the train, so we got a sleeping compartment:

The seats slide together to form the bottom bunk, and the top bunk flips down from the top (you can’t see it in this picture).)

10. Visit a national landmark I’ve never seen before (done 8/28/10 – Space Needle:

And, also, 9/2/10 – the Golden Gate Bridge:

The fog there is no joke!)

11. Visit a tourist trap I’ve never seen before (like the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or something)

12. Spend a weekend in Amish country at a Bed & Breakfast

13. Visit my friend who lives in LA

14. Spend a night at the Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook, Arizona

15. Ice skate at Rockefeller Center

16. Finally Yelp! Fat Matt’s Rib Shack from our trip to Atlanta (short version: go there) (done 8/3/09)

17. Go back to the Excellent Dumpling House in Chinatown in New York (where they really do serve excellent dumplings)

18. Go to Coney Island (when it’s open this time)

Tourism at Home

19. Take a Duck Boat tour of D.C.

20. Visit the September 11 Pentagon Memorial (done 10/?/10 – this is a beautiful memorial, and I encourage anyone who visits D.C. to make the effort to go there)

21. Take a tour of Old Town with one of the colonial guides

22. Take a Segway tour of D.C. with my mom

23. Go see the dolphin show at the Baltimore Aquarium (done 11/6/10 with David, the Princess, and the Conductor – We spent the whole day at the Aquarium and the Inner Harbor:

it was a wonderful day!)

24. Go to the National Zoo

25. Go to 5 museums in the D.C. area (1/5) (7/31/10 – I visited the National Inventors Hall of Fame and Museum at the Patent and Trademark Office)

26. Go to Arlington Cemetery (done 6/18/11)

Home

27. Finally finish unpacking the books (done 9/18/09)

28. Try 2 new recipes a month for 6 months 12 new recipes (5/12) (August 2009 – Oven-Fried Pork Chops and Glazed Sesame Pork, both from Cooking Light) (November 2009 – Cinnamon Buns from Pioneer Woman (see #32 below) and Beef Burgundy from Cooks.com) (July 2010 – Butter Chicken, from Tasty Kitchen) (February 2011 – Chicken with Creamy Chive Sauce, from The Eating Well Diet cookbook)

29. Put loose recipes into binder (done 8/11/09)

30. Go through boxes of high school and college memorabilia and toss everything that no longer holds meaning (done 9/20/09 – it’s amazing the crap I hold onto)

31. Host a dinner party

32. Bake something that requires yeast (which scares me) (done 11/3/09:

Cinnamon Buns from Pioneer Woman’s recipe!)

33. Enter a baked good in a contest

34. Hang curtains in bedroom (done 11/14/09, finally)

35. Bake a cheesecake from scratch (done 4/1/10, served for Easter 4/4/10 – YUM)

36. Cook meals for lunches at work two weekends a month for 3 months (0/3)

37. Find out what, exactly, chipotle en adobo is, get some, and then make something with it (7/26/10 – found chipotle in adobo (which are just chiles canned in adobo sauce) in the store and grabbed a can; I’ve got a recipe in mind to use them, just haven’t had a chance yet)

38. Find dulce de leche and re-attempt Death by Caramel Bars

39. Grow mint so I can learn to make my own mojitos (started a little pot of mint on 7/31/10; update 9/18/10: back to square one – the mint didn’t take)

40. Get caught up on putting photos in albums and printing photos from my camera (started 2/10/10 – what else to do with my 4th snow day in a row? 3/13/10 – ordered 500+ prints from Costco to catch up; now I just need to put those in albums; 7/19/10 – When I was putting those 500 prints in albums, I realized I’m missing pictures between January (our trip to Vegas) and April 2009 (our trip to Atlanta) – they got lost when my external hard drive somehow got damaged.  I’m waiting to see if David can recover them before I put the rest of the prints in albums so they won’t be out of order.)

41. Buy a scanner (done 10/16/09 and finally all set up today, 10/25/09 – see #70!)

42. Upload old photos (this is in progress as of 10/25/09, but I’m not sure when I’ll consider it completed)

43. Go through photo files and name all photos

44. Buy an apron, maybe from Etsy from Lydia (I got it on 7/21/10 – see her blog for pictures!)

45. Find a recipe for beef burgundy and try it out; see if it compares to this (done 11/7/09, and it was pretty good – not like that one, but very close to one I had in a French restaurant about a month ago; the link to the recipe is in #28 above)

Health & Fitness

46. Lose 40 50 60 pounds, 5 pounds at a time (0/60) (update 9/13/11 – hahahahahahaha!!)

47. Journal food intake (i.e., get back on track with Weight Watchers) for 30 days (finished 10/8/09)

48. Run another 5k (done 4/25/10 – I completed the GW Parkway Classic 5k.  I’m not allowed to run – doctor’s orders – but I did a little anyway.) (update 6/29/12 – I did 5 more 5ks before the end, all in April.  See this post for details.)

49. Take a kickboxing class

50. Take a dance class

51. Get off my medication (I stopped July 3, 2010, but had to start again August 5.  I hate it, but it’s for the best.) (Update 9/13/11 – I stopped taking my meds on 8/18/11 – so far so good.  Hasn’t been easy the whole time, but I think I’m leveling off finally.) (Update 11/27/11 – that did not go well; started again 11/17/11 and I feel much, much better)

52. Floss every day for 30 days (done – finished 4/20/10 and still (mostly) going strong)

53. Take Pico to the vet three times (more as medically necessary) (3/3)

54. Take my vitamins every day for 30 days (finished 8/30/09 – and still (mostly) going strong)

55. Work out 5 days a week for one month (0/20)

56. Finally upgrade my processor or get my back-up processor fixed (fixed 8/18/10 – yay!) (upgraded to latest technology 5/15/11)

Financial

57. Establish a savings account and deposit money from every paycheck (done in 2011 – David and I deposit money into 2 different savings account each pay period)

58. Create and implement plan to pay off credit card 1 (done – February 2011)

59. Create and implement plan to pay off credit card 2 (done – February 2011)

60. Create and implement plan to pay off car (done – October 2011)

61. Figure out whether and how to roll over old 401(k)

Recreation

62. Attend an NFL game (done 9/19/10, Texans-Redskins at FedEx Field:

We had amazing seats – I got the tickets from a friend on Facebook – and it was so much fun!)

63. Go ice roller skating (I changed this one because David pointed out I already have “ice skate at Rockefeller Center” on the list)

64. See games at 3 Major League ballparks I’ve never been to (Done! Astros-Cubs at Wrigley Field on 8/31/09; Indians-Tigers at Comerica Park on 9/1/09; Yankees-Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre on 9/3/09) (Update 9/18/10: I’ve been to three new parks: Twins-Mariners at SafeCo Field on 8/29/10; Rockies-Giants at AT&T Park on 9/1/10; and Angels-A’s at The Coliseum on 9/4/10)

65. Go horseback riding

66. Fly a kite

67. Go to the drive-in

68. Join a bowling league of some kind (we joined the Potomac Curling Club 2/20/10 and signed up for a beginners curling league; league play ended 4/9/10.  We decided to become full members of the Club this season and have been curling regularly in the TGIF league since October!)

69. Go to a monster truck show

70. Drag David into a photo booth get a photo strip of pictures of us (done at the Henry Ford on 8/30/09:

And I did, in fact, have to drag him, but he was a good sport.)

71. Bowl a perfect game on Wii Bowling (my best game so far is 212)

Enrichment

72. Read Anna Karenina (11/27/11 – I have this on my new Kindle Touch and have started; let’s see how it goes. Update 2/19/12 – 53% done; it’s looooooooong!) (update 6/29/12 – 75% done; I keep getting distracted by other books!)

73. Learn to play Euchre, so I can play with David’s family

74. Learn all the state capitals by heart (completed 9/7/09 – made it through the list 5 times over our ten-day trip without missing any, but David says he’s going to retest me in 6 months!)

75. Take a class at the community college

76. See half of the movies on AFI’s  list of the Top 100 Films of the Last 100 Years that I haven’t seen (5/23) (June 2010 – Goodfellas; October 2010 – Psycho; November 2010 – The Deer Hunter; February 2012 – Rear Window; March 2010 – Vertigo)

77. Finish Heart of Darkness, even if it kills me

78. Learn to use 3 new features on my digital camera (1/3) (on our August/September 2010 West Coast vacation, I learned how to use the shutter speed priority setting to take pictures from a moving train or car – thanks Lydia!)

79. Watch the third Godfather film (done 7/30/10; we watched the first two again (not all at once, of course) to get in the right frame of mind – I didn’t hate it)

80. Re-read all 7 Harry Potter books (done 11/6/10) (7/12/10 – Book 1; 7/21/10 – Book 2; 8/1/10 – Book 3; 8/15/10 – Book 4; 9/9/10 – Book 5; 9/27/10 – Book 6; 10/10/10 – Book 7)

Community

81. Volunteer with the Girl Scouts somewhere (I went through all the rigamarole to get approved for GS in the summer of 2009, and even met with a lady who was supposed to set me up with a troop, but she fell off the face of the earth and I can’t get anyone else to respond to me!)

82. Do 10 nice things for strangers and don’t tell anyone about them (done 12/21/10 – this has been one of my favorite items on the list.  I think I’m going to keep going.)

83. Leave a secret in a Post Secret book at the library or bookstore

84. Write three letters to companies whose products I enjoy or who provided excellent service (0/3)

85. Write three letters to companies when I have a problem with a product or service (2/3) (8/21/09 – wrote to AMC about multiple misspellings and improper punctuation in the captions of the season premiere of Mad Men; 10/26/09 – wrote to Belk to express my displeasure at their statement that they canceled my order because the item wasn’t in stock – despite the website indicating it was – without ever notifying me (I only found out after I inquired because I’d only been charged for one item))

86. Send a care package through Anysoldier.com to a soldier serving overseas (done 12/16/10 – I opted not to go through Anysoldier.com because they had all kinds of restrictions and rules and things that made it less, I don’t know, fun than I thought it would be.  I did mine through work at our annual holiday party last week instead.)

Personal

87. Ask my grandmother to write down five memories of her own mother for me

88. Have the Princess and Conductor spend an overnight with me in D.C. and take them to do fun stuff (done – they came 2/13/10 and we saw Disney on Ice!  They had such a great time!

The next morning, we had a Valentine’s breakfast, complete with heart-shaped pancakes!

I am an awesome aunt!) (See also #23)

89. Write actual letters to 10 people telling them how much they mean to me (0/10)

90. Go one weekend (from 6pm Friday to 7am Monday) without using the internet (including from my cell phone)

91. Do something special with Aimee in 2011 to celebrate 20 years of friendship (Update 9/13/11: Aimee suggested tattoos; I countered with a trip to Napa.  We’re still deciding.) (Update 11/27/11 – I think sky diving – haven’t suggested this to Aimee yet!)

92. Take David on a picnic

93. Continue the Christmas cookie weekend tradition with Karen (3/3) (2009 Cookie Weekend) (2010 Cookie Weekend happened, but I didn’t blog it because apparently I don’t blog anymore) (2011 Cookie Weekend happened too, but I still don’t blog anymore!)

94. Get a haircut and maintain it with regular (every 6 months) trims (8/22/09 – hair cut; 2/28/10 – trim; 8/15/10 – sweet little cut that added bangs; 2/12/11 – trim; 8/19/11 – trim; 2/20/12 – cut with bangs)

95. Write myself a letter at FutureMe.org to be delivered on the end date of this challenge (done 12/17/09)

96. Find a new job (Update 11/27/11 – I have decided to stay on at my current job for the foreseeable future)

97. Finally get my diploma and bar certificates framed (done 12/11/09)

98. Send someone flowers for no reason (done – they were delivered 2/19/10 – I sent my good friend from college some sunflowers (her favorite), and she loved them!)

99. Buy new running shoes (done 1/2/10)

100. Buy new iPod (done 2/4/10 – my parents bought me a Nano for an early birthday present!)

101. Marry David (DONE – 10/15/11!)

Devote today to something so daring even you can’t believe you’re doing it.
— Oprah Winfrey

It’s official: I’m doing a sprint triathlon in September.  I know I talked about it months ago, but the truth is, I only signed up two weeks ago.

I’ve been training, though, eight weeks now.  So far, I’ve stuck to my schedule pretty well (that’s a link to a Google doc – feel free to check up on me!), though until this week I skipped my mid-week run every time.  That shouldn’t happen going forward, since I’m joining Lydia’s accountability team for Wednesday morning runs.

I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty scared.  When I signed up, I had to state my 100-yard swim time.  Turns out my best training time so far barely qualifies me.  I thought I was doing great – the first time I swam 300 yards (my sprint tri distance) back in May, it took me 20 minutes because I had to stop and catch my breath at the end of each length of the pool.  A month ago, I did it in 15 minutes flat.  Two weeks ago, I hit 14:48.  I was pretty psyched.  I mean, I knew it wasn’t fast, as far as swimming goes, but it was such an improvement for me.  The 100-yard cutoff, though, is 4:59.  I lied and gave my time as 4:30.  I have 10 weeks to get faster.

Here’s how I’m training:

In the pool, Saturdays are for speed.  I do 300 yards as fast as I can, then tread water for the remaining minutes.  On Tuesdays, after my WW meeting, I walk to the high school to spend 30 minutes in the pool working on endurance.  I do 500 yards usually – 300 freestyle at a comfortable pace, then 200 more, alternating just legs or just arms for 50 yards each.

I bet I could gain speed, or at least shave seconds off my time, if I could learn how to do a flip turn.  I’ve been practicing, but it’s not easy, for a couple of reasons.  Timing is the biggest one – I’m no good at counting my strokes and figuring out when to take the last big breath before starting the flip.  The second one is balance – my hearing loss caused problems in my inner ear, so that spinning or flipping of any kind can leave me dizzy and disoriented.  I figure if I keep practicing (YouTube has a bunch of intructional videos, which were a big help in figuring out the mechanics), I’m bound to get it sooner or later.  (Confidential to kylydia: the noseplug is crucial)  If not, I’ll adopt the touch the wall, turn, and push off super-fast the Olympic breast strokers and butterflyers use.

I’ve started biking to work on Thursdays (occasionally Wednesdays, depending on weather or schedule) and I love it.  I can’t believe I never did it before this summer, and we’re going to be moving soon.  It’s only a little more than 5 miles one-way and takes 30-35 minutes, depending on how much stopping for traffic lights I have to do once I get into D.C.  Before that, it’s all bike trails – I love where I live.  So 60-70 minutes on Thursdays, total, about 10 miles.

On Sundays, I try to do a longer ride, distance-wise, all at once.  Two weeks ago, David challenged me to ride to Mount Vernon; he said it was 24 miles round-trip and not too hilly.  We did 24 miles in May at Bike DC and it wasn’t too bad, so I happily accepted.  Well.  It was 30 miles and ridiculously hilly, particularly on the way there (you may know that Mount Vernon sits on a bluff overlooking the Potomac.  I myself forgot this fact.).  By the time we were less than a mile from home, I was just done. I  pulled over and told David to go ahead, that I was not going any further (I was irrational with fatigue and hunger, obviously).  He said he couldn’t leave me behind.  I told him this wasn’t the Marines.  He stayed.  Obviously I made it home – the whole thing took about 3 hours – but what I learned is this: The triathlon will likely take me 2.5 hours (I hope, including transitions); I need to be sure I am adequately fueled the whole time.  I need to look into things I can carry with me and on my bike to keep my energy up.  I also need to pick up the pace – 10mph average isn’t going to cut it.  Luckily, the tri course is reportedly flat, so that will make it a little easier to reach a faster average pace.

On the running front, the bad new is, I’ve skipped every mid-week run but the most recent one.  The good news is, every Saturday run and this past Thursday’s run, I’ve run the entire time, no walking except warm up and cool down.  Thursday, by the end, I realized it wasn’t even that hard – the only reason I wanted to quit is because I find it so freaking boring.  I really think all the cross-training is paying off in endurance.

None of this, however, has translated into any weight loss, mostly because I still am not eating as well as I should be.  Before last week, though, I was on my 6th straight week of tracking everything, which hadn’t happened literally in years, so that’s good.  I’m back on track with tracking again, too, now that our family emergency is behind us.

Another thing I want to do is get stronger.  I really need to add weight training to my schedule.  I always mean to, and then don’t.  So here’s what I think I can do:  Wednesday mornings after my runs, I can just hit the gym in my apartment complex before going back upstairs to get ready for work.  If I leave just a little earlier on Thursday mornings, I can do a session in the gym in my office building, since I have to go down there to shower anyway.  If I split upper body/back and lower body/core, it shouldn’t be a problem doing it two days in a row.

Next, I need to figure out what to wear for the race.  Lydia sent me a link to a site that sells everything I could ever need for a tri, and some of it is probably even in my size.  Choices, choices – tri suit? Shorts and tank? Tri suit and a shirt to go over it for the bike and run?  I don’t know.  Obviously, these suits leave nothing to the imagination – will I be comfortable running in one? (I don’t worry at all about wearing it for the swim – covers more than a swimsuit – or the bike ride – too fast for anyone to notice).  By the end of the race, will I care what I look like?  Maybe, if I want a picture of myself crossing the finish line.  Must think about this.

I’m also considering volunteering at a local triathlon, if I can find one, to see how people handle the swim/bike and bike/run transitions.  I got this idea from Emily at Big Life, Little Blog, and it’s a good one.

My goal in every 5k I’ve ever done has been: “Just don’t come in last.”  I’m 6 for 6.  I’m not sure I’ll be able to accomplish that in September, and I’m not sure how I feel about that.  In any event, my goal for this tri is: “Don’t die.  Finish. Try not to come in last.”  That’ll do, pig.