"I cannot go to school today"

I feel like little Peggy Ann McKay in the Shel Silverstein poem "Sick."

But I can't ride TOSRV tomorrow, my knee feels all tweaky.

My rear break is too loose?

It's too windy?

Too sunnny?

Oh, all right, fine.

We arrived in Columbus in the wee hours of this morning, bikes and camping gear in tow, and adventure in our hearts. I dropped into the bed at my father-in-law's around 2 and suddenly 8 o'clock came to early. My body was not yet willing to give up on sleep, but apparently my brain had other plans.

"It's light outside, so it must be time to get up!" it kept shouting at me.

I rolled out of bed and wandered upstairs to the kitchen for my required cup of coffee: it was time to get the day moving.

After a leisurely breakfast of yummy bagels and cold cuts, we moved outside to start organizing our gear: rolling and repacking our tent, stuffing sleeping bags that had just been tossed into the car, into their stuff bags, the hunting down of biking gloves that had gone astray from their helmets during the trip.

We adjusted my seat (to hopefully eliminate the tweaky knee that resulted during the last long ride), gave my handle bars a tiny turn up (wish I had done that a year and a half ago), and tightened the aforementioned loose rear break.

My saddle back has been packed with tools and spare tubes that I am completely unsure of how to use in the event of an emergency. But I did receive coaching on that as well. "Pull out the tools and the tube and then just play dumb. Someone will stop to help you," were my husband's sage words.


Excellent, no problem there.


Okay, yes, I should learn how to change a tire. Bicycles do not come with AAA after all. And how big of deal is it when I already know how to tighten my breaks and align my gears? One of these days....


The weather forecast had been promising, mid 60s and sunny. 


That has since changed to mid 50s, cloudy and winds at 25 mph from the WSW.


Great. We'll be bike SSE.

Sunday is slightly better. The winds drop to 12-15 mph but shift to coming out of the WNW, the direction we'll be heading.

Good times.

Here's to hoping that the weather man is wrong.

The pros and cons of catching pneumonia

Spring has finally sprung in Cedar Rapids.

The 50 feet of snow that had blanketed my lawn has melted.The oak in the backyard has given up its leaves. It is officially spring.

I have been hemming and hawing about starting to bike into work.

I've been blaming daylight savings since it now doesn't start to become light until 6:45.

I've been blaming the fact that we switched my pedals to clip-ins so I can ride with my new bike sandals and the fact that between work and cake orders, I've been too busy to get out and ride.

I've been blaming the weather for not being warm enough or for being too rainy.

Really, it's been the fear of the frustrations the biking causes me. Hills are still my nemesis. And I'm sure that in the 6 months it's been since I've been outside on my bike, I haven't magically gotten better at it.

But I had quickly run out of time, considering how soon TOSRV will be here, followed shortly by the Pigman.

So I packed up my new bike bag last night with clothing for today, set out my sandals and collected my riding gear: bike shorts, thermal tights, long sleeve shirt, short sleeve shirt, bike gloves and helmet. Well, it was only going to be in the high 30s when it was time to set out.

7 am came fairly quickly and I began to second guess my decision. The recent, very fast thaw, followed by buckets o'rain had flooded the Cedar River again and it was quite possible that my bike trail would be submerged still at certain points. This wouldn't be a huge deal, but using the bike path allowed me to skip certain monstrous hills and tons of traffic.

Okay.

I'm being a bit dramatic. I live in Iowa after all.

Tons of traffic doesn't really exist. At least not in the direction that I was headed.

My husband offered no sympathy, though he did admit to being mildly concerned about me being alone on the 4 miles of bike trail that runs through the woods. Not because he was concerned for my safety (see above reference to living in Iowa), but because I was clipping into my pedals. He is fully aware of my lack of coordination and was worried that I might fall and break something.

I relented and off we set, heading down the hill and through the park together until our paths diverged.

And I was left alone with my thoughts.

Which, to be honest, consisted mostly of, "um, why the hell am I doing this again?"

I don't know if it was the addition of bike shoes and pedals or maybe the effort I've been putting in has just paid off, but I certainly felt stronger. The ride that I had made a couple of times last year seemed easier.

The trip itself was uneventful. The portions of the trail that had been washed out by the floods of '08 had been repaved and were dry, though they were still covered with sand where the river had taken over again. I was able to stay within myself when the climbing became difficult, not paying much attention to what awaited ahead. I focused on the gearing advice that been given to me by someone who had many century rides under his belt.

I got into work an hour later than usual, which had been expected. It threw my day off as I'm so accustomed to being the first one in our set of pods each morning.

Unfortunately a quick peek at the weather forecast around lunch time showed that the 10% chance of showers at 3pm turned into 60% by 2. At 3, I checked the radar. There was almost only green on the screen with a big blob of yellow storms sitting over Cedar Rapids.

With Pete having biked in to work as well, I had no choice but to set out for home in the rain.

I was mostly surprised with the results.

Early in the trail portion of the route, I became concerned by a sound that I could not identify. I turned my head to to try to get a better ear and realized that the path was winding through some swampy lands. The sounds that had caught my attention was many happy toads wallowing in the rain. Definitely not something that I would have gotten to experience had I driven in.

I arrived home, soaked, sandy and cold, but really, it hadn't been as miserable as I thought it would be.

“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect it’s successful outcome.” ~William James 

Who would have thought?

Who would have thought that my local grocery store follows my blog? I mean, how else can I explain that everything that I wanted was on sale this week. They surely heard my complaints last week and promptly resolved the issue, right?

It seemed that all produce was $.88 cents (each or per pound, didn't matter). Chicken breasts were $1.99 per pound and 99% lean ground turkey was Buy One Get One. Roma tomatoes are slow roasting in the oven (where they will be for the next 6 hours) in prep for a couple of menu items this week. Avocados are ripening on the counter for sandwiches. Joy has returned to my kitchen.

Since Pete worked late a few days this week, I hate cooking for just one, and we had massive amounts of turkey chili left over, some of last weeks items were moved to this week. So while it may not have changed much over last, I feel more inspired with what I have to work with.

Same goes for my work out this week.

Though I'm sure it was sitting back in my subconscious already, I was reminded by Andrea during our swim yesterday, the Pigman is just over three months away. And while I have been better about getting to the gym, I've let my running program go a little lax. Part of it was the lingering cold that I fought for two weeks, true. Part of it has just been my struggle to fit it all in.

So I have decided that I need to start pushing myself even harder. I'm going to start sacrificing the warmth of my bed in the early morning hours to get to the track to run. Sure, I could just do the treadmill, but having been through four 5k runs now, it doesn't seems to be enough to aptly condition my body. The track still offers more shock absorption that the concrete roads that surround my house, and, quite frankly, it's still too cold to start running outside in the dark hours of the morning.

It also seems that the weather has heard my pleas for mercy. The current 10 day forecast shows temperatures at or just above freezing with some sunshine to go with it. At the moment, next Saturday is showing a low of 31 and a high of 42. If that sticks, I may have to bike to the Y for my usual Saturday swim.

And now, in the world of biking and extreme goals for this year....

It has been decided that Pete and I will be participating in the annual Tour of the Scioto River Valley bike ride in May. I'm optioning only the half ride: 50 miles one way. It'll be good prep for both the triathlon and for our planned vacation. I need to get over my dislike of hills and being stuck in the middle of nowhere will force me to complete the ride.

Sign me up, pay the fee, announce it to the world so I can't back out.

"Things that hurt, instruct." ~ Ben Franklin

Training Schedule: Week of February 21st

Since I create the Board on Sundays, it just made more sense to shift the week to Sunday - Saturday. Maybe it'll help me actually make my Sunday work out too.

The menu this week feels uninspired. Maybe it's my irritation with my local grocery store for having nothing even remotely healthy on sale aside from grapes.

I joined a Biggest Loser competition at work a couple of weeks ago. Of course I was sick during the first two weeks of the competition and hadn't really been able to work out. My loss stands at a whopping 1.25 pounds.

Now in the fourth week of competition, my cold is mostly gone and I've decided it's time to light a fire under my motivation. The pot is at $415 for the Biggest Loser to take away with 8 more weeks to go.

And now that I'm getting the energy back to both work out and cook, the sale selection just seems to be blah.

Or maybe my irritation stems from the weather forecast and the additional 2"-5" of snow that will fall by noon tomorrow. Global Warming my ass!!

New swim suits are on their way.

I balked at the $45 price tag of my swim suit when I started on this journey. I figured that I was simply paying for the Speedo name, but with limited resources for swimsuit buying in November in Iowa, I concluded that it was the best deal to be found.

Last spring I came across the website Swimoutlet.com and found fitness suits for as little as $19, so I ordered myself a pretty red one.

It started to shred three months later, and that was with switching back and forth between the pretty new red one and my basic black number.

The original $45 suit has held up for over a year now but is now on its last leg. There's a little more drag in the bottom and I continuously have to pull up the top at the end of each lap. A seam in the back is getting a little threadbare and is making me start to worry that it will soon come undone mid-stroke.

I bit the bullet and ordered the same suit again. Hopefully it'll hold up as well as my original.

American Cancer Society

I promised I would do it again.

I would have even if I hadn't promised.

It's a big part of what holds me accountable.

The link to my American Cancer Society's donation page is up and running again. Click here to make a donation or use the link on the right hand side of this page.

I'm dedicating this season to my mom, who battled cervical cancer over the summer.

And to Lori Michael, a friend of the family, who recently lost her fight.

Help me Tri for more success stories and fewer good-byes.