This has got to stop already!!! >:-(

OK, after about a week of winds now I am starting to think that this might actually impair my marathon preparations. Last night was probably the "windiest" night so far this year (with only two days remaining, tight squeeze, ha) as we had gusts over 80mph and wind ripping apart my screen doors and windows. I was awake most of the night, pretending to be sailing in a ship (thanks to B's imagination) with the shinook (cute word, huh) winds hitting my house being the waves hitting the boat... I actually felt my bed sway back and forth at times, no joke. It was supposed to let up this morning I thought, but my run about an hour ago was the most pathetic thing ever. Not only did I have no oomph, the gusts would literally stop me in my tracks, and it took at least twice as much energy to move forward. The top gust at 10.30 A.M. was 73mph or something. Nice. Branches and parts of trees were strewn all over roads and trails, trash was scattered everywhere, and some construction site lost a good ton of styrofoam, as it decorated most of my neighborhood this morning. Big cleanup is on the way...

I am trying to find some info on the benefits of running in such a crazy circumstance; there has got to be something good about it. I am spent like I did a track workout after these runs and my hamstrings take days to recover, because apparently my knee lift goes beserk when I go into these headwinds. This must be the winter of wind, instead of snow. I am not sure which I prefer more...

Last Long Run and Chlorine

I did my last loooong run before the marathon today in rather frosty conditions, but am happy that I got it done, because with the weather here, you never know what's coming next and it could always be worse! I didn't think it would be as freezing as it was, but thanks to some fierce winds the real feel air temp was hovering right around 10 degrees. My gloves stayed on the whole time. I divided my run into three parts: run the first 80 mins by myself around my neighborhoods, then meet up with Brandon at his house and run for an hour from there with him (which ended up being the creek path) and then run back to my house and add on if needed.

The hour with Brandon was pretty easy so that I had enough left in the tank to pick it up a bit on the way home, despite nearly freezing my face off. All the ponds and lakes are frozen; people are using them to play ice hockey on (hopefully the ice is thick enough for that) and even my gel I brought along felt like I took it straight out of a freezer when I opened it. But hey, what doesn't kill you, will only make you stronger.

I finished the 3-hr run on a high note and then cooled the legs off in the pool for 30 mins, realizing once again that swimming is my least favorite of the three sports. I mean come on, what is enjoyable about forcing yourself out in temps hovering around 0, while your bathing suit is hardening up from the water (joking) freezing on it, and doing it all in complete darkness with the entire pool to just yourself. My thoughts seem to wander when I do these swims, and I usually end up getting some dumb song stuck in my head, repeating it over and over again, even though I can't stand it.

While we certainly have gotten our share of the frigid, nasty weather lately, the Pacific Northwest seems to have been hit a little harder, whilst less prepared. Apparently, most roads are iced over like skating rinks, with only major highways cleared and accidents just waiting to happen. My family is flying to Germany for the holidays tomorrow and left their house today to be able to make their flight out of SeaTac tomorrow. Hopefully it all goes without incident.

If you're a member of a health club with a locker room, you will probably know what I am talking about when I say locker room gossip. And I mean the kind women talk about. Lets just say that you hear the MOST interesting things come out of people's mouths, it almost feels like confession in there sometimes. Today I "accidentally" (it was loud enough for all to hear) eavesdropped on a woman complaining about the fact that she won't swim because of the chlorine in the pool and of how dry her skin gets afterwards. Ok lady, two things: sorry but you need chlorine in a public pool, otherwise you will not leave healthy after swimming, and second, there is lotion for that dry skin. It's funny how triathletes (and swimmers I guess) actually talk about how much they love the smell of chlorine on theirs and other bodies; and I must confess, smelling of chlorine after a swim is somewhat satisfying, almost like a deep cleanse, or a mark of achievement. I guess this comes to show just how freaky we ueber- endurance athletes appear to the general population.

Yes, it's freezing

note- picture of Antarctica, not Colorado, we don't have penguins here, although right now I think they'd love it.

Just to let the world know that Boulder has not frozen over yet, here is a post. After weeks of unseasonably mild (60s and even 70s) weather, I knew we were doomed for some major changes. Well those arrived this weekend, during Brad and Pete's annual holiday party (more on that in a sec) where it started to snow ever so slightly, increasing to a full-blown storm overnight. We awoke yesterday to temps that hovered around 0-5 degrees F in the morning and warmed up to about 10 maybe? Running in that was bearable, although not recommended for the weak of heart, as it took awhile to warm up. Due to the company I was running with however, opting out was not in the cards. It ended up being a snowy and uncertain adventure out towards the res via Wonderland Lake and Eagle Trail.

Today however was a whole different ball game. I set out for a run at 9 a.m., with my usual cold weather running attire, which really doesn't differ that much from temps ranging in the 30s to teens. I added gloves (fleece lined) and my headband (in hindsight I should have worn a hat on top of it, I know better..) and headed out. It was literally BITTER cold. The always trusty weather.com said at least 5 degrees so it seemed that would be similar to yesterday. 20 mins in my left hand got really cold, as in bitter cold, as in it wouldn't warm up. I tried all the tricks: blowing in my glove(dumb as it just turns the evaporated air to ice), putting my hand into a ball in the glove and covering it with my sleeve. Nothing worked and I just got colder. It started to really bite. I came to my last resort- taking my hand completely out of the glove and shoving it down my pants for a few seconds. That did nothing. Neither did the armpit. My only option was to book it back home. The catch in that however was that when you run harder, more blood rushes FROM your extremities, such as your hands. When I finally got back to my place, both my hands were frozen; I had to run water over them and then wait for the thawing to begin. Scary to say the least. Fortunately I came away unscathed, but refused to go outside the rest of the day. Later on the news I found out that we broke 2 records in less than 12 hours. Yesterday's low and this morning's low, which was freaking 19 below 0, and that's Fahrenheit! So I am going to take a wild guess and say that the temps during my run were around -10 maybe? I passed a guy who was also running, who had a snow mustache. Tomorrow sounds balmy as we are supposed to climb back up in the teens and 20s, woot!

Now back to Saturday night. I ended up yapping away in German for a good part of the ever-entertaining white elephant gift exchange with a certain double Kona winner from Germany. After doing several double takes, I came to the conclusion that it really was him and asked him what he was doing here in Boulder. Seemingly happy that he was able to speak in his native tongue, we talked about our Kona experiences this year (from not enough salt tabs to too many) and accepted white elephant gifts, one a little more risque than the other. After being talked into meeting up the following morning for an "easy" run (it's not that hard to convince me) I called it a night and went home, only to wake up to antarctic-like weather conditions. But I couldn't cancel, from one German to another, when we say to meet, we don't back out. And I did not want to come across a wimp. I survived the run better than expected and apparently even impressed the Norminator with my running "speed". ha. Fun times.

Falling off your bike trainer- talent or stupidity?

I managed to do it again. I did it last winter, although on a different trainer. I fell off the thing in a slow-motion trance. To paint the picture, I was sitting upright, reading Triathlete Mag's Jan issue (the one with my picture in it:-) about Saul Raisin's comeback after a brain injury (which btw is just incredible!); I can't read or focus on small print when I'm on trainer and the mag is sitting on my aerobars- too far away, and just got to the part about his rehabilitation and how he had no sensations in the left side of his body- when it slowly happened. I slowly tilted sideways. But I was so into reading this story and how this guy didn't have great balance, it seemed like I was living the story through him. Ha, CRASH, down I went, one foot still clipped in. I made a soft landing onto the carpet and nearby ottoman chair, but managed to chip some paint off the frame. Just how I do these things I don't know. I have yet to crash (knock on wood) outside, but have so far managed to do it twice inside.

I later realized after a careful inspection that I may have forgotten to tighten the bolts on BOTH sides of the trainer. Who knew these things were this complicated...

Last night we got more snow again, wet snow this time, making things a bit messier than last week. At 4 a.m. I was awakened by the sounds of a snow blower 7 ft below my window. Out of all noises to hear in the middle of the night, this is probably my least favorite. It might as well have been in my bedroom. Not to mention, why in the world would you do this at 4 a.m. while it's still snowing and people are asleep? Use a shovel next time! Earlier in the night I was treated to car alarms going off; why don't people whose car alarms are going off, do something about it??? Are they immune to the sounds and just don't hear them or are they trying to piss everyone else off? Anyways, it was a pretty restless night for sleep.

What follows snow...

...is the big meltdown. The temps have crawled back up in the 40s and 50s and Thursday's snow is rapidly decreasing- yay! I made the smart (or not so smart) choice to run at the res for my long run today, as to avoid any residual icy roads I may otherwise have encountered, had I done my regular LR route through Boulder. I figured that the res roads should be mostly cleared up by now, as the sun has been out for a while.

Well I got to the res and the dirt road was still covered in snow- hard, 'iced over in spots' snow. I know my trusty Adidas Bostons aren't the best for slippery conditions but hoped I wouldn't slide. Turns out the road had a foot wide exposed shoulder of dirt I was able to run on, until I got to 39th Street leading up to Nelson Road. That's where the muddy fun started. I caked myself in a thick layer of it and probably weighed 5 lbs more at the end of the run than when I started out. I had to snap some pics as my collection of grime was too impressive to not show off. Click on image to get all the muddy details.
It even caught the eye of two envious cyclists who were trying to get dirty by riding their cross bikes around the res. One gave me props for getting "dirrty". Um... thanks? All in all, I ran around like that for 22.5mi before I stopped and it all started itching real bad. Maybe I could make it the latest beauty trend? "Mud-caked skin, better than a chemical peel." hahaha.More mud than I ever accumulated throughout all of my XC running years

Say it isn't so...

Well, not quite as bad as my disappearing bug in this picture, but this morning I woke up to winter. Not only did we have a "chance of snow later today", we got about 4 inches overnight. While I do enjoy the whiteness of it all, I am not exactly a fan of it because a) my car drives like absolute crap in snow, I fear for my life every time I strap on the seatbelt, b) snow removal is foreign to Boulder, or at least using alternative means to get rid of the ice and snow on the road is, yes I can understand that salt is bad for the road, cars and environment, but I feel that safety comes first and if you don't have four-wheel drive such as myself, it really sucks! c) all my running routes are altered! Plus no riding outside for sure now! OK, we do live in CO, so it's to be expected, but I thought that just maybe we'd get a little less this year, and later on, it was 70 degrees after all, 2 days ago. Anywho, I guess I should stop complaining since this is a sign that not all is lost in climate change just yet.
Only 6 months till summer!!

In the meantime, it's trainer rides galore, snowy runs with snowstraps on my shoes,and lovely outdoor pool swims under the flakes (which is actually pretty neat once you warm up) Off to start layering up for my run, it takes forever to get out the door in the winter, doesn't it?My slip-proof feet ready to goTo run or not to run?

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So I went for that run, and am happy to report that my ankles and all other body parts are still attached to me and I am in one piece. About 30 seconds after heading out the door I heard the little voice inside my head telling me that this was a dumb idea. Even though I had my "grippers" on my shoes, I still slid into the road as I tried to navigate my way across. The brown slushfest that greeted me there, was even more fun for the cars that slid through it! Hesitant to look as cars were making turns or braking, I half blindly made my way down the street and realized that NoBO must really not be on any snow plow department's list. The roads looked treacherous and the sidewalks were shoveled only where a few kind souls got their own equipment out to clear their driveways/10ft of sidewalk. I trekked through the snow that was over my ankles on the sidewalk and made my way to the Cyclo Cross Course, only to find actual, fresh tire treads! Whaaat? Who would practice their bike in a foot of fresh snow? I guess I am just a wuss! My run proved to be quite a white-out, as I had trouble with depth perception from the icicles covering my eyelashes. My glasses had long given up and fogged up as soon as I brought them near my face. Snow blew left and right and in my face, which I repeatedly wiped in fear of the melted snow freezing to my cheeks and giving me frost bite, eek.Post-run purple lips, and no, it's not a dorky boy scout look Brandon! It's how you stay warm and keep flakes out of your eyes at the same time! (headband and hat!)

I also saw a mom on a bike with a trailer and her little 4 year old son following on his own lil bike. In the snow! In the blizzard! These people must be part Eskimo, I swear! She was even yelling at him because he was pushing his bike through the snow, instead of riding it. I think I will suck it up from now on and ride my bike in the snow! NOT! ha.

I got back home and shoveled a path to my car, in case I drive it at all this week, but the snow kept on falling and has already covered most of it back up. I am freezing to the bone, even after bundling up in a 6ft long scarf (see pic) and drinking hot tea. We are sitting steady at a "balmy" 17 degrees F!Ueber-scarf and still purple lips

Blueseventy Ad

I was informed a few days ago that I am featured in a Kona ad by blueseventy in Inside Tri's January issue, but was unable to see it since the magazine hasn't hit store shelves yet. Jax sent me a snapshot of the ad last night so I could see for myself. It's only about half the ad, as it spreads out over both pages, but it's so cool! They managed to completely capture my terrorized face prior to the swim start. It's a mix between fear, excitement and apathy. The ad is also in Triathlete's January issue I am told.