Two Ears One Mouth

Are you guys tired of hearing about triathlons yet? Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) for you, I'm never tired of writing about them. So here we go. When I was little, I was mildly adventurous. I remember bus evacuation day when I was in 1st grade. 2 of the tall kids on the bus would jump out the emergency exit in the back of the bus first then one by one all of us would follow with the tall kids taking our hands and helping us out. By 3rd grade, I was one of the tall kids. Sensing the impending duty of being the first one off the bus I began contemplating first, what would happen if I died jumping out of the back of a bus with no one to help me. Then, I contemplated what would happen to the other kids. Then the day came, I thought, "How hard could it be?" and jumped. Do you know what happened? You're right, I didn't die. The moral of this story is that I went through a phase in life that I think we all go through where suddenly I stopped thinking, "How ha...

How do you keep yourself up? How do you keep from getting down in the dumps? I'm not historically a bright, cheery and positive person but I've done some major overhauling over the past year and am really starting to turn things around. But my real question is how do you keep it up? How, after problem after problem, constant issues, stresses and disappointments, can a person continue to say "It'll be ok." "It'll get better." How many times can you say "Tomorrow will be better." when every tomorrow still isn't any better? When you get to the point where "At least today wasn't worse than yesterday." is the brightest phrase you can come up with before you go to sleep, how long can you keep that up? Having to search for a silver lining every single day isn't how someone should have to live their life. What about a day where there are less storm clouds so you don't even need to find a silver lining? I know it could alwa...

I don't want to go into detail. Probably not something a blogger should say considering the reason most of us have blogs is to go into detail about things the people in our lives are completely over hearing about. Anyhow, long story short, the past 2 weeks have been all kinds of awful. From car trouble to professional drama and mathematical woes it's really just all been bad. Regarding the negative, I don't want to go into detail. What I will go into detail about is my new baby. Let me preface this by saying that I love Big Red and she will always hold a special place in my heart. She was my first (well...sort of). But it was time to upgrade. I love you Big Red! Just wait until we start trail riding... Yesterday, it finally happened. My Trek Lexa S was finally ready! All of the bullsh*t of the past few weeks just melted away when I was on my test ride. I felt like a real athlete triathlete. I only had a slight panic attack when my card was swiped and only considered my fut...

Yesterday was literally a nearly perfect day. My sister and I went out to Swag's East for our first group one together. I've been to a few and she's been to a few but our schedules rarely line up for the both of us to be able to go together. They were doing 5, 8 or 10 mile routes. I chose the 5 and Alexis was planning on 8. It was pouring rain when I got up but by the time we got there it was starting to ease up a bit. It was in the mid 60s with a breeze so I wasn't thrilled to be running in the rain. Where was it when I needed it during those 6am 90 degree days?! Anyhow, off we went and the rain let up after about a mile or so and about 2 miles in the clouds started to break and the sun came out. It was really fun having my sister around and somehow I managed to keep a conversational pace throughout. I tried to go out slow since I'd swam over a mile the day before (for the first time! High Five!) and hit the first mile right on 12 minutes. It still seems so fast t...

Totally forgot to write a race report for the Pioneer 5K last weekend! It was my best 5K to date (aside from when I used to be skinny and a real runner) and I'm really proud of it. You can check out the results here. I got 9th in my age group out of 12 which is surprisingly good for such a small race. In big races I'm pretty sure I won't be last but in smaller races it's not outlandish to think I might be DFL in a small race. Nice to see I wasn't. The day started off really well even though I had a sore hip flexor from a Chris Freytag workout a couple of days prior. By the way, for anyone looking for a great at home circuit workout weight loss program, Chris Freytag's 10lb Slimdown Xtreme is awesome! But as a result I had a little soreness in my hip so was a little nervous but still excited. It was exactly one week after my tri so the plan was really to just have fun and do a nice little 5K jog with my sister. Tyler was running too in his second race ever but ...

I couldn't possibly write a blog about things that used to matter without in turn telling you what does matter. Shorts - I have a long and negative history with shorts. Even when I was young and cute and skinny I still rarely wore shorts. I don't have a good reason for why I disliked shorts so much but my new and improved triathlete self greatly appreciates that shorts and I have buried the hatchet. What really brought about this change was the combination of training and excessive heat. Sounds simple enough but it used to take a half marathon in 90 degree temps to get me into a pair of shorts. Now I have so many pairs (ok maybe like 3 pairs) that I absolutely love I find myself wearing them around before, during and after a workout. I've also found that I don't care. In the same way I didn't care if I was last during the tri because obviously no one else would, I've found that I don't care what people think of me in shorts. I know, it's stupid. Hydratio...