Ode to a hunk of metal
We got a new car a few weeks ago. This probably wouldn't be a big deal except that our old car was the only car we have ever owned. It was 14 years old. It was like family.
The Camry had nearly 133,000 miles on it. We took good care of it, but we drove it hard, up and down and up and down the hills of SF, through several harsh Chicago winters and summers, and across about 30 US states. The poor thing endured being parked outside for at least half of its life when we didn't have a garage.
Who says you can't have adventures in a family sedan? We loaded the Camry up with bikes, camping gear, bike trainers, and more bikes. We drove it to Niagara Falls and Moab, Utah. We circumnavigated Lake Michigan (about 1100 miles) in a weekend. We cruised along the Mississippi from New Orleans to Minnesota. We crossed the borders into both Canada and Mexico, drove all up and down the West Coast and dabbled in New York state.
We raced that sweet 4-cylinder, 125hp engine (against no one) at the Bonneville Speedway. We got lost and got a flat on a fire road outside of Ashland, Oregon. The Camry took us to too many trailheads to count, and many races, from my very first triathlon in scenic West Sacramento to Ironman triathlons in Idaho and Arizona.
We got engaged in the Camry, in December of 1996, in Texas. It's a very romantic story; ask me some time if you haven't heard it.
And all that time, the air conditioning never let us down. Well, except that one time on the drive to Tahoe in July -- my GOD that was a hot drive through Sacramento -- but we got it fixed for $400 and we were back to enjoying that ice-cold breeze while we blazed through the oven-hot Central Valley.
The costs of repairing the old car are what eventually did it in. We'd been putting a lot of money into it in the last few years. Last year's failed smog check was the first nail in the coffin. And then Dave was coming home from a race a few months ago and the engine started to sputter about 70 miles from home. He found a place that was able to fix it late on a Saturday afternoon (for $350), but then the next day the radiator dumped coolant all over our garage floor. We fixed that, too ($400), but decided enough was enough. I didn't want to put more money into the old car when the click I was hearing with every hard right turn inevitably became a big problem. So we got a new car. A new four-door sedan.
You read that right, we could have bought any type of car we wanted for our sporty lifestyle, but we didn't get a wagon or an SUV. We like the sedan (even though the word "sedan" makes me think of giant American 1970 and 80s cars... my grandparents' Caprice Classic, specifically). I fail to see how a wagon with a bike rack is any better for us than a sedan with a big trunk and a bike rack. And especially living in the city, I like having that big locking trunk.
I really like the new car, but I doubt I'll ever love it like we loved our Camry. And the AC, honestly, it's just not nearly as good. It doesn't blast cold air like the Camry could. On the bright side, I'm not worried about busting an axle on a road trip or wondering where the undiagnosed brake grinding is coming from. It's a fair trade.
June 16, 2009 2:45 PM | Comments (2)
I am not a morning person.
I'm beginning to feel like this site and my twitter feed are turning into a string of complaints about how much I dislike getting up early. If you were paying attention to my Twitter feed last Sunday, you might have noticed that I was up at two o'clock in the morning to volunteer at a race that was really far away. I have never gotten up that early for any race. Not even ironman races. I am much more likely to still be up at 2am putzing around on the internet than eating breakfast at that hour.
But... sigh... I had committed, and I had agreed to run a relay leg on top of the volunteering, and luckily I wasn't driving. So into the Woomobile I hauled my sleepy self at 3am, and off to the Morgan Hill Sprint Triathlon we went.
After a hilarious round of "where the hell do we park?" in the total rural darkness at 4:30am, we found ourselves setting up the registration table, sorting out t-shirts and swim caps. We had been assured that most of the competitors would pick up their race packets the day before, and that race-day registration would be mellow. WRONG.
Of the 700 or so participants, I think about 25 had the foresight to pick up their packets the day before. The remaining 675 stood in line, growing increasingly pissed off as race time approached, the line grew, and they realized they had ALL left their USAT membership cards and their wallets in their cars half a mile away. (I can still hear the whining: "But the web site didn't sayyyy I needed to bring it!")
(Side note to triathletes: Always always always bring your ID, your USAT card and some cash or a credit card or a checkbook to packet pickup. Always! You never know when you or a friend will need to pay for a one-day license, or perhaps replace a small but crucial piece of gear, or maybe bribe a race official not to DQ you for a missing bar-end plug. Or, you know, whatever.)
I was on goody-bag duty, which required me to grab the appropriate color swim cap and t-shirt size for each racer, stuff them in a canvas bag and then hand them to the right person, all within about four seconds. The caps were in piles on the ground off to one side of the registration tent, so every time I grabbed a cap I did a deep right-leg lunge. I suspected this might come back to bite me after 300 or so lunges.
The registration table was two solid hours of controlled mayhem. We were moving pretty efficiently, but we only had three copies of the race list so we could only move the line so fast. They ended up delaying the race by 10 or 15 minutes so we could get everyone registered. And then suddenly we were done with our volunteering duties. Time to get ready to race.
By 8am it was getting hot. I did a short warm-up run and my right knee was screaming from all the right-leg lunges. It was too hot to do a warm-up anyway. So I just stood around and sweated while I waited for our cyclist to come in, starting my 5-mile run around 9am. I think the temps were already in the mid 80s, maybe even 90. The aid stations were very well stocked with ice water, but by the time I finished running I was fully cooked. I'm just not used to heat like that. My run time was 43:15ish, not blazing fast by any means. But it was fast enough for us to win the women's relay division by about 30 seconds. (Although honestly, we won it on the swim, thanks to our awesome swimmer, certainly not because of my running.)
A highlight of the day was seeing 2007 Ironman world champion Chris McCormack and local pro Chris Lieto sprint it out at the finish line, with Lieto's little boy right on their heels wearing an outfit that coordinated with his dad's. I got a brief chance to say hello to Macca in the morning when he stopped by the registration tent with the race director, but never got a photo.
By noon it was a hundred degrees out and we all felt like it must be late afternoon. That's what happens when you get up at 2am. We were happy to head back to the cool breezes back in the city. And despite my complaining, the day was a lot of fun. I got to get in some volunteering and a quick race, all before 10am. And I snagged myself a spare swim cap in silver, the color the pros wore. Just one of the perks of working registration!
Return to Glory Hole
I raced the Angels Camp triathlon last Sunday in an attempt to defend last year's age group win. After last year's victory I suggested that maybe it was time to retire, since I'd probably never win my age group in a triathlon again. And I may have been correct. (Well, check back with me when I'm 70. I may be winning again by then, assuming my current competition moves on to other pursuits.)
So yeah, I didn't win again this year, but I did end up on the podium and I'm pretty pleased with my results. And as always, the race was loads of fun, with ample sunshine, pretty scenery, and a nice low-key vibe.
I was looking forward to this race as much as I was dreading it. Last year I was a month post-ironman and I was in terrific shape. This year, not so much. I'm heavier, I've been training less, and I think I might have picked up some asthma or something -- still trying to figure that out. So I expected to be considerably slower. I expected to be passed by a lot of women on the very hilly bike course. I just hoped I could pass some of them back on the run.
My swim time was almost exactly the same as last year despite the fact that they changed the course in an attempt to lengthen it. The water in the reservoir has been very low -- see photo below of the steep quarter-mile boat ramp we had to run up to get to T1 -- so the swim course is sort of disappearing.
Despite my fears, I actually passed two or three women on the bike and, more significantly, did not get passed by any sprightly climber women. The last one I passed was riding her brakes on the huge descent back to transition. Women, let's please learn how to ride downhill safely and confidently. Seriously.
But then once I started the run, that woman plus two others immediately blew by me. Luckily none of them were in my age group! Knowing that I was the fifth woman off the bike, and knowing that at least one of the top four was not in my age group and that the winner would be taken out of the age-group results, I calculated that as long as I didn't get passed by any thirty-something women, I'd end up in the top three for women 30-39. Maybe I wasn't running hard enough if I could figure that all out in my head. Heh.
That run is difficult, mostly on a very narrow trail with rocks and roots and some short but steep hills. I expected to feel my lack of fitness on the bike, but I think it affected me more on the run, where the hills felt way harder than they should have. I caught my friend Liz around mile two and tried to drop her, but bless her heart, she hung on to me like a remora on a shark and we ran down the chute together. I managed to outsprint her at the line, barely, ending up with a 1:44:59 to her 1:45:00. We both took 3rd place in our respective age groups, and we were 9th and 10th overall out of 38 women. (That's what they get for moving the race to Mother's Day: 25% fewer women than last year!)
But best of all, I was only three minutes and four seconds slower than last year, which more than anything was a huge relief. It means that even when I'm not in ironman shape I can still produce a result I'm happy with.
Why Dave is now typing on his Blackberry at half speed
Many of you have heard snippets (ha!) of the story of my husband injuring his thumb. Here's the full story, for posterity, and maybe also for a little therapy.
Dave has been working from home since March. Three weeks ago today, just after noon, he was chopping veggies to go into a salad for lunch. I was sitting just a few feet away when he swore loudly, threw down the knife and backed away from the cutting board. It took him a moment to realize that he had effortlessly sliced off the top of his left thumb with our just-sharpened santoku knife. He took off about a quarter of an inch of skin and tissue.
He couldn't have made a cleaner cut with a scalpel -- this was a perfectly crisp slice, sitting on the cutting board among scattered carrot coins and shredded lettuce. It didn't even start bleeding until several seconds later, and then it was pretty much gushing. (Later, at the ER, Dave would observe that the blood flow was pulsing with his heartbeat. Which, you know, it is supposed to do, you just don't expect to see blood spouting out of your finger at 60 beats per minute.)
We sat around waiting at the ER for several hours. The thumb spurted blood all over the X-ray table while they took pictures to make sure that the bone was not involved. We waited for the doctor to help the homeless lady with emphysema and the the guy who had an infection at the site where a stranger injected him with speed, absorbing the sad stories of those without access to primary health care as Dave soaked up his blood with an unending supply of gauze.
I had carefully collected the fingertip from the cutting board and taken it to the hospital in a cup of ice water, which by this point was just warm and bloody water, like a Dixie cup of room-temperature Hawaiian punch... with a little prize at the bottom. But they couldn't use the tip since the finger was bleeding too much for them to suture it back on. I was a little disappointed.
When I was a kid, my then-11-year-old sister lost the tip of her middle finger in a high-speed domestic chase situation involving a closing door. (I still say it wasn't my fault. Not 100% anyway. Maybe 51%.) I was responsible for retrieving the tip and cradling it in a bowl of ice water as our mom drove us to our dad's office. Dad (a doctor) sutured the tip back on, saying it was "the best possible dressing," but warned that it would probably fall off eventually. A couple weeks later, the mummified tip fell off the Frankenfinger as predicted. It was cool and disturbing.
Anyway, instead of grafting the tip back onto Dave's thumb, the doctor plugged up the wound with a substance called Gelfoam. It looked like a little chunk of styrofoam. It immediately stopped the bleeding and acted like a synthetic scab. Pretty cool.
Three weeks later, the injury is definitely healing, but the digit is clearly shorter than before. I know some of you want to see photos, but be warned that they are not for the squeamish. Here's the well-circulated picture of Dave in the ER. It's is a little bloody. Here's the unbandaged thumb in all its shortness. And finally, the grossest of them all, here is the head-on view of the injury, two weeks post-slice.
When it is uncovered, the raw tissue bulges up a little and it reminds me a little of a tiny person who has had the top of her skull removed to expose her brain. Like one of those Fisher-Price peg people after being scalped in a bloody battle. Maybe we should draw a Sharpie face on the thumb and make a tiny band-aid baseball cap for it.
I hope you already ate lunch!
Down at the Lake
I went down to Lake San Antonio last weekend with friends. If that name sounds familiar, you probably are a triathlete or know one. Lake San Antonio is the site of the Wildflower triathlon festival every May. The Lake San Antonio Resort pays its bills with income generated not just from race week, but also in the two months leading up to the race, when triathletes from all over California descend on their rental cabins and campgrounds to train on the race course.
I'm not actually training for this race. In fact, I have raced Wildflower only once, back in 2003. But I've gone down for our club's training weekend five or six times now.
It's beautiful there. And in March, it's still green. By May the hills will be golden brown.
We arrived on Friday and unloaded what seemed like weeks' worth of food and gear from the cars. It was a beautiful afternoon. My pals went for a short run while I kept the beer cold for them. I could have run with them, but it would have been my second run of the day and I preferred to save my legs for the next day.
We rode at 8am sharp 8:30am on Saturday morning. Our plan was to ride the 56-mile long course bike route, but also to add on 20 miles in the middle just for kicks.
The 20 extra miles we picked were the flattest possible, so we got a nice tight paceline going and ended up trading pulls for about 35 miles. Pacelining is not necessarily good practice for triathlon racing, but it is a fantastic interval and pacing workout. Plus it makes you go much, much faster. (And no, the above photo is not an example of good pacelining; even I am not crazy enough to attempt a photo while I'm two inches from someone's wheel.)
The day was mostly gray but the sky cleared just as we started the steep climb up Nasty Grade. Normally this climb would be at mile 40ish of the race, but for us it was mile 60ish. It's always a slog of a climb, but we were happy to have some sunshine, finally.
Did I ever tell you the story about how I almost died of dehydration on this training ride one year? Yeah, well, I said almost. It was maybe four or five years ago? I think it was 2004. It gets very hot down there in Monterey County. It was a classic Wildflower 90-degree day and we had all run out of water before we got to the bottom of Nasty Grade. I made it to the top, but had to lie down to compose myself before I could continue. As I lay there, slightly delirious, I realized the blessed shade I had surrendered to was under towering branches of poison oak.
Here's the view from approximately that same spot.
And here's the view coming down Lynch Hill, when you finally realize you're done with the bike ride and can start the awesome run. (It won't be long after you start the run that you'll wish you were back on your bike.)
The run really is pretty. You get views of the lake like this.
We only ran for 30 minutes on Saturday, and then followed that with a dip in the lake. I took my wetsuit, so I figured I might as well use it, although I didn't do much actual swimming.
And here's one for my collection:
Our 60 clubmates who were also there for the training weekend had a raging party on Saturday night. We checked in on them, very briefly.
Along with the LA Tri Club, who were also present in full force, our club people made goofy partying noises late into the night. How many of those folks were up the next morning for the 7:30am run on the long course? Hmmm? They all missed this:
And this:
But they did not miss out at all on the MUD. It rained all night, and although the skies had cleared and the trails appeared to be dry, they were actually composed of sticky, sticky clay. We'd take a few steps and then realize we were stumbling on our tiptoes because six inches of mud had adhered to the bottoms of our shoes. I am not exaggerating. It took us about an hour of step-step-step-scrape to "run" mile 2.5 through mile 6. When we finally got back closer to the road, jumped a gate to get off the trail, and scraped the mud off our shoes for the last time, it felt like we had escaped a horrible punishment.
We finished off the run, showered, and were on the road back home by 11am Sunday. It all went by way too quickly. I wish I were going back this weekend. I hear the weather will be even nicer... and the trails should be dry.
