End of the decade

A new decade begins tomorrow, and a whole lot has happened since then. I am pretty sure there is no way I'd think I'd be where I am now. I don't know if I'd be disappointed or not, probably too shocked to think anything about it either way. I'm going to attempt to recap here, and it will probably be more detailed in the early years because starting in about 2004 my life can pretty much be summarized by saying there was a lot of swimming, biking and running. I'm doing this more for me than anything, so don't bother reading if you get bored easy.

I was 20 years old when this decade started. We had a huge millennium party with family and friends and it is probably the last time I stayed up until 4am for New Year's. My first memory of this decade was at about 3am when we were returning to the food spread, and my cousin Trip wanted some meatballs from the crockpot, except there were no toothpicks left. He asked how he was supposed to get at them, and my mother responded, "Like this," and proceeded to dip her hand into the marinara sauce and scoop up a handful of meatballs. Yep, that's how it all started.

I was a junior in college, a basketball player and a film major taking awesome classes like comedy writing and acting for non-performance majors. I scored my 1000th point for the Emerson basketball team, was the top shot-blocker in the NCAA and got invited to pro basketball camp. I opted not to attend, because being pretty good in your Division III league is a far cry from being good against you know, real basketball players. Oh yeah, that was also the one time I ever got a call from Sports Illustrated. Unfortunately, I was later deemed unworthy to appear in the faces in the crowd.

I turned 21 that summer while staying in Cape Cod and working on an independent movie with some friends and an interesting cast of characters. And even though my role was mainly that of crew, it also contains my one acting role which included four words and one irritated look. We rarely really worked on the movie but I did get a board and learn to surf. In case you're wondering, my first drink was a mud slide at this Chinese restaurant that was pretty much the only place open in town besides Wendy's. I had two sips and let someone else finish it. I've never been much of a drinker.

To start my senior year I boarded American Airlines flight 11 on a Tuesday morning in September... of 2000, one year before that flight crashed into the World Trade Center. All I can say is that it is a good thing I was too tall in first grade to be held back. I interned at a couple of production companies and made a whole lot of photo copies of scripts and spent every Saturday surfing at Huntington Beach. I saw Sting get his star on the Hollywood walk of fame, but mostly while I was in Los Angeles I just got really, really fat. Like, fatter than I had ever been even though I was already pretty fat to begin with.

New Year's Day 2001 I jumped into the cold Atlantic Ocean in Boston, insulated by an incredible amount of body fat and finally ready to change that for good. It was when I actually started running on purpose. Just a mile at a time to start, but to me that was a big deal. I decided that maybe, just maybe I didn't need to drink a Pepsi with every meal, and it was probably not necessary to eat so much fried crap. I lost 20 pounds in my final semester, finished out my college basketball career losing in the first round of the playoffs and fouling out of my final game, probably the 4th time in my entire basketball career that I ever fouled out (total crap, too) Our practices that year were held at a local mental institution. I wish Emerson had a gym when I was there.

I graduated college, completely lost as to what to do next. I mean, I was ready to not be in college anymore, not live in a dorm, not have 3am fire alarms and treks down 11 flights of stairs to stand on Boylston Street in my pajamas freezing to death, but I wasn't ready for what was next. (hint: nobody is) I found out that the best thing about not being in college anymore is that when you are tired at night, you can just go to bed. No studying, no papers to write, just good night. My two best graduation presents were rock climbing, from my parents, and skydiving, from my sister. Both were tons of fun but I have to wonder if they were trying to kill me.

I bought my first car (which I still have and it's still just fine) I worked at the front desk at a gym, kept up with my running and started taking spin classes and continued losing weight. I was a full time ski instructor during the warmest winter ever, mostly teaching kids how to avoid skiing over the grass on the slopes. I lost two kids off the chairlift, but both were just fine. I lost 30 more pounds on top of the first 20, and then slowly got rid of another 10 once spring rolled around and I decided to sign up for my first tri, started riding a road bike with my dad, and started swimming.

I did my first running race, also probably the worst weather ever for a race to date for me: combination of pouring rain and slushy snow in the middle of May. I did my first sprint tri, had to walk a bit during the run, did my first Timberman and walked a lot of that run since I was not only completely unprepared, but it was about 95 degrees out and I was so late in crossing the finish line that there was hardly any food left.

My niece was born, and a month later I moved to Los Angeles to give my film career a shot. I was an intern again for a while, again making lots of copies of scripts before landing my first paying gig as a production assistant on a TV movie called the Pennsylvania Miner's Story. My amazing responsibility was to supply water gear to the crew while they shot scenes inside the water tank. But it was still kind of fun, and I got to meet some interesting people.

I saw Kermit the Frog get his star on the walk of fame (and yes, they still maintained the whole illusion that he was an actual frog and not a puppet) and got another job working on this movie The Rundown with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Seann William Scott (Stiffler from American Pie) and Rosario Dawson. My production assistant job on that one mostly consisted of getting blueberries and yogurt for the Rock in the morning (but never actually giving them to him, only to his assistant) writing down when the union guys went to lunch, and standing in the behind buildings on the set wearing a breath mask for the fires to make sure nobody walked through the shot while they blew stuff up. It was also on that set that I learned that movie cattle really have no interest at all in stampeding, no matter what the director says.

Even though it was great spending my weekends riding up and down the PCH through Malibu, I decided that LA wasn't for me, and I moved home and started working for my father's construction company, somehow getting stuck in accounts payable when I filled in for someone on maternity leave who decided never to come back. I signed up for some more triathlons and started training more. I also appeared on a reality TV show, a fact I forgot until I started writing this. That's right, I was on an episode of A Wedding Story. Not mine, of course, but my friend Heather's since I was a bridesmaid. So yeah, I was on TV in a fancy dress, of all things.

I did some more triathlons and signed up for my first Ironman and became obsessed with that. And really since then it has been mostly triathlon-related stuff. Eleven Ironman starts, ten finishes, 4 Kona qualifiers, one winter spent living and training in Phoenix, one Ironman win, one full-page ad in Triathlete magazine, a bunch of other triathlons, some new injuries, leaving the office work life behind, hopefully for good, coaching, and, well, we'll see what happens next.

All I know is that waking up on the first day of this decade as a chubby college kid with dreams of working in the movie industry I'm pretty sure I didn't think that ten years later I'd be a (sort of) fit person (or will be once I get off the off-season weight, even if I am probably 40 pounds lighter than I was then) who exercises 4 hours a day, races triathlons and coaches some athletes. Who knows where I'll be in another 10 years?

New Years eve eve

December 30th, and 2009 is almost over. I had completely forgotten that this is the end of a decade. Apparently the whole novelty of being in the 2000's overrides the whole concept of 10-year increments having some sort of significance. Before I get into the last decade, let's just talk about the past week.

There was a nice little gathering on Christmas eve, although it was different than normal because many of my cousins didn't come to the usual Christmas eve gathering, so there was no long-into-the-night game of Scene-It or Simpsons trivia or anything like that. In fact, everything was over by 9pm. So while I usually find myself going to bed really late on Christmas eve, I was actually in bed earlier I think than I had been all week. That didn't stop me from sleeping until 7:45 on Christmas morning, which for me is quite late. And obviously a far cry from the 5am I would get up at when I was a kid. I was one of those kids who was so excited for Christmas that I couldn't sleep at all that night. And, maddeningly, it was the one morning of the year that my father did NOT get up at 4:30 in the morning. So my brother and I would be forced to sit around and wait, knocking on my parents door every 15 minutes or so until they decided it was finally time for us to get up. My older sister typically had no trouble staying in bed.

Anyway, Christmas morning has definitely lost its excitement for me. In fact, I've found this whole year I wasn't really into Christmas at all. I wasn't so much anti-Christmas as I was more or less indifferent. I hardly watched any of my typical Christmas movies. But anyway, I went to my sister's on Christmas morning, which is more fun because my niece and nephew, at 7 and 3, are at prime Christmas ages. Except that it freaked me out when I realized that if my niece follows the timeline I remember from when I was a kid, then this is her second to last Christmas believing in Santa, which just seems impossible. But we'll try and make her hang on as long as possible. Anyway, they were lost in a sea of new toys and both seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly.

Later on we all went to my grandmother's for the big gathering. It actually turned out to be pretty fun. There was a yankee swap which I chose not to participate in because first of all, I hate those things, and second of all, given the participants, I can't imagine a gift that I'd end up with and actually be happy about. Plus, my own name for that game is the Christmas-ruining gift stealing game. After that was some singing of Christmas songs, which I wisely opted to watch from afar. Then we busted out an old home movie. Actually, two movies that I made with my cousins about 12 years ago. This is serious stuff that was edited, music, chase scenes, and credits written on a chalkboard. That was a lot of fun, especially since I don't think a lot of people had seen them in a very, very long time. And later on, I went with my cousins to my brother's apartment where we spent an incredible amount of time playing the video game Rock Band. If you haven't tried that, you really need to, because it is seriously fun.

Oh, and other than that? Training, biking in the basement, running in shorts on Sunday only to be reduced to nearly freezing to death on my run yesterday with below-zero windchills. Weather can be annoying sometimes. And I'm still trying to figure out what I want to watch while on the trainer. My brother gave me Netflix for Christmas, and after having it last winter and browsing their selection again, I am reminded that yeah, I've seen almost everything. I've rated over 1400 movies on there. So yesterday morning on my trainer ride I went with old classics that just happened to be on Encore. Die Hard and Spaceballs. Which only serves as evidence that I have the same taste in movies as a 12-year old boy.

Tomorrow I'm going to post what has happened in my own life over the past 10 years, and it is more for me than anyone else, so don't read it if you get bored easy!

Christmas eve

Tomorrow is Christmas, and again, how did that happen? I did nothing to get into the Christmas spirit this year. I watched hardly any of my favorite Christmas movies, I didn't listen to much of the music, and even though Christmas is not until tomorrow the Christmas tree is lying in the snow in the back yard. Why, you might ask? Well, when the tree falls over for the third time in 4 days, it's probably time to get rid of it. Plus, there were hardly any ornaments left aside from the unbreakable replacement ones. So last Christmas no tree because a tree fell on the house in an ice storm, and this Christmas no tree because the darn thing just wouldn't remain upright. My mother tells me that that is one of the things that husbands are for.

Speaking of my mother, she actually had knee surgery on Monday. I only mention this because I think it's kind of interesting that in the past year my mother has broken her foot (slipping on the ice last February) and torn her meniscus (taking a clumsy fall walking out of a gas station convenience store) and both times didn't get diagnosed for 6-8 weeks later, when she finally listened when I told her that if it doesn't stop hurting on its own after that long, it's probably time for some medical intervention. Hopefully this trend will not rub off on me.

I thought I might have more to say, but mostly I'm just killing time before the Christmas eve festivities begin. Oh, I did get my wrapping done this afternoon, so that's about it for getting ready. And once this pesky Christmas thing gets out of the way then I can finally start concentrating on the important stuff: TRAINING.

Christmas eve eve

Somehow December 23rd has arrived. It's just too bad that January and February never seem to go by anywhere near as fast. I'm proud to be able to say that after my post-swim trip to the mall this morning - arriving at 7am and getting a really kickin' parking spot - I finished my Christmas shopping one day earlier than last year. I didn't used to wait so long, but somehow it just keeps happening. And although my family will ask me what I want, I am not a fan of asking what they want. It sort of takes the fun out of it, you know? It's Christmas morning, you give them their present and it's like, "Oh yeah, here's that thing I told you to buy for me and you went to the store and got it. Thanks!" I mean, I suppose it takes away that element of fear that they won't like it, but it still just doesn't seem to be as much fun. The exception to this rule is my mother, who is absolutely impossible to buy for. She has everything she needs and wants it seems, and if there is something she decides she wants, she goes and gets it. My father, on the other hand, I never have trouble with, so at least that's a good thing. I also am interested to see what my 7-year old niece things of the game Perfection. Remember that one? Where you have to beat the timer by putting the little shaped pegs in the right holes before the timer runs out? Hopefully it will prove to be more fun than frustrating.

So what else? Pretty much nothing but absolute frigid cold. We had one day where the warmest it felt all day long was 4. Air temperatures with highs around 20. Oh, but today it will be about 23. Some days the windchill puts us below zero. I understand that this is sort of what you know you have to deal with by living here, but this is awfully early. I mean, we're only two days into winter. We were also due to get quite a snow storm last Saturday night. I've lived here long enough to know that you never know what you're going to get with those things. I can remember more than one night growing up being 100% convinced that school would be canceled the following day, only to awaken to not so much as a flake. It can go the other way, too.

So I went down to Boston that night, fully expecting to get trapped there for the night with snow starting sometime around dinner time. Dinner came and went, no snow. 10:30 at night, still no snow. I'm not sure when exactly it started, but I do know that by 12:30, it was finally coming down pretty good. That left me with a decision to make. I could either leave right then and hope that I'd make it before it got too bad, knowing that the further north I went the less snow there was supposed to be. Or I could stay, and likely get burried and trapped until sometime late the following afternoon since it would probably be snowing for more than 12 more hours.

I decided to make a break for it. I drive a Nissan Sentra, which could probably only be worse in the snow if it were rear-wheel drive. I figured maybe driving on 95 wouldn't be so bad because it was light and fluffy snow, and maybe it would just be blowing around since it had only started recently. Well, I drove incredibly slow towards the highway, and when it came time to turn onto the on-ramp, I had a hard time seeing it. At that point I started questioning my decision, but I was too far into it to turn around.

So, onto the interstate. Well, the snow was light and fluffy, but also coming down hard enough that the road was covered in it. Fortunately, almost all of the cars were driving equally slowly, crawling along at about 25mph. You know, except for those SUV's who seem to think that just because they have four-wheel drive they also possess magical powers that make it impossible to slide off the road while driving 50mph through the snow. I can't tell you how many times I've been passed by a car like that on the highway, only to find the same car a few miles further up, off the road and turned facing in the wrong direction. As for me, the speed wasn't really an option, and upon reaching what I would describe as a slight incline, I nearly didn't make it to the top because my rear wheels kept skidding out.

Surely I was questioning my decision at that point. It had taken me what seemed like 20 minutes to go one exit. I couldn't decide if I did or didn't like having other cars around me. On the one hand, I was afraid if my tires skidded out again at my blazing speed, I'd crash into one of them. On the other hand, I needed their shared light to see where I was going, otherwise all I could see was the illuminated blizzard coming down toward my headlights.

So essentially, for about 15-20 miles, I thought that maybe I was going to die. Or maybe I'd have to spend the night sleeping in my car under an overpass. At least I had a backpack with some extra clothes since I had planned on spending the night in Boston, but at that point, I figured I would actually be worse off turning around. Then, without warning, the snow wasn't so bad. Is that pavement I see? I was driving 40mph and I wasn't fearing for my life. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped snowing entirely, and I zipped home the rest of the way on completely dry roads. It was crazy. I don't think it started snowing in New Hampshire until about 8:00 the next morning and even then we got maybe an inch. Boston got like 15". So that was an adventurous evening.

So that's about it for now. Still swimming, where the pool was quite cold this morning, riding the trainer and going nowhere and running in way too many layers because it's so freakin' freezing out. It's supposed to get into the mid 30's tomorrow. It'll probably feel downright tropical.

Frigid weather, 5K's, fixed foot and credit card fraud

It has been a somewhat eventful few days. First, on Friday I got to run outside and feel as though my face might freeze off. It's nice and cold and windy, and apparently we can look forward to a high temperature of 20 degrees on Thursday. This is not supposed to happen until January, normally. And really, it doesn't HAVE to happen at all. Not sure why we're getting so lucky. Saturday was nice because there was no long ride, just a nice, short easy ride in the morning.

Oh, but then there was yesterday, Sunday. I ran a 5K. I don't particularly want to elaborate on it except to simply say that it was the slowest 5K I've ever run. I didn't check my actual time, because it might make me want to quit running all together. But I'm pretty sure that my pace was slower than what is my fastest Ironman marathon pace. Except during my marathon I'm pretty sure my heart rate never hit 193, as it did yesterday. I don't really know what the biggest problem was, I just know that it sucked.

Of course I'm coming off an injury, blah, blah. But let's keep things in perspective here. It's not like I'm coming off paralysis that had me incapacitated for months. I had a tiny crack in one little bone in my foot and didn't run for 7 little weeks. So right now I'm thinking that I will either come up with a fake name to use for running these races until I run a time that is not flat out embarrassing, or maybe think up some costume I can wear during the races so people think that I'm just running them to be funny and don't have any ideas in their heads that I might actually be trying.

Anyway, after that, I spent the car ride home coughing since I had that taste of blood thing going on in the back of my throat that sometimes happens after hard efforts in cold weather, and then I got on my bike trainer for 4 hours where I learned that while watching the movie Julie & Julia the Powerbar you might be eating is absolutely not an adequate substitute for anything you might see on screen. This was all followed by being unable to keep my eyes open to even read past 8:30, but still not being able to fall asleep or stay asleep.

The one, amazingly bright spot of the day was finding a pair of Oakley sunglasses that had been missing for an entire year, that fortunately I had still not yet replaced.

Then there was today. Today I discovered that someone has been using my credit card number in and around Sacramento, CA. This seems odd to me since I have the card in my possession and am sure that it is currently about 3000 miles from California. The first tip-off was a $14 charge at a KFC in Oakland about a week ago. Not only have I never been to Oakland, but I've also never even eaten anything from KFC let alone purchased "food" there. Then today two new ones: a gas station and a K-mart in Sacramento. Both charges around $35. So much for that credit card. But seriously, if you were going to steal like that, wouldn't you go somewhere more interesting or at least spend more money? I really don't know how this could have happened, but I'm more annoyed with the fact that now I won't have my credit card number memorized when they send me a new one. It took about a 10-minute phone call, so I'm not really so worried about that. I wonder what they made my signature look like?

Oh, and also today was the follow-up appointment with my podiatrist. The good news is that everything looks good there. And my hideously deformed hammer toes already seem to have flattened out a bit due to the orthotics he gave me six weeks ago. So my dreams of being a foot model may not yet be dead.

Winter showed up early... again.

Apparently last week while I was in Las Vegas it was 53 degrees there and closer to 70 back in NH. Not really typical. But then, probably 36 hours after that little warm-spell, it snowed. That's usually the way it goes around here. So when my plane landed at about midnight on Sunday night (I'm probably pretty lucky I got out, there were huge delays and cancellations everywhere, people lying all over the airport terminal, but I was on a direct flight) I could just make out the whiteness covering the ground, signaling the onset of winter. Technically it's still fall, at least astonomically speaking, but that never seems to matter.

The past couple of days have been spent trying to recover from my 2am bedtime that night I returned. Oh, and trying to get some workouts in. It hasn't been easy, as my motivation has been severely lacking. The more I think about it, the more I think the biggest issue is that all of my training sessions are done solo. It's not like this hasn't pretty much always been the way I've trained, but I think towards the end of the season I got to spend a lot of time with my teammates, and there were always at least a few things to break up the monotony. But currently I'm staring into the face of 4-5 months of winter Ironman training done mostly by myself. Yikes. And to top it all off, I still need a TV series to watch on the trainer. Fortunately I am pretty sure Netflix is going to be one of my Christmas presents. When trainer season hits, let me tell you, you can get a whole lot of mileage out of your Netflix subscription.

Wednesday morning was when winter really decided to hit. Normally I like to be up and in the pool as early as possible, assuming I'm starting with a swim workout, which inevitably on any weekday I will be. But since I was still exhausted and on Pacific time, I decided not to worry about it, and it worked out quite well because there was quite a snowstorm that hit overnight and into the morning. I also happen to own a terrible car for driving in the snow. Small Sedans that weigh maybe 95 pounds just love sliding all over the road. Somehow in the 8 years I've owned it, I haven't had any snow-related accidents, but I've sure skidded out on the ice a lot. more than anything though, it is probably just that I choose not to drive it in bad weather if it is at all avoidable.

So anyway, the swim was put off until much, much later, after the majority of the roughly 8" of snow had fallen. And even later than that I finally went out to get my run done. I hate the treadmill. I have done exactly two treadmill runs in about the last 4 years. One was for about 5 minutes when I was sort of doing a test run on one of my many injuries of the recent past. The other was almost exactly a year ago when there was a major ice storm that knocked out power for a week, made a tree fall on the house, and caused hundreds of roads to be closed. Considering the amount of trees and limbs lying on the ground and across the roads that day, I decided I might just be better off running indoors at the gym, where the power fortunately was never lost so at least I had somewhere to shower for the week.

So anyway, the point of all of that was that I ran outside on Wednesday. I timed it just right to finish as it got dark. I also ran on roads that I had never run on before. I had decided I'd be better off on much less-traveled roads, so that if cars went by me they'd be less apt to splash me with slush or, more importantly, slide into me and break my legs. It worked out well for the most part, except I did get splashed a few times, but all of my bones remain unbroken. It was actually raining by then, which made it quite pleasant.

So now we have a solid coating of white on the ground, and no sign of warm weather to take it away. It may be too soon to say so, but it looks like we might have a white Christmas for the third year in a row. What's strange about this is that we probably had three total white Christmases in the entire 20 years preceding. I know we still talk a lot about global warming, and to me we definitely experienced it for at least a little while (I spent the winter of 2002 as a ski instructor, routinely teaching people to ski on slush-clovered slopes while they wore t-shirts, and having to take our skis off at the bottom of certain trails to walk across the grass and get ther rest of the way to the bottom) but the past couple of years have been brutal, and I fear that this one is going to be the same. May first certainly seems awfully far away right about now.

Vegas, baby!

I am currently sitting in the Las Vegas airport, being a good kid and not throwing my money away on the plethora of slot machines available while I wait for my delayed flight. (if you've seen The Three Amigos enough times, it makes you want to use the word "plethora" whenever it is applicable, as I believe it is here)

The biggest gamble of my trip - seeing how I am not a gambler - was bypassing the exit row on my Southwest flight in the hopes that if I sat in the back and pretended I was waiting for someone, nobody would sit next to me and I'd have an entire row to myself. That gamble paid off, and I can't tell you how much nicer it is to spend 6 hours on a plane when you can do it lying down, especially for someone who on most flights spends the entire time with their knees pressed up against the seat in front. And God help me if the person decides to recline. How is it that when you recline your own seat, it feels like it hardly goes back at all, and yet if the person in front of you does it, suddenly their seat back is two inches from your face? But anyway, we even managed to land early, so that was a nice start.

My luck ran out there, though. I caught a shuttle from the airport, not really knowing where I was going, but I had a piece of paper with my reservation at the Hilton Garden Inn and the address. I showed it to the shuttle driver, and she said that was where she was going. She was dropping off several of us, and at about the fourth stop she pulled up to the Hilton, and I got out with two other women. I showed her the paper again. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Yeah, Hilton on the strip."

Okay, here's your tip, see you later.

Of course that was not the right Hilton. Mine was several miles down the road. I don't know how you can charge $30 in a cab to go like 5 or 6 miles, but at least I had finally made it to the correct hotel. You know, the one I had actually reserved a room at.

So I was prepared for a weekend of triathlon coaching education, but the first night really only had time to unpack, brush my teeth and go to bed. On Thursday morning, I had some workouts to get in. This included riding on a stationary recumbent bike in the "fitness center" in my hotel. Notice I use the word in quotation marks, because 3 treadmills, an eliptical machine, a recumbent bike and a weight machine to me does not equate a fitness center, but rather a room with a few pieces of fitness equipment in it.

I felt slightly ridiculous riding the stupid thing, but it did allow me to read a few magazines and I am really not too worried about my biking suffering terribly from riding in that very non-tri position for a few rides. Oh, and let me tell you, it is a welcome thing to get on an airplane and travel without a bike box. It is something I've done a grand total of two times in about the past six years, and it's awfully nice to bypass the baggage check line and the associated fees that go with it.

First up Thursday night was a USAT seminar on athlete weight loss. The main reason for my taking it was that it took care of several of my "continuing education credits," which are a requirement as part of the certification. Luckily, Bob Seebohar, the presenter, was a good speaker, otherwise I might not have made it through. As it was, a seminar that went from 5-9pm, or 8-midnight to my internal clock, had me just about ready to collapse by the end. It was interesting information, mostly because his thoughts on nutrition are completely opposing to almost everything my own coach has me do. But that's okay, if I've learned anything doing this, it's that nobody has all of the answers, and it's always interesting to get a different point of view. But I do think that in my next Ironman I'll be taking in more than 860 total calories.

Day two began with an early morning run. The clinic started at 8am, and I wanted to be sure to have plenty of time to get in an hour and fifteen minutes. I had at least had the foresight to check the weather and know enough to bring tights, but I hadn't realized I would probably also need gloves, a hat, and a second layer. It was in the upper 20's that morning, and I was a bit chilly in tights and a long-sleeved shirt with no insullation. In fact, after roughly 45 minutes I noticed that the sweat that had been dripping off the brim of my hat had actually formed an icicle that got bigger and bigger as I went along. Needless to say, my bare hands weren't working too well when I was finished. I had been running on random sidewalks simply until I ran out, then I'd turn back and find some other random street. Unfortunately, I never got far enough to see the interesting part of the infamous strip, but that would come later.

The clinic itself was pretty good. There were things I'd heard before, things I hadn't, and once again things that were completely contradictory to lots of other things I'd heard. But even if you read Triathlete magazine, you will often find that there are articles within the same issue that directly contradict each other, so you just kind of have to take in what you can.

On the first night, I was far too tired to go out and do anything interesting, so I was totally lame and boring and stayed in my room and watched TV. In case it wasn't already obvious, I'm not exactly a party person, so for me, going out and living it up in Vegas was never really something on my list of things to experience. Especially when I was out here by myself.

Day two began with a shorter run and not quite as cold weather. Then lots more triathlon stuff. They throw an amazing amount of information at you in a very short period of time, but luckily most of the presenters were at least engaging. It could've been pure torture if they hadn't been. We also seemed to have a pretty good group of people taking the clinic. I'd heard some stories about people in these clinics that made you fear for the lives of any athlete they might attempt to coach, but I didn't get that kind of feeling from anyone here, which was comforting.

I was just as tired Saturday night as I had been the night before, but I decided that as long as I was in Las Vegas, I might as well go check it out. Long story short: I met someone and we're married now. He was here for the rodeo and I'll be moving to his ranch in Colorado. Okay, okay, that's not really what happened. What really happened is that I took the hotel shuttle into town, walked up and down the streets with my hands in my pockets, trying to avoid the dozens of men accosting everyone with playing card-sized photos of naked women, and walking through various hotel casinos but not spending any money. I was so adventurous that I had dinner at a food court. And I was back on the hotel shuttle at 9:15, thoroughly ready for bed after such a wild evening. This must really make people want to hang out with me.

On Sunday morning I went for another run in the cold and dark. It must've been slightly warmer because the icicle on my hat was far less pronounced this time. Towards the end, I started hearing what sounded like thunder off in the distance, and I looked back to see fireworks going off back by Mandalay Bay. You don't often get fireworks on your Sunday morning long run, but this is Las Vegas. And it also happened to be the morning of the Las Vegas Rock 'n Roll marathon and half marathon, which was just starting. Too bad I didn't get a chance to jump in. Although I don't even want to know what I'd run for a half marathon right now.

That day the clinic was mercifully short and filled with much less information. We spent the morning in groups working on a training week for a fictional athlete we were presented with. My group was me, and three men twice my age. Before I knew it, the learning was over, and now I just have to do the test, send it in and I will be officially certified. Very exciting.

And now here I am, at the airport and wondering when/if my flight is going to take off. It's currently raining here, and this is one of those places where they don't really know how to handle it. Apparently at home on Thursday it was close to 70, but then on Friday night it snowed. I'm not sure what kind of weather to expect when I get there, but at least we can handle precipitation when it comes.

So there you have it, lamest trip to Vegas ever. But at least I got some good education out of it.

Holiday Movie Guide

I made this list a couple of years ago but decided to post it here. Now that it's December, these movies can help you get into the Christmas spirit. On to the holiday movie picks:

Molly's holiday movie guide

There are certain holiday movies and specials that simply must be watched every year. It just wouldn't be the same without them. Having many cable channels and the help of a DVR has made this task easier than ever. Usually my indoor bike rides in December are spent catching up on these Christmas classics. You may or may not agree with my "must watch" list, but I will try and give reasons for my choices as well as ones I have left out. For those of you who didn't know me in my former life, I used to be a film geek. Now I'm just a geek in general.

A Christmas Story
This one is just too easy. First of all, it is on TNT for 24 hours straight from Christmas eve through Christmas day, not to mention the multiple airings before that... although it does seem to have gotten less air time in the last few years. Second of all: it is simply the best Christmas movie ever made. I loved this movie so much when I was a kid that I used to ask to rent it year-round.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
Oh, Clark W. Griswold, you've done it again. From uprooting the giant family Christmas tree to getting trapped in the attic to dealing with infamous cousin Eddie, this is another one that just can't be missed. And it really made up for the atrocity that was European Vacation.

A Charlie Brown Christmas
Who among us doesn't feel for Charlie and his tiny little tree? And isn't it just like Linus to tell us what it's really all about?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Sure, we're all a little weirded out by the Island of Misfit Toys and the fact that for some strange reason they are ruled by a lion (and just what exactly was wrong with the doll?) But we still enjoy the freakiness of Yukon Cornellius and Herbie, the elf who wants to be a dentist (I actually met a guy who looked like Herbie... seriously) and of course cheer when Rudolph triumphs in the end. Also this was always the most fun song to sing back in elementary school. "Like a lightbulb!"

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The cartoon one, not the crappy live-action one. Though heartwarming, those Who's down in Whoville sure are a forgiving bunch. Whether he gave back Christmas or not, I'm guessing that in real life this one would end with more of an angry mob scene.

Muppet Christmas Carol
I'm a huge fan of the Muppets. I'm also a big fan of Christmas. This one was easy. Although slightly bittersweet, as it was the first movie where Kermit was voiced by Steve Whitmire. R.I.P. Jim Henson

Muppet Family Christmas
This lesser known classic came out in the mid-80's and includes Muppet Show Muppets, Sesame Street Muppets and Fraggle Rock Muppets. Not to mention an adorable flashback to Muppet Babies. Any Muppet fan's dream. And as Animal said: "Peace on Earth. Gimme presents!"

The Christmas Toy
Another Henson creation. Sort of like Toy Story with new toy vs. old toy, only with old school puppets instead of computer animation and no Tom Hanks.

Emmett Otter's Jugband Christmas
Either you know what I'm talking about here, or you think I'm crazy. Riverbottom Nightmare Band had some pretty rockin' 70's outfits in this one. It's also fun to watch otter puppets go down slides and sing songs about puttin' holes in the washtub.

A Very Merry Muppet Christmas Movie
This one just came out a couple of years ago, but it has found a prominent place on my list. It does get a little creepy though with a beefed up Beaker as bodyguard and a Sam the Eagle who I think might be on E.

Home Alone
I actually still have my ticket stub from seeing this movie when I was 10. (that was when I started hanging onto them... and no, I'm not a hoarder... I swear) Admit it: no matter how old you get you still enjoy it. You just have to not think about what a weirdo Macaulay Culkin turned into.

Elf
The new classic. Just the right mix of regular Will Ferrell antics and genuine Christmas spirit. And it makes you wonder what spaghetti with maple syrup might taste like.

Scrooged
Bill Murray in the modern-day (well, late 80's anyway) fairy-tale. Did you ever really stop and think about what a great story it is? It almost makes me want to read the book.

The Santa Clause
For some reason I actually like Tim Allen movies. I have no defense.

Die Hard
I know, you probably read that and thought to yourself, "what?" Then slowly it dawned on you that yes, this movie takes place on Christmas eve. This is my brother's favorite Christmas movie. It's been around for 20 years and it's still awesome.

Honorable mention:

Frosty the Snowman
I know, it's sort of a classic. But this one just doesn't seem to translate into adult-hood as well as a lot of the others. Frosty seems a little on the slow side, and little Karen seems a bit over-dramatic over the loss of a new friend she's known for like 3 hours.

Santa Claus is Comin' to Town
Another one that just doesn't hold my attention anymore. I can't get through it every year.

Jingle All the Way
Yep, you read that right. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger (before he started being a governor and took away our hopes for a True Lies 2), Jake Lloyd (the kid who ruined the new Star Wars trilogy) and Sinbad, who I actually can't figure out why he's famous. I actually saw this one in theaters, folks. I was a lot younger so I think my mom gave me the money for it, so I wasn't actually the one paying. Does that help at all?

A Very Brady Christmas
This one came out when I was totally into watching the Brady reruns. Even if it had a fake Cindy. (seriously, was Susan Olsen really that busy?) You have to wonder if even the writers cringed as they typed out this huge display of corniness. Mike Brady becomes trapped in a collapsing building (on Christmas day, no less) and is only able to free himself when he hears his family singing "Oh Come all Ye Faithful" outside. This one also led to the very brief drama "The Brady's" with such gems as Bobby becoming paralyzed from a race car accident and my personal favorite, Marcia (fake Marcia) being an alcoholic. Classic.

Yes, there is a glaring omition here. It's a Wonderful Life. I've actually only seen it once. I should probably sit down and watch it again.

Let the indoor riding begin

I suppose it had to happen sometime. The weather had held out as unseasonably warm and dry for far too long to last, especially this time of year. For the past few days we've been stuck in a haze of drizzle that doesn't seem to want to go away. Sun? What sun? It hasn't been that cold yet, but that part is coming. However, they seem to keep getting the forecast slightly wrong. While today has certainly been just as windy as predicted, I was pretty sure I was going to be dealing with at least rain, and possibly even some snow. Right now there is neither. If I'd been willing to deal with the wind, I would've been able to do my long ride outside. But with snow predicted, I woke up early and got on the trainer in the dark. I haven't yet settled on a TV series to get into for my long winter of training rides, so for some reason I decided that today I'd finally watch the movie Gone With the Wind. I had 4 hours to kill, and that just about fit the bill and was offered up On Demand. Obviously it is just one of those movies that you always hear about but have never actually seen. I even went to film school and didn't see it. We did watch Citizen Kane in class, but not this one. Far better though was when we got much later in the film history time line and watched Terminator, but anyway...

The ride passed by faster than you'd think 4 hours would take, and now I've finally seen Gone With the Wind. Would you like a movie review? The CGI was incredible. Okay, just kidding. Well, I'd say it was pretty decent for about 2 hours. Then I just kind of got tired of what a bitch Scarlett is. From a purely technical standpoint, it's pretty incredible what they could do in the 30's. But seriously, give me a main character I can actually get behind. I mean - spoiler alert! - her daughter dies when you get close to the end. I didn't really feel sorry for her loss. But hey, it got me through my morning ride and now I can go back to my normal routine of watching mostly movies that would have no chance of ever being nominated for an Academy Award.

And after that, I was outside to the not rain or snow, but lots and lots of wind. I actually got a little nervous running near the trees, but the fact that I'm typing this now shows that obviously I survived the outing. Again, barely more than a walk so it seemed, but done anyway.

You know, I'd been so looking forward to all of these long workouts and really being in training again. I was just about to jump out of my skin towards the end of my break, but now that I actually am training, my motivation has completely disappeared. I don't know what it is, but it's not fun. I'm doing it all anyway, but with the season still so far away it just feels like going through the motions more than anything. We'll see if it changes at all.

So completely unrelated, but the other night I was watching the show The Biggest Loser. I'm always fascinated by these weight loss shows, and I've been watching this one from the beginning. Admittedly, now that they stretch the whole thing out into 2-hour episodes each week, while filling in the time with roughly 20 minutes worth of actual content, you don't so much have to watch it as just have it on in the background and get the results of the weigh-ins. Honestly, it's the same thing every week. They work out, somebody blurts out some astonishingly personal baggage in an emotional breakdown during a hard workout, there is some stupid challenge that is never worth watching, the weigh-in takes up about 40 minutes of the whole show and then the voting off someone at the end takes care of another 20 minutes. But really it's all about how much weight they lose in the end. When the show first started, the heaviest contestant by far was just over 400 pounds. I mean, one of the women, although short, was a whopping 167. Now the lighter people seem to be in the lower 300's, while most of the contestants are over 400 pounds. This year they have the all-time heaviest contestant, who also happens to be a woman, who started the show at 476.

Anyway, like I said, it's really all about how much they lose in the end, which can be pretty incredible. But the night before Thanksgiving they had a "where are they now?" show and featured a bunch of past contestants. Most are doing pretty well, although all seem to be at least a little bit heavier than they showed up to the final weigh-in. But they showed one guy who did the Beach to Battleship iron-distance race just a few weeks ago, and then they showed Matt Hoover, who competed in Kona through a celebrity spot. Unfortunately, he missed the cut-off by a little over 3 minutes. This feature also brought back my own painful memory on the day, as they showed him standing on the shore waiting to get in the water on race day, and I heard Mike Reilly's voice in the background saying, "Who's going to be an Ironman today?" Oh yeah, I remember that exact moment. Not me. Not that day. I hoped that might spark some motivation, but not so much so far. It will get easier, right?

The post-swim sniffles

I have been trying to figure out exactly what swimming yardage line you need to cross before you get stuck with a runny nose for the rest of the day. 2500 yards? Nope, free and clear. 3500 yards? Not sure, haven't swum that distance in a while. 4200 yards? You're in trouble. For some reason, in spite of otherwise moderate swim yardage totals, today I found myself staring at a 2.4 mile swim workout, 10 days into training and months and months removed from my races. I wasn't so thrilled about it. I think I have this workout since I get to avoid the pool on Thanksgiving morning, which now makes it worthwhile. The pool is open tomorrow, but I'm glad that I won't have to worry about fighting for a lane between the regular swimmers and the swim team practice which for some reason will be in there tomorrow morning. I hate crowded pools. Fortunately, I don't often have to deal with them. Except today, but I had a feeling it might be crowded so I made sure to get in the water at 5am, when I was sure to get my pick of lanes. Only when I was done was it crowded.

Anyway, after that 4200 yards of drills, some breath control sets and some painfully slow 800's since I was finishing up about twice the distance I've been swimming lately, I was out of the water and into the shower to rid myself of the chlorine as best I could. The sniffling was almost immediate. Why does that happen? I can't stand it. And there is nothing that can be done. It won't be gone until I wake up tomorrow morning. It is also accompanied by excessive sneezing. I once tried using nasal spray to remedy the issue, but I only succeeded in watering things down enough that my nose was just running uncontrollably. As if I need anything to make me less attractive. I've heard rumors of salt water pools that are quite nice on the skin. Too bad mine isn't one of them.

Anyway, that was enough pointless rambling for today, don't you think? And please, nobody suggest that I get myself some nose plugs for my swim workouts.

Week 2 begins

Week 2 has begun. Mondays are always the easiest, and today was just a swim with some drills and some lifting. I happened to run into an old friend of mine who taught me an ab workout I am pretty sure I'll be feeling tomorrow and probably even a couple of days after that, but it was good. This particular friend I've known since we were probably 3 or 4, so it's fun to run into people like that. Also funny that the two girls beating themselves up in the weight room used to be the same 2 girls who used to sit around eating Doritos. But hey, we also played outside a lot and rode our bikes all over town back before it was too scary to let kids leave the driveway on their bikes. When I think about sending my 7-year old niece to ride across town on her bike, sans helmet, I can't even imagine such a thing. And yet when I was her age I would routinely ride through the center of town to get to a nearby friend's house. Darn traffic ruins everything.

I had also forgotten to mention that yesterday when I was out on my bike, which was fairly late in the afternoon, I seemed to have picked a time where everyone in town was out for a walk. I guess I can't blame them, given the fact that we've been particularly lucky with the weather lately, but it's just unusual for me to come across so many other people out and about when I'm doing my training. And not only was everyone walking their dogs, but I actually saw someone out walking their miniature horse. Or maybe it was a pony. I'm not really sure. I just know that the only thing stranger than that I've seen as far as walking animals was years ago when I saw someone out walking their monkey (why does that sound dirty?) It was less than a mile from my house and I only saw it that one time.

Also on the agenda for this week is Thanksgiving. How did that happen already? But who can think about Thanksgiving when it seems the whole world just wants us to skip straight ahead from Halloween to Christmas? Seriously, why does it all have to start so early? Do you start celebrating Halloween the minute Labor Day ends? Let's just get right into 4th of July the minute Memorial Day is over. Really, it's just getting a little out of hand. But anyway... Thanksgiving will be spent where it always has been, at my grandmother's house. Oh, I guess way back when my dad's parents were still alive we had Thanksgiving with them a couple of times, but mostly it has always been at Nana's. Oh, and also except for that one that I spent at Denny's with my cousins when I lived in Los Angeles. I was 21 years old, I wasn't going to cook a turkey. I'm not sure how many of us there are going to be this year, but it should be plenty, as usual. Either way there will be lots of turkey, which is all I really care about.

One week down...

...how many left to go? Let's not count right now. Week #1 is in the books. I swam, I rode outside and on the trainer, I ran, I even lifted weights. It's like I'm actually training for a triathlon. There wasn't much soreness to speak of, amazingly enough. I think I'm doing a fairly good job of hanging back and not trying to go too hard too soon. The first couple of days it was just nice to be back out and doing anything. Already that has somewhat deteriorated into, holy crap, how am I going to be able to do all of the things I want to do this season when I'm this slow!?!?!

You tend to forget how that happens every year. I think it's one of those aspects to the whole thing that you block out. Sort of like how for almost every single year of my entire life (at least the ones in which I've lived in the Northeast) the clocks change, it's November and suddenly it's just about dark by 4:00 in the afternoon. Like I said, I've experienced this phenomenon at least 25 years of my life, and yet every time it starts happening, I have to think to myself, "Does the sun seriously always set this early in November?" Yes. Yes it does. And just like that, after you take a long break from training, you come back slower. Wait, I'm seriously this slow after every off-season? Yes. Seriously. In fact, sometimes even worse. Wait, and I still can finish an Ironman with a pretty good time months later? Yes. It happens every year, but it still seems surprising. But being patient really sucks sometimes.

There wasn't too much exciting about my training this week. Running continues to be 100% pain-free, albeit 100% embarrassingly slow. I've done some swim drills to remind me how frustrating that aspect of my training can be. I've gone on some outrageously slow bike rides. I've had to figure out how to dress for sort of cold weather on the bike again, and so far I've managed to both over- and under-dress, but haven't quite nailed it just yet. I've actually enjoyed being in the weight room again, probably because right now the weights get to be really light.

But I guess now I should talk about my experimenting with Powercranks. So far it has basically just been an exercise in futility, as it is without a doubt the most frustrating thing I've tried to do probably since I was first taught how to swim fly. In both instances I just feel like my limbs are completely out of control and I can't seem to make them move the way they're supposed to. The plan is to start my rides on the Powercranks until I can't do it anymore and then move on to the regular cranks. This means that currently I have my old tri bike set up on the old trainer with the Powercranks with the pedals and saddle of my road bike while my regular tri bike sits and waits for me to be done with the ridiculous circus act. I don't know how anyone can ride those things outside. I think I'd kill myself. Supposedly eventually I'll even be able to handle my long rides on them, but of course the skeptic in me doesn't see that happening. So far I've topped out at close to 5 minutes on the crazy contraptions, and it certainly wasn't entirely spent pedaling like a normal person. But anyway, we'll see how that goes.

Yesterday was also my first long ride in what feels like an eternity. I was out on the road pretty early and got to ride one of my favorite loops. The only bad part was that it seems to get harder every time I ride it. That was followed up by a transition run in which I couldn't even walk slow enough to keep my heart rate down in the appropriate zone, but hey, at least I was out there. I've been quite lucky with the weather lately. It's been unseasonably sunny and with above average temperatures. Why those words never seem to cross the lips of the weather man in May and June I don't know, but I guess I'll take it while I can get it. Because once again, I'm thinking it's going to be a long winter.

Day 1: anticipating the soreness

Today was the first day of "real" training for the season. Honestly though, it didn't really feel like it. For starters, my swim, while more difficult than what I've been doing, was actually less yardage than I've done in the last few workouts. We're literally talking about 150 yards less, but less is still less. It also involved a time trial effort, which went quite well for about the first 100 until I just had nothing to push with. Apparently that's just what's going to happen on my first attempt at a hard effort in anything in 5 weeks. But all in all, not a bad little workout and at least it felt like it had a purpose.

After that it was time to head to the weight room. I actually kind of missed lifting since it's been so long. I had 12 weeks of it to start last season, then I think maybe 2 weeks back at it in August, so this is not something that has been part of the normal rotation for a long time. I didn't feel like doing it, but once I got in there I actually kind of enjoyed it. It was all light and easy, so perhaps that's why. I even did some core work, which made me very aware that I hadn't done that in a long time, either. I feel nothing yet, but I am already dreading the soreness that awaits me when I wake up tomorrow morning and then get to bike and run. It's going to be great, though. I can't wait.

Last day of being a slug

The vacation is nearly over, and it was certainly a long one. I have never taken such a long stretch off with nearly no training probably since I started training in the first place. Even way back after my first tri season when I thought I was going to work in the movies, lived in Los Angeles and worked on sets for 12-18 hours a day I was still training for the Los Angeles Marathon (never ran it, moved home a few weeks before and didn't go back) and rode my bike down the Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu on the weekends. That was 7 years ago, and I'm just now taking a real, serious break. Even in 2008 when I hurt myself and couldn't run for over a month, as soon as everything else was okay I wound up overcompensating by biking and swimming like crazy.

Last season it was 2 weeks totally off, then 1 week of barely anything. Last season I was not coming off of a huge build-up to Kona, but rather a season that completely fizzled out after some personal worst performances and one final sprint race that wound up getting canceled due to a hurricane. This time? 3 weeks totally off. 2 weeks with so little training it might as well have been totally off. Sometimes when you have a "vacation" coming up you fear that it will go by too fast. This one felt like it was never going to end. Don't get me wrong, that first week in Hawaii wasn't too bad. Breakfasts at Lava Java followed by pool or beach sunning, even time for an afternoon of surfing. The following week was spent in a fog while recovering from the time difference. Then it was just more like, ok, can I start training now?

I spend some days in the midst of heavy training wishing that I could just have 1 morning where I could wake up whenever and not have to worry about getting a workout in. After so many days of that in a row I've found that it's really not all that exciting. Although to be honest, I found myself trying to savor these last few days of it. In fact, yesterday I actually never even left the house and the pouring rain outside my window didn't make me unhappy not to have a long bike ride like I might on most Saturdays. But I'm sure I'll be better off when I start back up tomorrow. The volume won't be huge to start, but it will at least feel like something. I'll start eating right again (remember fruit?) actually going to bed and getting up early, my nostrils filled with chlorine, my hamper filled with workout clothes, 14 showers a week.... it'll all be there.

And I'm excited for it. I want it. I went on another run today and already my heart rate has dropped considerably and the pace is faster than my recovery runs before the stress fracture. I'm rested. I'm ready. It's only too bad it's probably about to get really cold out around here. It's ok though, because after getting incredibly sick of watching movies on the trainer I'm actually looking forward to it. I will surely regret that statement quite soon, but it is inevitable anyway.

This is it, 2010 starts tomorrow for me. I was excited about last year starting because I wanted to fix things, but I am way more excited for this season to start. I'm not scared about it like last year. It's going to be a good one.

One last, totally unrelated note: one of my car radio pre-sets has already started on the Christmas music. Why do they do this? I am not a Scrooge, but seriously, there are only so many Christmas songs. Why do you want to make me sick of them 2 weeks before we even get through Thanksgiving!?!?!

"Cartoons lose weight easily"

One of my favorite things is the disclaimer that usually sits at the bottom of any ad for some sort of quick-fix weight loss product. You know those products: take this magical pill and lose 20 pounds in 1 month! This particular ad had a before and after of a woman who was, like in all of these things, quite chubby in the before picture, and quite a lot thinner in the after. The only thing was, she was a cartoon drawing. So the fine print at the bottom of the page read: "Results not typical. Cartoons lose weight easily. Real people need diet and exercise to lose weight." Really? I never knew that before. I just found it hysterical that they were quite so blunt with it.

Yes, real people do need to diet and exercise in order to lose weight. The thing is, you actually have to be diligent about it. It is actually almost maddening when you realize that you had the power to do it all along, you were just unwilling. I say maddening because it would be nice if there actually was some kind of quick fix or pill you could take, but there just isn't. Needless to say, I will not be purchasing myself any Slimquick. Unless I wake up sometime in the near future and find that I've turned into a cartoon. But I suspect that would first require my taking an entirely different kind of pill...

What else? Oh, just the usual lately, training only enough to keep me partially sane. I'm swimming very slowly, still taking out my mountain bike because it's so darn fun even if I'm on a really old bike I've had since 7th grade, and finding running to be amazingly not the out-of-body experience I usually find it to be when coming back from a running lay-off. And this is especially amazing because honestly, usually even after 6 days of not running I feel like I'm a mess trying to run, and yet after over 7 weeks straight of no running (unless you count floating around in an aqua-jogging belt while kicking my legs madly in the water) it actually feels... fine. I'm not even that slow - for me, anyway. On Monday things kick off for real and I can't wait to get started!

The meeting: 2010 plan of attack

Exactly 1 year from my first meeting with coach Jesse, it was time for the 2010 version. I remember how I felt when I was driving down there last year. I was so convinced that he was going to change his mind about taking me on after he realized how truly fat and out of shape I was that I had to call my friend Leslie to help me feel better. I honestly don't recall another occasion in my life where I called a friend for that specific purpose (as in, generally I've been pretty lucky). Although I'm pretty sure realized that we had more work to do than he might have anticipated, but he actually made it sound possible to come back from the damage I had done. He showed me race goals that I almost laughed at. I think any normal person who took me in at that point in time would only need to look at me to say, hmmm.... maybe an 11:30 for Lake Placid. Nope, we were going to bring me back.

So we did. Maybe not all the way back, but we're close. We hit a few stumbling blocks along the way with a few minor soft tissue things that kept me off running for maybe a week at a time, my own errors in race execution in Lake Placid - as in, don't start the marathon at a 7:25 pace when you have no business running a 3:15 marathon - and finally the stress fracture that put the nail in the coffin. I suppose that some might consider that to be an unsuccessful season, being 25 minutes slow on my Ironman PR, 8 minutes slow on the half, and not even being able to finish the race in Kona. But while it wasn't a complete success, or the season I've been waiting to have for years, it's a whole lot closer than I was a year ago, and that is something I'm grateful for.

Anyway, the meeting began with the most fun part: the threshold test. I put my tri bike on the computrainer - the bike that still has the race number on it because I haven't ridden it since October 10th - and began warming up. I also noted that it might not have been such a bad thing that I hadn't had enough to drink in Kona and never peed on my bike or in my shoes. In fact, I don't think I peed on my bike all season. I guess that might seem like a good thing, but from a hydration standpoint, that's actually not a good thing at all. So now that I think about it, one of my goals for 2010 needs to be urine-soaked tri shoes. Nice.

Anyway, the test began. These tests are sort of sneaky in that it is pretty much totally fine for quite a while, then without warning you finally hit that one, 10-watt increase that starts to put you over the edge. My legs were burning, my lungs were burning even worse, and with a heart rate of 192 and the hearing of the words, "20 more seconds," I was pretty sure that if I had to ride for 22 more seconds, I'd be throwing up all over the floor. But it was over before it came to that, and aside from a slight cough that stuck with me for the rest of the day from the heavy breathing, 5 minutes later I was fine. The verdict? Same threshold watts and heart rate as the same test on 1/31 of this year, that one coming after 12 weeks of training. Maxed out 10 watts higher than that day though, also highest recorded in all 3 of my tests in the past year (though still 30 watts lower than the best test I did back in 2006, though testing protocol was slightly different) Body fat is about the same as 1/31, thanks to an 8% gain since Kona (nicely done) although weight is lower than it was then. In short, I'm essentially 12 weeks ahead of where I was a year ago, without having started training really at all yet. Good news, especially since my Ironman this year is 12 weeks earlier. Although I'm still hopeful that more progress will be made this year, just by the simple fact that I've only got to lose 20 pounds now instead of 40. Race weight will be lower this year, assuming I can get there. But I will get there.

Beyond that, we went over the season plan. First of all, I will be training on Powercranks. Not for my biking, but for my running. We are also taking away my key bike workouts and I will have 2 key run workouts every week. It seems that all I really have to do is have a bike to be able to ride it well, so taking those key workouts away doesn't really bother me too much. Biking has always come easily for me, I don't really know why. I just wish that running or swimming came as naturally as biking does. So basically we're pulling out everything from what Jesse calls the "bag of tricks" to get the running to come around.

We also went over the long-term goals. Back in June he set these up for me. He initially said we were going to go out 5 years, but wound up stopping at 3 because things had gotten pretty good by then, so no need to go further. Again, I nearly laughed. He knew I didn't believe him, but he seems to be pretty good at what he does. After the nosedive my season went on after July, I was pretty sure that those goals would be gone again. He recalculated based on where we are now. They came up the same. He hadn't looked at what he wrote down 5 months ago, it just came up the same. Let me tell you, if I can hit these goals he has set up I will be one happy triathlete. I'm going to do everything I can to get there. Well, not everything. I once sent Jesse an e-mail that said, "if it will make me faster and it doesn't involve drugs or elective surgery, I'll do it."

Injuries are done. New orthotics should prevent further damage, maybe even fix my ridiculous looking run form. I've seen video of me running my 3:30 marathon in Lake Placid and was amazed that someone looking like that while running could actually finish in such a time. And maybe we can get me to be more aggressive on the swim so I don't let slower people get in front of me just because they are willing to fight for their position and I'm not. It feels good to be in such a different position heading into this coming season. While things could've turned out better and ended on a higher note, it has only left me that much more eager to go out and have another chance. For now, I get the rest of the week to do some shorter, easier workouts and then things kick into full gear starting Monday. I can't wait!

20 minutes today - progress

Today I ventured out on run #2. It is still odd to wake up on Saturday morning... at 8am, no less (I had awakened at 6 actually, but forced myself to go back to sleep since this is just about the last time I can enjoy such an opportunity) and not have hours and hours of training staring me in the face. Soon enough, though. Anyway, after a few hours of extended pajama time, I put on some running tights and headed out on a crisp, sunny, 40-degree morning to run 2 miles or so.

I opted to run on the road this time, since this is where 99% of my training and so far 100% of my racing takes place. I was pleased to discover that it didn't feel that bad. First, there was no pain at all from my foot. So as far as injuries go - not that I'd like another one for say, 10 years or so - the stress fracture I guess isn't so bad. First, it is a definitive diagnosis. It's either broken or it's not. And it is easy to tell when it is healed. Did the bone fuse back together? Yes, go run. No? Wait longer. It's not the same kind of guessing game as, say, a strained hamstring or something of that nature. You don't go out and run on it only to have it creep up on you again, always wondering if it will go away or if it will bother you for an eternity. It broke. It healed. All done.

I overdressed for the occasion because I have completely forgotten how to dress for running in general, let alone running in temps in the 40's. Before Wednesday's run, the last run workout I had done was the one when "the incident" occurred, September 13th. It was a lot warmer then. Anyway, since it was only for 20 minutes, it didn't make much of a difference anyway. I headed out on the shortest actual loop I can do from home. I spent some time attempting to find my heart rate monitor strap, but instead of spending more time looking for the stupid thing than it would take to actually do the workout, I decided to go on without it.

I'm familiar enough with this loop that I know where the first mile marker is. I know, everyone else I know trains with a Garmin and always knows their exact pace at any given moment. I think given my running "ability" I might actually wind up quitting running entirely if I was too aware of my pace at every moment of a run. And also maybe someday I'll have enough spare cash to justify spending $200 or so on what I consider to be a non-essential toy for racing, especially given the fact that now I'll have to buy a new wetsuit for next season. Did you see that 2XU is coming out with a new wetsuit that costs $900? Does it seem startling to anyone else that the cost of wetsuits has seemingly doubled in the past few years? Are they motorized? Kayaks are cheaper than that, and they come with paddles. But anyway...

Where was I? Oh yeah, the first mile. I hit it in 9:05. I know, wicked fast, right? Actually, to be honest, I was expecting something more in the 10:30 range. I'm not kidding about that, either. It seems like in the past 18 months, whenever I have come back to running after some layoff due to one injury or another, or time off, even my worst-case scenario isn't as bad as what things turn out to be. I've learned to set my expectations low. So after not just taking 3 weeks nearly completely off, but not running a step in over 7 weeks and managing to adequately fatten up due to inactivity and simple sugar and carb consumption, I figured 10:30 was a reasonable guess. For most, that's not even running. Even for me it hardly feels like running. Truthfully, that's about the pace I started at last fall after the season of rock bottom. So to look down at the watch and see 9:05, I actually thought that maybe this time things would be different. Only time will tell, but it's not a bad start.

I finished out the run likely slightly slower than that, but not by too much. 20 minutes of running. Does that even count? At this point it sure as heck does. My throat burned and my joints are aching already, which is both annoying and wonderful all at the same time. Annoying because it seems ridiculous that I've gotten to the point where a 20-minute run can make me tired and sore and make my throat burn. Wonderful because at least I am out there running. And again, my foot didn't hurt, and that's about all I'm looking for right now.

For other workouts this week, one of the days I actually dusted off my old mountain bike. Ok, I didn't dust it off, but I did take off the race number that was still on it from the only off-road tri I've ever done, also the last time I rode that bike... a little over 5 years ago. So if you can't tell, I'm not an avid mountain biker. The bike got plenty of use for the first several years I had it. I got the thing in 1992, when I was in 7th grade, about 10 years before I even considered attempting a triathlon and just wanted something to ride around town. But once the road biking began, the mountain bike was pretty under-utilized, until that off-road race, and it has been sitting in the garage ever since.

Until this week. I don't know why I suddenly decided to ride it, I just felt like doing something different. It was only going to be a 30-minute ride, and there is a nice little trail less than a mile from home, and what difference did it make what bike I was on? I went to the garage and picked up the old Specialized Hard Rock, tore off the old number and checked the tires - the same tires that have been on the bike for 17-and-a-half years (wow, that makes me feel old!) - and found that yep, they needed some air. I used that other hole on my bike pump and checked to make sure that the brakes worked. They were unbelievably squeaky, but they still worked. Ok, I guess it's time to ride.

It felt a little weird to be on a bike other than my tri bike. Although it felt even weirder last week when I went out on my road bike. It also felt weird not to have my feet attached to the pedals. I just wore sneakers and used the regular old pedals like the 12-year old kid I was when I got it. I felt a little silly, like my bike clothes were more like a Halloween costume on a person pretending to be a biker. After a brief ride on the road, I was happy to turn onto the trail and get away from the cars. Initially, I was a little nervous as my off-road skills haven't exactly been tested in a while. That, and the shifting on the bike wasn't exactly working perfectly. Hey, when the chain and cables on a bike haven't been oiled, well, possibly ever, you can't expect much in that area.

After a few minutes of cautious, nervous riding, I quickly remembered how fun it was and just relaxed and let go and didn't worry about every little root or what obstacles might be hiding under the piles of leaves on the trail. It was a fun way to spend my 30-minute bike ride, and I enjoyed the change of pace. My only regret was that I went out pretty much exactly 30 minutes before the sun was going to set (sadly, darkness begins to fall not long after 4pm these days) which left me no room to stay out and play any longer. I'd love to get a real mountain bike and ride it more often. Maybe someday. But for now, I guess I'll settle for a short ride here and there on the old bike I got in junior high. Come on, I already mentioned earlier I wouldn't shell out the money for a Garmin, no way I'm going to do it for a mountain bike that might get ridden a couple of times a month, if that. Fun anyway.

One last thing I feel I must share is my little encounter yesterday on a walking workout I was doing. Yes, I said walking workout. I'll be doing some extra walking to help strengthen the weakened soft tissue in my foot. The bone will be fine now that it's healed, it's just the soft tissue we have to be careful with while I come back. Anyway, I was finishing up the walk coming back through the parking lot of a shopping plaza near home. At the end of the lot near the Dunkin' Donuts I spotted a woman holding up her camera to take a picture. Posing for the picture was what appeared to be her husband and 2 kids. Ok, fine, not often you see someone taking family pictures in a parking lot outside Dunkin' Donuts, but no big deal. Oh, except then I noticed behind them the giant dead deer head sticking out of the trunk of their white sedan with blood apparently intentionally smeared on the side of the car. The deer was so huge it didn't fit in the trunk. Upon closer inspection, they were dressed for hunting, so this was not a road kill find. My stomach immediately started to feel queasy. People hunt around here, that's not unusual. I guess I just never really considered what happens when someone actually kills a deer. I didn't realize that you had to haul its carcass to your car, stuff it in the trunk and drive around with its giant head poking out while the drivers of other cars on the highway try not to puke up their breakfast. And really? A family photo? Look, momma, daddy dun' killed a deer! Take my picture! Let's smear its blood on the paint! I think I just found the image I will conjure up anytime I am feeling tempted to cheat on the core diet while I try to lose my off-season weight.

However, not long after this incident, I finally hit that feeling. The eagerness to really get back into training. Honestly, I had gotten kind of used to not training like crazy every day. I've been sleeping great, not anxious to get to bed at 8pm, and not exhausted walking up a flight of stairs. However, I finally hit that point where I felt like I was ready to jump out of my skin I wanted to train so badly. By the time I got the stress fracture, all I wanted was to stop training. I wanted to start over with a clean slate after a break. Well, I got my break a little earlier than intended and I missed out on the biggest race of the year, causing my season to fizzle out without every really hitting that high point. But the result is the same. I've got that clean slate. I'm anxious to get out there and train again. Presumably I'm healed and at the moment injury-free. We just have to see where things will take me this time around.

Tomorrow I have my meeting with coach Jesse. We will plan out the whole season and go over my goals. I'm excited and scared all at the same time. A year ago we did the same thing. I was pretty much hopeless at that point, but I was giving it one last shot. I had a threshold test that resulted in numbers that were embarrassingly low for wattage, and way too high as far as heart rate was concerned. He laid out my year goals with numbers I didn't believe were possible even if somewhere inside I wanted to believe they could be achieved, I just didn't think it was going to happen. Truthfully, after shattering my initial goal for California back in April, I failed to meet any of the other long-term goals. I'm not quite sure what happened between April and the rest of the season, but I just couldn't quite come around to where I needed to be. Lake Placid was probably more my own fault, not the optimal race execution on my part, but I'm not really sure what happened in the other races. Well, I suppose we can blame St. Croix on spending most of the day before the race sitting in the airport hoping my bike would arrive and not eating or drinking or lying with my feet up. So anyway, that's what makes me nervous about setting out the goals for this year. On one hand, I don't want to once again set up goals that I don't quite wind up reaching. On the other hand, I don't want to see goals that don't excite me to get out and train. I want to know I'm capable of doing something great. Only time will tell.

All I can say is that I'm ready to do everything perfect to make this season the great one. I feel like a broken record and I've been saying that every year since 2006, the actual great season before every race result became disappointing. But hey, now that I'm in my 30's maybe I've matured enough to actually make it happen. One more week of super easy ridiculously short stuff, and then it's time to get back at it!

I ran today

I ran for 15 minutes today. There is not another time during the season that 15 minutes would even count as a run, but today it does because it is the first time I have run in 7-and-a-half weeks. I decided that I would go run on a trail. I don't often run on trails, but I felt like doing it today, first, so that nobody would see me when they drove by and how slow and awkward I looked. Second, so that maybe the impact would be a little softer on my weakened joints and soft tissue. Third, for the nice scenery and so that I could follow it up with some light hiking to make it seem a bit more like a real workout. And fourth, so I would be clueless about my pace and could just focus on being happy that I was out running rather than panicking about how slow it was.

I dug some run clothes out of the very neglected run clothes drawer and drove off to the trail entrance. I'm not normally a fan of driving somewhere just to run, but I was ok with it in this case. There really isn't a whole lot to say about it since it was so short. 15 minutes goes by awfully fast, and given the fact that I was trail running and had to be careful with the footing, I didn't really get a chance to go fast enough that I tired myself out. I felt like I could've gone on for much longer, which is a good sign. An even better sign is the complete absence of pain of any kind coming from the site of my stress fracture. That's really the only important thing that can come of this. I can't wait to do it again. The only problem is that now I feel like I'm starting from scratch again. I wanted to be starting from a much better spot this year than I did last year, but I keep on sliding backwards. I'll just try to keep the progress in the forward direction from here on out.

I also had my first early morning swim workout today in, I don't know, 6 weeks maybe? Remember, pre-Kona my last few swims were open water to avoid wall pushes on the broken foot. It was far too cold in the early mornings to be getting in open water around here! I had to drop my friend Trent off at the airport for his trip to North Carolina to race B2B half this weekend (good luck, Trent!) and the airport is way too close to my pool for me to not swing by. So after a 5:15am drop-off I was in the water by 5:30, done by 6 and home again by 6:30. I forgot how nice it can be to get workouts in nice and early. Swimming doesn't feel as hard as I thought it would (with the exception of doing the first 100 at race pace and then realizing that was not the way to complete my easy, aerobic 30 minutes) but I sure am slow! Ugh, again, it feels so strange to actually get out of shape on purpose. I just hope I can get it back quick.

The other strange thing after the break is that there was no ease into this cold weather. I started tapering just when it started to cool off, then spent 11 days in Hawaii, then came home and didn't train for nearly 3 weeks, then had to step back outside into noticeably cooler weather. My fingers don't work well and I need very hot showers afterward to warm me up. Again, I'm not quite ready for this yet, especially knowing that this kind of weather will be with me literally until I race IM Utah in May. It's going to be a long winter.

I'm healed!

Today was the big day: follow-up appointment with the podiatrist to make sure that everything had grown back together the way it was supposed to. I made it to the office for my 10am appointment and he almost immediately had me in for another x-ray. Nothing to see here, folks, the bone had healed. According to him that bone has now lost some length, but I sincerely doubt I'll notice. My feet are practically the length of canoes (though strangely this hasn't at all helped me with swimming) so maybe that's not even such a bad thing.

After hearing that bit of good news, I told him about the barrage of issues I've had over the past 18 months or so. SI joint, knee, cuboid bone, stress fracture... he had me walk in bare feet for him. It didn't take him very long before he decided that my right side is "significantly" longer than my left. He said side, not leg. I don't know where the extra length comes from, but he guesses about a quarter-inch. I realize that this is the kind of thing that people can often be told when it has more to do with things being out of alignment than anything actually being physically longer or shorter, but then again I've also read stories of people who had chiropractors adjusting them to even out leg length discrepancies only to knock hip joints out of alignment because these people did in fact have actual bones in their legs that were different lengths. Given that this particular podiatrist is literally world-renowned in his field, I'm going to go ahead and trust him.

He fitted me with some orthotics to even me out a bit and I'll go see him again in 6 weeks to see how things are going. But things are looking good. I'm going to add a bit of walking into the mix to help with the soft tissue, which has been weakened due to lack of use, but my first run - all 15 minutes of it - will be on Wednesday. This should be interesting. I think I'm going to have to find a trail so that nobody can see how ridiculously slow I am. Even on my short little bike rides so far I get that pain in the back of my throat from minimal exertion - that strange taste I always remember from my first basketball practice after an off-season in which I once again had forgotten to do anything to stay in shape - so I can only imagine how it's going to feel when I finally go out and try to run. I'll just try to be happy that I am actually able to do it, and maybe in another month I can panic again at how slow I am and how hard it is.

I can't wait for the routine of normal training again. Not doing any of my normal stuff puts everything else out of whack. What time should I go to bed? Why have I still not motivated myself to put my tri bike back together? Surely it is not because I really missed riding my old road bike, although this has at least justified having kept it instead of selling it. Just because I don't have a bunch of smelly workout clothes doesn't mean I don't have to keep up with laundry. See, the system just gets thrown out of wack. But anyway, soon enough.

At least I am no longer fractured and broken. Now I just have to try and stay that way.

Race spectating - Manchester Marathon

Today was the third annual Manchester City Marathon and half marathon. The start and finish is about 5 miles from my house, yet given the timing I have not participated, and given my focus on other, specific races, I probably never will. However, the timing does usually work out for me to casually go and watch without having to work around a huge weekend of training.

I had a lot of extra time before heading downtown for the 8:50am start because in spite of my newfound ability to sleep in, with the clocks moving back an hour last night, I was wide awake by 6am. I appreciate the extra hour and the extra daylight in the morning, but not such a fan of it getting dark at about 4:30. Anyway, I made it just in time for the start of the race and watched the masses run by and head off on their 13.1 or 26.2-mile journeys. After walking around aimlessly for a while, I found myself a good spot on Hanover Street, where I'd see the half marathoners coming up towards the finish and the marathoners approaching their halfway point. In the interest of my random observations from my last post, here are some random observations from this race:

-The race officials offered an early start for those marathoners who were going to be out on the course for an extra long time. I believe they were given a 90-minute head start, so these people started coming through halfway long before the other racers, usually completely by themselves and without much fanfare. It must be odd to run a marathon almost entirely alone. Anyway, these people took their time at the aid station and seemed afraid to just chuck their Gatorade cups on the ground like the rest of us do. One of these guys actually asked the aid station volunteer what place he was in. Um, well, at the time he was I guess about the 15th person to come through, but not sure it really counts when there are several hundred people who only happened to start 90 minutes after you did but time-wise will be far ahead.

-Apparently, among 11-year old girls, the super-high side ponytail is no entirely dead. (spectator, not runner)

-When the race first started, I noticed that among the lead pack of elite runners was this guy with a long ponytail. That made him easy to identify when he came through 13 miles at about 1:45. What exactly was he doing going out with the lead pack?

-There are always going to be people who run really fast but don't at all look like they are running fast.

-I'm getting really sick of watching races and not running them. I haven't crossed a finish line in almost 2 months and it sucks. I feel like Kona was 3 months ago, not 3 weeks ago.

-That said, it's still cool to see the look of accomplishment on people's faces when they approach and cross the finish line.

-Even if there is a big sign right in front of people telling them to go left to finish and right to continue for the second half of the marathon, a surprising amount of people still have to ask the volunteers where to go.

-On the drive home, there was a truck in front of me with a set of fake balls hanging off the trailer hitch. What kind of a person, under what circumstances, thinks that might be a good idea?

-An amazing amount of people still wear iPods during races even though rules state not to.

-I wonder if the guy who wore the entire Canadiens hockey uniform, including wool hat, shin guards and mini hockey stick, regretted his decision?

-I made the executive decision a few days ago to start wearing my right shoes again. I'm quite happy with my decision and it makes it a lot easier to walk around. Also, my foot isn't so cold.

-I saw a guy running with a Newtons visor and Asics shoes. Is that allowed?

-I miss running terribly. Watching other people do it on an amazingly gorgeous day doesn't help.

-Tomorrow is my follow-up x-ray. Let's hope for good news! And you know, not the good news I got after the first x-ray that turned into bad news on the second. Basically, I'm hoping last x-ray for a very, very long time.

Randomness - Stuff I'm noticing

When you have all of this extra time on your hands you have more time to notice things and ponder meaningless stuff. My mind surely wanders when I'm swimming, biking and running too, but right now I've got a lot of different stuff to look at. Please forgive the fact that most of these observations are food related:

-At Burger King, they actually have on the soda fountains suggested soda pairings for your meal. For example: a bacon cheeseburger goes best with Dr. Pepper. And in case you were wondering, the garden salad is best served with Diet Coke. In related news, BK onion rings are terrible.

-I watched this CBS Sunday morning news show that was mostly focused that day on obesity issues. But just for good measure, they finished off the show with a trip to the Texas state fair. They fry EVERYTHING. Seriously. I mean, you've probably heard of fried Twinkies, fried Snickers, and fried Oreos. But have you heard of fried cookie dough? Chicken fried bacon? Fried lattes and fried Coke? How does that even work? The ultimate though was fried butter. Not kidding. The fried butter stand had a line a mile long. Honestly, that doesn't even sound good. I'm surprised most of the people don't have heart attacks after just 1 bite.

-Shopping baskets are way lighter when filled with processed crap instead of produce and chicken and such. Also cheaper.

-Why does it only take 1 or 2 nights of going to bed really late before you get used to it and can't fall asleep at the normal time the next night? Yet, after 2 days of trying to get yourself back on track with getting up very early, it's still incredibly hard to do on the 3rd morning and beyond. Hopefully the clock change will help me out on this.

-This isn't a general observation, but a very funny thing that happened to me the other day. I was in North Conway shopping at the outlets with my good friend Heather and her family, including husband John, 2-and-a-half-year old son, Noah, and 3-month old daughter, Kylene. It is important to note who I was with so it makes sense that I was inside the store Children's Place. We were sifting through the racks, trying to find a teeny, tiny Christmas outfit for Kylene when a woman came up behind me and asked me something in a thick accent. You know how sometimes you don't quite understand what someone says right away but 5 seconds later it sinks in? Well, for a second I thought maybe she had mistaken me for someone who worked there. Nope. Actually, she was holding up this vest that she wanted me to try on because apparently I was the same size as her daughter. This situation might not be so strange had I not been inside The Children's Place! For anyone who doesn't know me, I am 6' tall. Of all places for someone to want me to try something on, a kid's clothing store? I couldn't shop there when I was a kid. I hit 5'9 at age 12 and I'm pretty sure I've been 6' tall since I was 14. Fortunately, I'm actually a lot lighter now. Anyway, amidst my disbelief I smiled and put on the vest and zipped it up. It fit. The woman seemed satisfied and I'm pretty sure she bought it for her daughter. I mean, I'm somebody's daughter - 2 people, actually - and like I said, I've been a giant since I was quite young. But even though the store might've been age appropriate for me at the time, I doubt my mother shopped at the Children's Place for me by the time I got this big. In fact, I am pretty sure that like any adolescent in the early 90's, 99% of my wardrobe was from The Gap and American Eagle.

-I enjoy the Halloween special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! but I don't understand why they always try and pretend it's an hour-long special by after Linus's discovery that The Great Pumpkin isn't coming, they start some other, random Charlie Brown special that nobody has ever seen or heard of. The voices are different and it may or may not have anything to do with Halloween. Cut it out. We all know that the real special is only 30 minutes. Just because Dancing With the Stars! isn't on tonight and you have no other programming doesn't mean we're going to fall for this sub-par Charlie Brown. Oh, and why do they never show the Garfield Halloween special anymore? I love that one.

-If you are ever feeling a little down, do a google image search for puppies. Awwww.....

-You know what else can brighten your day? A $2.99 Pearl Izumi bike jacket find at the outlet store. It might not be the color you would choose, but come on, $2.99!

-There is a big difference between ice cream that is worth it, and ice cream that is not.

-My social life, which is pretty sparse to begin with, almost completely disappears without training.

-I still don't miss swimming.

-Of all things, I actually miss weight training.

-NBC Thursday night TV is awesome.

-Drawer and closet space is a lot tighter when you swap the summer clothes for the winter ones.

-I own far too many sweaters, but still find myself looking for new ones. Even here, when it is cold for almost half the year, I don't think there is enough winter for me to wear all of them.

-Eating crap makes you feel like crap. Sucks how that works.

-I'm looking forward to my first long bike ride after my time off, just hope it doesn't snow by then.

-I am going to need a LOT of DVD's to get me through this winter of trainer rides.

-IM Utah is 6 months from tomorrow, and that is a scary thought.

-I think I like the idea of eating whatever I want a lot more than actually doing it.

-I'm looking forward to the holidays and a bit of chilly weather and some skiing, but I am dreading everything after January when I'm sick of winter and can't stand being inside anymore.

-Whenever I am around little kids and they do certain things, I often wonder how the world would be different if people never grew out of stuff. Like what if we all still cried and pouted when we didn't get what we wanted, no matter how small and simple it is? What if whenever someone offered us a bike of some food we didn't want, we said no with such force that you'd think our lives were at stake? What if we all walked in one direction while looking back the other way?

-Similarly, have you ever noticed how disinterested kids are generally with food? They really do only want to eat when they are hungry. Now there's something I wish we never grew out of.

-I miss when USA and TNT used to show movies instead of just constantly running episodes of Law and Order and NCIS. I think it is because of this that Overboard actually hasn't been on TV once in the past few weeks. Usually you can't go a weekend without it.

-Saturday Night Live, with the exception of last year's Sarah Palin stuff, has been terrible for years, but I still have to watch it every week - recorded, of course. Seth Meyers grew up in my hometown and his mom is still the junior high French teacher.

-I have been watching The Simpsons for so long that I actually remember talking about certain episodes in school with friends in 7th grade. Back then it was up against The Cosby Show. You know, once it jumped the shark and they had to add Olivia because the other Huxtable kids got too old.

-I need to start training again so I have less time on my hands to contemplate these mostly meaningless things.