Recovery!

Ahhh....the total excesses of a Thanksgiving well done!  What a wonderful weekend of food and family.  I'm still recovering from the gluttony of it all.  I got myself off to spin class this morning with a short swim before.  I think everyone was there to work off their holiday indulgences and the class was killer.  Seriously gotta be putting together my training plan and race schedule!

2011 Finish!

This is the finish that my friend in line told me about, pretty exciting!

Scoop on IMAZ Volunteering

Great weekend, ok I'm feeling it now, so much energy.  Craig and I left Friday afternoon, we met up with my tri buddies on Saturday morning before the volunteer meeting! So fun, I will post a picture when I get it from Craig's phone.  So the scoop on volunteering at IMAZ--We did morning/dry clothes bags, we got there at 5:00am and stood around not doing very much until close to the start time, and then the onslaught of bags!!!  At first you can somewhat organize them, but at some point they start coming at you so fast all you can do is build a mountain!  Inevitably people forgot things and left them in their bags, gu, swim caps, goggles--and believe it or not I think we found everyone when they came back (remember the mountain) no easy feat.  It is a huge job to organize all the bags numerically in rows, some bags must weigh 50 pounds!  It was also a little sad to have some of the swimmers who didn't finish the swim come back for their dry clothes.  I talked to one lady who was doing her 21st Ironman she said she didn't know what happened, she wasn't sick, but just started coughing so much that she couldn't continue.  After organizing the bags all of the bikes of the DNF's were pulled off the racks and checked, then we reracked the bikes and at 10:00 am or so we were finished.  We hung out for awhile and cheered, especially for the last people coming in off the bike course, we should have stayed for the final finish, I kinda wanted to but I didn't sleep well the night before and knew we would be up early today.  Jason, next to me in line this morning said it was the best finish, there was a lady all bent over (oh my visions of last year, been there!) who was so close but just wasn't going to make it, Mike Reilly went out to help her come in, she was leaning on him and still not making it fast enough, he literally pushed her over the finish line with not a second to spare.  I'm hoping someone will post that one on Youtube.  Craig had patients scheduled starting at 2:00 today so we were anxious to get home.  Everyone said it was best to get in line for on site registration about 6:00am, since we wanted to get out of there early we decided to go down at 5:00am----good call.  It was still a long wait but we were on the road by about 7:45 or so.  I was about 20th in the volunteer line which snaked clear back down to the road.  So here it is 365 days, I'm pretty jazzed, I just wish I could keep this feeling going for the whole year!
Oh yeah, and what to volunteer for the next time I volunteer, I would do Saturday registration for the current years athlete to do the following year (did that make sense?). Some nice perks with that one!

Defying Convention Wisdom

7 mile run today.  I have always been a very slow runner, this year I have decided that I need to get faster. I am old and am suppposed to be slowing down not speeding up, heaven help me if I get any slower! So I am attempting to defy conventional wisdom and get faster in my old age. Now remember faster is all relative--I haven't even hit a 10 minute mile yet, sad I know. Furman running has been too intense, I've made relatively weak attempts at it so I am following a Runners world training plan for the St. George half in January. We'll see how it goes.  Yoga now!!

No gear=New running clothes

So I think I've figured out my nightmares about not having gear!  Friday Craig and I went to St. George so I could do a Runners Series race.  No stress, I just have to complete a 5k with my cute daughter in law for company.  We got to St. G, ready to check into our hotel, and guess what--no gear, that's right, I forgot the whole darned thing, and what's more I didn't even miss it till we got to St. George.  Luckily I had my running shoes on and a quick trip to Target for some running tights and a jersey saved the day.  A quick trip to Target would not save Ironman!  One race down, one more to go, I think I'm doing the St. George half in January.  I'll put up a picture of Ally and me when they're up.  Craig and Kev did the half, it was fun to get to spend some time with Kev and Ally.