Panic! at the Disco

I hate the term "awesome sauce", but this Sriracha and honey stuff I mixed up to toss with roasted brussel sprouts really is sauce that is awesome.

 Sometimes weekends can have so many different people and parts to them, that I feel I've lived a few lifetimes during their course. This weekend was much like that.

Friday was a nice, mellow evening of just John and myself and the cats. I wanted to make scallops, but at $22/per lb, I didn't feel like mortgaging the house just to have them, so we had salmon, baked potatoes and honey Sriracha brussel sprouts instead.

I'm the one in the back, with the braids, "running" and pulling the "rip chord" to unzip my wetsuit. Thanks to Edwin Montgomery for the photo.

 Saturday morning was glorious. John and I got up and went open water swimming at Lake McBride. Every year I tell myself I'm going to open water swim for at least a month before the triathlon and every year, it's the day before and we're finally getting out to practice. This year, I did one other open water swim practice about a month ago, and we had also been swimming laps more regularly at the pool. So, it was a little better than years past.

Post Pigman lunch with friends. Thanks to Heidi Younts for the photo.

 The rest of the day John and I spent cleaning house. My brother is as crazy as I am about all the outdoorsy crap. He has friends he cross-country skis, bikes and paddles with. One of those friends was going to do the Pigman this weekend. My brother emailed and connected us. He was going to stay at our house. Which was great. John and I have stayed with people when we were out of town to do races, so it was nice to do a little payback.

We cleaned and mowed and laundered for most of the day. We went to Cedar Rapids to pick up our packets and then my brother's friend, Walt arrived. He was really great. He was funny and a freak about bikes and running and he liked to eat and drink. We took him to Kalona Brewery for dinner and carbo loading (what some of you refer to as drinking beer). By the time we got home and chatted a little longer, it was 10 o'clock. Which isn't late for a Saturday night, unless you have to wake-up at 4 am to compete in a triathlon.

When my alarm went off at 4 am, I thought, "Thunderstorm raging outside? Check! Migraine? Check! It's going to be an awesome race." I did my biofeedback and took some Advil. If I had taken my migraine meds, I wouldn't have been able to compete. So, I had to tough it out. The storms passed and my migraine got better once the low-pressure system moved through. Whew!

So, after much verbosity in this post, I am FINALLY getting to my race report. As I said last post, last week was rough for me physically and emotionally. going into the race, I was tired, iron deficient and my hormones were crashing. It would have been great to have another couple of days to recuperate, but that's not how it was.

They had a new timing chip thingy this year. In years past, we were given a little ankle bracelet at the competition. This year they gave us a disposable one the night before. There are a LOT of things to remember to bring, which is bad for me, if you have any idea how spacey I am. So, I forgot my ankle bracelet and had to figure out how to fix it. It was right before the race, and they were behind because of the storms, so I was getting pointed to different places to try to take care of it. I finally was instructed to talk to the organizer guy. Again, I understand that he was stressed and busy and I was making things more complicated, but he his response was to ask me what time my group went off. I said, I thought maybe 7:41? He then very briskly asked me every little detail he thought I should know and then asked me why I didn't have my packet on me. Who takes their packet with them into the transition area? I finally just said, "I don't know." and then started crying. I was already stressed-out, and I didn't need someone making a point to be sure I felt like even MORE of an asshole than I already did. He finally took a deep breath and told me to go to registration and have them assign me a new number. Thank you. That's all I wanted. I got my number changed out and all of the people in registration were extremely helpful. Of course, the minute I have a meltdown, I see everyone I know. it's like the second I go to the grocery store looking like crap, I run into every guy I've ever dated with their beautifully put-together new girlfriends.

I put my stuff in transition and a friend of mine there, instructed me on the best way to hang my bike, in order to get through my transitions more quickly. So helpful. I didn't get to transition until right before it closed, so I was rushed in setting up my area and forgot my water bottle.

I spent some time in the water before the race. This year I really worked on the swim. Remembering our wetsuits this year, made a big difference, but swimming more often beforehand helped a lot too. I got my fastest time in the water by a minute and a half. I even passed people. I never do that. I didn't get my head in the water as often as I would like, but I was a much stronger swimmer than before. I was super exhausted coming out of the water. I went through transition, hopped on my bike and went as hard as I could. I wasn't as strong as I'd like to be, but I had moments of brilliance (just not enough of them). By the time I was making it back for the run, I felt like I was bonking and realized that I forgot to eat a Gu before the race. I had one in transition, so I choked it down on my way out. I was dying of thirst. The clouds had gone, the sun had come out and it was getting really hot. The Gu helped me my first mile, but I think I went out too fast. I started to die quickly rather than slowly and by the last mile, I was feeling faint. I had the chills and was starting to see the sparkly spots. I could actually see the finish. So, I told myself I only had a half mile left. I used to run that in a little over 2 minutes in high school. Of course, now it takes me way longer than that. Good news, is that I finished without passing-out. Bad news, is that I got my worst run time ever by about a minute and a half. You know what? I did the best I could with what I had. It wasn't my best Pigman time, but it wasn't my worst one either. So many things to work on for next year, and I was glad of what I accomplished for the swim.

Our funny looking TT bikes.

We met our friends at Big Grove for lunch. They were all going for a long social ride. I was a little bummed to miss it, but we had our TT bikes, which are uncomfortable to ride any other way, and apparently, John and I were both exhausted. We went home, and took showers, followed by a nap. John must have really been tired. He slept for about 4 hours.

Like I told John, we got a great work-out in, we got to hang with our friends, we're well rested and our house is clean. Not a bad way to start the week.