Counting down... two weeks to go...

It's both scary and exciting to think that two weeks from now I will hopefully be in the midst of a good night's sleep before the Danskin tri.

The Tri-Babe training group started our countdown today with our last brick. (A brick is a bike ride immediately followed by a run.) This week we did a little over 14 miles along a beautiful but hilly route around Seabeck, and then walked/ran 3 miles. Afterwards, when we came back to the table to sign out, we pushed one of the "easy" buttons that our tri-turtle coach Lisa's Mom got her. Gosh those are hilarious - they actually talk!

My mentor, Pam took a photo of me after this week's brick. I usually wear my hair back in a braid but I'm vain enough that I let it fall loose for this photo. It turns out that I am the only one of us who is actually training with this group. Deb and Karen have been training on their own.



So this coming week is the last week of working hard before the race. Next Saturday we have a practice tri - with the full 1/2 mile swim in Wildcat Lake, but a only short bike and a short run/walk. I'm not sure how Lisa defines "short" but I'm guessing that the distances will be about half those of the race, so maybe 6 or 7 miles on the bike and 1.5 or 2 miles on the walk/run?? We'll see.

Those of you are really athletes probably don't think any of this is a big deal, and it probably wouldn't be if I was like you, but I'm not. I'm excited and happy simply to finally have a bike as an adult and to know how to use the gears so that I can get up steep hills. It opens up a whole new world. Last Thursday as I was riding down off the hill at Fort Worden, a group of bicyclists were headed up and they called out to me to turn around and come back up and join them. How cool is that?

I'm even running on part of the walk/run course. Ha! you probably wouldn't call it running, slow jogging is probably a better description. But that's another big deal for me. I skipped the running craze when that hit a couple decades ago, which may be why my knees still work despite all the falling on them when rollerskating on the steeep hill I grew up on.

What a journey this has been - a wonderful, fabulous journey full of life!! And it's just the beginning... next year I hope to do the Danskin tri again, and some other Tris, and also this week I joined a team which will be doing the 3-day "Race for the Cure" in September 2008. That should be relatively easy, it's just a 20 mile each day for 3 days. Just like the tri-babes, who Tri-Harder :), the camraderie should be wonderful.

tootles for now :)