Pranked!

Just wanted to share this photo of what happened to my friend Scott when he asked his neighbor to take his garbage out when he was out of town:

I mean, come on! What self-respecting gorilla would wear a helmet on the bike trainer? Sheesh! And poor Eeyore clearly has some heel-strike issues.

Roanoke Tri Club Party

Last night was the Roanoke Tri Club holiday party, and even though I live roughly 35 miles away, I am grateful to have been "annexed" into the group! It's a club, but in a very organic way that works because let's face it, it's not easy to organize adults. Especially busy triathlete adults. The party was terrific, filled with rich and heart-felt holiday discussions (haha) of training, racing, injuries, and equipment.

It was capped off with an incredible slide-show that represented a major creative and analytical effort on the part of Mark Taylor and Scott Moir. It included two slides of each athlete, featuring his/her racing year recap and a given nickname and unique award. There were many laughs and far more photos of pole dancing than one might expect in a triathlon presentation.

The nickname bestowed upon me was Cortney "Love Tri(s)" Martin (hmmm....) and my award was related to my 44 deadlifts on my 44th birthday and an insinuation about being able to crack a walnut between my butt cheeks. I'll take that as a compliment, thank you!!

Mark and Scott who put together the presentation did their homework!!  They analyzed our collective results in the Virginia Triathlon Series and declared Roanoke the triathlon epicenter of Virginia in terms of per-capita triathlon success! So take that, Northern Virginia and Richmond!! This rag-tag bunch does some damage on the race circuit!!

The rapt audience

As a newcomer, I'd wager that the reasons this club is successful is that

1. it is very loosely structured. I could be wrong on this, but there appears to be no executive board, no set requirements for membership, no actual fees, and no set schedule. Maybe it's beyond unstructured! But honestly, we have so much structure in our lives and jobs it's nice to be a part of something that flies in the face of that. People just seem to step up and do what needs doing.
2. It is encouraging to all members who get out there to swim, bike, and/or run. We each have different goals and there's no judgement whether you're a relayer or an IMer.
3. There is enough friendly rivalry to encourage members to to dig deep and do their best, but friendly trumps rivalry every time.
4. There is recognition of and collective celebration for the achievement of personal milestones and PRs.
5. There are many uhhhhh....interesting personalities!!  Along with that, there's a great deal of humor used to keep any potential triathlon egos WELL in check!

Mark and Scott, emceeing the "awards" presentation

Thanks and congratulations to all the Roanoke Triathlon Club folks for a terrific year of racing and antics!!

Dark Day for the Hokie Nation

I am typing this from the conference room at work...at Virginia Tech...where I am currently on lock-down with my colleagues. My kids are on lockdown at their schools.

At 12:37 we got the first alerts of gunshots on campus and what we know so far is that there have been two fatal shootings, one of which is an officer. The suspect has not been caught.

We had all been gathered for a holiday lunch. It's reading day, the day off between classes and exams, so a perfect time to get together and celebrate. Not a good day to listen to sirens, watch ambulances go by, ask if this is really happening, and reminisce about April 16 when 32 Hokies lost their lives to a lunatic.

Today, lives have been shattered, families permanently altered, and sadness now burrows ever more deeply into each of us.

There is no script for what to do, how to act, how to move forward.

With those gunshots, everything that seemed important immediately dropped 100 places down the list. All my complaining, the craziness, fussing about run paces, tendonitis, and whether I need a flip turn....none of that really matters.

I just want to collect my kids, go home, thank God for another day, and pray for peace and healing for those affected by the events today.

Such senseless violence. I do not understand.
 

December Crazies

December feels like the equivalent of the accountant's tax season for me. This is the month when things at work are THE busiest because I am gearing up for a big three-day conference I chair (e.g. wrangle) in February. Then add on top of that the holiday stuff where at least in our family, 95% of the planning and executing falls to me. Robert and the boys chop down a tree, so I'll generously concede 5%.

I usually do a pretty good job of managing daily stress but it's been a challenge lately. I've been wound very tightly (or more accurately as I joked today, "about ready to punch someone"). During yesterday's swim and today's bike trainer workout I was distracted and agitated. As my status revealed:

Oh, bike trainer. If this is how it's going to be between us it's going to be a long winter.

I had a workout scheduled with Kurt today and that helped tremendously. By the time I left I'd been sufficiently rehabilitated and it was safe for me to re-enter the general populace.

I was home this morning then continued to work at home. The solitude was therapeutic and I got a boatload done creating a pretty sweet 14-page conference schedule - color coded and with QR codes! We are getting fancy this year.

One bit of good news is that I am coming out of a shoulder issue I've been dealing with for a few months now. Kurt has helped me to work around it and I've been getting acupuncture. Slowly I have been able to add exercises back in. Today was the first day that I could do incline presses and pushups so that was very exciting. When the injury hit, I couldn't even do a lateral raise...with just my arms. For some reason swimming hasn't been affected.

I did successfully focus my frustration on deadlifts Monday. It was my first time doing sumos in a while and I hit two sets of 5 x 225 lbs. Sumos are not exactly an essential lift for a triathlete but sometimes it just feels good to load up a bar and lift something sorta heavy.

Tomorrow will be my first day back to running in two weeks. And I've only run twice since the marathon on November 12 (one being the Turkey Trot). This started as a promise to the orthopedic doc last year but I have to say, I rather liked the forced shut-down. I feel physically and mentally fresh and ready to go. And not a moment too soon given my attitude. Getting outside in the fresh air to run is probably just what I need.

That and my snowman bowl. Who can be grumpy eating out of that?

I've been diligent with my three meals-a-day with greens.  Collard greens, asparagus, broccoli, spinach, and green beans are all fair game. I have to confess though the Christmas cookie food group has been making dangerous inroads.

I've started to get a bit of holiday spirit. It took a Christmas puzzle, some holiday tissues (who knew?), and a gift for the dog (stuffed animal pictured at the top)!  Shhhh....don't tell her what I got her. She loves her stuffed animals and she usually sleeps with one from her collection. We do lose a few to eventual shredding but by and large they last pretty long.

Friday I am headed to a Christmas party with the Roanoke Triathlon Club. If the pre-party online banter is any indication of things to come....oh MY. It's a wild bunch!!

Hope you don't mind the non-triathlon-y post.Wishing you a peaceful start to your December :-)

Grant breakfasting at the puzzle table (that we rarely "dine" on)

I've had the time of my life...

Cue the Dirty Dancing song....bring in Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze for the romantic dance lesson scene. Remember that mountain lodge they danced in? Well, it's about 30 minutes from my house and the place where dear hubby and I had our wedding reception 16 years ago. If you look closely at the picture above, you might just see "Baby" and "Johnny" behind me wishing they'd been riding bikes instead of dancing.

Wedding Day at Mountain Lake

I rode my trusty road bike, Ace, up the mountain to that lodge - Mountain Lake - today with Coach Jim. It was one of the things on my triathlon "bucket list." The resort closes for the winter so traffic is minimal and the road surface is great (other than one patch of ice and snow on the road sides at the top). I'd never done this ride, or anything like it, before and when I saw that the forecast for today looked sunny and mild for December (low 40s at 10 am), it seemed like a perfect opportunity.

The ride was just under 50 minutes up and about 12 minutes down! It reminded me of Thanksgiving dinner - all that work to get ready, and the family scarfs it down in no time.

Coach Jim circling around

I do love living in the mountains and this ride with Coach was great! I showed my kids the elevation chart and I think they were imagining that it was somehow as steep as the picture and I had to explain that the horizontal and vertical scales are different and that it curves around the mountain as it goes up. We went up steady and conservatively but had enough left to finish with a short all-out sprint at the top. We dropped down the mountain pretty fast, topping out around 36 mph which was plenty of speed for me. We were pleased we had dressed right for the temps/effort up and the windchill down.

This is the front side of the mountain with about 2100' of elevation gain and average 6.4% grade. The grade is far from overwhelming, but there's not much letup either. The back side, which is significantly more steep and challenging, is also on my to-do list, but much further down :-) The front side was plenty fun!!