I swam with an Olympian today, what did you do?

My first thought when I saw the flash of the gold medal was, 'damn I shoulda brought my camera, or at least my BlackBerry'. And then I held it and it was oh so heavy. And then...I put it on and it was as cool as you'd imagine it would be.

We also got to hold her gun, but that's not as cool as the medal -- even though it had a handcrafted wooden handle and a lot of foreign stickers on it. (No, she's not a trained assassin -- the gun is part of her latest sport, modern pentathlon.)

"She" being Sheila Taormina. She's one of those career Olympians up there with the likes of, say, Dara Torres or Carl Lewis. You know, the familiar faces we see every 4 years. As we age and get older and fatter and grayer, they seem to remain frozen in time while getting faster and stronger.

She keeps showing up in new sports. How amazing is that? Swimming, then triathlon, then modern pentathlon. Damn, I'd be happy to quasi succeed at one!

Anyway, the gold medal was from the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta - 4X200 relay in swimming (freestyle). (Brief observation: she has the most amazing triceps I've ever seen on a man or a woman. I guess that's why she's a gold medal winner in swimming.)

She was the headliner at a swim clinic put on by TriSmart Coaching.

It was such a positive experience. I'm all about that these days -- surrounding myself with happy, great people! Sure beats being an Eeyore, doesn't it?

We started off doing dry drills and learning essentially one key workout we need to do to get stronger, thus faster in the water, then it was time to hit the pool to put the theory to the test.

I love it when I "get" things, especially swimming. I bitch and moan and whine a lot about swimming, but deep down - I actually like it. Maybe not 5K straight in the pool, but in general, the water....yeah, it's alright. Yeah...it's alright.

I'm way sorer than I should be for the wee amount of swimming we did today, but it's all good. Gotta hop back on the horse one of these days. :-)

Crazy is good

I bought the coolest scale the other day.

I'll say it again, in case you thought you read it wrong: I bought the coolest scale the other day.

It's not the most expensive model, nor is it the flashiest, but it has some great features. Like how much fat I am. Literally, how much of me is fat (more on that in a minute).

I've thought about getting one of these babies for awhile -- it falls into my plans for 2010. You know, if I'm going to the trouble to hire a coach to become faster, it kinda makes sense to become as lean as possible too.

See? I'm so not insane. Take that Mr. Einstein!

I got it at Sports Authority -- it was on sale for $60. I couldn't wait to get it home and feed it a battery.

Let's see -- I've had it 2.5 days and weighed myself no less than 2,000 times or so. It feeds me the same info every time, unlike my current scale. You know that scale. Everyone has one, or at least their parents or grand parents have one. It's analog and the spinner flips back and forth in the little window before stopping at a random number. With that scale, if I don't like the weight it reads, all I have to do is hop off and hop back on again. Chances are I'll be 5-15 lbs. different because it's a shitty scale.

I've used the vagueness of it though as another excuse. I think 2010 might be the year of number one and "no excuses". It's hard to track weight on a lying scale. (This is the same scale that Moose hid this summer. He's not allowed to touch the new one, er, at least hide it. I've chained it to my floor.)

I've got a spreadsheet going with a weekly weigh in for pounds --and for fat %. I'm doing an experiment of sorts -- making my Lean Down Challenge a goal and not some esoteric bullshit I spout off when my jeans don't fit out of the dryer -- as I head to the pantry for some chips.

I've figured out the math -- by not eating a barrel of movie popcorn a week and hitting the DQ for Blizzards, I can lose 15 lbs. this year. Seriously.

• I've replaced my beloved Stella Artois with my beloved Coors Light. That's 33 calories per bottle. I'll probably lose a pound a week from this modification alone.
• I eat salads from Chipotle instead of brimming burritos (no dressing).
• Ben and Jerry's has been bumped for Luigi's Italian Ice or lowfat popcorn.
• I'm taking my lunches to work now instead of eating out daily (this is brilliant. Not only do I control what I eat, it also helps pay for da Coach).
• Coke is out. Diet Coke is in, even if it does make me crazy. Crazy is good.

So, these are just a few of the modifications I've developed so far. My goal is to lose 43 lbs. Yeah, I know, it sounds like a lot, but before you become my Mother -- it's something I need to do. I need to answer the same burning question I come back to over and over which is: what would happen if I really tried?

And to not leave you hanging, this is just how roly poly I am:
67 inches
163.0 lbs.
32.5% fat
I'm not a math girl, but if that's true, then I'm hauling 52 lbs. of fat around. 52 lbs! No way in hell I'm hauling 52 extra pounds around Florida.

The missing piece

Shel Silverstein's The Missing Piece was one of my favorite books as a kid. For like an entire year, I checked it out from the library as often as they'd let me. I don't know what about it appealed to me -- it doesn't have very many words and has rudimentary black and white illustrations. Maybe it was a pre-cursor to my fondness for PacMan. Maybe I like circles. I just remember really liking it.

My pre-pre training for Ironman Florida 2010 begins Monday, November 30th. I’m over the moon with happiness and the promise of a new season. It’s great to have something to look forward to again. I’ve been more than a little lost this year.

I’ve occasionally left my athletic ways before – for my career, to try something new, to build a house, because life happens. It's usually on my terms, though. 2009 wasn't. Anyway, I always come back to it just fine, except the time I ramped up from running zero miles to 40 m.p.w. in a nanosecond -- and promptly ended up with a tibial stress fracture. Oops. Lesson learned.

I think having “away” time from sport is good to be a well-balanced human. So as much as I’ve whined and moaned about 2009 sucking ass, on at least one level it was good for me. And now I’m back to doing what I love, finally 100% healthy again – and thrilled to be doing it. I was so burnt out training for IMAZ that I needed 2009 off mentally as much as I did physically.

I have a lot of new plans of attack for the 2010 season, the most exciting one being that I have a coach.

I’ve thought about it, well, for almost a year now and researched coach options. I also studied paid programs online in lieu of a human coach. I asked my friends who have coaches a ton of questions about their experiences, about cost, about return on investment, what they learned. I read blogs and forums. I narrowed down the list and picked my Coach based on her strengths, her location (local) and my positive run-ins with her the past few years (not as a coach).

My Coach is The Missing Piece for the Ironman distance. At least for 2010.

Einstein is famous for (among other things) saying, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I’m really proud of my first two Ironman races, but I want to be better. And not insane. I've reached the bottom of my bag of self-training tricks and racing a third one doing the exact same thing I've done is kind of crazy if I want to be faster.

I struggled a bit with paying someone to coach me. Am I really worth the cost a coach? Me? After all, I’m not an AG winner. I’m not Kona-bound material. I’m back-of-the-pack. I don’t win anything but…what if I could?! Or at least move up a few slots.

I’ve never really tried.

I’m frequently the non-competitive “nice” girl who wants everyone to be happy, even if that means holding back so as to not rock anyone's world. It's a convenient excuse.

What would happen if I believed I could – because I did it in training? What if I focus on Number One and not worry about everyone else around me? What would happen if I had someone unlock the mystery of swimming and I did more than just slog through it and hop on the bike in relief? Or teach me patience and discipline on the bike so my marathon is more run and less death march?

Here's to the next 11.5 months of finding out!

Catching Up

It seems my blog is an afterthought these days. I guess it kinda is. Facebook is where it's at, baby!

So we went to Florida, our first time down there. I've dipped in and out for work before, but I'm always on a mission and in a time bubble when I travel for work, and my surroundings are pure background for the post part, so...it doesn't count.

I could never live there. It's just not my bag, even though I love, love, love the ocean. Florida just doesn't cut it for me, at least not the slice of the state we saw. Way too many tacky souvenir shops, way, way too much pink and green, and a lot of scary Spanish moss. And things like alligators. Even though I didn't see any, I saw the signs everywhere!

But it was beautiful when we were there, and the town was virtually deserted except for the two thousand Ironman athletes and their families. Lots of shaved legs, low body fat, fast bikes to gawk at.

I also noticed this Ironman had a much, much more international feel than the other two I've done. I heard more foreign accents -- and when we were working the water station, a lot of foreign talk. (German being my favorite, of course!).

Our friend Dan was doing his first Ironman, so we went to cheer for him.

In one house it was Dan and his wife Gaye and their 4 nearly-grown kids, us, Kurt, and Kara and Mike. It took me about a day to get used to the hub-bub, but then I loved the energy and the activity of that many people!

Kurt and Dan are like family to us. I'll never forget how they came to Louisville and supported us for our first one. Words cannot describe my gratitude, and I'm sure Rog feels the same way. It just meant a lot to me that they'd do that for us, and it forever sealed our bond with them.

Race day turned out beautiful. Dan's family had IronShrek shirts printed up for everyone, so we proudly put those on and headed to the swim start.

The water was calmish, the sun was shining, it wasn't nearly as windy as it'd been in previous days. I was constantly surprised at how cold it was every morning, though. It was COLD!

I won't describe play-by-play the entire day, just know it was a good day. We cheered at the swim -- and stayed until the darkest end for five Ironman athletes who didn't make the 2:20 cutoff. Rog and Kurt were yelling at a few of the "close" ones to hurry up, but I couldn't watch. I actually started crying and had to walk up the beach. It was heartbreaking.

We cheered on the bike and managed to find Dan not once, but twice on the course with no maps.

We volunteered on the run and ran the water/aid station outside our rental house for about 7 hours. Holy exhausting! It was great, though. When I'm racing I don't get to see the rest of the field, or if I do, I'm too wrapped up in my world to notice them. I was surprised at how many of them "look like me". I don't know if it's because Florida has such a high number of first timers or what, but it was a surprise.

Dan did awesome. He did something to his knee on the bike and couldn't run at all on the run course. He was really disappointed and in a lot of pain, but you know what? He did it. He finished 140.6 miles in less than 17 hours. I'm so, so, so proud of him.

And it's probably no surprise now, but we signed up for IMFL 2010.

Ha ha. I distintcly remember swearing "no more" after Arizona, but I've had a lot of time to sit on the bench and think this year.

You know what? It's not the race, it's the lifestyle and the training and our wild friends that draws us to this crazy sport. I do enjoy race day, but I love nothing more than hopping out of bed at 4:30 on a Saturday, meeting at Dan's house, and heading out for an 90-mile bike ride. Then sitting at his house exhausted, eating pineapple and laughing.

This is why I do Ironman, and I'm happy to be healthy enough to do another one!

In other "exciting" Ironmanish news: I got my first "sponsor" yesterday! I know, I know. I use the term loosely. I realize I'm not sponsor-worthy, but my magical doctor was so excited for us that he offered to sponsor our post-workout recovery nutrition for a year! Woot!

If you get a chance, check out www.riseabovenutrition.com!

Photos from Ironman Florida 2009

Briefest of fly bys:

We just got back from a week in Florida, volunteering and cheering for our friend IronDan who finished his first Ironman in 15:59!!!

I'll write it up this weekend. In the meantime, FaceBook photos. You don't need to be my friend to see them:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=131347&id=672246570&l=1ca8b4eb24