I went to the mountain

This last week I had the workout of the season. In six days I flew to Montana, cleared out my father's entire house, held a garage sale, got all his tangled affairs in something like order, and drove back out to Iowa with him. I slept on the floor. I dealt with constant and mind-boggling family craziness. I prevailed.

It's now Wednesday and we've been back two days, but when I woke up this morning the desire for another workout had not in any way revived. I'll hit the pool tonight and maybe go for a run afterward, if the ribs don't give me any trouble. My whole body is tired and my soul is fatigued.

back to the pool

There's a half hour lap swim at our little local outdoor pool. Seriously, half an hour a day. Obviously no one is training for much of anything. At the end of the half hour they turn up the music and next thing you know small children with water wings are falling from the sky. It's an invitation not to take the workout too seriously, just show up and jump in every day and do your thing as long as they'll let you. A good methodology for lots of things really. I will try to apply it to putting my father in a nursing home, which is the order of the hour. There comes a point for everyone where they turn the music up, you get out and little kids take over. It would bother me less if my father had some uncontrollable, tragic illness rather committing ritual suicide-by-diabetes at the young age of 67.

oh the pain

I tried to run this morning and nothing happened. Well, I jogged painfully for about half a block, turned around, went back to the house, got on my cycling clothes and went riding instead. It's going to put a serious crimp in triathlon training if I can't run.

This afternoon I saw the doctor about the headaches after swimming and the injured ribs. She says to try taking ibuprofen before I swim, because if it's some sort of exertion headache the anti-inflammatory might prevent it. She also got me an appointment with a neurologist (he's booked until August anyway) so that if ibuprofen doesn't help they can give me an MRI, an angiogram, and the general full-on poke-and-prod. Because of my family history of stroke and brain aneurysm she was fairly concerned, but just not the panicky type. I like a doctor who has you try ibuprofen before giving you an MRI. This seems very sane.

About the ribs, nothing can be done but take, yes, more ibuprofen. I really like mountain biking, but I like even better being able to breathe deeply and go for long runs, neither of which I can do now. Grumble grumble grumble. Silver lining: what with headaches and ribs, my cycling is getting better all the time.

mommy!

For my sins, my mother has come to town. Oh, I don't mean it like that. She's really perfectly harmless compared to my father, who has obviously been possessed by the sort of slothful alien who can be trusted never to take over the universe and go landing his spaceship on an aircraft carrier only to leap out in full Top Gun gear to shout in his unearthly tongue, "Mission accomplished!" Oh no, my mother is a more subtle menace. She'll let me get my workouts in, but I will feel guilty about it. I will. I feel guilty already just writing this post. You see how insidious it is?

Bloody marvelous thunderstorms this morning scrubbed the long run planned. Swimming this afternoon unless we see recurrence of aforementioned bloody marvelous thunderstorms.

the sky is full of blue

and full of the mind of God.

owie

My Friday workout consisted of some light weeding in the garden this morning, chased by life-threatening mosquitoes. Tonight I will run around chasing Bu. I think that's about it. My ribs hurt, my knees hurt, I can't lie down on my left side. Maybe some cycling tomorrow morning if it doesn't hurt too much to lean over my handlebars.

endo

A couple of friends from work took me mountain biking for the first time last night on the local trails in the hills around the lake. The trails are marked green, blue and black, like ski runs, and we did mostly greens and blues, then one black to see what it was like. Mostly I was fine and really liked it. However, about two minutes into the whole ride, on the first real downhill, I caught a pedal or something and flew off my bike and down the hill in what was later described as a "total Pete Rose slide". Opened up my knee, scraped up my thighs, hips, elbows, forearms, and did something as yet undetermined to my ribs. It was really lucky I was wearing gloves or my hands would be a mess. So at least I wasn't worried the whole time about taking my first fall. I got that over instantly. It didn't even hurt until I sat down after the ride and stiffened up. We rode for about two and a half hours and had a great time, went for beers afterward. What a crazy sport. Everyone we met along the trail had a more gruesome story about how they'd maimed themselves mountain biking. Clavicle breaks seem very common.

pain in the head

I got my swim last night, but the pain and pressure in my head at the end of a workout isn't going away. It feels like I'm going to pass out or throw up. My goggles are so loose that at one point they actually came off in the water and I had to dive for them. I'm going to try wearing a different swim cap tonight.

In a moment of weakness yesterday I bought Bu a little US Postal team jersey, and now he's in heaven. He wants to bike race everywhere we go, and he says he and Papa are going to do the Tour de France together. When you see the really tall guy on the mountain bike with a little guy on a tagalong behind, trailing way way way behind the pack in the Tour, you'll know it's them. Andy says that Bu pedals so hard he actually pushes the big bike from behind.

the heat begins

Last night was the first night we threw all the windows wide open and still couldn't get enough cool air. It had gotten cool enough by morning to be comfortable, but it will only get worse from here on in. I miss the high, dry country where no matter how oven-like it gets during the day, the land releases the heat at night. I woke up very early and did yoga. I feel a little sore, but strong, planning on doing laps at the outdoor pool tonight. I'm thinking very seriously of signing up for Olympic distance at the Dutchman in Pella on June 26: 1k swim, 40k bike, 10k run.

I went for lunch at Bu's preschool on Friday, and he's been getting lunch sent from home every day since. The major food group of the school lunch was cheese puffs. Fruit & veg consisted of an apple slice. The "main dish" was processed cheese, something balogna-like and butter on a white hot dog bun. It came with whole milk and a vanilla sandwich cookie. The whole thing was repulsive. Bu ate his cheese puffs and apple slice like a normal child but didn't want any part of the nasty sandwich and wasn't even too keen on the cookie. No wonder he's always starving when I pick him up. Today he's armed with a co-jack and mustard sandwich on whole wheat, raisins, almonds, yogurt, carrots and fresh apricots. Would it be over-the-top to get his lunch delivered from the great Indian restaurant up the road? The mother of the Indian boy at preschool says he has allergies and sends all his meals and snacks with him. I now suspect that this is a total fib so that no one thinks it's weird for her to send decent food for him.

first tri of the season

Yesterday was the Pigman Triathlon at Pleasant Creek Recreation Area outside Palo, Iowa. I came in 11th out of 29 in my age group (one of the most competitive apparently) and 243 out of 486 overall with a time of 1:30:36. Dead on middle-of-the-pack, but the pack was mostly men so I don't feel so bad. Actually I feel great. The wetsuit made me much faster, so that my swim didn't really drag down my overall ranking. My bike was the fastest, as always, but my run was slower than usual. I think I was getting overheated by that point. I ran 8:22 splits, which is really slow for me. Afterward I felt completely fine, not even extra hungry. I'm thinking about trying the Dutchman Olympic distance tri in a few weeks, so as to make the sprints seem really easy by comparison!

wake

Took the new wetsuit out to the lake for a trial run last night. It was great. Fit great, felt great, kept me warm, made me faster, all that good stuff. The swimming was a little weird, though. The flooding has made the beach disappear, but the buoy lines are still up, so the water was silty and opaque. Power boats kept buzzing by and setting up wake. The overall effect was a little like swimming in the ocean, but without the icky salt-in-the-mouth. Bottom line: love the wetsuit, should've gotten it sooner. And the Body Glide worked really well. The wetsuit slipped right off, no 5 minute struggle.

The only thing that worries me is that I got a bad headache again from swimming. It's not my goggles, they're very loose. The pain seems to be more across the high part of my forehead, or when it's really bad like a band around my entire head. It corresponds better to my swim cap than my goggles, but my swim cap is silicone and not that snug. I'm a little worried that it's something physically wrong with me causing pressure in my head when I stay in a swimming position for a while. It's apparently nothing to do with chlorine. Maybe I should just wear my swim cap for half an hour while hanging around the house and see what happens.

Pedy the dromedary 

new stuff

I'm messing with the template. The old one was a little too pale, but now of course I've lost all my customizations. Easy come, easy go. We'll have to see if the comments are working.

This morning, ladies and gentlemen, I took a walk. It was a very nice morning. I'm still exhausted from my dad's visit. We all are. Bu slept over 12 hours. The other big news is that I went ahead and bought a wetsuit last night, a longjohn I guess it's called, long legs and sleeveless, for $115. It's the cheapest I've seen anywhere, so I'm happy. We're going out to the lake tonight to get it wet and make sure the bodyglide stuff actually works. I envision spending 5 minutes getting the damn thing off in transition.

By the way, the camel is the one I rode and walked with for a week in South Australia. We were near Coober Pedy, hence the name. He was a good camel and wise.