Season's Greetings

Wow, I can hardly believe how December just flew by!!! What a fun month! Between training and the holidays, I haven't had a spare minute to update my blog. Ok, well maybe I did have a spare minute, but I probably used it up on a nap instead!

Well I won't bore you all with the details, instead I'll just provide the highlights...

Highlight 1...TNT camping weekend. We camped with the other TNT teams (Westside, Eastside and South Bay) up at Leo Carillo state beach in Malibu. Despite the torrential rains, I was definitely a happy camper! I love camping, so I'm just happy to be out there any chance I get. We arrived Saturday morning and took off for a long ride of 3 hours. Of course, I had a small incident (aka I fell over on my bike), which was amusing since I didn't sustain any serious injuries. Unfortunately, I put new clips on my shoes, and needless to say, they're a lot tougher to unclip from my pedals. This has resulted in a couple unfortunate "incidents." Gotta do something about those clips! The rest of the day was spent lounging, eating, and also included a quick trip to target to buy a gift for Toys for Tots.

Saturday night was punctuated with a serious storm. When I woke up Sunday morning, only about 1/3 of the original campers were still there. Looking around I noticed several tents sitting in pools of water... bummer! My tent kept me dry and thank goodness I was on "higher" ground so the rivers which ran around my tent didn't form an actual lake. We set off on a run for an hour and forty five minutes up PCH. It was beautiful and windy...just like Saturday. I was actually surprised how great the run felt. Then we all headed home. I was supposed to swim Sunday when I got home, but instead my 30 minute nap morphed into 2 1/2 hours...so I never made it to the pool.

Highlight 2...My ride today!!!! 3.5 hours! I am down at my parents house in Carlsbad, so I opted to bike on my own today, rather than drive the 2.5 hours back to Malibu to bike with the team. While I certainly missed seeing all my teammates, I did have a wonderful albeit chilly ride. I biked from Carlsbad to S. La Jolla and then back past Carlsbad to S. Oceanside and then back to S. Carlsbad. All in all, I was able to log 54.28 miles, just 1.75 miles shy of a 1/2 Ironman bike distance.

I really enjoy biking down here because so many of the roads are bike friendly. It's amazing the number of roads with bike lanes...I love it!!!

Oh, the other big difference...a new cassette on my bike. I had an 11-23 and last night I put on an12-27, which made a huge difference on the hills. Ok, I realize that probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you, but just know, it makes it easier for me to bike up hills without thrashing my legs. I was speaking w/ one of the coaches up at the TNT camping weekend and he made that recommendation...I'd give him a big shout out for revolutionizing my life, but I can't remember his name. (Boo on me!)

It's a really good thing my legs aren't thrashed, because tomorrow I've got a nice long run to look forward to. I will likely get up early and sneak it in. My lil' sis is here in town with my two nephews and I want to be able to spend as much time as possible with them. The great part is that whether I run North or South, it doesn't really matter, because it is so beautiful either way!

Highlight 3...Two weeks ago at our team practice, I swam 100 yds in 1:40 min...so I'm pretty stoked on that! While I love the water, I'm not the faster swimmer. In fact when my coach said I was to swim 10 100sX2mins, I was like "yeah right!!!" Of course, when I finished protesting, I swam like a fish and to my surprise actually pulled it off. Not sure if/when that will happen again, but I'm glad my coaches were there to vouch for me!

Ok, I'm off to bed now...truthfully, I'm just too tired to write any more.

Happy New Year!