Au Revoir

My blog is moving!

All the old posts including everything from Quotes of the Week (my old blog) are over at:
hollidaysburke.wordpress.com

Ultimately I will delete this entirely so update your bookmarks now!

Happy Valley Sprint Tri

This morning I went up to State College for the Happy Valley Sprint Triathlon.  I was definitely regretting signing up for it when we left.  First of all, I actually registered for the race twice because my first registration got lost in the mail.  Second of all, not many of our triathlete cohorts were competing (including Sean).  Third of all, I felt like complete crap.  

However, I am very glad that I did it.  The swim was in a 50 meter pool with three swimmers in each lane.  I was a little worried about how that was going to go, but it wasn't really a problem.  I was able to pass the two other people in my lane without too much problem.  I had put in an estimated time of 14:30 and ended up at 16:07, but I didn't feel too bad about that.  I was able to keep track of the number of lengths I had gone without a problem which was my other main concern and I was the second person out of the pool in my heat which makes me feel good even if it is completely arbitrary.  Most of all I have now raced the longest distance I will need to do this year for the swim.  While the rest of the races will be open water, this is a good thing to have out of the way because I know I can definitely do it now.

My T1 was decent - no real problems - except I guess the first person out of the pool in my heat was the guy whose bike was next to mine!  Again!  Unbelievable.  I ate two Jelly Belly Sport Beans.  I have decided that I like them WAY better than gels.  I got all my bike stuff on the correct body parts (unlike the woman I saw later riding her bike with her sunglasses sticking out of the top of her helmet...

Mounting and dismounting my bike = not my strong suit.  I really liked the rest of the bike though.  My goal was to be under an hour which would have been averaging 12 minute miles which is not really that fast, but is decent for a beginner (in my opinion at least) and my actual time was 49:26.  The course was not as challenging as Rocky Gap, but I would say there were more long gradual uphills and what I would actually describe as rolling hills as opposed to steeper ups and downs like at Rocky Gap.  For those familiar with State College, it went from a grassy area near the natatorium out to Park Ave., past Beaver Stadium to the left onto Fox Hollow and then out past the airport and back.  Not too many hills, right?  But at the same time, none of it is really flat.  At any rate, I was very excited about the bike because it was the first time during that portion of the race that I wasn't just sitting there wondering why the hell I was doing this to myself and actually enjoyed it instead.

My bike to run transition was easy.  Ate two more sport beans.  The course went past the new law school building and then around some service roads to the intersection of University and Park where you turned around and came back.  There were only two hills of any concern - 1 right before the turn around and 1 back up to the water station on the way back.  There wasn't a whole lot of shade, but that is really my only complaint...if I didn't live in Central PA I might complain that it smelled like cows - but what else is new, really?  This was the first run I did as part of a triathlon on which I didn't totally suffer or walk really at all.  I took a few walking steps to get my water and that was it.  Major victory.  My run time was 32:23 which is more than 2 minutes faster than my run at Rocky Gap and almost two minutes faster than my run at Martinsburg.

So all in all, although I was only 18th in my age group, I really loved this race.  Two weeks until the next one!

About all those races....

This morning when I was feeling very ill on my way to the Happy Valley Sprint Tri:

Sean:  Why did you sign up for this race?

Laura:  I don't know...

Sean:  Is it because you like signing up for races?

Laura:  ....yeah....I do like signing up for races!

It ended up being a good race!

Uncle Leo Says Hello

"Helping" with the quilt project.

Flag

Okay, this guy on NPR who claims he designed the flag with 50 stars when he was in junior high before there were 50 states...kind of sounds like he is full of crap.