Introducing: The Lady Lenore

I've had my bike close to sixteen years, and FINALLY found a name that suits her.  The Lady Lenore is named after a fictional violin and I'll buy a drink for anyone that knows who owned that violin.

On the road again……..

I've taken a hiatus for the last couple of weeks after the doctor told me to lay off exercise.  Eight or so years ago I herniated a disc in my back.  It’s never been quite right since.  It always bothers me a little, but most days it is like background noise.  I am used to it and I barely notice it.   Sometime between Christmas and New Year’s it started to bother me a lot.  By New Year’s Eve I was walking with a limp.  I had to cancel my plans and go see the doctor.  I told him that I was training for a triathlon and I was hoping that he would say “good!  Exercise is just the thing that you need.”  But he told me that I could swim.  He hesitated about the biking and told me flat out to not run.  I asked if I could do the elliptical in lieu of the run.  His answer was: “You know what, just stay off the exercise for a while.”  I was going bat crazy and becoming lazy, neither of which is good.   The doctor gave me a week’s worth of meds and told me to contact him if it still bothered me in a week.  It did, but not as bad.  I spent the next week playing phone tag with the doctor and have now given up getting a hold of him.  Unable to get his permission I've diagnosed myself ready to go back to the gym, and I was SO HAPPY to be back there this morning.  Still got to get my back better though.

SUPER BOWL POOL to benefit The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

Join me on my journey as I train for my third triathlon 

and raise $1,800 for the Leukemia Lymphoma Society.

SUPER BOWL POOL

to benefit

The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

$10 per box

Box sales and selection are on a first come, first serve basis

 

How to pay for your box:

If you are unable to see me to choose you box and pay cash I will be happy to select a box for you. 

Payments may be made to PayPal. 

My PayPal account is LauraCBergman@yahoo.com.  

Be sure to select the Friends & Family option in order to avoid PayPal fees.

 

What are your odds?:

All boxes have an even chance to win.

The numbers that correspond with each box will be randomly drawn after all boxes have been sold. 

This makes it so that everyone has the same opportunity to get any set of numbers. 

It also means you don't have to know anything about football as it all comes down to the luck of the draw.

 

$500 to the winner

$500 to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

Winner is determined by the FINAL score of Super Bowl XLVII

 

A late post about the TOBAY tri

I know that I haven’t updated my blog since August.  I’m about to train and fund raise for my third triathlon and I never wrote about my second one. 

I was really nervous going into the TOBAY tri.  I know so many people that do that event and even more that volunteer there.  In Tennessee nobody knew me.  It didn't matter if they had cleaned up the finish are before I even got there or if I was followed only by the street sweeper.  At TOBAY I knew tons of people, some of who are excellent triathletes to whom fitness is paramount, who spend months working on shaving two seconds off of their finish time.  What would they think of me just put-putting my way to the end?

Well, there was no hiding it.  They knew that I was there and that I was competing.  I just had to make the best of it.  Knowing other people in the race actually turned out to be fun.  I ran into them in the transition area, joked around, took pictures, and sipped one of their beers between the bike and the run.  I even found out that a friend of mine was right next to me in transition.  (which turned out to be a little embarrassing later.)

The most interesting part of the race was the swim.  I was not worried; Team in Training prepared me well for it.  I was not the fastest swimmer around, but I thought that I wouldn't embarrass myself too much.  I always heard that the swim part of a tri was a dangerous affair, with people kicking and clawing to get ahead of the other swimmers.  I did not have that experience in Tennessee.  I wish that I could say the same for TOBAY.  Somebody hit my face, scratched it a little and knocked my goggles askew.   The goggles felt weird, but kept their seal so I left them.  That was not the interesting part.

About halfway through the swim I did something that you should not do.  I looked up and compared myself to the other swimmers.  That’s when I saw something odd.  The swim section of the race was shaped as a semi-circle.  We entered the water at the boat ramp and swam around an arch of buoys until we exited the water at the beach.   When I looked up I saw a whole lot of swimmers on the right side of the buoys.  They were supposed to be on the left.  Typically you can expect one or two people to misunderstand the rules and get disqualified as a result, but this was well over a third of the athletes.  What was going on?  I kept swimming to the left of the buoys.  The swim was supposed to be half a mile but it seemed awful long to me.  Why was the swim taking so long? I know that I am not fast, but I thought that I was faster than this.  Well, apparently a couple of the buoys got loose and stared drifting away.  Most of us swimmers were unaware and followed them, going way off course.  I still wonder how the other swimmers knew the situation and followed the intended swim course.   I didn't find out any of this until after the race.  I’ll never know how far I went, or if I would have finished the race within the time frame I was hoping for.  Kind of a bummer.  After the swim I saw my transition neighbor heading out for the run.  He had already completed the entire bike segment and I was just getting out of the water.

The bike was relatively uneventful, hilly and challenging, but doable.  The best part of it was being on roads that were closed to other traffic.  There is this hill on 25A that I hate riding down.  Once you pick up some decent speed you have to stop for the intersection at the bottom, then continue up the next hill from a stopped position.  I loved picking up speed and cruising through it. 

The run sucked.  I can’t run.  The run always sucks. 

The Best part of the race was the end.  By that time I had kind of given up on the half walk half jog thing that I try to do.  Mostly I was walking.  Many of my TEAMmates had passed me along the way, cheering me on, so were the volunteers that I knew and the ones that I didn't.  I LOVE being cheered on.

When I got to the end my entire TEAM was waiting for me.  They all cheered and clapped for me then they filed in behind me and ran me across the finish line.  I definitely felt the TNT love!

My official time was 2 hours 9 minutes.  I was hoping to finish in less than 2 hours.  Who knows if I would have had the swim buoys stayed in place?

Tapering

The week before a major event athletes are supposed to "taper".  The point of tapering is that any exercise that you do within 10 days  of an event will not add to your strength in time and may actually fatigue you.  For me it is too easy to become a lazy couch potato.

I've been tapering all week..  My definition of taper is as follows:  
ta•per  [tey-per] verb (used without object)1. to sit around and drink a lot of wine.

TOBAY tri here I come

I’m not sure if I mentioned the big dilemma that I have this tri season.  I had the choice of doing two triathlons with TNT.  One is on September 9^th in DC and the other is this weekend here on Long Island.  I REALLY wanted to do the one in DC.  One reason is that I found that it was a lot of fun to travel with the TEAM.  You really get to know the people that you maybe didn’t get to know too well during the season, and you create a good bond.  I am also a TEAM mentor.  I would hate to have my mentees in doing an event in a distant city without me.  I want to be there and be a good mentor.  Plus the September course is flat.  Sunday’s course is hilly, VERY hilly, and you know how I feel about hills. 

September’s course is an Olympic distance triathlon, like my last one.  The one this week is a sprint tri.  You would think that I would prefer to do the shorter event, but I see the difference between the two much like I see the difference between running a marathon and running a 5k.  When you complete a marathon everybody cheers for you.  You can be as slow as molasses and it really doesn’t matter to anyone.  They just care that you finished, and afterwards you can say something like “I’ve completed four marathons”.  When you complete a 5k either nobody cares or they want to know your times, which for me would be worse than nobody caring.  My times are embarrassing. 

Now add that embarrassing time to a local event where I know a couple of dozen of the participants.  For these particular people it IS about the time.  They care a lot about breaking a personal record or beating their friends.  They have little competitions and they smash talk each other all year.  If I am going to embarrass myself I do NOT want to do it in front of these people.  I’d much rather do it out of town where nobody knows me. 

My predicament is that my cousin’s baby’s baptism is on the 8^th in NY.  There are not a lot of things that I would skip my desired triathlon for, but Baby Sebastian’s baptism is one of them.  (I really wish that my family and friends would consult me before planning anything.)  So the TOBAY tri it is.  I’ve trained and practiced on the course twice.  I’m able to finish, but, again, I am VERY slow.  Wish me luck!

The Olympics has me thinking about medals

One of the things that I was really looking forward to, while training for my last triathlon, was winning a medal.  Unless you finish among the top three (and most likely not even then), triathlon medals are not made of gold or silver or even bronze.  They are just a symbol of an accomplishment and I SO wanted one.  Though I completed the entire tri, technically I don't think that I qualified for a medal, since it took me so long to finish, but the guy running the race said that I could have one as long as I finished the race, no matter how long it took me. So when I crossed the finish line I got a medal.

I was so proud.  I wanted to wear it to the victory dinner, but I let my coach talk me out of it.  I, however, put the medal in my purse and slipped it on and off all of  that evening and the next day.  The next afternoon, as we boarded the plane to go home, I put my finishers medal around my neck and sat down in my seat.  The group of us sat in the same section of the plane and joked back and fourth amongst ourselves.  A guy in front of me noticed our banter and asked the typical plane questions:  "Where are you guys from?", "What were you doing in Tennessee?"...  I explained to him that we were all on the same triathlon team and were returning home after competing in a tri in Knoxville.  He asked how we did.  I explained that we all finished, and my teammates did well, but I was actually the winner.  That is why I am the only one wearing a medal.  I had him fooled.  :-)