Tomorrow, Tomorrow, I Love You, Tomorrow

Eek! It's here. The triathlon is tomorrow. I've been on the East Coast all week and the flight back last night was delayed four hours which meant that I didn't get home till 2:30 am today. I took the day off work, got some sleep during the day and made my checklist of stuff. Tuesday night I had my first anxiety dream about the event: made it to the swim start but didn't know where my shoes or my bike were and my running shorts fell in the water. I did manage to get a couple of short runs, a single swim and two aikido training sessions (which I do want to blog about, but not in my current state of mind) in while in Princeton (lovely campus, by the way) so I don't feel completely unprepared. But still...

Let's see, my bike is on the car, ready to go, tires all pumped up, brakes checked. Helmet is in the back seat, check list is on the dining table along with the rest of my gear. I'll wear my swimsuit.

Just checked the weather. It's going to be in the mid-50s. Oh baby, the water is going to be cold. All the better to swim fast(er) in, I suppose.

Time to sleep.

Dawn Ride

I got up this morning to squeeze in a bike ride before work. The stars aligned just right so that my brother, who is staying with us, could watch the kids before he headed for work since M is off at 6:40. I was out the door at around 6:35 am. Still not quite light, but not pitch black anymore. I headed for my familiar 11 mi out and back with a little loop thrown in the middle. It runs right along Alameda Creek, into Coyote Hills Regional Park, along the San Francisco Bay and back home.

I saw no other bikers on the trail. A few walkers were sprinkled here and there, but I was cruising on my own. It was cold and, though I had thought ahead and dressed in layers, my hands and feet got chilly. No matter. It was time to pedal. Usually, I'm watching out that I don't run into somebody else. It was liberating to just go for it and have room. Not that I'm going at Tour de France speeds but still...

As I rounded the hill to head back home, I saw the sun peeking over the hills, a bright orange-red slice in the sky, and I smiled. This was totally worth it. In that moment, I felt like I could have ridden on forever. But it was time to get back to the kids, get ready for work, get going.

The good feeling stayed with me all day.

Bitten by the Bug

The triathlon bug that is. It started innocently enough: running three times a week, then I thought I'd get back in the pool because the summer was so hot and running at noon was sweltering, then I started riding my bike back and forth to aikido class and the pool instead of driving and coughing up the parking fee each time. Next thing I know, I'm surfing the web, looking for a triathlon to do.

Found one: See Jane Tri - all women, non-competitive, SHORT - 400 yd swim, 11 mi bike, 3.1 mi run. Better yet, the site is only a half hour drive away from home which means that I can get up relatively late for the 8 am start. Yeah, I'll be up at 5 am, but I think that will be nerves.

Oh, and it's two weeks away which means that I've been squeezing in biking, running, swimming and aikido into my weeks that are already full with work and family. Thank goodness I've got M backing me all the way. Wouldn't be able to do this without him. I think he secretly harbors this fear that I'm going to be trying for longer distance tris after this. All in good time, I think. Maybe when the boys are a little older. I want to see how this first one goes. I might hate it. Then again, I may love it.

I'm excited.

Lullaby, and Good Night

Maybe it's all this exercise but I find myself really looking forward to a good night's sleep these days. Sometimes, we even get one that's not interrupted by either one of the boys. Some good middle of the night quotes from them:

1. "My bed is messy."
2. "P is in the way." (P was asleep on the floor, between the boys' beds.)
3. "I'm scared." (Always a classic.)
4. "I need to go to the potty."
5. "P is snoring and it's annoying me."
6. "There's a gap (between my bed and the wall)."
7. "Sorry for waking you up." (Then don't wake us up!)

I hear the siren song again and it's only 9:24 pm. Does that just make me an old fuddy-duddy?

I don't care.

A Short Drive

My brother is moving closer to us! A new job has brought him to these parts. Today, he drove about 660 miles in just over 1o hrs to get from Idaho to CA. Needless to say, with that kind of drive between us, we haven't seen each other much these past few years. With four of us here in CA and five of them there, it just seemed like a logistical miracle to get us together once a year. Now, he and his family will be living just a 30 minute drive (weekend traffic conditions) away. Hooray!

We fought like crazy when we were little, as all siblings do (at least I think so). Then when we got to college, we got along much better. Finally, I moved away to go to grad school and I think that distance did make the heart grow fonder. We're really good friends now and I'm very much looking forward to seeing him and his family more often. Part of what I've missed, living here in the U.S., is having family close by. That has just changed.

Got a smile on my face. Life is good.

A Small Class

Doran Sensei taught on Tuesday at noon. There were just four students: a sandan (third degree black belt), a nidan (second degree black belt), a 2nd kyu (two ranks away from a black belt) and myself (5th kyu). It was like having a private lesson. Very cool. We worked on variations in response to yokomenuchi (strike to the side of the head). Sensei broke the techniques down very methodically into their component parts: entering, blending, redirecting and projecting. It made me think about how good it is to break things down in order to understand them, one piece at a time. Then put it all back together again and see if you can make it work.

Sometimes I really think I'm getting the hang of things and am not moving so robotically from one bit to the next. This was one of the times.

Thoughts on 100 and more

My grandmother lived to be 100 years old.

I've logged probably 100 days of running since I started Thanksgiving 2006.

I have over 100 hours of aikido training under my belt (pun intended).

I have 100+ cousins, if you count my extended family.

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Read during one summer in college, not as a requirement. I must read it again soon.

C, the Roman numeral for 100. Also a vitamin.

Tried to make a list of 100 people I know that I'd like to find and connect with through Facebook and/or LinkedIn. Got to about 90. Only found 14. Get with it, people!

Using MyTravelMap, I've figured out that I've traveled to around 140 destinations in the US, Western Europe and Asia. There's still so much of the world to see!

This is my 100th post. Who would have thought I'd get this far? One hundred things about me? Maybe for the 200th blog entry.