Winnie-the-Pooh…and Tigger too!

On Saturday, Brian and I made an impromptu trip to the Magic Kingdom. Really can you think of a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon in July? My niece Emily’s softball team had qualified to play in a national tournament that was hosted by Disney. My brother, Chris, my sister-law, Vicky, and Emily had been in Orlando for over a week. Since Emily was so busy playing softball, we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get together. Everything worked out and we met them Saturday afternoon at the Magic Kingdom.

Emily had certain rides she wanted to go on so we just let her lead the way. The Magic Kingdom is primarily focused on younger children, and Emily at age 12 is probably close to the age when some children lose interest, but she has been to Disney two other times so there are certain rides that she remembers and likes. The adults had no problem letting her run the show. Disney is all about the children after all. Besides so many of the Disney characters have been imprinted on our cultural psyche that, unless you are a total grouch with a bug up your butt, you can’t help but enjoy yourself. Most of the rides are fairly benign – Space Mountain was probably the most intense. Of course we had to do “It’s a Small World”. Brian hates that song so I made sure to sing along with the music during the ride. “Pirates of the Caribbean” was another must do. The Buzz Lightyear ride was hilarious! Brian, Emmy, and I were in one car. They were manning the laser guns and I was responsible for spinning the car so they could shoot the bad guys. Yes, they let me be in charge of spinning the car. Yes, I abused the privilege – what else would you expect?

When it came time for dinner, we ate at The Crystal Palace, which is a lovely buffet-style restaurant that has the Pooh characters walking around while you eat. A love of Winnie-the-Pooh is one thing Emily and I have in common. Of course I had my picture taken with all the characters. If you are going to spend the day at Disney, you might as well make the most of the experience. I even got a kiss from Pooh!

After dinner, we rode more rides. There was a lovely parade with floats of Disney characters all lit up. It was really pretty! There was also the nightly fireworks show, which was really nice, too. The park closed at 11:00 pm. Brian and I said goodbye and we headed home to Gainesville. It was a fun day, and it was so great to see Chris, Vicky, and Emily.

15 and Counting

Today marks 15 weeks until the New York Marathon. I have been officially training for 1 week. Since it’s still triathlon season and I have 2 races to go, there hasn’t been much difference in my training yet, but it’s about time to start increasing the run mileage. On Friday, my “In training” shirt arrived in the mail. It’s a nice technical shirt and fits well. Brian says it looks cute. The picture is of the logo on the shirt.

I’m really excited for this race for a few reasons.

• The course – running over the Verrazano and Queensboro Bridges is going to be so cool! Running through the rest of the city is going to be pretty awesome as well.
• The spectators – New Yorkers are a really vocal and surprisingly friendly group of people, and apparently have no problems spending several hours on a Sunday hanging out on the sidewalks in front of their apartment buildings - or favorite bar, restaurant, or coffee shop – cheering on thousands of runners.
• The family – I have a lot of family in the area and a lot of the race goes through neighborhoods I am familiar with. My family is already planning where they will cheer for me. It looks like mile 17 is going to be the best spot, which is awesome because anyone who has run a marathon knows that you really need the spectator support later in the race. Brian will actually be there to cheer for me. This will be the first time he’s seen me run a marathon. He’s excited because he doesn’t have to get up early to see me race, and he will have lots of company.
• My birthday – the race is on November 4^th which is two days before my 37^th birthday. If I can find a comfortable tiara, I may have to wear it for the race.
• Ironman Florida 2008 – The marathon will mark the beginning of my Ironman year. It seems like an appropriate way to get started. Joey and Maggie are repeating their Ironman journey and I'm really excited to be sharing it with them.
  
• My health – it’s been a year of rebuilding the base and I am finally starting to feel really good. The plantar fasciitis also seems to be starting to resolve itself (keep your fingers crossed). Overall, I feel better than I did at the start of training for my other two marathons.

That’s all for now – I’ll keep you posted on how the training goes.

Crab Feast!

As I mentioned in my last post, I spent the past week at the beach with my family. I think I need to spend a little more time describing the crab feast we had on Wednesday night. Steamed crabs is a Maryland tradition. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest blue crab fishery in the world, at least it was until overfishing and pollution pretty much destroyed it, but that is a rant for another day. Anyway, crabs and beer is a standard summer time activity in Maryland, but crabs have gotten super expensive, and are nonexistent here in Florida, but are both plentiful and affordable in North Carolina, so the crab feast has become an annual part of our summer family vacation.

I feel like I should mention that Brian, Greg and Diane, as native New Yorkers, are relatively new to cracking crabs, but have taken to it like they’ve been doing it their whole lives. How Brian made it through college at the University of Maryland without going to a single crab feast is beyond me. He did not crack his first crab until we attended a crab feast held by Joey’s Uncle Mike in Rockport, TX. I have to digress for a moment and mention that Joey’s family puts on a crab feast that rivals any I’ve had in Maryland, and it is always a treat when a crab feast is part of our visit. If it weren’t for Joey’s family, we might not have discovered that Shiner Boch is a great beer to have with crabs.

The crabs were ordered, shrimp for the few non-crab eaters, the newspaper was spread out on the table, the Shiner was passed out, and we all started in. Now my family is really social at the dinner table as it is, but cracking crabs is a social occasion at a whole other level because it takes a while to fill up when you are pulling apart a crab to get the meat. We had lots of fun, made a big mess, and the crabs were super yummy!

On Vacation

I thought I’d take a break from all the fun in the sun to write a quick post. This week I’ve been in the Outer Banks, NC with my family. This vacation has become an annual family gathering in recent years and is always loads of fun. The weather has been perfect! There has been lots of biking, running, swimming, playing in the ocean, kayaking, and eating and drinking, of course. Here are some pics of the week so far.

Release the Kraken!

The 4^th of July was fairly uneventful. I got up early to help out with the Melon Run – the Florida Track Club’s annual 4^th of July 5k race – so dubbed because we serve watermelon at the race finish, and the age group winners get a watermelon to take home. I had decided not to run the race. A 5k didn’t really fit in my training for the week. I really needed to ride. Also, I had stayed up way too late the night before and was just plain tired. I ended up taking care of the post-race food table. The event was a success. We had 400 participants, which is a great turnout for a town the size of Gainesville, and a course record of 15:02. Everyone had a good time, lots of watermelon was consumed, and the rain held off until we were all cleaned up.

Back at home, I decided that I probably needed to take a nap at some point. It was a steady rain outside and showed no signs of clearing up. I ate some breakfast, did some laundry, and settled on the sofa to watch some Wimbledon. After getting the important details from Joey about Jordan’s first triathlon, I crashed out. I was awakened around 2:00 pm by a text message photo of some crazy person in disguise. I wonder who it could be?

Let’s hear it for friends who go above and beyond to make you laugh. I had a bad headache and felt truly horrible so I went back to sleep. It was still raining and Brian was working so I really lacked any motivation to move. I woke back up around 5:00 pm and still felt yucky. I grabbed the remote and started looking for something to watch. I found a Godzilla movie marathon on Encore. No kidding – they were showing all 29 Godzilla movies to celebrate the 4th, and since it’s Encore – no commercials. So I settled in to watch some cheesy Japanese scifi. I do wonder if the Japanese people are fixated with seeing their cities destroyed on the big screen, but that is a discussion for another day.

The Godzilla movies reminded me of the St. Augustine Triathlon turned duathlon. I had done this race last year and Brian and I had such a good time, I decided to do the race again. When we arrived at the race hotel Friday night, the wind was absolutely horrendous. It was so bad that it actually lifted my bike as I was walking across the parking lot. Insane! Of course there was concern that the swim would be cancelled. While we were eating dinner, I checked the weather on my cellphone. At the top of the page in big red letters was a coastal flooding and wind advisory. I showed it to Brian and he remarked that the locusts would be arriving at 6 am and there was a Godzilla alert until 8 am. I laughed pretty hard, and decided to share with Joey. I knew he would find it amusing so I sent him a text message. He replied that the Godzilla alert was nothing, at 7:45 am they are releasing the Kraken. Now I should know better than to be eating or drinking anything when I read one of Joey’s texts. I almost choked and then had a good laugh, as did Brian. If you don’t get why this is funny, you need to watch more cheesy scifi.

The swim was cancelled the next morning. The ocean was one giant froth and you could actually see the riptides. A sea monster rearing up out of the ocean wouldn’t have surprised me. The tri became a du. My first one ever. Everyone had a good time even though the wind was crazy. Brian and I spent the afternoon in St. Augustine before heading home.

Here's to lazy, rainy days spent on the sofa, friends that make you laugh from 1000 miles away, and cheesy scifi.

My Race T-shirt Quilt

It’s been awhile since my last post. Last week was one of those uneventful weeks that didn’t really inspire any posts. I do have some past events that I could have shared but I honestly wasn’t much in the mood to write anything. Camp was so-so, my training has been off, and Brian has a bunch of grant deadlines so he is working like crazy. I am basically in the post-halfiron doldrums. Same thing happened last year after Gulf Coast. Fortunately, Brian and I are heading to the Outer Banks on Saturday for a week of fun in the sun with our family. I am so ready!

On to the reason for this post. Joey’s mom, Carol, has started making quilts out of t-shirts. She made one for Joey a while back using some of his race t-shirts and I loved it. I told Carol that I wanted her to make one for me. I have so many race t-shirts and I rarely wear t-shirts so they are piling up. Brian and I spent last Thanksgiving in Rockport with Joey’s parents so I figured it would be a good opportunity to give Carol my shirts. I picked shirts that I didn’t wear and I thought would look good in a quilt. We decided on the placement of the shirts, the color of the fabric, and even picked a shirt for a pillow. The quilt was finished in March and Joey presented it to me when I was in Austin in April. I absolutely loved it! It looked great! I couldn’t take it home with me because I didn’t have any room in my luggage. I forgot to ask Joey to bring it when he came to Orlando so Carol shipped it to me. It arrived on Monday and I’m very happy to have it. My only regret is that I didn’t have it made bigger. It would look really great on our bed. I have lots of race shirts so I guess I’ll have to have another one made.Thanks Carol!

Click on the pictures to zoom in.