A busy weekend

Long weekends are great.  I’d say they are also exhausting, but I like that, so they are still great :)

Friday was a rest day, but I went mountain biking instead.  I guess it counts for the bike ride I didn’t do on Sunday.  It was my favorite kind of day on the bike: cross country and tough work, but also some time with the “fun” stuff, including a new gap jump on HLC for the first time!!!  Probably a lot more exciting than it should be, but that’s ok.  It’s so nice to be getting my confidence back, and being able to attack new features like that (rather than shying away, post-collarbone).

Tried to stay relatively easy on Saturday.  It was a short long run (wait, what?) since it was still recovery week.  I was NOT feeling well.  I wanted to keep it easy, and not worry about pace, but I was really, really dragging.  Finally stopped at the halfway and found a bathroom and gave myself a quick break (and mental pep-talk) and that helped some.  I still kept it easy, except that I decided I needed to really push it for one mile at the end.  So, that was nice—still a nice, easy run, but I did have 7:12 of running hard and pushing myself to go fast.

The other exciting part of Saturday was—adopting a new cat!  She is 2 years old but so tiny!  She is also a polydactyl with way too many toes, so her paws are huge…meaning she just looks like a kitten!  We are still working on the adjustment (Xyla is not amused) but she’s a real sweetheart and I’m really looking forward to getting to know her better.
Sunday was the Vashon Xterra.  What an…experience.  It kind of went like this:

- Swim: SO MANY JELLYFISH.  So many.  Huge jellyfish.  Get away!  Keep swimming, don’t think about the jellyfish, just get through them and don’t freak out.  Oh look, you passed someone.  And he’s still behind you!  No way!  Ok, keep swimming, get through the giant marsh of jellyfish again..and get out of the water!
- Bike:  giant hill.  Can’t even walk up it, much less tote a giant bike.  Find some people, and either chase or lead them.  Don’t slide out on the corners.  Repeat.  Why did I forget a water bottle?  Running does not sound fun, dehydration is setting in…
- Run: get to the end.  Why are you running soooo slow??? This is absurd!  Pass a few people anyway, feeling a lot better towards the end.  Gee, this is a great bike trail, why are we running here instead of mountain biking?  Look at that awesome little jump!
- Post-race: ALL THE GATORADE, ALL THE FOOD

I did alright, I suppose.  I’m happy with the times, I’m just not sure how I feel about the mountain biking part.  I like mountain biking as my fun, no pressure, play on the trails kind of thing.  This was making me think a lot more about who was around me, and going faster, and also trying to save some legs for the run…  Oh well, great experience and it was still a lot of fun.  And as much as those jellyfish scared me, I know it was great experience to get in the water and do it anyway.

Looking forward to ramping training back up this week!  I skipped my swim this morning, mostly because I swam yesterday and I was exhausted…but now I’m glad, because my back is actually really sore.  I guess I was swimming hard (for me, at least).  Back at it tomorrow!  We also have family visiting this week (Tuesday-Tuesday) sooo it will be interesting to see how things go.  I am planning to keeping the same training schedule, but it’ll still be kind of tough to fit in the socializing and the training AND the sleeping…