crap crap crap.

tomorrow i have to do something way too hard. to remind myself of why i signed up for this yet again, i went back and found last year's race report. since i was blogless back then, i thought i would repost it here.

also, my shift button fell off. i know there's another on this old crappy dell, but i cannot change my typing today.

i made the traditional last minute shoe-change to a killer pair of orange saucony fast twitches. the ft is my go-to shoe, the new silver zoots were rubbing just a little wrong.. so carrie at saucony set me up. how could i turn down orange? <-- found the shift.

two photos from today first: the morning swim. tiffany is the sherpa-neuroscientist extraordinaire here from toronto. katherine is wide awake and ready to roll. and i am still half asleep.. but can't ever resist an opp to show off a cute splish.

i woke up half an hour later, by the time i ran into the three lieto boys at breakfast; matt, chris & kaden.


and to remind myself that tomorrow will be fun (when the bike is over).. last year's long report, as written for the timex blog;

Someday when I am old and fat and slow you will wonder to yourself -Why the hell is Rachel Ross still on the Timex Multisport Team?- so I’ll clue you in now: it’s the pictures I took of our team management at Kona.

Ever had a fever that made you totally delirious? Apparently I tried to swap bikes with Joe Boeness at the bike drop off on Friday afternoon. I have no recollection of this, but Joe doesn’t lie. I slept/hallucinated the rest of Friday away, and woke up ready to go on race day, after my horse-pill sized ibuprofen to get the fever down. I had my pre-race cry (thank you ironmanlive for catching that on film and replaying it for all at the awards ceremony) and got my sorry butt into the water just in time for the cannon. I decided to line up in the front and let the people who actually know how to swim go over me until I found some feet. It was a little painful, but it bought me a six minutes swim PR, so it was worth all the panicked underwater screaming. Swim: 1:03:50.

I rolled over some duct tape in T1 so I got to listen to it flap for 112 miles against my brakes. It was kind of like that water-drop torture you hear about. It was melted on by the end and is now part of my race wheel. April and I passed each other back and forth for the first 30 miles or so, and yelled back at men making inappropriate comments about body parts they shouldn’t be that close to if riding legally. Shortly after Hawi, my eyeballs started to burn in my head again. I reached for the Tylenol to kill the fever and dropped it – and smartly decided to go on. By Waikoloa I was on fire. Not in a good way. I knew the fever was back and it was high. My thinking was cloudy and I was having funky daydreams. So I sat up and spun it in slowly, dreaming of the 800 mg ibuprofen in my T2 bag. It was hard to watch my goal bike split go by, but I managed to get in with time of 5:28:46.

I started the run and saw the family immediately. My training buddy Wil screamed “you have to run 3:23 or better to break 10 – you can do it!” He later told me “I didn’t think you could do it, you looked like crap.” Thanks, dude. I, on the other hand, had planned on running 7:30s the whole way and breaking 3:20, so I actually did think I could do it. I found a Big Island friend and ran down the first of two girls in my AG that were ahead, chatting all the way. Jeff dropped off, so I ran the second 5 mi back to town with Fernanda Keller, who was not feeling very chatty but was a pleasant companion none the less and steady with her 7:30s. I caught the other girl in my AG on the way back to town. Up Palani was more of a party than a run, I saw my kids, my parents, my Oahu friends, and Macca coming down the hill for the win. Sharpie screamed that she loved me, totally making some nearby perv’s day. The pace was pleasant and I made small talk along the road, even though I swore I’d shut up and run this year. Out at the energy lab I saw my superstar friend Bree Wee ahead in the first amateur position (fortunately for me the girl’s a baby and still in the 25-29 AG) and knew I was the next one behind her. I love the energy lab. It’s beautiful and truly the beginning of the end. Lots of people were puking - apparently they don’t love the energy lab. I tried to pick it up for the last 10K home, but it seems holding 7:30s had become my max. I rolled down Palani and onto Alii fairly confident that sub-10 was in the bag. There is nothing like turning onto Alii and seeing that arch. Though it really should be closer to the actual timing mat.. My marathon split was 3:18:45, for a finish time of 9:56:21.