A few words can put me in a place. She never mentions the word addiction.. out of the mouth of Kate Hudson's hairy ex-husband and I'm sitting on a school bus in a swimsuit and running shoes, paddle in my hand, looking out the window on Keeaumoku Street, where those beautiful monkeypod trees sit between Young and King, on the way down to paddling practice. I'm 14, and Brooke is sitting next to me.

A few bars of One by U2 and I'm on Sandy's road, heading to the beach at 3pm with Jenny in my mom's red saab, old enough to drive, but still a baby really. I still hear that song on that road all the time.

Dido's Thank You still plays every once in a while and I can feel the bump of wyatt in my belly in the Orinda days. When You Sleep by Cake has me back in El Cerrito, a few months after graduating from Berkeley, telling Ramsey about the "little problem" that appears to be growing in my uterus. We don't call him that anymore, for the record, even when he's problematic.

Stand by REM came on in Jamba Juice yesterday. I could almost see Haseena doing the Stand dance in the middle of Portlock Road between our two houses, while I laugh from my kitchen balcony.

april showers

Sky asked me last night as I washed her hair: Do you know what my favorite two parts of your body are? and I thought, uh-oh. Is this going to be like the time Wyatt asked my sister what those two round lumps on her chest were, and then added, because my mom doesn't have those? And then Sky told me - your arms and your mouth, so you can hug and kiss me. Sometimes on a shitty day in the middle of a shitty week, that girl is all I need. In a separate, clothed conversation, when asked what her earliest memory was, she replied, you know, that day we walked down Waikiki to visit Uncle Rabbit. You mean three days ago? Yes, that is my earliest memory. So on the plus side, nothing I say could possibly be scarring her for life.

There are hard changes and challenges afoot this week. I'm wading my way through the crap, and suddenly all the other things, the ones I thought I could count on, fell apart. My foot, for one. I have a pain in my heel that's difficult to even walk on - it started at the race on saturday, perhaps all that barefoot sand running was too much. So no running for a while, until I can walk again, anyway, and I should probably lay off the giant hooker heels at work. Not running is not good for my brain. And then I was reminded that sometimes, when you're down, people do shitty things to you. Friends are judging me, or not showing up on me, and I'm wasting energy on anger over little crap like busybody-ing that I should just ignore. But that's easier said than done, because I am, after all, my mother's daughter. And when you're bad to Lucy, you get a seat on her plane. Permanently. My swimming teacher from the second grade is still on that plane. But the plane is a story for another day.

Yesterday afternoon, Katherine and I went for a swim at Ala Moana. Mucky, nasty Ala Moana Beach Park had the clearest water I have ever seen there. Usually it's difficult to see my hand in front of my face, but today you could see the bottom. We swim there in spite of the ick because it's convenient, and because there are 500 m markers that we use for intervals. We warmed up 500, then started off on our first interval. I was able to hang side by side with K for the first couple 100, but then she pulled ahead, so I hopped on her feet, figuring it's got to be akin to motorpacing somehow. With about 100m to go, I hit her feet. She had stopped. But before I could catch my breath she started up again. I figured she hit some seaweed and forgot about it. Until we were out of the water a two intervals and a cool down later, and she told me that she stopped because of the very large shadow that swam by underneath us. It was too big to be anything but a good-sized shark. Lucky for us, he wasn't hungry! Lucky for me, I was too busy trying to breathe to see it.. because I probably would have gotten out and run back along the beach on my bum foot, injuring myself further. I've seen many, many sharks while scuba diving, but only two that ever scared me. A galapagos chased me out of the water in high school, and a large sandbar shark behaving oddly freaked me out off of Barber's Point a few years ago. But something about being on the surface makes them so much scarier..

saturday in pics

Last week I won a mint plant. It died in a mid-week monsoon. This week I won a coconut tree. Everything about the first Kahala Challenge was cool. An 8 am start? Awesome.

Note the orange nails.. this is Dale's tree, and I think he may have done the spray painting.

The overall winner.. on the left. And me, the runner up, second week in a row! Always a bridesmaid.. check out the transition full of canoes, paddleboards, and stand up boards. It was a whole different thing to run a 3.5 mile run knowing that you still have another sport to compete in when you finish. Katherine got away on the swim, and a few more seconds away on the run, and then I made up some time on the paddle.. just not quite enough.

Billy found us paddle boards, then got them to Kailua for us for the race, then rode around on a cruiser cheering us on.

While waiting for awards, Mike asked me what I do for IT band syndrome and I showed him my favorite pre-run psoas stretch. It was contagious. Please note that the famous physical therapist, second from the right, has the wrong arm in the air!

The fastest relay team of Mike, Dale & Jaco with their coconut trees:

What's in the second place bag? A pair of these Kaenon glasses, which look somewhat ridiculous on me, in a nicole richie way. They're so huge that I pulled them out of the bag and laughed... And then I put them on, and it was if my eyes had gone and died to heaven. They're polarized, and the lenses make the world an easier place to look at.. I'm in love. And they make up for the race entry fee times five. I never understand when people complain about prizes at races. They're an added bonus. Today was a super-bonus day.

The race was a perfectly run and such a fun change from the usual triathlon scene. There were many familiar tri-world faces, and even more new faces. There was a calmer, mellower air about it, and many new friends were made. I can't wait for next year.. or maybe Kukio Challenge over on the Big Isle this summer?

After the race we lunched at the outrigger, then walked down waikiki with the Toes on the Nose boys. A pic of me and my barefoot crew:

Down by Canoes we were lucky enough to find Rabbit Kekai, who entertained us for an hour or two with stories of Waikiki in the Duke Kahanamoku days.. he is a rascal. I learned jokes that I will never, ever, ever repeat in my life. In fact, some of them I would like to forget!

That blonde bump just in front of Wyatt's foot? Yeah, this was a kick in the head almost caught on film. We swung on the banyan trees and listened to Sheryl Crow's sound check at the Shell.. it was a nice free concert to end the day.

earth day every day.

On earth day, which is heavily celebrated in an office full of environmental scientists and engineers, I accidentally hit print instead of save while pulling minute-data for sulfur over on the big island. A whole month's worth of data taken each minute. I am shunned. None of the super-hippies are speaking to me. Which would be terrible, if they didn't kind of smell funny anyway.

I ran an easy eight miles that morning, and had to drive the back-up car, a 93 eurovan, home from town in time to get the kids after an afternoon swim. Except there was some kind of construction emergency on Kal Hwy, and the eurovan does not like traffic. It's an awesome car, 16 years old with fewer miles on it than my bike shoes, but it gets very hot in traffic and has to stop. So when I realized I had a problem on my hands, I pulled off in Kahala and parked it at the mall. I had a pair of goggles, a cap, my blingy shades, and a silk DVF wrap dress with me. I was wearing my new hot pink lululemon bikini. I remembered the emergency shoes in the back of the van. So I had to decide - wait out 2 more hours of rush hour, or run 8 miles home in a traffic jam in a pink bikini, gold oakleys, and a pair of worn out newtons.

No, there are no photos. At least, I hope not. I beat everyone to Hawaii Kai, and made some friends in cars along the way though. And I had an accidental 16 mile run day. My question is this - does the gasoline not used and emissions not made make up for all the trees I killed?

Barkley

Not a lot to report here from rossland. In totally not important news, I went from looking like Barkley:

to looking like Betty Page (sans the chest) due to an unfortunate run in with my office scissors in the ladies room. My colleagues were threatening to cut eye-holes in my hair, so it had to be done.

Turns out that you pretty much have to have the boobs to pull off a haircut that bad. I do not.

Since there's nothing esle to report, I thought I would post some beach day pictures for those still waiting for spring..

Henry and Wyatt made up a fun game - shove Wyatt off the wall..

then point and laugh. Any game that ends with point and laugh is a good game, in my book.

lanikai triathlon

That was a tough as I thought it would be. Katherine, Ingrid and I hung out before the race and realized that we all had a similar "good performance" determinant for the day - top three. The ocean was incredibly calm for Kailua, and the sun rose out over the Mokes just as we started. Katherine quickly pulled up on my right and hopped on Stefan's feet. And I hopped on hers, just like always.. except then she started getting smaller and smaller.. and totally dropped me. She out-swam me by over 30s on a 9:30 swim! It turns out that swimming 0-1x/week doesn't really make me good at swimming. 

There were really, really long transition runs, and then onto the bike to try and find Katherine.. I rode at 100% the whole way, for a 27:00 bike split, which was faster than I've ever ridden this course before, and caught Katherine coming into T2. We headed out together, running side by side for a about half of the run. I was running as hard as I could. I'd get a few steps up on the ups, and she'd pull away on the downs. And then at the half-way point, she just started to pull away. I tried to slow her down with humor, talking about my thighs.. but it didn't work. I would get within 5 feet, and then suddenly she would be 15 feet in front of me again. It's a thin line between being happy that you're great friend is kicking ass and going to win and reminding yourself that it's not over yet, don't settle for second, keep pushing the pace. In the end she ran away with it, finishing 20s up on me after a long stretch of beach to the finish. Ingrid came in just a little behind us in third.

I didn't take nearly enough pictures (see yesterday's pictures from the ocean and just re-arrange and put katherine in the middle and pretend it's the podium) but some fun ones will come in. My friend Laura and her family visited from Seattle and jumped into the race too. Rob rode my road bike, and even crammed his feet into my shoes.. here we are post-race.

We've still got that clear-skied Kona wind weather, so we're off to the Honu Pond for the afternoon to relax.. I love it there.

I heart jellyfish.

People here on Oahu complain about Kona Winds (which to me, just seems to mean no wind, but I'm not a scientist or anything. Oh wait --) but the ocean is so gorgeous on Kona days that I can't bother to complain about the heat. This is the view from the far end of Waikiki this morning, before Katherine, Ingrid and I headed out for a short pre-race workout:


The surf at Diamond Head was small, but so glassy and pretty we had to stop and take a look, and a picture.. mushroom heads!

Then we hopped in the water. There wasn't a jellyfish sign up yet, but we had just discussed half an hour earlier that it was time. They come each month, about a week after the full moon. Mornings are the worst. Out at the windsock:


That was the last happy moment, before I swam face-first into a pile of jellyfish. Damn you, box jellyfish. I come into your habitat at your time of the month and splash around in my inefficient human way.. and you sting me across the face. Ow.

The really, really nice beach boy, whose name I forget, had vinegar. He was so nice that when he told me to put my goggles on before he sprayed my face down and I said I don't know where they are, he replied, they're on your head, without adding dumbass to the end. Thank god he had vinegar, because the other best thing to do is kind of gross. Especially on the face.

I now have a giant red nose, kind of like bozo. And I'm all welted up and swollen.

And this is my whiney, my-face-hurts face.

Tomorrow is the Lanikai Triathlon. It's a sprint, and it's going to be crazy. Ingrid hasn't raced in a couple of years and she's an ass-kicker who just did the Cape Epic mountain bike stage race in South Africa. And Katherine is always right up there too, not to mention all the other great Oahu athletes.. the last 1/2 mi of the run is on the beach, in the water.. it's going to be fun.

Glassy

This is what the ocean looked like this afternoon.

The wind has finally died down a little. In a week and a half, Katherine and I are racing the Kahala Challenge, an 800m swim, 5k run, 2 mile paddlboard race. Finally, we get a Kukio-style race here on Oahu! So we've been trying to get on the paddleboard at least once a week. It is so much harder than I remember from my water-girl days. We paddled from one end of Waikiki to the other and back late this afternoon, on perfect turquoise glass.

My first sport was paddling. My very best friend and across the street neighbor, Haseena, dragged me down to Hui Nalu at Maunalua Bay when I was 11. We were on the girls 12 and under team and had shirts made that said We Race for First Place! They were very cool. I wore pink and black flojos at the time, was about the same height I am now, 5'11" but about 20 pounds lighter. It was not pretty. I was the definition of gangly and uncoordinated. But my weight made me an ideal steersman, so it wasn't long before I was steering canoes out into the deep stuff. Another of my best friends was made in Maunalua Bay, when we were practicing open-water changes and I said to the random girl next to me: Look, it's cornflower blue! and she answered It really is. Do you want a kitten? I'm a sucker for kittens.. I still talk to Nani everyday. 

I paddled each summer for ten years, and four years of high school. High school paddling taught me to be an athlete. We ran every day, often timed, and did swim workouts and paddled for hours and hours on Saturday mornings. There were whales and dolphins and sometimes we would huli near Diamond Head Buoy just to freak ourselves out and see how fast we could flip the canoe back over and get out of the water. Once our canoe lost a plug and sunk a mile offshore and we had to swim for it as the sun set. I had a coach that changed my life for the better and had this incredibly faith in my ability that I never understood.

When I went off to Cal, I tried rowing. Practice was at 5 am. It was freezing. We rowed on the Oakland Estuary. I made it until spring break, when I was so homesick I was dying to get back to Hawaii. I hit a dead pig with my oar and that was it, I was done. It was not the sport for me. Someday, I'll go back to paddling, when I have the time flexibility to commit to a team sport. I'll probably be 45 or so and the kids will all be in college.. but paddleboarding today on that glassy, turquoise ocean reminded me that I have to get back to it someday. It's so nice to spend an hour on the ocean. Regatta season starts now, people.

I can see again!

Before lunch I looked like Barkley.

And now, after being yelled at by Sherry for the third day in a row to get a freaking haircut before I cut eyeholes in those damn bangs, I went downstairs and did it. It was in the building at Heaven on Earth. It took about 4 minutes total and cost $10. And I have to say, last time, when I did it over the office bathroom sink with my crappy office scissors, it didn't come out nearly as well.

After lunch, I stood around drinking my passion tea watching my little ant farm below at Bishop Square. And I saw a roller-blader. He was clad in work-like attire, which really doesn't make it any better. And he was doing tricks in the crowded square. And I know it's not a nice joke, but I just couldn't help but think over and over as I watched him.. What's the hardest thing about roller blading? -- and, well, if you don't know the punchline to that old joke you're just going to have to google it.

directions

Wyatt hurt his fot. He always spells foot wrong and I find myself thinking/writing fot when I should write foot entirely too often. I asked what happened and he said:

I was playing soccer and I stepped on the ball and it rolled southwest and I fell. Wait - southeast, it rolled southeast.

This morning I ran N, then W, then S, then E for a whole bunch of tempo intervals. Tempo pace isn't where it should be, but now that I tried it on the track, at least I know. And knowing is half the battle. Yesterday I did a swimmer-speed workout on the road with Todd - 15 x 200 on 1 minute. I know it's probably too short for the interval work I need and the distances I race, but by the end it's hard, and I find it a less daunting way to face speedwork, which often scares the shit out of me. And then, after that, I ditched my swim. Again! I've swam once in three weeks - in a harbor in Oceanside. Crap.

Check out the hippie outfit I came home to yesterday:

Think someone was born in Berkeley?

I have had lots of race schedule questions, especially since passing the Kona slot down. There are a few local sprints.. and the next big thing is Escape from Alcatraz in June. Brr. Why do I do this to myself?

This blog is stupid.

It's just me ME me me me me my kids me me me me my running me. I'm sick of reading it. Maybe I'm just sick of me? I do have to listen to me all day. Those of you reading this must be twice as sick of me.

It's been a year of blogging. I put one of them there tracker thingamajiggies on it and I have to say, there are about a thousand more people than I would expect out there reading everyday about my mundane little life. Which (quoting Sky here) totally freaks me out. I mean, I can see if you were a relative or something why you might bother reading my blather. But I don't have a thousand relatives. Well, except in Champaign, IL, where my maiden name takes up a whole page in the phonebook.. but I don't know most of them.

I think perhaps I am having a mid-life blog crisis.

But I'll just continue on, for now, with guess what? A little more about me. I wrote a little story for the April edition of Honolulu Magazine. It's short, and rather brainless, but you know, so is this blog, and you're here reading it, so you might as well read the article while you're at it. It's about Kailua, which isn't me, thus this is kind of a change of subject. If you see Honolulu Magazine, grab it and check it out - I got my first real byline. Any my name is in Timex orange.

Other	1:30	0 mi
Bike	95:42	1,704.6 mi
Swim	12:31	47,149.1 yds
Run	50:39	406.1 mi
Total	160:22	2,137.5 mi

I'm loving the slowtwitch training log. This is my 2009 thus far. I've wasted 160 hours away in endorphin-junkie activity. 1700 miles on the bike thus far, and 406 miles run as of April 11. I would bet all you reader people that I haven't driven anywhere near 1700 miles this year. Let's not talk about the swimming.

I got a lot of questions about turning down Kona. I tricked myself into it, because I knew it would make my life easier this year, with the job thing going full time and the kids and all their activities.. so Katherine and I signed up for the Nike Women's Marathon in San Francisco the weekend after Kona with the big goal of breaking 3h. We've both just missed, I think she's done 3:03 and I've done 3:04.. It won't ever happen if I don't back off the cycling and get the runner body back. So after a few early summer tris.. it's all running. And nothing sounds better right now than a fall full of marathons. I'm considering the first annual Kauai Marathon in September as well.

Total blasphemy

This is where I'm spending Easter Weekend. I'm not usually this messy, but I'm under a serious deadline and it all goes to hell when I'm in a hurry. Not my writing, of course, my rock facts are still total quality, I swear. My office just looks like a bomb went off. If you look closely, you'll see the essentials: starbucks, oakleys, multiple bike water bottles, various office-sweaters, mardi gras beads, knee-high yellow DKNY boots that make me eat shit on rainy days, and heaps of paper. It doesn't help that it's gorgeous outside..

Something big happened at post-lunch chocolate time. I hit the cadbury mini-eggs, as I'm inclined to do 3-4 times a day, and found this:


A heart-shaped egg. I found love in the mini-eggs! I took it to the conference room (field trip!) and likened it to the Virgin Mary in the Grilled Cheese and may have offended some of the visiting Navy reviewers. I guess it is Easter tomorrow..

Two-thirds of my children want to go to church for easter. I think Sky wants to learn more about her friend Cheesus. Henry has declared himself a Catholic. Which will make his Nan very happy. Every Sunday he asks to go to church and every Sunday I forget to take him. So tomorrow, the uku-head, the chicken pock, and I will hit Star of the Sea with the rest of the once-a-yearers and the kids will learn about Cheesus. Happy Easter!

welcome back!

When I finally had time to catch up with the kids, this is how it went.

Me: What did you guys do while I was gone?

Kids: We went to Target!

Me: What did you get?

Henry: I got the Chicken Pox (come on, pinch your nose and say it with a NY accent to sound like Henry - it's fun!)

Sky: My head itches.

Wyatt: I missed you, Mommy.

Yeah, that's right, chicken pox. The kid was vaccinated. I wonder what the hell they injected into him back then, since it wasn't anything that kept chicken pox away. He's a mess.

And there is a strong potential that Sky has ukus. I saw nothing living or crawling in her goldilocks last night, but if you've got a kid in Hawaii public school, my head itches is the kiss of death. And when one goes down, we all go down. It took a team of pre-school teachers to clean up my 800 pounds of hair the first time we got ukus.

We are public health enemy number one in Hawaii Kai right now. If I weren't working all weekend, I would be in quarantine.

hook line and sinker.

Will, a new addition to Team Timex this year, who is an avid Xterra-racing nut, sure made camp interesting. After doing push-ups in the fire pit our first night in town, he showed up to dinner the next night in a full lycra home-made superhero suit. It had stirrup pants. Did anyone know they still made stirrup pants? At the bar after dinner, I told him I needed a picture. He decided to show me how to stand like Captain Obvious (his alter ego). It went like this: Shoulders back, hands on hips, stomach in, and chest out - and I fell for it. The camera flashed at chest out, of course.

I found this photo amusing and decided to try my hand at photojournalism.. or pimping, whatever you want to call it. Here I am, getting my assistant's costume in place and discussing strategy.

And then I started asking the girls on the team if I could take their photo with Captain Obvious. They all said sure and went right up and put an arm around him and smiled. And he said, no, no, let me show you how to stand like a superhero. Shoulders back.. and so it went:

Camp was really busy this year, and I feel like I only got to catch up with half the people I wanted to.. here's the gang sober(ish).

I did get a quick visit in with Kirsten and Beth at the lululemon store in Carlsbad. Lots of shopping was done.. and the lululemon tramp stamp that I sported during the race (it's a little high, but it's hard to tramp stamp oneself.. try it sometime) was recorded forever. Look for Kirsten in a certain magazine's swimsuit issue coming soon..

Chris, the 70.3 Age Group World Champ, dominated the mens 35-39 once again in Oceanside. And then, after the round of tequila shots I unwisely invested in at Fidel's, he and Roger said something about wanting to be on the blog or something...

Now I'm back in Hawaii.. it was a 4 am wake up in California, an 8 am flight, 1 pm arrival and work until 8 pm. I got about ten minutes in with the kids before I passed out. I left my suitcase open on the garage floor, which is pretty much just begging the cats to pee in it. But I'm too tired to care. That's it for fun photos and fun stories, because now it's back to life as usual..

The last of the race photos: the sand made up about a mile of the run and was not that fun to run through..