On Coastal Breezes and Air Conditioners

When my mother first moved my sister and I here from Florida in August of 1995, I came kicking and screaming. When most peopleuse that phrase it's a figure of speech. I mean it literally: I was kicking and screaming. I was already an angry, confused adolescent who thought I knew everything, basking in my self-made depression and inner turmoil. I threatened to move to my father's house at least twice a day, I screamed at my mother about everything, and I slammed my door often enough that my mother took it away...multiple times. I...was...pissed. Everything I knew was gone from my life; everything and everyone familiar was now two thousand miles away. My beach, my Gulf, my house, my school, my friends...and I was stuck here in this hell hole freezing my butt off (the days would sometimes get to seventy degress in mid-August...that was the dead-of-winter low where I was from) and feeling constantly as if I was breathing through a straw. Boy, was I angry.

Ten years later I look back and laugh. Florida never held any promise for me, and while my life hasn't gone exactly as I would have liked it to (working for the second-largest natural-foods chain in the world managing promotions for one of our chains of stores isn't quite as glamorous as being a well-published author or even a lawyer or teacher), that has next to nothing to do with where I live. "This hell hole" has become home, and most of the time, you couldn't pay me enough to leave. I can barely afford to live in this town and yet I can't imagine how much I'd miss it if I had to move. Going to other places around the US and then to Greece over the last few years has given me a unique perspective on my home, and I often wonder if all Colorado residents feel the same inner glee I do when I look around other places in the world...like, hee hee, I have to put up with this for now but then I get to go back to Boulder! I'm sure most people have an attachment to their hometowns, home states/provinces/countries, etc., but mine feels better than theirs, I feel, if only because I had to fight myself so hard to really love this place.

Boulder proper, as a city, also happens to be one of the greatest places in the world if you're an athlete...or a wannabe like me. I remember reading recently in some fitness magazine quote that was ranking neighborhoods in terms of how healthy families/people who live there are, that something along the lines of a dozen Ironman (Hawaii) placers live in a ten-block radius of each other in the country's "healthiest neighborhood", the Newlands area of North Boulder. There are an overabundance of massage therapists, yoga practitioners, and of course your run-of-the-mill cyclists, runners, swimmers and triathletes. I'm five-foot-seven and around 140 pounds, not scrawny like I used to be but hardly fat...I have a little jiggle here and there when I jog and hey, I'm working on it. Going to run in a jog bra and a pair of shorts, however, as I quickly found today, makes me feel like the town's only fat person. Everyone else out today (not too many; most of the serious cyclists were out this morning and only the real crazy people like me would exercise during the hottest time of day) was slender, cut and trim, without an ounce of extraneous fat, and these are the not-so-serious athletes...the ones who only do 60-mile bike rides every Saturday and Sunday rather than 150-milers. I am just about the perfect weight for my height, perhaps a bit high, but in this town, I'ma fat person. It's almost amusing...and it definitely works in your favor when you're trying to get into shape. Aside from that, living in Boulder--or at any altitude, really--comes with it the privilege of training at altitude. If you watch any kind of sports, you know what advantage I'm talking about: you've seen the oxygen tanks lining the sidelines at football and basketball games, the benches at hockey games, and the dugouts at baseball games, when teams come from out of town to play our Broncos, Nuggets, Avalanche or Rockies. The reverse is true when you go to sea level: you last longer than usual (and usually, than most other people with similar fitness regimens) and you have more energy because your brain isn't focused entirely on sucking up as much oxygen as possible. You recover better and faster, and more completely.

There are a few benefits to living in Florida--and training and running in Florida--that I miss, and these came to me on my five-mile run today. The first came when I started thinking about getting home, about four miles or so in. I was getting fatigued, and I haven't trained in the past week after straining my knee and foot last Saturday. At my boyfriend's suggestion (Gregory has also become my impromptu sports physician and physical therapist) I laid off for a few days...and at my mind's laziness laid off for a few more, so I knew it'd be a painful run (it was, but not as bad as I thought...I did manage to get my Zen/zoned-out feeling going for a bit there) to start. Four miles in I began thinking about how mice it'd be to get home...then remembered it wasn't going to be a whole lot cooler at my house. Coloradans consider air conditioning an unnecessary luxury most of the time, and while most homes--including mine--have it, the air-conditioning unit in my apartment is pitiful at best, a wall model that makes the living room slightly cooler--sort of--and is so noisy it drowns out the television. I keep the shades drawn most of the time in the summer--which makes a dramatic difference--and the fan on in my bedroom to keep air circulating in there. Still, I knew it'd be only slightly better than outside, and my hopes faded.

Nearing the finish, I slowed to a walk, taking deep breaths and lengthy strides. A cool, dry brreze came thorugh and lifted my hsir off of my sweltering neck. Colorado's summers have an interesting efect: they're generally cooler in overall temperature over the span of summer days, but we're so much closer to the sun that it's 5000+ feet more intense than in Florida. Colorado also has about the aridity of a desert, whereas in Florida, if I didn't blow-dry my thinck, strawberry-blonde hair in the morning, it would still be wet when I came home from school. The air is so dense you can almost drink it in, making for not much fun during meets and races. I was suddenly brought back to those meets: during the hot, hot months of August and September, feeling as if you were running through water and drowning on your own breath.

But Florida, unlike Colorado, also has coastal breezes...that is, winds that sweep in from the Gulf, bringing floods of cooler, seaspray-charged air with them. For a moment, I weighed the possibilities...which was really worse?

Then I looked up and caught a view of the Flatirons. Days like today the world-famous rock-climbing precipices of Boulder's foothills--the Flatirons, which were closed for some time due to climbing deaths and boast cliff faces that invert climbers completely in some spots--look like a painting, or some fantastic mirage. There's no way to phrase in words the cut of the redd-ish-brown rocks and green treeline against the blue blue mountain sky, snowcapped peaks shining in the distance. They look as though they can't possibly be real. The first time I ever saw the mountains, when I was fourteen and woke up on our first day in Colorado, I could not stop staring. They did look like a painting...too big, too beautiful, and too alive to be real. Then, I gaped in awe. This time I smiled and put my head back down, breathing in deeply through my nose. The air smelled like pine needles and warm cedar, and for a moment I could have just as easily been on a trail in the mountains as I was standing in front of my apartment building doing my cool-down stretches. This place is my home.

Hey man...thanks

Almost everybody meets at least one person who has a profound impact on their life. Most of us meet a few. Some of us are lucky enough...or perhaps, thoughtful enough...to realize it. My family, especially my parents and my little sister Emily, most of my teachers but most especially my high school band director, Corry Petersen, my best friend Shawn, my ex-boyfriend Bob, who to this day knows me as well as any member of my family and remains a close friend. My colleagues Marsha and Denine, and my work buddy Kelly, who's becoming more and more my good friend. A lot of the time, you don't really realize the importance of their influence in your life, and hindsight is almost always 20/20. I have inherited from my parents the (usually) fortunate perspective that everything, no matter how weird, bad, good, extraordinary or seemingly detrimental, every experience is a learning experience. Everything works out okay in the end. And even when it doesn't, you've still gained all the more from actually experiencing it.

I've also, unfortunately, inherited a strange insomnia from my mother. My father sleeps like a brick, and I've never known the man to be less than a few minutes from solid, heavy sleep once his head hits the pillow. I hope, for his sake, that this is still the case, because insomnia sucks. Especially when you get it at least once a month, like me, and you know it so well you don't even try to beat it anymore. My body's reaction to sleeping aids is to fight them, so I refuse to try to take them anymore. When I get this type of insomnia, it's just all th ebetter to sit up writing a blog post or a journal entry with some cheesy movie on cable (it's "Kingpin" right now) in the background than lay in bed for hours on end watching the minutes tick by and trying to devise ways to trick my brain into shutting off. That's really it: my brain just won't close shop for the night, and I spend the next day wondering at the vibrance of my colleagues as I stumble through on an hour or two of sleep and a lot of caffeine.

However, serious insomnia also gives you a lot of time to ponder things. When in a position like this, I tend to let my brain wander and try not to dwell on one thing too much, just in case it should wander to sleep. This night, my brain keeps wandering back to my boyfriend.

You tend to forget yourself sometimes when you have such an idyllic person in your life, and I, having strong tendencies towards this, tend to push away when I feel like I'm getting too close. Especially when I don't feel that my feelings are being reciprocated. I freak out and I shut down and I almost lose one of the most important people in my life.

I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow or next week, three months from now or ten years, but I do know that no matter what happens between us, I'm quite grateful to my boyfriend. He really, really has been the defining influence in getting me back on the track to who I want to be, who I used to be when I was younger. All of the roads leading to my silly, playful, athletic, tomboy self have taken serious twists in the last seven or eight years, and somewhere along the way I lost myself...or at least, a lot of it.

When Gregory and I started seeing each other I was hyper-paranoid about this happening again. I didn't really feel like I knew myself very well anymore, but I knew I wasn't too happy with the person I was at the time and didn't want to get serious with anyone because I always tended to "lose myself" when that happened. Gregory was, much to his credit, extremely patient with me, and as things progressed, I started to see that I really didn't want to be without him. I really liked this one, mostly because he brought out everything in me that I always really liked. I have a better attitude, a better sense of humor, a lighter outlook, a greater sense of self-worth and a healthier approach towards life. I quit smoking, and while everyone I know has recognized this as no small feat, Gregory was there every day in the beginning and, though I don't crave anymore and never ever want to cigarette between my lips again, has been there throughout. Aside from being the biggest catalyst, he's also been my biggest supporter, at least insofar as physically being there for me day in and day out. A couple of weeks in I came home for my lunch break from work to find a card waiting for me on my desk. Its contents detailed his being proud of me, despite the apparent "fact" that I am going to beat him at the Bolder Boulder (not likely).

As it turned out, this is the one relationship where I didn't lose myself, but rather kind of stumbled across myself again. I often wonder at what I could have possibly done to deserve such a great guy, and relish the thought of having been canonized or martyred in a past life and this is some exixtentialist make-up for that.

Then I think about the nature of things between us, and just Gregory's character in general. Between attracting new clients to his company (and maintaining systems for the current ones), volunteering as "shark bait" at Ocean Journey, the Denver aquarium where he works twice a month putting his Dive Master certification to good work by jumping in a huge pool with a bunch of reef fish and sharks (yes, sharks) to feed the fish (and sharks), clean the aquarium, and entertain visitors, working towards his pilot's license, training for Ironman in Perth in November and maintaining his status so he can stay in the country and keep working (ah, the joys of immigration...after hearing about what legal immigrants have to put up with, I can't imagine why anyone would want to get into this country). Yet this guy constantly sports a huge grin that lights up his eyes, which sparkle even when he's being quite serious, and has one of the most positive outlooks of anyone I've ever known. He's attractive, fit, healthy, trim, and very handsome, but doesn't come off as if he knows that at all...there's much more of an "Aw, shucks..." presence to Gregory than anything else. He's unassuming, polite, sweet, incredibly friendly and extremely outgoing. He'll talk to anyone and no matter who they are, he makes them feel more valuable thereafter. Chatting with him is great, and hearing him speaking to his parents or his best friend in French is even better, though I don't understand fully one percent of what he's saying. It's the passion in his voice, the excitement you can hear no matter what the language. It's how alive he is.

It's how I feel too, in the last few months. Not to say I wouldn't have gotten there without him, but Gregory's provided a strong and stable compass that was also fun to be around and made me laugh in addition to pointing me in the right direction...back towards the person I used to be, the person I love to be. Back towards me.

When you pedestallize someone, anything they do can devalue their status in your eyes and therefore, hurt the relationship. When you practice a healthy admiration for your partner, your friend, your lover, you realize the difference really quickly. For me, it's that when I look at my boyfriend, or think of him, or talk about him, I always smile. The difference between pedestallizing and admiration is clear because I can see the way he looks at me too. His gaze mirrors mine. "What...?" One of us will ask. The other one responds, "Nothin...just looking at you."

So hey, Gregory...thanks. I could've done it without you---could've quit smoking, could've started running again, biking again, swimming here and there, could've broken out of my cynicism, etc.--but I probably wouldn't have, and certainly not so quickly. So hey man, thanks. I hope you stick around for awhile, because I sure enjoy your company. I hope you feel the same about mine.

On Failure and the Kindness of Strangers

So today was my first attempt at serious distance. I planned my route, dressed accordingly, ate beforehand and carried with me two energy bars, to energy gels (as disgusting as I always expected they were), and a bottle filled with diluted Gatorade. My route, if it went as planned, would take me on my usual 3.5 mile loop for a warm-up, then up an 8-10-mile descent to Gold Hill at the end of Sunshine Canyon, then back down into Boulder. All told, I'd walk roughly the distance of a marathon. I clipped my pedometer to my running shorts' waistband, typed up a quick e-mail to Gregory to let him know where I was going, and headed out.

Of course, things didn't go as planned (there would be no point in stating "if it went as planned" if it actually DID go as planned)...the canyon road was a grade of roughly 8-10% as well as being roughly 8-10 miles long. Over the course of the road, I would ascend approximately 3500 feet in elevation, topping out at Gold Hill, elevation somewhere around 8900 feet. I didn't really put two and two together here and ended up totally beat halfway up after race-pacing my walking. Yes, walking...I'd like to see you try to run it.

I also neglected to bring enough fluids. My hands began to swell badly about halfway up and I was out of Gatorade. I wasn't checking my pedometer as much as I probably should've--in the vain hope that I'd go further than I thought I had. By the time I nearly reached Gold Hill I had made up my mind to call Gregory when I got there for an impromptu rescue. In reality, I would've been fine had I just brought enough water...the constant uphill was a bit tiring, but it was entirely exhausting when exacerbated by dehydration. I ended up really kicking myself for that performance. By the time my pedometer read 11 miles, I was depleted, swollen and cranky. Every time I rounded a corner, the road just went up...and up...and up. I wanted to cry.

Instead, I kept moving. One nice thing about working out in Colorado is that as long as you're outside, no matter what else is going on, you have the luxury of some of the most breathtaking views imaginable. From the Sunhine Canyon Road (formerly a nice little mountain road home to fond memories especially with my friend Shawn, now a nemesis to challenge in a rematch) you can look right around you and see the semi-arid climate in its late spring splendor: tiny bright flowers scattered about, striated sandstone boulders, desert grasses...or, you can look up and see snow-capped mountains in the distance and the magnificent spread of lush foothills preceding the snowy fourteeners carpeted by evergreen and aspen. The houses up Sunshine Canyon, at first, redefine "property value" in terms of Boulder real estate, where the current average price for a single-family home is $549,000. Gold Hill, as a town, resembles Ward and Nederland in population: hippies, neo-hippies and real mountain folk (no, not the Vail poseurs who drove real estate through the roof by building multimillion-dollar homes along the I-70 corridor)--sun-chapped, wind-hardened, often sporting scraggly beards and skinny-braided locks of hair, higher-elevation people who have managed to retain their tiny plot of worth-its-weight-in-gold land because it's been passed down to them through the generations--as well as in real estate: strangely-shaped, poorly-built homes suffering from expanding from one to six rooms in a series of ill-devised construction attempts. These are the houses you see further up the canyon, especially at the end of the paved section of road. So no matter where you look, you're bound to see something interesting.

"Something interesting" did not, unfortunately, quite make up for lack of water. I was about a mile from Gold Hill when I happened upon two young men walking back up from a little overlook towards a bright yellow Jeep Wrangler. I'd long ago given up on any hope of getting water on the trail and was doggedly and devotedly trudging towards Gold Hill. "Excuse me?" I called. "How much further to Gold Hill?"

Now, as a single woman in a town most recently known for sex scandals, I tend to err on the side of caution and try to make myself invisible or, at least, appear deaf and/or mute when I'm on my own out and about. Not to say Boulder is a dangerous place--it isn't at all--but as a woman you learn quickly, if your mother taught you well, that just being alone puts you in a more compromised and sometimes dangerous position than it does men. Soliciting help from men when you're all alone, especially when you're alone, out in the middle of nowhere, and totally exhausted, is not advisable.

However, I was not only alone, out in the middle of nowhere, and exhausted, I was also seriously questioning my ability to continue. I'm pretty sure if I hadn't planned a route that gained 3000+ feet in elevation and managed to actually bring enough water to supply myself for the journey I would've been able to do it, but those were facts not in my favor, and besides, they looked like nice enough guys, and at least one of them was wearing a wedding band.

They confirmed what I suspected: that Gold Hill was at least another mile. I licked my very dry lips with my very dry tongue and mustered a small smile. "Hey, you guys don't have any water, do you?"

As it turned out, one of them had a thermos filled with water. We chatted for a few minutes, and I started to feel a little better. Then I looked back out at the road...still climbing. I sighed and turned back to the guys. "Are you headed back to Boulder?"

They were, and I asked if I could hop a ride. I've never hitched, I've never accepted rides from strangers and I have no problem getting myself around, but I was pretty done. I would have no issue with leaving Sunshine Canyon for another day.

They agreed, cautioning that they didn't have a back seat. Their names were Dave and Jeff, and as I gulped water greedily on the way back to Boulder, I discovered they'd come out to go four-wheeling, they had been friends for years and they were out for one last hurrah before Jeff graduated and moved away. They were extremely kind to me, especially given the horrible state I was in (swollen, thick-tongued, lips chapped and covered in sweat and road dust), and they got me back to Boulder. Once there I called Gregory and begged for mercy. I asked him about the edema I was experiencing and he replied candidly, "That's from not drinking enough water."

Okay, so I need to get a decent hydration rig and find better-tasting energy gels (chocolate-flavored Gu is terrible). I need to go out prepared next time I do any serious endurance training, so that next time I can finish.

As ill-prepared as I was, I slathered myself with enough sunscreen that I managed a decent runner's tan and not a nasty sunburn. My next effort at a marathon-length run/walk will be planned on a fairly level route, and if I don't have any better hydration gear by then, it will also include water stops at grocery and/or convenience stores so I don't swell like an overstuffed sausage in its casing. For now, I'm really very grateful for the kindness of strangers. And, of course, sympathetic boyfriends.

Man, does it feel good to finish nearly two solid hours of running and walking.

Man, if somebody told me I'd be writing something like that three months ago I would've laughed my ass off. But it does. I can feel my body responding more quickly and efficiently to the exercise. I am slow to warm up, and I still often have to run a good half-mile or so before easing into a comfortable pace, but once I'm there, that's it. I feel like I can run forever. When I DO stop, I recover very, very quickly, a fact that has surprised me.

The worst part about quitting smoking and upping the intensity of your exercise level substantially--and simultaneously--is that you really realize how incredibly stupid you were to spend whatever amount of time you spent smoking. It was seven years for me. Seven years of time, money and healthy lung tissue spent in the worst possible way. The saying that the only tihng worse than a non-smoker is an ex-smoker is true, too; I hate being around it, I hate smelling it on people, I hate smokers' breath, the way their clothes smell, the way that scent hangs around them all the time, and most of all I hate knowing that a lot of people thought the same of me not too long ago.

Running is an interesting endeavor; since you are constantly pushing your body and after awhile your knees feel like they're being jammed into your shins and every footfall is a chance to feel your joints knocking together, it's an easy sport to give up. Just as easy, however, is it an addiction. I'd long forgotten the feeling of zoning out entirely, feeling completely at ease just putting one foot in front of the other, matching pace to breath to stride, slowing when necessary, speeding up when possible, and feeling like you could go on forever. Today I ran/walked from my house in north Boulder to Gregory's at the edge of south Boulder towards the outer edges of town, then back to my office in north Boulder. Sometime soon I'll actually use the pedometer I bought the other day and start really working on my race pace, but right now it just feels so good to stride, stride, stride and feel as if I could do it forever. When I got to my office it was around eight p.m. and, gratefully, there was nobody there, but I ran up there to pick up a pound of extremely high-quality organic ground beef I'd received from our meat department earlier--the perks of working for a natural foods corporation--and subsequently forgotten in the kitchen fridge. I was stuck with a mild dilemma then...run home with the pound of beef and hope it didn't get too warm or fuck up my pacing too much by carrying it, or chicken out, call my boyfriend and beg in earnest for a ride. My legs were killing me by then, so I chickened out and Gregory was kind enough to drop everything and come drive me home.

The whole time I was running, though, by myself (Gregory met me about a third of the way from my house to his...or two-thirds of the way for him, and ran back to his place with me, so I had company for the first half), a little voice kept whispering three little words, rhythmically in tune with my breathing...(i'm getting stronger...i'm getting stronger). My lower back aches now and my hips hurt a bit, but otherwise I feel great. Oh, and there's nothing like running anywhere in Boulder, Colorado. My friends give me shit because I prefer streets to trails...don't ask me why, I don't know...and when I run the bike and pedestrian paths I tend to choose those close to streets, like this one out by the highway, but it doesn't matter. All you have to do is look up, and you see the most spectacular foothills on the planet, and the biggest sky on earth, and no matter where your mental conditioning is at that moment, you just have to grin and thank your lucky stars...you live in the most beautiful place in the world.

The Bikram's Experience

Yoga means different things to different people. To some, it's merely another deviation on the term "workout", a physical means of stretching and posturing with a physical end of increased flexibility, balance, and well-developed muscle tone. To others, it's more an experience of the mind, designed to draw you into yourself and promote greater mental, emotional and spiritual well-being through a highly meditational experience. For most practitioners, it's a combination of these two. Yoga students can be distinguished from the general population by several noticeable traits: they usually carry themselves with better posture and a grace of movement that comes from properly developing muscle groups to maintain balance and alignment, and they're often "stringbeans", or, very very skinny people with longer, leaner muscles resulting from toning through stretches rather than weight training.

Then again, to some people, yoga is the quickest way to lose five pounds in ninety minutes. No, I'm serious. When you start sweating the moment you walk through the studio door and are wiping away streams of perspiration (who knew you had so many pores?) within the first fifteen minutes, you can lose five pounds rather quickly. That's not the goal and since it is entirely waterweight you must rehydrate--and therefore, replace--those five pounds as quickly as possible or face the rather severe consequences of extreme dehydration, but it is a rather interesting little fact. The Bikram style of yoga, championed by former hatha practitioner Bikram Choudhury, is a practice combining a series of postures and bookended at the beginning and end by breathing exercises. Some of the postures are well-known hatha poses, such as the camel pose or the tree pose, and some are designed specifically for this particular style of yoga. It's all performed slowly and deliberately, and boasts the benefits of any standard yoga practice, from hatha to power yoga, of increased flexibility, mental clarity, muscle strength and development, balance, etc.

Did I mention that the room you're doing these postures in is a requisite ninety-five to one-hundred-and-five degrees Fahrenheit?

What sets Bikram's apart from the rest of the yoga world is, in a word, the heat. High-intensity heat is a part of this practice, designed to increase your body's ability to remove toxins. It also makes it more of a cardiovascular workout than yoga often is, and, at least for some of us, ratchets up the intensity of the meditational quality. I haven't ever tried abother form of yoga and don't think I ever will; I have kind of found my niche here, I'm a born multitasker; allowing my mind to wander freely at all virtually guarantees a shut-down of any sort of transcendental or meditational experience. Forcing me to contort my muscles into odd positions only guarantees that I will be a little more flexible; forcing me to contort my muscles into odd positions in 100-degree heat guarantees that I will be focused on it. When it's that hot, you can't afford to let your mind wander; it MUST be entirely focused on the postures. That's why this form of yoga is the one for me (knowing that I will be leaving with towels and clothing I can literally wring out is NOT).

So, I've been doing Bikram's on a very occasional basis for the past three years or so, usually going to a studio in Boulder run by a woman who makes the Nazis look like cuddly little teddy bears in her approach to critiquing her students and, as often as I can or every time I'm visiting my mother, attending the classes at the Fort Collins studio, run by a much nicer man with the unique ability to find something kind to say to eacj of his students, especially those of us who struggle. Recently a Bikram's studio opened at the Flatirons Crossing mall, a massive, expansive shopping center that very nearly has its own zip code (I think the lack of residential space is the only reason it doesn't) just up the street from lovely Boulder, Colorado. Aside from being entirely too amused at the idea that someone would actually, in mid-shopping, shed their street clothes for the lightest, skimpiest outfit they own and toil for ninety minutes in an oven only to emerge red-faced, dripping and stinky with perspiration, I figured it was nice to have an alternative to the neo-Nazi who ran the main studio in Boulder. I've been off-and-on bugging Gregory to give yoga a shot and, somewhere in the midst of the post-half-Ironman reverie that has apparently been clouding his better judgment, he agreed. We picked up a schedule at the mall studio and decided to attend a ten a.m. Sunday class.

Now, dating an athlete in training for an Ironman comes with its advantages...as well as its disadvantages. Some of the advantages are: almost always having something athletic to do, because you can just jump into his routine and do as much or as little of it as you can stomach at any given time, feeling like what you're doing is relatively easy because endurance training involves lengthy distances at a generally slow pace, and, yes, bragging rights to dating a bona fide lunatic. I mean who else would take on an event with those dimensions (2.4mi swim, 112mi. bike, marathon or 26.2mi. run) but the completely insane? Some of the disadvantages are: waking up alone on a fairly regular basis (my wake-up greeting is often a note: "D- Went running/cycling/swimming. Back in about three hours. -G 10:30am...when I wake up at ten-forty-five), feeling like a total bum while recounting that, while your boyfriend was out on a 70-mile bike ride you were at home devouring Sex & The City reruns, and suffering frayed nerves all weekend because your boyfriend just did one of the most intense half-Ironman courses in the world but it's out in the middle of nowhere with no cell service or signal of any sort and you can't even get an "Are you okay?" text message to him. The pros significantly outweigh the cons, but aside from being elated that he was going to come to yoga WITH me (nobody ever comes to yoga with me), there was definitely a little fiendish devil in me rubbing her hands and laughing maniacally. The boy had no idea what he was getting himself into. My mother, an avid cyclist, Tour de France follower and former triathlete, has been to one Bikram's class with me. When I told her that Gregory and I were going to take a class together, her first comment was: "He's screwed."

The heat isn't really the worst part about Bikram's, at least not after awhile. Some of the postures are torturous, heated room or not, and they are all designed to really amplify the intensity of muscular stretch and tone. What becomes difficult is trying to acclimate to the heat and do the postures and take enough water breaks so that you're properly rehydrating. I've seen people go through a gallon and a half of water in one class, and I've seen people pass out because they're not drinking enough. The heat is brutal, but the dangers come from not being aware of it. I love it because it turns my muscles into slightly more viscous Jell-O; I can bend and move in ways I never thought possible. Because I've been a fair-weather student I end up paying for it the next day, but I'm always grateful I've gone, no matter how sore my shoulders, triceps, hamstrings, pecs, quads and other assorted muscle groups are. BUT, Gregory hates high heat. And to his credit, he admits readily that his flexibility and balance leave something to be desired.

So we attended the class. I informed him that the shirt he had on wouldn't last long; he left it in the locker room. I told him to drink a lot of water, and he did. I told him that the most important goal was to stay int he room for the entire class, and he did, exiting flushed and dripping at the class' finish with me. He'd done an excellent job for a first-timer, completing most of the postures and sitting out a few at the end. I'd tried to keep my eye on him, mostly because I felt entirely responsible for dragging him into this to begin with, but also because...well, I never really saw my boyfriend as much of a yoga person. The man is built like a linebacker and trains for long-distance endurance events, not knock-down-drag-out ninety-minute sweatfests. By the time the class was over, I couldn't gauge his expression. For all I knew he fell in love with it...or absolutely hated it.

"I loved it!" He announced, striding up to the desk and paying for two more classes. Uh-oh...

We may have created a monster.

Thoughts On My First 5K In A Decade

Some interesting things happened to me today that haven't in over ten years. A sampling:

1) shin splints
2) self-pacing
3) "Are you sure you don't have to go?"
4) dehydration...that I really felt
5) Passersby running up to me, an alarmed look on their faces, saying, "Oh my God, are you okay?"
6) (upon arriving home, post-run) "Damn, I need to buy Gatorade."

Okay, so, the explanation:

1) shin splints: these are wonderful little pains that shoot up your--you guessed it!--shins when you're doing a high-impact activity like running. The more out of shape you are, the worse they hurt, at least in my experience, and the more fit you are, the more quickly they disappear. It's not like I spent the whole 5K in severe pain...though I started out that way. The bad news, at leats for me, was that they hurt like hell when they started. The good news is that they went away within about a quarter of a mile.

2) self-pacing: okay, so when you're in a race you can usually within the first few minutes lock down on a pacer, someone going about the same speed you are and is in your line of sight who you can keep your eye on during the run and maintain approximately the same speed. When you're out running alone it's really easy to screw up your pacing, especially when you're used to team training. As a cross-country runner and racer in Florida I never ran alone; I was always either with my teammates or in a race. Gregory and I ran together once and I was able to keep up with his pace, but the man had already done a full days' workout (which is something like four to seven hours of running, cycling, or swimming or some combination of two of the above) and the run we did was like a little cool-down for him. That one actually felt good, because we were moving at a snail's pace. My biggest problem with starting to run again from a performance standpoint was pacing. I would start out at my old race pace, which meant seven minute miles a decade or so ago but now means I get about half a block before I'm wheezing. To some degree this run began that way too; for the first half of it I did a pretty up-and-down run/walk, sometimes accelerating to my old race pace and sometimes walking...briskly. For the second half, though, I made up my mind to run it. That meant not stopping. I completed the last half of the run the way I wanted to, running the whole time, learning to pace myself, check my pace and re-pace as necessary. This was huge...I've never done it before and also never realized how essential, and difficult, it can be (largely because I never needed to do it before now!) to maintain your own pace. But finishing the last mile and a half and running the whole thing...man, did that feel good.

3) "Are you sure you don't have to go?" This is a phrase most of us stop hearing when we're children, and it's being asked of us by our parents, and it refers to the bathroom. It's one of those that is usually brought to an abrupt halt as the child matures and goes from smiling winningly at the parent to rolling their eyes and hissing "Yes!" in mortal embarrassment at the question. Now, I don't ask myself this every time I leave and I usually don't need to...I can handle my potty time by now, thank you very much; however, I forgot that when you're running for forty-five minutes or so and a substantial portion of your run is through neighborhood streets with virtually no commercial property whatsoever around you, chances are you need to make sure you've visited the loo before leaving home. This was, easily, the most amusing of my thoughts, as it brought me back to thinking that I am, again, an infant...an infantile athlete, that is. There are few opportunities in life where you get to regress back to infancy and literally start all over again, but athletics is one area where that is always the case...if you don't keep training, you lose your ability to perform, and the deterioration is quick and intense.

4) dehydration...that I really felt Okay this one isn't as scary as it sounds; I didn't drop dead of thirst halfway through or anything, but I am the first to admit that I am terrible about drinking enough water. I drink soda like it's going out of style and water only when I have no other option. Running today, I really felt that. My mouth dried up and my lips were a virtually impregnable fortress around my teeth, they were so thickly glued together. I'm glad I didn't feel thirsty because, as one of Gregory's tri magazines pointed out recently, if you're thirsty, you're already in trouble, but I was definitely overheating a bit and perspiring too little for the workout I was doing...I have GOT to start drinking more water....beginning with the refill of the glass I just downed sitting in front of me at my desk.

5) Passersby running up to me, an alarmed look on their faces, saying, "Oh my God, are you okay?" Now, actually, this IS something I'm kind of used to, because I'm a total klutz. I crash into stuff, drop things, lose my balance and fall over, etc. all the time. I am not, however, used to minding my own business and having someone run up to me--from across the street, mind you--to stop me in the middle of my run and ask if I'm all right. Seriously. Today as I neared Broadway on Balsam, a woman who was walking her dog across the street from me saw me, looked suddenly alarmed, and bolted across the street towards me. I was in the midst of my running reverie, that wonderful little somewhere you float away to when you're jamming to good tunes and your adrenaline is nice and boosted, when she grabbed my arm. "Oh my God, are you okay?" She asked. I jogged in place for a moment, tearing off my headphones and looking at her quizzically. "Yeah, I'm fine. Are you okay?" It seemed only natural that I should ask her as well; maybe she really wasn't and this was her way of using reverse psychology to be able to tell me or something. "Yes, I'm fine," she replied, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bother you, but your face is really, really red." I smiled, nodded, assured her that I really was okay and thanked her, and we both continued on our respective merry ways. Now, while it was very sweet of her to stop and ask, I really was fine, and I broke my stride to chat with her, and, well, I would say it's due to the dehydration but it really isn't...I could drink gallons of water and electrolyte replacement drinks daily and my face would STILL be beet-colored after the first half-mile of any run. It's something that always happens, and if I've been running for a really long time, my skin turns white just around my lips, nose and eyebrows and the rest of my face is red. I can't help it, though while I appreciate this woman's concern (this really has happened before; when I was a cross-country runner in Florida I got asked this question at every race I was in, for school or individually) I'd rather just let the world of Boulder know that unless I'm flat on my back I'm probably all right. So this section also functions as a warning for any Boulderites reading this blog (yeah right...because sooo many of you are!): I have quite short red-blonde hair and fair skin, and I wear either black Adidas warm-ups (the kind with the triple stripe down the outside of each leg) and a grey yoga top with criscrossing straps or black running shorts with same top and/or maybe a tee shirt over the top. I also almost always wear some sort of sound system running...my CD player and stereo headphones thus far, but if I can get Gregory's sport MP3 player working he's said I can borrow it instead, and my hair is almost always in a headband. If you see me on foot, in this gear or something similar, jogging, and my face is beet-colored, I'm okay. Thanks for asking. ;)

6) (upon arriving home, post-run) "Damn, I need to buy Gatorade." I haven't needed to keep electrolyte replacement drinks on hand in a very, very long time, and nothing does the trick for me like Gatorade. My mom loves Propel, but I'm a classics fan when it comes to my sports drinks. It was nice to open up my fridge and think that rather than, "Damn, I need to buy some Coke."

The Bolder Boulder is May 30...T-minus 27 days and counting!

Aerobics OnDemand

Now, if King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in Monty Python and the Holy Grail had really been thinking about it when God charged them with their sacred quest to find the grail, they would probably have at least wondered why God couldn't find it Himself. After all, He is God. Now there's an alternate ending for you...one that would end the movie approximately twenty minutes after it began.

These are the kind of thoughts that creep into your head when you're trying to follow a perky blonde aerobics instructor who is charging you with a very different, though no less difficult, mission. "Tone those arms! Work those triceps! Yeah, starting to feel the heat now!" By the time she said that I rolled my eyes and sank onto the ground. I'd been feeling the heat since the stretching segment. The Monty Python thought came first. Next, I am so screwed on the 30th.

The Bolder Boulder is now less than a month away and, instead of being characteristically seventy degrees and sunny, the weather has taken a turn for the worse or, at least, the more ironic. I'm glad Gregory's returning from his tri/business trip on Wednesday as it will give him at least a few more days of psychotic Colorado weather, something he's yet to experience as a resident. It's the first of May and as I sit here writing this snow is falling outside. I gaze mournfully at the tiny flakes. A combination of recent illness (24-hour stomach flu and severl-day-long cold) and incelement weather has pushed my training regimen off track. Gregory may be able to go run in a blizzard, but that's because the man owns more quick-drying and weatherproof outwerwear than Patagonia. And he's training for an Ironman. And I'm not. Training sick is never a good idea, so I made up my mind to take the last couple of days off, determining last night that I would do a serious run this morning and a workout segment courtesy of my cable company later in the day.

When I awoke this morning, it was sleeting. Now it's snowing. It's not really sticking but it is damned cold outside, and I really doubt that my still-recuperating immune system would be very happy with me if I forced it into overdrive right now. So I pulled my coffee table aside, threw on my yoga clothes, made sure ALL of the blinds in the house were firmly closed and snapped on the TV.

Now, I am a huge fan of OnDemand already; it's reduced those pesky trips to the video stroe significantly, but I've only recently discovered OnDemand fitness, which is basically a library of exercise videos available whenever the mood strikes you. I decided on Total Toning and Ultimate Abs, because I am currently Totally Out Of Shape with Ultimately Flabby Abs. Soon I was being guided through a series of stretches and movements by a bright-eyed no-name fitness queen, whose workouts not only drew my attention to the fact that I am totally out of shape but also to the fact that I'm a total klutz as well. At one point during an "obliques" session I nearly gave myself a black eye trying to bring my elbow to the opposite knee. Among pondering the subtle nuances of Monty Python's most popular production and my boyfriend's finish in his half-Ironman...a not-insubstantial total time of slightly over seven hours...and how badly I was going to be beaten at the end of the month, I came up with a couple of suggestions for the OnDemand people regarding their fitness segments:

1) We don't need to be told how to operate the remote and how it will stop, pause, rewind or fast-forward whenever we'd like. If we figured out how to get to the fitness programs on OnDemand, a daunting task in and of itself, we can probably handle the complicated functions of stop, play and rewind/fast forward.
2) Please, please, please, someday have an instructor who isn't perfectly fit and drop-dead-gorgeous. I mean, you don't have to have the fattest people in America either but it would be nice to have at least some more realistic looking people running these things...less of a blow to the self-esteems of the real people trying to follow them.
3) Show movements slowly before jumping into the routine. These are largely being used by people like me: who need to get back into shape. Our lack of decent physiques notwithstanding, we still deserve to be treated like normal people, and normal people cannot necessarily swing from one motion into the next without severely injuring ourselves.

Anyway, that's the beginning of it. By the end of the segments I felt more toned, a little more fit and soreness in muscles I hadn't had in awhile. Seeing as I need to make up for missing my run this morning, however, I am going to have to take on a cardio segment or two before heading out to the show I'm going to tonight with my friends.

A Sea of Tissues

When you're an athlete, getting sick can be devastating. When you're an endurance athlete, the time you spend being sick is measured painstakingly in how much you're losing by giving up that training time to let your body fight off whatever's ailing you.

When you're a total poser like me it's a double whammy because not only are you lamenting the fact that the Bolder Boulder is a month and a day away and you haven't run since the last post you created on your blog, but you're even more discouraged to jump back in than those who actually are in shape or work towards getting there on a more regular basis.

These are the things I'm pondering as I sit in a sea of used tissues, my nose still totally stuffed up, and pop more Benadryl-D into my mouth. This part of the situation is not unusual for me; as the carrier of perhaps the worst nasal allergies of anyone on the planet, tissues, Benadryl-D and stuffy sinuses are part of my life. Nausea, chills, fever, aches, a perpetual headace and deep bronchial coughing are not, and I wonder how I managed to catch both a cold and the flu at the same time. I have spent a lot of time today downing juice and Echinacea and Cold Snap, taking it easy and threatening ye gods above in many ways if I don't get better by Sunday night.

Sunday night is the Jimmy Eat World show, which I've been looking forward to ever since my best friend Shawn introduced me to the band a couple of years ago. When you're home sick you have lots of time to ponder these things, and aside from my occasional threats and channel surfing I've spent a lot of time on the web today. I checked my e-mail earlier to find a new e-mail from Shawn; it was a chain forward with a touching story attached, one of those ones that ends with such things as "Remember: someone is thinking about you right now. Someone's day is made every tiem you smile..." and the like. I had received this one in particualr before, and even Shawn, who sent it to his zillion other friends as well as me, commented on its being sappy but this particular story touching him, so I read it all the way through anyway. As I read through those sweet little "someone's thinking of you" comments at the end, I started to think about my relationship with Shawn.

Shawn may be the only person who brings a smile to my face every time he crosses my mind. My boyfriend is wonderful and he got me to quit smoking, but we still get into weird places and have nagging doubts and sometimes, I get the worried look rather than the smile when I think of Gregory. The only time I've been worried thinking of Shawn was after we got in a huge fight and didn't speak for about two weeks. This isn't unusual; Shawn recently moved to Denver and we talk whenever it's convenient for us, most often when he's coming up to Boulder or when I'm in Denver, but it's not a big deal to go a period of two weeks without chatting. These two weeks were rife with concern and fear that I'd lost my best friend. Most of my other friends I'm rather ambivalent about, but Shawn, and the group of people I know through him, always make me smile. He called me after about two weeks and I called him back, and through a series of phone tags and brief calls we met up for dinner and made up almost instantaneously. Shawn showed me the collegiate party scene, how to cut loose and step out of my work-centric self and anjoy life a bit. Shawn also came to my rescue when I went on the worst date of my life and took me out the next night for what was one of the best nights of my life. If we'd gone to high school together, we would never have known each other: he's cool in every possible way, and I was and, in many ways still am, the quintessential band geek. He hangs out with the coolest people, goes to the most awesome clubs, and is one of the most popular people I've ever known. Shawn could walk into a room with any eclectic mix of people you could think of, say, or example, a neurosurgeon, a rock star, a bitter gothic poet and a Valley girl and have everyone talking to each other and laughing together in minutes. He makes the party...because he's sweet, funny, light-hearted and has a great sense of humor. He has a reputation for being a bit of a flake, but he's always there for his friends when we really need him. When my ex and I split I called Shawn crying, and he dragged me out of the apartment my ex and I shared for the following weekend to go to the X Games with him and a bunch of our other friends. Some of my most crazy experiences have involved Shawn, but also, some of the most honest and important.

Shawn is gay, and he and his boyfriend are very much in love. I am also crazy about his boyfriend--the three of us used to work together-- and we get along really, really well. I've known a lot of couples and a significant number of gay couples, but I can honestly say that I rarely have the kind of faith in a couple being really, really happy together and staying together if they want to, as I do in these guys. My mentor and her husband, who went through substance abuse treatment for him while she was pregnant and shortly after she gave birth to their son, and my little sister and her boyfriend, who have the best dynamic you could ever imagine between two people, are among the others. There's a stereotype in the gay community, and it's often true, that gay couples are more promiscuous than straight and that monogamy is a greater challenge for a gay couple. It's actually the case that monogamy is a challenge for eveyone, but gay people are more open about most things in general and monogamy just kind of falls into that category. These two have a great relationship, and I'm crazy about the two of them. So when Shawn asked if I would be the surrogate mother for he and Bryan, I didn't even think about it. I agreed instantly.

This is usually the type of conversation we'd have amidst a drunk "I-love-you-so-much" type of moment, and I think the fact that we were sober when we first spoke about it is what really made it one of the most important--and firm--decisions I've ever made. We were talking and laughing, we were at the X Games and on our way to a bar, but we were just goofing off and talking about having kids and Shawn asked, almost offhandedly, if I would be a surrogate mother for he and Bryan when they want to have kids. I replied, almost offhandedly, that I would, really without even thinking about it.

"Really?" He asked, looking at me. The look on his face suggested that he knew how quickly I responded and he was giving me an out if I wanted it.
"Really," I replied, looking back at him. I didn't think about it again, and while pondering the issue further, I found that it really was true. I would gladly be a surrogate mother for Shawn and Bryan. They both wanted children, they were in love, and they were two of the most incredible people I'd ever known. It was a significant moment that lost its sacred quality once we started joking about it, but we've spoken about it since and I've always been just as willing. We've discussed it seriously, and Shawn has expressed sincere gratitude, but truth be told, I honestly can't imagine saying no. I can't imagine NOT being their child's surrogate mother...partially because it would be a part of me as well, and partially because I would always be in that child's like, but mostly because if I had the opportunity to give my best friend the chance to be a father, that's the greatest gift I could ever give. Shawn has already given me what I treasure most: his friendship. I don't have very many friends, but all those that I value, except members of my family, have all come as a result of my friendship with Shawn, including Bryan and of course, Shawn himself.

Being a surrogate mom is really the least I can do to say "thanks".

Getting It Back

Any endurance runner worth their salt will tell you that stride is key. Not just the length and pace of your steps, but the way you're holding your body when you're moving. As a former short-endurance athlete whose lungs are desperately trying to rebuild tissue, I can tell you that missing my stride lately has been a nightmare. It has turned what was once a generally pleasant activity I could do virtually anytime, anywhere (hey, no matter what Nike is telling you, all you really need to run is a decent pair of kicks. The rest doesn't really matter.) into a rather unpleasant lesson in muscular rediscovery. My legs ache, my back cramps, and the big ol' belly I'm now hauling around after the past year of a relatively sedentary lifestyle is starting to really weigh on me. Indigestion used to be an occasional, short-lived moment of misery; it's now consuming half of my waking hours and I am finding that I can no longer eat "whatever I want". Oh, and in addition to all of this new stuff, the old stuff is back too: side and shoulder cramps, the latter being the worse of the two.

Honestly, lately, it's been rather a trying time to keep going with all of this stuff. I've been cigarette-free for nearly a month (three more days and it will be!) and I'm really learning what smoking for all of those years has done to me. I keep plodding along, hoping things will get better, going about my so-called training halfheartedly and telling myself it will get better. This morning, for a change, it did.

I was just doing my little neighborhood loop, taking my time, trying not to outpace myself after I blew the first third of the run by moving too quickly and then having to walk to regain my composure, as well as my will to keep breathing, when something changed. I don't know what it was, but I fell into step. My legs got lighter. Things became easier, my shoulder cramps began to loosen up and my upper body fell into perfect rhythm with my lower. I, the occasional atheist and generally religious nonconformist, was about to say twenty Hail Marys when I realized what it was. I'd gotten my stride back.

It wasn't something I ever noticed before, because back when I was running seven-minute miles I was a kid, I just did it. It wasn't anything to pay attention to, it was just what had to be done. As a gangly twelve-year old (don't worry, she's still kicking my butt) with long, coltish legs I developed a larger stride than most kids my age; my former coach used to say it made him uncomfortable to watch me run, but it got the job done. Now in my early twenties, my torso's grown to round out the lengthy runner's legs I was born with and I found that I needed to make more adjustments to my form and pacing to try to fit my newer, longer frame. And now that I've got it back, I just hope I can hang onto it. My inner twelve-year old is dancing with glee, while simultaneously saying "duh!" and wagging a finger at me. Of COURSE I couldn't run the way I did when I was twelve. That was over a decade ago and a lot had changed. This morning I figured out just how much, and man, did it feel good. Instead of dreading my next run I am looking forward to it. Stride helps you pace yourself, organize your timing and speed, refocus your attention and movements to the parts of you that really need it (for example, if you're cramping badly you can batter accommodate that when your form is working for you) when necessary; it straightens your posture, which helps you breathe better, and gives you more flexibility in timing your workout. It's the component that makes everything else fit together, and when you get it, there's a "whoa!" moment where you kind of ponder why you haven't been doing this all along. Maybe your form isn't perfect "runner's form" according to this training guru or that, but man, if you find something that works for you, hang onto it for dear life. I would've stayed out this morning and explored further, except that whole work thing was calling my name. I'll be out tonight working with it some more...I just hope that after getting it back, I don't lose it too quickly again.

Heartburn? Seriously? You WUSS!!!

I'm the first to admit I'm a total pansy when it comes to being in pain. Some people deal with it okay, some people get all macho and won't admit that they're hurt or injured if they're bleeding from the eyes, and some people cry when they get a papercut. I would be one of those in the third group. I don't deal well with pain and I'm not afraid to admit it. If you read Lance Armstrong's books he talks of ascending 14% grade slopes in the French Alps with freezing sleet coming down, feeling as if his calves are on fire from the steady pumping to get the bike up the damned hill. I'm not Lance, and since I'm not sponsored by US Postal, pushed along by throngs of fans from every nation, every culture on the planet, or spending 8-12 hours every day training, I tend to just pack up and go home when adversity hits. My sponsorship comes from myself, my only fans are my boyfriend, my friend and family, and my loving little kitty, and I spend maybe 8-12 hours a month training. As a recent bet with an Ironman-athlete-in-training-boyfriend demands, however, my training regimen is in for a long-overdue overhaul.

I am lazy, however, and so instead of sitting down and mapping out a schedule, I tend to train when the urge hits me. Usually, that's on the weekend, while my boyfriend is putting in his four hour-long bike rides and three hour-long runs and hour-and-a-half-long swims...I'll laze around for awhile and then get off my butt, haul out the cruiser, and go for a ride or toss on my sneakers and jog for a bit. This past weekend I decided I'd ride for an hour (while Gregory was out with the Boulder tri club for four). We were going to do a post-ride half hour run at the reservoir so it seemed like a good way to warm up...and I'd meet him out at the res afterwards. I was feeling good, so I threw on some shorts and a tee shirt and hit the road. It was a beautifully mild spring day, one of those days when you thank your lucky stars that you live in Boulder, Colorado, home to more sunny days than the two Sunshine States. It was, in other words, an absolutely perfect day to ride. Unless, of course, you factor in the climate in my stomach.

I'd gotten going and was keeping a pretty good 16-20mph pace, keeping the bike in her upper gears, working my quads, and was about a mile from my house when I felt a mild achy, burning sensation in my chest. I figured I'd ride it out and kept going. Another couple of miles later, however, I was having trouble maintaining my posture on the bike. My chest felt like there was a vat of battery acid erupting inside of it. For a few minutes I seriously debated whether or not I was a qualifying candidate for cardiac arrest (blood pressure: good, ex-smoker: bad, weight: pretty good, stress level: bad, especially right now, etc.) and then I realized I was just suffering severe heartburn. But man, it was the heartburn that they make those "purple pill" commercials about. I kept trying to ride, wanting to get in at least a solid hour, but alas, the pain won out in the end. I ended up stopping at a gas station for some Pepto-Bismol, which, unfortunately, didn't work as quickly as it's commercials would have you think, and a Gatorade which, once I swigged enough of it to get the chalky taste out of my mouth, posed a new problem: what the hell do I do with this Gatorade? I have your fairly standard-looking cruiser: fat tires, heavy frame, chain guard, fenders...and no cages for a water bottle. Fortunately, I also have a battery attached to it for a high-tech lamp rig I've got for night riding, and as it happened I'd left it on when I went for the ride. It's attached with a lengthy Velcro strap, and so I spent my ride home, curled over the handlebars in agony, with a Gatorade bottle/battery jerry-rigged to the bike's crossbar, sharing the metal pipe with the battery pack nestled close beside it.

To make matters worse, my situation hardly improved at home. I ended up e-mailing Gregory, knowing he'd pick it up on his cell, to let him know I wouldn't be at the res. I curled into a fetal position and waited for the burning to eat me alive. It really was that bad. Gregory was extremely sweet about it and commiserated kindly, but I kicked myself for the rest of the day.

Now as I look outside at the heavy, grey clouds dropping rain from fine mists to bursts of hail all over Boulder, my spirits are as damp as the streets. Mt stomach, however, is just dandy, and my new kicks are beckoning from the door. It sucks to do anything in the rain, but I figure this'll make up for wussing out over the weekend.

THUD!---OW!!!

Sometimes you just sit wondering what to write because the title says it all. THUD!---OW!!! accurately describes so many things, in fact, that it's getting tough to enumerate. Consider:

-Getting bike gear off at work when the wire for your headphones gets caught around your bike bell and jerks your face into your handlebars...by your ears. To add insult to already-smarting injury, the CD skips too and several coworkers are passing by trying to preserve some facade of your dignity by pretending they didn't see it. Hey guys, it's okay, I know you all saw the handlebar faceplant-by-way-of-headphone-wire. Thanks for trying to be cool about it.

-While juggling backpack, commuter jacket, headphones, and helmet up three flights of stairs, dropping helmet on third-to-last stair to watch it bounce to bottom of second flight of stairs. Toss other stuff into pile on floor of third-floor landing and pound down stairs, retrieve helmet, then pound back up stairs to find your director smirking at you as you huff, puff and wheeze your way back up. (This is only partially true, at least the sarcasm part is; my director has been a huge supporter in my quest to quit and I really appreciate it.)

-Passing by friendly neighbor who ALSO bikes everywhere...going up the stairs to your floor, carrying your bike. Problem: He's also carrying his. Next Problem: You have headphones on. Yet Another Problem: He says something and extends hand in friendly gesture, to which you can only give big openmouthed grin and slight wave as you truck your bike carefully past him--and his--to your mutual floor. Hopefully he saw the headphones and put two and two together; otherwise from now one you're the friendly neighborhood Gaping Mute.

-Using an extended hand jamming into a pedestrian-signal-button as a last-ditch stop effort. This came as a result of multitasking: I was trying to pedal AND look where I was going. Okay, not just multitasking, pre-coffee multitasking on a day I woke up late and was racing out the door (sans coffee) to get to work. Somehow I underestimated the rate at which I was traveling forward and thought that my chicken-bone hand and attached chicken-bone wrist would be enough to stop me once I got to the signal button. I extended my hand, aligned it with the button, and realized a moment too late that I was going about seventeen miles per hour, which is about sixteen and a half miles per hour too fast to be traveling when attempting such a stunt. I DID stop, thank God; otherwise my non-arrival at work would've been announced that morning in wailing sirens as the EMTs from Pridemark Paramedic came to scrape my innards off of the highway. The innards that hadn't been totally vaporized by whatever vehicle flattened me in its seventy-mile-per-hour race through the light, that is. I stopped, and the jolt of pain that went up my hyperextended elbow and through to my shoulder sang like a high note shattering crystal...and I bellowed like a twenty-three year old crybaby. (The wrist, elbow, shoulder and other auxiliary joints recovered quickly, thank goodness.)

There's an authenticity to athletic klutziness that can't be designed elsewhere. Usually if you're a klutz or do something ostentatiously stupid people kind of cringe inwardly and feel bad for you. Most of the time, this reaction occurs as a result of empathy, that is, the ability to relate to another human being's plight. When you're doing something athletic, however, and you're not one of the kings or queens of slapstick comedy like Adam Sandler or the Three Stoges (this distinction is important, because they can get away with it), people just feel this rather humorous disgust. Instead of, "Oh, that poor girl," it's "Aw, that poor bastard." It's not empathy, it's more like sympathy, but mixed in with something darker, more malevolent, more woeful. Something that tells you your audience would never be so stupid as to attempt what you just did, but if they were, they'd have done it right.

Thoughts that comfort me in these dark, desolate times of desperation and plots of demise: warm summer days (after the race, of course), fuzzy kittens, sunshine streaming through the window on a Sunday afternoon...yeah, right, whatever. Truth be told, summer days in Colorado are notoriously hot, a sneaky little fact about the place they don't tell you in guides provided by the state tourism board (yes, an extra mile closer to the sun will bring you champagne powder in the winter...and desert-dry heat in the summer that will fry your skin like you wouldn't believe). There's one fuzzy animal who is ALWAYS a comfort, no matter what the ailment, though she's four years old so not a kitten and, well, yes, soft and fuzzy and super-cute, which is why I put up with the allergies. My apartment faces west so there would be lovely afternoon sunshine...if the apartment building across the "lawn" weren't across such a narrow strip of lawn I'm lucky if I ever see sunshine from inside here. But there's one thing I know for sure that always makes me laugh. There's even a true story that represents it, and it charms my inner (bruised, beaten, klutzed-out) athlete out of hiding time and time again): there is always a bigger idiot/nutjob/lunatic than you. There will always be someone more competitive, more obnoxiously devoted, more psychotic, more involved, or just more short of luck. In my case, the story involves an anonymous friend. My friend is everything more athletic than me: more devoted, more involved, more dedicated, more in tune with his training schedule (mine is like, hey, maybe i'll run today; his is: i will run for forty-five minutes today and do an hour and a half swim) and therefore, in better shape. I have little going for me here, except for one thing: his balance sucks. He made the mistake of sharing this with me, and it's my last shred of totally pathetic comfort when I make a total imbecile of myself otherwise. He rides, as do most people I know for whom cycling is somewhere between a serious hobby and an Armstrong-esque addiction, an excellent roadbike, lightweight, skinny-tired, with all the standard features: arrow bar, tachometer, and, of course, clip pedals. You know, the ones that look like they're broken if you're used to looking at "regular" pedals, you have to wear cycling shoes to clip into them and once you do you're "clipped in", or better known as "the reason that guys who looks like the Village Idiot is out teetering back and forth on his bike in front of traffic waiting for the light to turn": he's clipped in, and he doesn't want to unclip. I still don't understand their purpose. This is why I ride a commuter bike or, as this particular anonymous friend refers to it as, a "tank". Unfortunately, he's probably calling it that for its weight rather than firepower...anyway, my friend's what I call a "real cyclist", you know, head-to-toe Pearl Izumi chamois and jersey, power gels and bars and God knows what else tucked into the pockets in the back of the jersey, Shimano bike shoes, helmet that streamlines the back of his head into his total cycling form so he's more aerodynamic, the whole nine. Anyway, as I said, my buddy's balance isn't anything to brag about, and he once said that, a couple of times each year he'll be coming to a stop and preparing to unclip, and just kind of blank on putting his weight to the correct side. Now, when cyclists unclip at a stop, they'll only do one side and put their weight down on that foot while stopped. If they shift their weight to the wrong side, they...fall over. Or so I'm told. My friend swears it's true, and I think I'm going to have to start spying on him, because this, to me, is what is intrinsically wrong with (and why I'll never get them myself) clips. I've been wanting to see this for ages: some all-out cyclist looking smooth as butt'a coming to a stop...and then literally falling over to one side. Once you're at that point, you're stuck just falling, you can't possibly unclip fast enough. It's been something I've longed to witness for a very, very long time, in part because I KNOW it happens, and this is the first I've heard anyone actually admit to it, and in part because whenever those sleek road riders pass me on their sleek Giants and Schwinns in their sleek chamois and aerodynamic headgear I feel slightly inferior on my "tank", dressed in whatever work clothes I'm wearing and my commuter jacket, hauling a big blue backpack or a black messenger bag on my back.

But I will never fall over at a stop on the tank, at least not for lack of clippage. And someday, they probably will.

Why Using A Cruiser To Try To Break A Record Is NOT A Good Idea

One of the best things about living in Boulder is the fact that, almost year-round, cycling is an available mode of travel. Whether it's the dead of winter or smack in the middle of the blistering high-altitude summers, the weather is rarely nasty for any longer than a couple of days straight and, if you're like me and your bike isn't just your preferred mode of travel (because it's also your only one), fortunately Boulder also sustains a healthy convenience-store climate for those days when conditions are too incelement even for a quick trip to the grocery. Most of the time, however, "temperate" describes Boulder beautifully, with more than 300 days of sunshine a year (hey, I learned something in my college orientation) and temperatures generally ranging between 45 and 75 degrees. As it's also a relatively small town, biking anywhere usually means a pretty quick trip and, at the end of any given workday, a much easier one than that offered by a motorized vehicle and a deluge of Denver-area and Longmont residents making a mass exodus. (Note to said residents: that's me flying by you on my beautiful turquoise cruiser, laughing hysterically at your plight. Sorry, cycling has to come with some perks, and most of them make themselves known at rush hour.) There's a going joke that you can get anywhere in Boulder in four minutes.

I made mention of this joke to my boyfriend about a month ago while discussing the pros and cons of riding everywhere, and he looked at me as if my nose had suddenly fallen off. While checking to make sure it was still firmly attached to my face, I queried the look. As it turns out, Gregory didn't believe you could get anywhere in Boulder in four minutes, maybe downtown but not to outer areas. He stated that he'd never make it from his house, at the far south edge of town, to mine, at the northernish part of town, in less than fifteen. I was, at the time, in the middle of baking bread for him and figured what better way to test this out (read: prove him wrong) that to sidle on over to Maison de Gregory on my cruiser with my backpack full of bread strapped to my back. I arrived panting but only thirteen minutes later, extending foil-wrapped baguette in friendship and a thumbed nose in competitive inquiry.

Now it's become kind of a thing for me to try to beat out thirteen minutes. I did that ride while I was still a (stupid) smoker and now I figure, hey, it's been almost two weeks, my lungs should be doing better by now, and the other night I took almost the exact same route to Gregory's house to try to beat my thirteen minute ride. I had my backpack, my lamp, my gorgeous cruiser...and my totally shot, desperately-trying-to-recover lungs. What they DON'T tell you about quitting smoking is all of the not-so-fun stuff that happens mostly as a result of your body recovering-rapidly-from the death, destruction, mayhem, chaos and general discomfort YOU'VE been dumping into it for however long you've been a smoker. For me, it was seven years, and my lungs are getting revenge now. Of the fun stuff nobody tells you you get to deal with as a result of quitting, a few of the problems I'VE experienced are:

1) Colds: most ex-smokers catch at least one and it lasts at least a week. I've caught two and, thanks to a background in the natural foods industry and sympathetic colleagues, have been able to brain them with herbs and homeopathics before they got too bad. This is basically your body's way of kicking your ass for doing something so stupid for any length of time, and it happens because, well, whe you're a smoker, you pretty much have constant respiratory issues, whether you realize them or not, so the cold(s) you get when you quit are really just your body's way of recovering from the self-inflicted illness (i.e. painting your lungs with tar) you've had for however long you smoked.

2) Trouble breathing: that's right, Hercules, you may be trying to feel like a million bucks but you're body's not quite ready to let you. Asthma checks in with you once you've quit, usually temporarily but sometimes forever. My grandmother has the worst hacking cough you've ever heard; it is truly alarming if you don't know to expect it and I've had many well-intentioned, but ill-informed, friends bolt for CPR mode once they hear my grandma for the first time. Usually we have to calm them while getting Gram a glass of water, so we usually try to forewarn them now. She never got it until after she quit smoking. For most of us, however, we merely experience temporary asthma symptoms. I was living with allergy-triggered asthma already before I quit, and while smoking just made it worse, quitting has had its own vengeance. As my lungs get more and more used to the idea of breathing in air that's NOT tainted by tar they're struggling valiantly to spew up the tar that's already in there, resulting in coughing fits for me.

There are other strange symptoms aplenty, including lowered stress thresholds, cravings ("nic fits"), restlessness sometimes to the point of sleeplessness, heightened sensitivity to other substances like caffeine and alcohol, but those are all the "duh" ones. You don't expect a cold or an asthma attack, and you don't expect to pull into the parking lot of your boyfriend's condo complex to find you got there in eighteen and a half minutes and you're coughing and wheezing for want of more pure, clean air than you can possibly suck into your poor, diseased lungs especially at an altitude of roughly 5400 feet, where the amount of pure, clean air, or any air for that matter, is severely lacking. I had to call my boyfriend to have him cart my bike up the stairs to his place, and when he got down to find me, sprawled out on the floor of his praking garage, heaving, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully and mused over the possibility that trying to break thirteen minutes on a commuter bike wasn't the best idea. I harrumphed emphatically and glared, still wheezing, as he tucked my bike into his storage space, and shook my head for extra emphasis as he started in on the idea of trying it out on a road bike, y'know, something that weighed maybe a third of mine, when suddenly it dawned on me that if I kept riding my cruiser and didn't opt for a road bike anytime soon, by the time I did get a road bike I'd be able to fly on it, between the increased longevity of my ex-smokerhood and my already-brilliant ability to cruise town on a commuter that weighed in around thirty pounds. I have to say, though, that it's not fair for me to claim this idea; Gregory's planted it long enough ago, but suddenly it all made sense, and I could picture myself in a black chamois and purple-and-white stylish Pearl Izumi jersey like my mom's, clipped into a practically-weightless road bike, cruising along with Gregory and his fellow triathletes, a big, bug-smattered smile wrapped around my face. I grinned at the thought, then coughed mightily, spat, and wearily accepted the glass of water Gregory extended towards me. I wasn't there yet, but I would be someday.

An Ass-Kicking From My Inner Twelve-Year Old

It's funny how, when you spend the first half of your life an athlete, the second half can come skidding quickly to a halt once you try to regain that early experience. Gratefully, I am sitting here now, still in my warm-ups from my earlier "jog", a well-used single-word expression for an activity at which I formerly excelled. That activity now needs a few more words to describe it accurately, and while it's a much more painful experience than before, it's become a much more colorful one as well. Phrases such as "tar-infested tissue", "spasmodic wheezing" and "iron lung" never crept into my head as easily when I was a twelve-year old cross-country athlete with a personal best 6:54 mile, as they do now, at the merciless old age of twenty-three.

When I was a kid, running was just a part of my life. My mother and then-stepfather, both triathletes, fostered a greater sense of well-being in what I have come to rediscover as my greater pain and suffering. We ran in all sorts of events when I was growing up in Florida; my wardobe littered with shirts advertising "The Times Turkey Trot" or "The Jingle Bell Run", I ran as part of my family duty, as an extension of my cross-country training, as something to do. To this day my mother is an avid cyclist and swimmer; a hip replacement a year ago took her off of the running/triathlete circuit for good but she has, at nearly fifty-one years old, a solid-rippling-muscle-below-perfectly-tanned-skin athlete's physique. She smokes cigarettes, but somehow she can do both. I tried the same only to find miserable failure. At twenty-three years old I was facing a relatively sedentary life bookended by gradual, though slightly exponential, weight gain and a pack-a-day habit myself.

Enter Gregory, a recent Boulderite with a tech company, a south-side condo and an affinity for endurance events. We met, I became mesmerized over a couple of dinners and a bottle of Burgundy procured from Paris, and realized that my smoker-friendly, body-abusive lifestyle wasn't going to fit well into my non-smoking triathlete boyfriend's very well. Having enjoyed a series of relationships in which I became what I now ruefully acknowledge as the "almost perfect girlfriend", the "almost" part describing how, in fitting into their lives I kind of lost myself in the process, I didn't want to do that with this one. However, I was beginning to realize, after being on the receiving end of a dozen or so piercing glares shot my way upon lighting up a cigarette, that I didn't necesarily need to "fit it" to kick the habit; actually, it just gave me a better reason than any I'd had previously. Dating a nonsmoker was getting to be a nuisance to my smoking self. Having to constantly brush my teeth, carry mints and gum, suck on Listerine strips and know that I still reeked and my breath was still terrible every time I kissed him was starting to drain me of all of my happy-smoker energy. Not to mention that, in spending an extraordinary percentage of my time with my gorgeous boyfriend, my inner twelve-year old was beginning to reappear, and boy, was she pissed. She took one long, carefully-measured stare at my protruding belly and fat thighs and sighed deeply. Offering up a look of bewilderment, she faced me and spat quickly, "What the hell did you do to me? You look like shit!"

I was about to chastise her language and offer up a plethora of half-baked excuses when I took a good look at her and realized that, language aside, she had a point. My inner twelve-year old had long, lean, tanned legs with rock-solid calves and thighs madfe of solid muscle. She had a tight, almost nonexistent belly and no "I look ridiculous in a sports bra" complex. Looking into my former self, the athlete formerly known as me suddenly realized why Gregory did hours on his trainer in his apartment when he couldn't ride outside because of heavy winds, why my mother, despite her smoking, busted out a sixty-mile ride on the weekends out to Carter Lake or Horsetooth Reservoir or some other beautiful area of Northern Colorado, why every once in awhile even over the last few years I'd get the bug in me and hit a trail for a few-mile hike, or go for a bike ride out ot the nearby reservoir, or something of the like. You don't need to be an Olympic athlete or even in training for your first Ironman to want to feel good. Sometimes you just need to shove the chair away from the computer, kiss your boyfriend on the forehead and get your ass out the door. My inner twelve-year old is now happy with me.