Wrong side of the bed...

I'm grouchy today. Clearly the wind, the line in the bathroom, the morning traffic, and the cold weather are only here to inconvenience ME. Everybody, just leave me alone! I want to go back to bed!

Sharing the love OR Have you accepted Richard Simmons as your personal savior?

I always imagined myself with someone active. Someone who could come with me on my long workouts, or at least carpool with me to the gym. I found a girl who I love, who's a wonderful person, who's caring and supportive, and who's a couch potato and a smoker. The expression "couch potato" doesn't exist in Spanish, so when I found her still in bed and wrapped up in a blanket at 4 in the afternoon one day and said, "you look like a potato!", it had some novelty. And the name stuck. As in every couple we have our nicknames that make other people gag. For me and Silvia it's Potato ("patata") and Co-Potato ("compatata"). A verb has even been born of it: "patatar", "to potato" and it's my other half's favorite thing to do. In fact, it's pretty much all she does. In fact, sometimes she gets depressed and it's hard to get her to STOP being a potato, even to just get up and go to the couch. And she's ALWAYS yo-yoing. When I first met her she was only eating 800 calories a day, all in meat (some of it raw - also, who the hell would have thought you'd find me with a carnivore!). Then, one night we got drunk and she ate an ENTIRE baguette's worth of bacon sandwich. When she had finished she went to a gas station and bought another sandwich of the revolting variety that you can find next to the Red Bull in any gas station or 7-11 in the US. She weighs herself every morning and will say "I lost 3 kilos yesterday" or "I got 2 kilos fatter". I tell her it's impossible to gain or lose that much fat mass in a day and that it's probably water, but she pays me no never mind.

She loves to tell me about what a good athlete she is. "I did Camino de Santiago," she says (a many day hike starting as far away as Switzerland and ending up in the north-west tip of Spain). "That was 10 years ago," I say, "it doesn't count anymore". "I used to climb up Tibidabo on my mountain bike and bike 40k to Sitges," she says. "But you couldn't do it now," I say. One day I was talking about a run I'd done and she said, "That's not that far." "You couldn't even run a kilometer," I said. Potato: "Sure I could." Me: "Wanna bet?" So we made plans to go to a track on Sunday. The terms: she must run one full kilometer without walking. Loser buys the other one dinner. We went to the track and had to ask around to find out exactly how much we had to run to hit a kilometer, 2 laps around the outter-most ring of the track. She started out fast and by the end we were nearly crawling, but not walking. She was breathing so hard that I seriously wondered if continuing to push her like this was a good idea and if I would need to do CPR. But low and behold, 6 minutes and 10 seconds later she finished. You should have seen how high she held her head that day. She was sick to her stomach and coughing all day long from the effort, but she was proud of herself. I'd never seen her proud of herself before.

I see in her exactly what I was like before I discovered triathlon. She hates her body and punishes herself with food. Either she totally deprives herself, or she binges, and to punish the binging she binges even more. She's depressed and doesn't really have any reason not to be. Why bother to find a reason to get out of bed every morning if bed is so comfy? But I KNOW a more active lifestyle would do her good. I KNOW she'd feel better in her own skin and wouldn't say "yeah right" when I tell her she's beautiful. I KNOW she would have more energy and WANT to eat better rather than depriving herself and then eating a whole pizza (or two) by herself. In the beginning I tried. I said, "You know, you would feel a lot better if you got a little exercise". "I don't have time". "Sure you do, you sit alone for 3 hours every evening staring at the wall and drinking coctails waiting for me to get home". "Ay, Claire," she said, "I'm tired when I get home from work,". I tried starting small, "Why don't we just go for a 20 minute walk 3 times a week?" "Ay, Claire!" she said, like I'd asked her to walk 6 hours in the freezing rain. "You could burn more calories in a day and eat more," I tried. "I don't like exercise, I'd rather starve myself," she said. "But then your metabolism...". "Ay, Claire, I don't want to!" Now she just says, "Ay, Claire" every time I even start.

I have a lot of respect for Richard Simmons. Given, the man's a walking joke, but you gotta give him credit where credit is due. He gets the lost causes, the people who can't even get out of bed or roll over because they would crush their lungs, and he gets them moving. Forget a sprint distance triathlon, many of these people literally risk a heart attack walking to the mailbox. He gets the biggest, fattest people who have lost ALL hope, and he manages to get them up, moving, slimming down, and feeling good about themselves. In my last job I gave introductory workouts to new gym members and encountered a lot of these women. I tried like hell to make exercise un-threatening so they would keep going. It's NOT easy to do and I lost most of them. Richard Simmons is a good man in my book.

So it all gets me thinking, this must be what door-to-door bible thumpers must feel like. "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?" Slam! It's the same as, "Why don't we go for a wa..." "Ay, Claire!" Religion is something that either you have it or you don't. Same goes for a fit lifestyle, and all the fitness missionaries are convinced that they can save others' quality of life like they've saved their own. People "find fitness" like they "find Jesus". There's nothing more irritating than a pair of clean-cut boys in ties and starched collars trying to save your soul. Alright, they love Jesus, I get it. I'm very happy for their souls and that they've found a reason to enjoy life, we all know how difficult that is and anything that gets you through the day is great. Really. Just keep your personal savior away from my soul. I'm a lesbian, for heaven's sake! I must sound eerily like those guys when I get started. "Have you accepted Richard Simmons as your personal savior?" And Silvia's probably not the only one who wants to scream at me, "Alright, you love your heartrate monitor, I get it. I'm very glad that you've found a way to deal with your own demons, but keep them far from my beer and Chinese take-out! I'm a smoker for heaven's sake!" How could someone get so angry when you're just trying to save their soul?

Having my cake or eating it too OR Mark Allen haunts my nightmares

When I was little I was convinced I could become an olympic figure skater only by dreaming. One day I asked one of my coaches why she didn't go to the olympics. Rather than some remark about, "do you know how f&%$ing HARD that is?!" which is what I would probably tell one of my kids if they asked me a similar question, my coach responded with this: "Because when I got older I had to choose between skating and my friends, and I chose my friends." At the time it was unfathomable, how could someone not be able to have both things at once? You don't spend ALL your time on the ice. Since then I've had to make sacrifices (mostly drinking and partying) for things I wanted more (mostly to feel good about myself) that alienated me a bit from my friends, but I knew they were still down for a coffee if I ever bothered to pick up the phone. So whenever that conversation came back to me (and it did from time to time), and I considered my first introduction to the concept of sacrifice, I still didn't understand how you couldn't have your cake and eat it too. I mean, get a life!

But then the other night I was laying awake (as I do) and the conversation came back to me again, and I GOT it. You see, I'm an alcoholic. Not one of those "have one drink and find me lying in the gutter 3 weeks later in a puddle of my own piss and vomit" alcoholics, but up there with a frat boy. I haven't had a drink since Christmas break, but in 2 weeks Lorraine is coming to visit and I decided that, for old time's sake (and because we would be running and biking so much that there was no way to go TOO overboard), I would put my abstinance on hold. But then James is coming right on her heels, and then my brother after that. Then a week later I have a half ironman in Valencia and the week after that I'm being kidnapped by my family to go to Ireland for a long weekend. With so many things disrupting my control over my surroundings, how am I going to find the time and discipline to train properly leading up to Valencia?

On the same day as the implications of this whole timeline solidified in my head I got a call from Shane. Shane and Kat (a couple) are my 2 best friends in California. We are like the 3 musketeers, and of course there's this screwed-up love triangle that wouldn't interest you. The important thing is that Shane said that they want to come out to visit for 3 whole weeks this summer!!! Only they want to come out the 3 weeks before my A race. With them there, even if I don't drink (which is unlikely), how am I ever going to find the time and control to peak correctly for the biggest race of the season? The idea of sacrificing a whole other season after last year's disaster makes me want to scream. But I can't tell my friends that I don't want to see them. That's not true.

So when I finally fell asleep I had this nightmare. I was doing a big race that I think was supposed to be here in Spain, but it looked a lot like the Big Kahuna. I got out of the swim and felt really tired and just sat down in the transition area to get my strength back. Then I was wandering off with the haunting feeling that I was forgetting something. Then Mark Allen said to me, "You forgot about the bike! You have to do to bike leg!" Mark Allen is in all my triathlon nightmares because I made a total ass of myself in front of him once. Okay, more than once. If enough people ask me about it I'll relive the unpleasant experience again to blog about it for all your benefit. Anyway, so Mark Allen made me get on my bike and I felt like I was made of lead. Everything was heavy and I couldn't seem to get moving. I kept finding myself walking my bike and thinking, "what the hell am I doing?!" and trying to get back on and get moving again. But I never got back to the transition area. I I just kept walking away from my bike for some reason and Mark Allen was asking me, "What the hell are you doing? Don't you want this?" I did! But it was getting harder and harder to stay on my bike. I would be wandering around with this horrible feeling that I'd lost something and remember that I was supposed to be biking and start running around crazily looking for my bike. Only when I found it, it was really, really hard to move at all, like I was in a really high gear going up hill. Eventually when I went back to look for my bike again I couldn't find it. Then Mark Allen drove away to the transition area to help the people who weren't losers and didn't forget how to finish a race.

If my friends come, I can't concentrate on this race. But California is damn far away and it's not cheap to get from there to here. It's not like people can just stop by for a weekend. When I was 9 I asked that skating coach if she ever regretted her decision. Her answer was a whimsical "sometimes". So what should I do? What does my dream tell me I want to do? WWMAD? What would Mark Allen do? Actually, he would probably run off to the desert to not see anyone for 6 weeks, like Jesus...

My broken heart

A few months ago I bought into the whole training with a heartrate monitor thing. Before that I was of the school that I could do everything just as well if not better based on perceived exertion. Why? Because I'm cheap. So until I plopped down 20 euros for the cheapest HR monitor they sold at Decathlon all I knew about my heartrate was that when they made me do the mandatory medical review at my gym the doctor looked concearned and asked if I felt okay when taking my resting heart rate. When she made me stop the graded exercise test, I thought that the effort was extremely easy, but she said that we didn't have to go any harder. In my results my resting heartrate was (are you ready): one HUNDRED beats per minute. My guess is that she only let me go up to about 170 bpm on the graded exercise test since that would be roughly my anaerobic threshhold based on statistics.

So now flash forward to my first experience with the heartrate monitor: I found it extremely easy to get into the high 180s and stay there. One day I decided to perform an informal max heartrate test by warming up and then employing the complex testing method called "running really fast". I saw the number climb to 214 before I thought I was risking puking on the floor again and backed off. This was in my phase this winter where I was drinking a lot, so I might have been slightly hung over anyway. So, by my calculations (which cannot be trusted) my max heartrate is greater than or equal to 214 bpm, making me six years old or younger in that "220 minus your age" addage. To find how I make people in their 50s think they're having a heart attack look back to my blog called "Who knows how I haven't killed myself yet".

Around the time I finally got sold on base training at a REALLY low heartrate, though, my numbers started wigging out. I would be at about 165 and suddenly drop down to 80, then 65, then 42. Either my heartrate monitor was busted, or I'd finally broken through to the next level of training where I could bike at 40 kmph at 25% of my max heartrate (Kona tape, here I come). This was happening with not only the cheapo monitor, but also my Polar that works with the bike computer I got for Christmas, now THOSE are not cheap. On the road I would be pedaling along at about 150 bpm and suddenly I would shoot up to 225 and the computer would start beeping. Then it would stop beeping and stop measuring speed or distance or time. I guess this was because the gadget assumed I had keeled over and died and it was only a matter of time before we crashed, so it was time to put its head between its legs and kiss its ass goodbye. All these things are really frustrating when you're trying to get to know your zones and keep it long and slow.

Then a thought occurred to me: "Maybe I have a heart condition. Maybe I really am going to die". When I had a bug before the marathon I thought, "This is it. This is what heart disease feels like and I'll probably die in the marathon." But, brave as I am I decided to do it anyway, even though I knew it would be quite embarrassing to keel over and die of exertion way back in the nether regions of the pack where they don't even have pace balloons. I'm sure you're on the edge of your seat, so to calm you down, yes, I DID survive the marathon. Since then I've been looking at heartrate monitors again. A regular old heartrate monitor and watch from Polar is over 100 euros (I can't even imagine what that would be in dollars), and even a regular old Polar watch that shows no more than time, date, and heartrate is fifty bucks (more in US). If I'm going to have to pay the Lanzarote entrance fee in a couple of months I can't be dropping 50 bucks on a heartrate monitor. So yesterday I tried something new. After my swim I put on the POLAR band and the CRAP-O watch, and to my amazement CRAPO was showing a number! A steady 147 that didn't rise or fall a bit. Usually my numbers are more inconsistant than the stock market, but here I was at a solid 147. One problem: I was just tying my shoes. At this rate, tying my shoes and chewing gum would probably put me in zone 2. I fiddled with the watch some more (by pressing all the buttons) and got the number to change. All the way down to gym #2 (yes, I need two gyms) I was at a constant two HUNDRED and thirty-three beats per minute. That's right folks: TWO hundred and thirty-three beats per minute walking down hill. So, one of three things is happening:
A) I have an equipment malfunction and have to stop sweating or whatever's messing up either the band or the receiver.
B) I have a heart malfunction and my heart beats irregularly tripping out the heartrate monitor and making it measure way too high or way too low.
C) I'm dying or dead and I've broken my heart.

Better version of me

Yesterday I gave my podcasts a rest (okay, I forgot to update) and listened to my music again. I haven't listened to music in about a month because I've had the same songs for over a year playing over and over in my ear. It's gotten to the point where I can't even HEAR them anymore, like the refrigerator hum in the background that you never even realized was there until it turned back on after a power outage. Ok, bad analogy, but you get what I mean I hope. Anyway, one thing you should know about me is that I absolutely, positively LOVE Fiona Apple. It got to be nearly a religion in high school and college... hence the tattoo, but I digress. Even though I've gotten a life, she's still my favorite artist, and yesterday I could finally hear her songs again and was bowled over yet again by her lyrics. So if you don't listen to Fiona Apple, or were turned of by the hype in the mid-'90s, then here's why you need to think again:

"Better Version Of Me"
from "Extraordinary Machine"

The nickel dropped
When I was on
My way beyond
The Rubicon*
What did I do

And of the games that I can handle
None are ones worth the candle
What can I do

I'm a frightened, fickle person
Fighting, cryin', kickin', cursin'
What should I do

Oooh, after all the folderol,
And hauling over coals stops
What will I do

Can't take a good day without a bad one
Don't feel just to smile until I've had one
Where did I learn

I make a fuss about a little thing
The rhyme is losing to the riddling
Where's the turn

I don't want a home, I'd ruin that
Home is where my habits have a habitat
Why give it a turn

Oh, after all the folderol
And hauling over coals stops
What did I learn

I am likely to miss the main event
If I stop to cry or complain again
So I will keep a deliberate pace
Let the damned breeze dry my face

Oh, mister, wait until you see
What I'm gonna be

I've got a plan, a demand and it just began
And if you're right, you'll agree

Here's coming a better version of me
Here it comes a better version of me
Here it comes a better version of me

*"crossing the Rubicon" means the point of no return in a decision.

This poem is actually a title in and of itself. It is the title of her second album (2000?), and the in the Guiness Book of World Records for the longst album title.

When the pawn hits the conflict he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring
There's no body to batter when your mind is your might
So when you go solo you hold your own hand
And remember that depth is the greatest of heights
And if you know where you stand then you know where to land
And if you fall it won't matter cuz you'll know that you're right.

"Extraordinary Machine"
from album "Extraordinary Machine"

I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes
-And-
I certainly haven't been spreading myself around
I still only travel by foot and by foot, it's a slow climb,
But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so
I can't stop changing all the time

I notice that my opponent is always on the go
-And-
Won't go slow, so's not to focus, and I notice
He'll hitch a ride with any guide, as long as
They go fast from whence he came
- But he's no good at being uncomfortable, so
He can't stop staying exactly the same

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine

I seem to you to seek a new disaster every day
You deem me due to clean my view and be at piece and lay
I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way, and say,
I've been getting along for long before you came into the play

I am the baby of the family, it happens, so
- Everybody cares and wears the sheeps' clothes
While they chaperone
Curious, you looking down your nose at me, while you appease
- Courteous, to try and help - but let me set your
Mind at ease

(Chorus)

-Do I so worry you, you need to hurry to my side?
-It's very kind
But it's to no avail; I don't want the bail
I promise you, everything will be just fine

If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me, or treat me mean
I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine

I sang Extraordinary Machine over and over to myself in my first marathon and it got me through. It holds a special place in my heart. If you don't like it the first time you listen, listen again... sometimes you won't like it till the 10th time, but you will.

There's no such thing as "calories that don't count"

I've been meaning to be more prudent about my food choices lately, but I just haven't had the time or the resources. I really miss the states where there's always (relatively) fresh and unprocessed foods available. Here I feel like bocadillos (lunchmeat, or in my case cheese or egg on a baguette) are going to come out my ears, but they're just about the only thing I can find to eat. And given the choice, I really WOULD eat healthy, only there are only so many variations on stir fry and I'm sick of them all. But I've been thinking about how I really need to suck it up and go on a diet. Diets are dangerous for me, so I avoid the word. From here on out we'll say "eat better" and everyone will understand that it's a code word for... *sssssh* diet. So today, fully mindful of my resolution and after a stack up to *here* of french toast for breakfast (that left me feeling woozy an hour later from the sugar crash), and pizza for lunch I went to the supermarket. I got all kinds of healthy things: spinich, high fiber cereal, nuts, legumes, soy yogurt... all the usual things on my list. Only there were these giant chocolate animals sitting around, see? Because it's almost Easter, you know? And they looked so good that I couldn't get chocolate off my mind. I don't even like chocolate. But when I was walking to the checkout line a whole BAG of little chocolate eggs FLEW into my basket. No idea how they got there, nor do I know how they wound up in my mouth before I'd even left the supermarket, but there they were. Then we rented a movie (the last available copy of Pan's Labyrinth, YES!) and I had POPCORN for dinner. Really, in general I do eat healthy, and today was a bad example, but the point is that all this stuff finds its way into my diet way too often. See? You just caught me saying I eat healthy. My problem is that I don't really consider this stuff part of my diet because it just kind of sneaks up on me, and after I've eatten the junk food and destroyed the evidence, I don't let myself think about it again. If I pay too much attention to the food I eat, counting calories, etc. then I get obsessive and it's a bad scene. Once I didn't eat for 2 days and wound up eating a whole box of Frosted Flakes in one sitting. But if I don't pay attention and don't obsess about food I might find myself eatting too big a lunch on Monday, a candy bar on Tuesday, fries on Wednesday, pizza on Thursday, restaurant food on Friday, and whatever I feel like on Saturday. It doesn't count if you weren't planning to eat it beforehand though, right? Well, that's what I always thought, but maybe that's why those six pack abs STILL haven't appeared after all these years...

I'm an ironman, who the hell are you?

Last night I ditched the soggy homos to go to swim practice with my gym's triathlon team for the first time. I can't usually make it to the practices, but I needed to talk to the team's manager about getting me federated (is that a word in English?), so I skipped my usual Friday night practice with the water fairies to splash around with the triathletes for a while. I'd never seen so many perfect bodies gathered together in one place. They were all lean muscle and definition in their speedos. Any one of them could have been used as an example in a human anatomy class to teach the skeletal muscles. Their muscles were so cut with none of that loose skin look that runners get, not too much of that swimmer's thickness, and no legs being forced apart by overdevelped quad muscles. There's something intimidating when you join a new group and the only thing they talk to you about after asking your name is explaining the workout. And then they put on their caps: nearly all of them from races. When one guy put on his cap with IRONMAN stamped on the side and it slapped into place across his forehead it was like a slap in the face to me. I'm used to not being the fastest one in the group, but at least I'm always the one who spends the most time working out. There's nothing I hate more than feeling weak, or letting people think I'm weak.

I was the slowest one, but I was able to keep up with the workout. I was feeling tired, though. My lungs were sore from sucking too much cold air after taking a wrong turn on the bike this morning and taking the steep way up a hill. I wanted to make it an excuse, but then I realized that these guys probably wouldn't have been impressed with my ride since it's one of the standard routes around here. I wanted to say my arms were tired from braking the whole way down the hill, but I realized that this would probably show that I was weak at descending ("only pussies and novices are weak descenders," the voice in my head said). I wanted to say that my back and shoulders were tired because this was my third day swimming in a row, but that wouldn't have cut the mustard either. Even though I really didn't feel it anymore, I wanted to use my marathon last week as an excuse for my weakness, but I realized that I might not even be the only one who had done that either. I didn't have a single excuse to hide behind, and had to admit the worst: I was weaker than these men. So in my last 400 (that was supposed to be a 500) I began to think, why do I need to make excuses? Because I'm weaker than these guys? No, I have to accept the fact that I'm weaker and train to be up to par. If I don't like being left behind, I have to stop making up reasons for why that is, and just train harder and smarter than everyone else to be able to keep up next time. Especially in endurance sports, the one who wins is the one who trains harder and trains better than anyone else out there. I have no god-given talent, but if I can stop making excuses I'm driven, dammit. So from here on out, I'm going to take responsibility for my weaknesses. No more excuses.

It's kind of liberating, don't you think? If I stop thinking about my weaknesses as unfortunate, unavoidable truths, then I can actually improve them rather than avoiding them like an old injury. Wow, that's a new idea.

Marathon number 2

A marathon was my first real endurance event. It was my first A race too, and therefore my first experience in achieving a major goal. And of course, it was my first time feeling that pain: where your bones feel like they're splintering and your muscles won't move right and they ache and they burn and muscles you didn't even know you had cramp from being so long in crumpled postures you've never been in before and your joints seem to have aged 50 years this morning. Since then I've been there more than once and I guess it never hurts as bad as the first time you're there. This weekend was my second encounter with The Marathon, this time as a B-priority race and mostly motivated by curiosity to se how I could do. One year ago I watched the race at mile 10 with a massive hangover, and I have to admit, more than one cigarette touched my lips before the last runner passed. As I wathed I berated myself for falling off the wagon, not trying to get back on, letting th wagon go, and then turning my back to the wagon trail. In other words, I felt a mess and wanted very much to feel better. I also missed the excitement of a race and the brief-but-nevertheless-important-and-sometimes-even-silent friendships you make along the course. So that day I resolved to do the Barcelona marathon in 2007. And when my season ended with The Race That Never Was I started telling everyone that I was training for the marathon. From November until January that was the only training I did: telling people I was training. This phase of my training climaxed in a full month of not working out once. So when January came and I bought my new shoes and went on my first long run and only made it 13 miles, I upped my training: I signed up. But to my dismay, paying the entry fee didn't put me in any better shape than telling people I was training did.

My entire training was limited to 3 long runs building up to 30k (one of which was on a treadmill: longest 2 1/2 hours of my life), and three half marathons (one of which was the better part of one of my long runs). Race week my girlfriend was completing her metamorphasis into a mean-spirited, entitled, selfish, sullen, and inhumanly lazy bitch and my mind was more focused on how I was going to deal with the challenges of breaking up and moving out than the race at hand. I missed my last taper workout because I couldn't sleep the night before. I was nautious from Wednesday on and feared I'd have to pull out of the race with the flu. And finally, the night before the race I couldn't sleep because my girlfriend had gotten worse than I thought even her capable of. I showed up at the start focused on anything BUT the 26.2 miles ahead of me (or, let's say 42.195 km, since it always seems like you have more to go). Joolie was doing the 10k, so we were able to spend most of the first hour together, and this hour I had fun. But after breaking with Joolie, my mind started to crack. Already. The first gel went down badly. I was already walking every now and then before the 15k mark. Despite my bad mood I still high-5ed all the little kids holding out their hands along the course. Especially the girls. I chased down the little girls to make sure that they slapped MY hand. To these kids every one's a sports star. And when you're a kid you still haven't learned to doubt that you're capable of the impossible; if it's never been done, a kid says (s)he'll be the first. Who knows, maybe they'll go home and say, "I'm going to run a marathon someday." Especially the girls need to see CHICKS out there too. Maybe THEY'LL go home and say, "I'm going to run a marathon someday, and I'm even going to pass some boys!"

My house is one block from the higest point on the course and it did cross my mind to go home. I had given my girlfriend permission to not come to the finish since she hates crowds, but she said she would walk the one block the cheer from next to the house. When she wasn't there I cracked; and we hadn't even reached the halfway point yet. I was feeling anger and hate. I was also feeling like a victim, which never helps matters any. Strangely, though, the distance never really regestered as "long". At half way it felt like a big, fat inconvenience, and I knew full well we were coming into the ugliest part of the city with no shade, no views, no landscaping, few spectators, and the Agbar Tower always within sight: the giant, technicolored dildo rising like a phallic monolith of bad taste out of the ghetto to fuck you in the ass.

For about 10k we ran towards the dildo, next to the dildo, away from the dildo, around the dildo and past the dildo. I came up with a plan to run for 5 songs and walk for a minute. I got to the third song and started walking, and kept walking for the whole song. By the time I finally escaped the dildo I was running for only 2 songs and walking for one. I was also walking at the water stations and sipping my water slowly so I wouldn't have to run again too soon. Every time I stopped running people were yelling encouraging things to me in French, "Allez, allez, Claire!" And other things I didn't understand. I wanted to say, "So what if this IS my f*&%ing race plan, huh?" Then we were running along the beachfront, away from the dildo and back to the RIGHT part of town: the left half, where the finish line was. There were people all along the beach cheering like every runner was their own mother. One man was standing alone and not dressed in beach gear screaming all the names on people's bibs and clapping like he wanted his hands to fall off. "Thank you so much for coming!" I said. "Thank YOU," he said. Later on, some people waiting to cross the street cheered for me and I said, "Muchas gracias" and they laughed with glee. I've watched races before, and most people just run by with a grim look of suffereing on their face. I do that too most of the time, you don't always have time to react. But even if we don't react, the cheering registers and the presence of spectators is so crucial to digging deep in those last miles. Come on, admit it, you run faster and prouder when you know someone's watching. So whenever I can I thank the spectators, because after all, it is they who have gotten out of bed on a Sunday morning to come out and help me along on MY big day.

In the deep, dark moments of the laps around the dildo I'd told myself that I could walk the last 10k if I wanted to. But when I hit 30k I felt okay. Plus we were running through the most crowded parts of the city. I marvelled at how I was running unobstructed down streets where I usually had to use my best crowd-dodging techniques just to move forward. I was amazed by the logistical feat of closing down the entire city for 6 hours, and I appreciated that they had us running through the most heavily trafficked areas at the end of the race, where people couldn't help but watch and cheer us on. I kept running 2 songs and walking one, telling myself that if I didn't want to start running again next time I didn't have to. But I wanted to go home, and really, I felt okay, so I kept running. Only that after a few minutes of running, every kilometer or so, I felt like something inside me was going to explode: not my heart, not my lungs, not my muscles, but my head, or maybe my soul. Maybe it was because I hadn't done hardly any long, slow training recently, and maybe it was because my heartrate was drifting into the high 180s. However, despite this, I was calming down. I knew that I would finish eventually, and I was finally too tired to think of all my other woes outside the race. I was feeling pretty sick though and it was getting hot and I was real thirsty. Water was every 5km, but that was getting to be over half an hour now. Finally we busted out of the old part of town onto the Rambla (the Rambla always surprises me, I'll be walking through these old, narrow, ancient streets, and suddenly I'm in the middle of the biggest pedestrian promenade in the city). There were people EVERYWHERE yelling and screaming and clapping. Boystress college boys were bursting out in cheers every 5 seconds whether there was a runner passing or not. 'Yes!' I thought, 'just a few blocks down and then we're going to be running up diagonally straight up Av. Paral.lel into Pl. Espanya!' But we were only at km 39 and the math didn't seem to work out. I was really, really hoping that the 5 blocks of Av. Paral.lel would be 2 kilometers long. Unfortunately, about half way up we turned right and back into the thick of the city to come into Pl. Espanya uphill.

Coming into the finish Joolie and Jamie called out my name and I waved without looking at them. As I crossed the finish line with more than 5 hours on the clock I held up a fist (being careful to hold my arm high in the air, so it wouldn't look like I was punching my imaginary friend in the ear like in other finishing photos I've had). I sat down to take my chip off and a volunteer ran up and said (in English), "Wait, wait, let me do it!" While she was untying my shoes she said, "Did you like it?" "No," I said, "but ask me again in a couple of hours and the answer will be different." I am always amazed by the volunteers and how helpful and GENUINE they are. Especially the kids who were grabbing sponges from buckets and running backwards up the course until they found someone who wanted their sponge. And they're doing this for free! I found Joolie, Jamie and Ben and we sat in the grass for a little while. While I ate a banana they tried one of my gels and each was surprised at exactly HOW gross they were. People were sitting with their legs in the fountains: the same fountains where they have light shows during the summer and they all have menacing signs next to them with a man getting a lightning bolt to the heart. I didn't stick my legs in because I was wearing long pants and no underwear.

I was able to navegate the stairs in the metro without problems and walk home relatively painlessly. My stomach was upset all day and most of the next, but amazingly my body was fine. I lay down and tried to take a nap and felt a deep, throbbing soreness through my legs like growing pains. I got up, took 2 recovery supplements and 1 anti-oxydent supplement (the cheap stuff: 8 euros at Decathlon) and lay back down. I could literally feel the pain draining from my legs and the muscles breathing a sigh of relief. For the rest of the day I was no more sore than I would be after a normal long workout (which was good because I still had to bike a couple miles round trip to return a DVD). After my first marathon my swim coach (also a triathlete, and an amazon of a woman) asked me if I would do another one. I said, "Only if it doesn't hurt as much." "It always hurts," she said. "I don't think it hurts any less for anyone." But, the truth is, this time it really DIDN'T hurt too badly. By Tuesday I was ready to work out again, and by Wednesday the only pain I had was in my left foot from an old injury that always hurts after a long run. So when I feel like doing another one (maybe in 2009), maybe I'll try for speed. Let's see if I can train to break 4 hours? For the time being I've got to figure out how to do one of those things after biking 112 miles!

God knows how I haven't killed myself yet...

The first time that I did (no, TRIED to do) a full bike ride of the whole 56 miles I did it on an out and back up California Highway 1 towards San Francisco. It was the bike for the Big Kahuna itself. When I arrived at the lighthouse at Pigeon Point I turned around and in the first mile back towards Santa Cruz I hit a crater of a pothole and slashed a 2 inch slit in my tube, which started bleeding green ooze inside my tire. I didn't have a spare tube. I didn't have a cell phone. I only had one dollar in my pocket. I clip-clopped about half a mile to a gas station and begged to use the phone. No one I knew with a big car could come get me. Finally I had to beg Lorraine, who I hardly even knew, to come get me. Only she couldn't come until she finished her shift in 2 hours. I was waiting in that gas station for 3 hours talking to a homeless Hawaiian about land prices in Nevada.

After that Lorraine said she would give me a clinic on how to change a tire. We changed it, and when I was loading my bike on the car rack the stem of the inner tube ripped clear off. "Now you'll get more practice", said Lorraine.

One time I climbed a mountain. Miles and miles, up and up and up. The hill was clearly out of my fitness range and I had to turn around when I got off my bike to catch my breath and couldn't get moving up the hill again. I turned down hill, and started FLYING. I didn't know how to corner, had relatively little experience descending, and my breaks hadn't been replaced since the 1970's (really). Additionally I'd just read somewhere that if you brake too much on a hill your rims can heat up and your inner tube can pop, so I didn't want to break at all. I really thought I was going to die as I flew down the yellow line in the middle of the road. Instinctively I stood up and made myself as big as possible to turn my body into a sail. I never clibed that hill again. Ever.

There was the 23k through the Santa Cruz mountains that I really just wasn't in the mood to push through, so I barrelled down all the hills as fast as gravity would carry me. I can be so cocky sometimes. The result was shin splints that kept me from running nearly the entire summer leading up to the Big Kahuna. Also, when I finished that race and went to bike home my bike had a FLAT tire and I had to walk all the way home, which luckily was only about 3 miles.

When I first got to Barcelona I knew I needed a bike club to get to know the routs around the city. The problem was, I couldn't find one that met on Sundays: my only free morning. I figured that if they were out there, they had to leave from one of the two ends of the city which led to freeways, so one Sunday I woke up at 5:30 so I could be out the door at 6:45. Then, I went to one of the major roads out of the city and just started biking up and down, up and down, looking for other bikers. After half an hour I spotted some and approached them. I asked them where a street was that I knew one of the bike clubs had their "headquarters" on, and they said they didn't know where it was. "Well," I said, "is it okay if I go with you guys then?" They agreed. "So, where are we going?" I asked. It turns out that I'd found the dirtiest old men in ass-tight shorts, but at least I had a bike club and they were delighted to have me because having a chick meant more bonuses for the team.

I lied, I have won one race. I won a bike race, where the winners were the first to the top of the last climb. There were probably about a dozen other women in the whole thing. Everyone stopped half way through to have a free lunch where they gave unlimited wine and whiskey to the cyclists (I abstained) and giant, fatty "butifarra" sausages filled with organ meat (I abstained). I went up that hill trying to keep by myself, but my teammates kept getting in front of me trying to help me draft. They were drunk, as they always are after we stop for a snack in the middle of a ride. They kept cutting me off and I wound up having to brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate. I yelled, "Just let me go at my own rhythm!" They paid me no mind. Finally we got to the top of the hill and I thought they would leave me alone. Since my hair is short, my teammates had to scream to the volunteers, "SHE'S A GIRL!" as I came over the top. Miguel Angel said, "Next time, when you're getting to the top, be sure to stick out your tits". The president of the club also won a trophy for being the oldest person to finish. He said, "My trophy's bigger than yours". I said, "Yeah, but you got yours just for signing up."

Once upon a time I did 5 consecutive hours of spinning for cystic fibrosis. It was indoors and I'm a sweater. The news cameras were there, and the cameraman was next to me the whole time. Of all the moments to be on public access TV, that was not the moment that I wanted them to choose.

There was the Carrer de la Dona (the "Women's Race") which was the day after a joint birthday party of not one, but three of my best friends. Silvia got too drunk to drive me home at midnight, so I kept drinking to stay awake until she sobered up. The next morning I was a few hundred meters from breaking 24 minutes in a 5k for the first time in my life when I started to sprint. Only the arch that I thought was the finish wasn't the finish. So I continued to sprint. 50 meters from the finish line I had to take a detour and spent the next 3 minutes puking my guts out in front of the hundreds of spectators at the finishing chute.

Once Joolie and I decided last minute to run a 10k as bandits. We knew roughly where the start was, but not exactly. We both woke up late. We arrived at the start 8 minutes late and just started running. There's nothing better than the feeling of passing people for a whole, entire race.

One time, running a race that went down the Rambla we cought a couple of whores trying to cross the course to go home after a long night of work. They saw us, smiled and started yelling and clapping. Then they got into the pack and started running with us and making their way to the other side of the street. Then all the runners cheered for the whores!

I make 50-year-olds think they're having a heart attack. Hey, you remember how my heart rate is always really high? Like my max HR is something above 220? So when I wear a heartrate monitor a lot of times I'm training between 175 and 185 bpm. I swear, I have not died once yet. So anyway, I was on the bike trainer this one time somewhere around 180 bpm and the floor monitor comes up to me and he's like, "Are you wearing a heartrate monitor?" Me: "Uh, yeah". Dude: "And about where are you"? I told him, and he gives this "See, I told you so" look to the guy on a recumbant bike behind me. Turns out that the guy had called him over because his bike was picking up my signal and he thought that he was suffering some kind of heart palpatations. Then I got on the treadmill where I got above 190 and the two old people on either side of me started getting worried in kind of the same way and then looking at me funny. So now I'm the girl that makes your treadmill tell you to stop moving NOW, who sweats all over the place, and on rare occasions pukes all over the floor.

First is the worst...

My first triathlon ever was an epic of learning the hard way.

So there was my first race: the San Diego International Triathlon. My first triathlon. I drove the 8 hours from Santa Cruz down to San Diego all by my lonesome. I checked my bike in the day before, got my bib, cap, bike number and goodie bag and went back to the hotel. Then I wandered out through Chula Vista to find something carb-rich for dinner. No more than 2 miles from the hotel, my car felt like it was getting a kick in the ass every few seconds. It was quite clear that the damn thing was breaking down (I would find out later that it was my transmission, and that was a sad story in and of itself). I got back to the hotel room and started calling people to ask for advice, and the arrow buttons on my cell phone stopped working, making all menus, and thus my cell phone, useless. So now, alone and stranded in a Holiday Inn in a strange city I would have to get to the starting line before 6:00 am without a car and without a cell phone. I hardly slept the whole night and my thoughts were anything but positive as I not only stressed about my car and the race, but also whether my evil ex girlfriend (the only person I knew who lived in Chula Vista) would call me back and give me the name of a good mechanic (she never did). When the cab came at 5:00 I'd barely had time to eat a yogurt and buy a McDonalds coffee. I found my bike in the transition area and tried not to make it so obvious that I was copying other people's transition area setups. I didn't have a lot of the stuff that they had, so there were only so many ways that I could set out my sneakers (that could hardly be called "running shoes"), socks, pants, helmit, and bib. There was absolutely no way to hide that my enormous hybrid bike wouldn't fit on the racks and I had to put down, yes, the kick stand. *Shame* Then I put on my rented wetsuit (the first and only I've ever worn: $75 for one day rental), trying to remember which way was right-side-out. And I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. I didn't warm up in the water because my open water swimming experience was limited to the most terrifying 300m I've ever swum in my life. I am desperately afraid of open water. Finally there was no way to get around getting in the water and bobbing in the start with all the other girls under the age of 25. As a rule, I try to avoid large groups of girls under 25 anyway. I don't know why I bothered to rent the wetsuit because the water in Mission Bay was as warm as the June air. And when it came time to swim, even though I'd put myself in the back and off to one side, there were still people all around me, punching me, slapping me. And they wouldn't go away. And I couldn't get away. I had practiced a little bit of spotting, so I tried to keep real close to the buoys so as not to go off course... so close that suddenly in my field of vision there was a CHAIN, going down into the murky ABYSS!!! I swear, I almost shit my wetsuit. Then, a few meters away I was spotting again, put my face in the water and there was A SEAWEED COLUMN!!!!!! I had a new scariest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. It was the kind of seaweed column that The Monster lives at the bottom of. I couldn't wait to get out of the water. And when I finally did, the strangest thing happened... I couldn't run. I never would have thought of that. I never had a problem walking after a swim workout, but after 3 steps I was already winded. I waddled into the transition area and found my bike as girls ran around me. But it took what seemed like forever to get the damn wetsuit off. It was like a giant, Claire-shaped suction cup. Finally free, I put on my pants and pinned my number onto my swim suit and patted myself on the back for saving time by not having to change clothes and put on a shirt. I had thought that I was pretty good at biking since I rode up the hill to class every day, but everyone was passing me, and not just passing me, but blowing past me like I wasn't moving at all. I'd thought that all that high tech stuff like automatic pedals, bike jerseys with pockets, carbon frames, bike computers, and aero bars were for suckers and pussies but I saw (and heard) things whizzing past me that I never thought existed: aero bars with the gear shifts on the aero bars themselves, "ksssht, ksssht, ksssht" as disk wheels passed me, aero helmits, and all manor of other gadges and mean-looking gizmos. If I was having fun up until this point, i was not anymore. A fat lady passed me on an uphill and yelled, "you go, girl!", which I could only read to mean: "wow, I didn't know anyone could possibly finish such a thing with such a Fred Flinstone bike!" Finally I came back into the transition area past bored-looking volunteers who'd already seen all the exciting racing go by. I hopped off my bike and pulled off my helmit, thinking that I was better off than all those suckers with the gear who had to change their shoes. Then I started to run. My legs were made of lead. I'd never felt a pain so horrible in my life! What the hell was going on?! Oh yes, that's right, I had never, EVER run off the bike, thinking that doing both in one day was good enough. I ran and I ran and I ran, and I suffered and I suffered and I suffered. I saved tons of time blowing through aid stations thinking that I didn't need their gimmicky "sports drinks" which were just as good as my plain water that I had in my bike water bottle and was carrying in my hand. I was HUNGRY. How come no one was giving me food? And no matter how much I concentrated and pushed, I COULDN'T make myself run. I had no idea that 10k could be so long, but even on fresh legs, running through the rental car lot at the San Diego Airport makes the miles feel longer. I'd never run in my swimsuit before, so it had never occurred to me that the seams weren't made to minimize running friction. Before long I had raw, open wounds nearly a foot long through my armpits with salty ocean water brought back to life by sweat being rubbed into them with every stride. Then, finally, I was running along the Embarcadero and had to run around the tourists who thought it was more important not to give up their spot in line for the sightseeing tour than to get out of my way. At the finish there were people holding their kids, women kissing their husbands, boyfriends hugging their girlfriends and smiles and happiness all around. I was grumpy and just wanted to get to the Clif samples, which were chocolate. I hate chocolate. Then I had to wait in the long, long line for the shuttle back to the transition area. All I thought about in that long line was how much I fucked up. I'd come into this thing arrogant, and my first triathlon had shown me exactly who was boss. But I still had to figure out how to get back to the hotel before I could shut myself in my room and drink by myself until I forgot what it felt like to be a failure. The volunteers guarding the transition areas were Marines, who were very effective in preventing bike thefts, but they didn't know their way around the San Diego area too well. I knew that my hotel was only a few blocks from the water, so if I followed the coast I couldn't be far. This story could have been much more disasterous if a girl named Christine hadn't overheard me asking for directions and offered me a ride home. Normally I'm too proud and stubborn to accept help from anyone, but this trip had been so disasterous that I gave in. When Christine was loading my enormous bike onto her roof rack she grunted and said, "we gotta get you a new bike, girl!" Yeah, I know. I'm pathetic, I'd done everything wrong before I even started to race. But on the way back, as I gave all my excuses for why I'd sucked so much, Christine had such a better perspective on my experience. "Look, you just FINISHED your first triathlon!" she said. "And on that heavy bike, too. I bet you were working harder than anyone else out there." It turns out that she'd done the sprint distance, and couldn't even conceive of herself doing the olympic distance until next season and was impressed by a distance which I had considered pretty pathetic, since there was so much farther you COULD go. I was ashamed to point out my crummy hotel tucked away behind a huge McDonalds with the bulletproof glass in front of the reception desk, but before I got out of the car Christine said, "That's so cool that you came all by yourself to a new city to do your first triathlon! I hope that you have a better experience next time." So really, Christine was my first introduction to what triathlon means to me today: sharing the glory of the culmination of all your training and hard work and sacrifice with those around you who are basking in their own private glory. No one will be as impressed by your accomplishment as those who were there with you when you did it; not those who have done it and know what it's like, and not those who think that they could never do it themselves. So enjoy eachother and enjoy the race, because you did all the work, and this is your moment. No matter what, don't let anything keep you from enjoying it.

When I got home I got a six pack and pulled out my journal and analyzed what I could learn from my experience. That same night, not to be done in by my own stupidity, I commited myself to do the Big Kahuna, a half ironman distance race right in my own back yard. Coincidentally, I made another horrible blunder that trip which resulted in me insulting and losing a friend while drunk. Holding up the two bad experiences next to eachother on the same trip gave me the kick in the pants I needed to quit drinking and smoking cold turkey until I achieved the Big Kahuna goal that I'd set for myself.

I think any newbie to the sport could benefit from a list of what I reflected on after the race:

~Practice swimming in open water. When you do so, practice running out of the water: not just the first few feet, but all the way up the beach to where your stuff is stashed.
~Should you choose to use a wetsuit, practice not only swimming in it, but also getting in and out of it.
~Have the right gear. If you're training for triathlon, you need a tri bike or a road bike. It doesn't need all the bells and whistles, but at least the basic shape and idea behind it. Don't buy a bike thinking that it'll be good for not only training, but commuting. You don't want to be commuting in your race.
~Nutrition and gear aren't for pussies. A lot of it's hype, but nutrition is a must, and clipless pedals help a lot too.
~Practice running off the bike. Often.
~Bodyglide. Swimming makes skin soggy. Sweating makes skin soggy. Soggy skin chafes more easily.
~Practice every aspect of the race you possibly can. Swim in open water, swim in cold water if necessary, practice your nutrition, practice your transitions and practice training in what you plan to be your racing clothes. Believe me, you will thank yourself later.
~If you're travelling to a race, bring everything you can from home because who knows where you're going to find it where you're going. Bring your favorite nutrition products, favorite snacks for pre and post race, spare bike stuff, good luck charms... And most of all, bring a buddy.

Not everyone could manage a snafoo like this one/OR/ Move over Lucy Ricardo!

This is a copy of an email that I wrote to Lorraine (the ultra-endurance runner) after I did something particularly stupid:

I know how much you like to hear about my little misadventures, so I thought I'd tell you about the newest one. Hey, it's been awhile...

Anyway, maybe you don't remember but once upon a time, back before you saved my ass up there on Hwy 1 I asked you how to train so that it didn't hurt so much over long distances. Like should I make my long runs longer, my in-between runs longer, do more strength training? Your answer: Celebrex (or some other prescription arthritis medication). You even gave me the sterling advice to go in to a doctor and fake arthritis symptoms (at 21 years of age, mind you). Anyway, I never got to the point where I was lying to medical professionals, but I do believe that Alieve is the best invention since the wheel. I took like 3 bottles of it out here with me. I also took some generic tylenol pm for my insomnia spells, some nyquil (which didn't last long), some tumms (which didn't last long either), and some multivitamins (which are mostly full still). SO, I've been telling everyone I was training for the marathon since November, but I didn't really actually get around to the RUNNING part of the training until January. Apparently paying the entry fee doesn't automatically put you in shape. The marathon's 3 weeks from today. I've been recklessly lengthening my long runs since January, and today it was time to do that last 20+ mile run. Coincidentally today was also the Barcelona half marathon, so I decided to run around a bit before and then run home and hopefully that would cover it. (Ok, now I swear I'm getting to the point.) But for a Claire (especially an out of shape one), 20 miles still hurts a lot, and I didn't want to feel it. So before I walked out the door I took 2 alieve. Only when I reached for my keys and took a second look at the bottle I noticed that they weren't alieve, but the tylenol PM (generic brand: same color scheme). I immediately went into the bathroom and stuck my fingers down my throat, but I didn't see any little blue submarines come up. I still have a LITTLE bit of dignity and I wasn't about to go poking at my puke with a toothbrush looking for them. So I just took 2 more REAL alieve and ran out the door. I have no idea if I ran for several hours today sedated. I felt a little float-y, but that could be because I haven't been doing a lot of long workouts. My tummy was a little yucky, but that could have been because I stuck my fingers down my throat 5 minutes before starting running.

On a positive note, it's now almost midnight and my legs feel fine. I just can't sleep.

How Embarrassing!

Here's a copy of an email I sent out to two of my good friends in California after THE MOST MORTIFYING MOMENT EVER! Do you think I should write in to YM magazine? Anyway, some background information that you might want to know: Kat and Lorraine work in the gym where I worked when I was in California. Kat is a powerlifter and Lorraine is an ultraendurance (like 50-100 miles) runner.

Kat, do you remember that time that you told me that you'd never thrown up from working out and it seemed like fun...? Well it's not. I speak from experience! Today I decided to run 10k at the gym (the streets here aren't very good for running). So I ran and ran and ran for an hour. Fine, normal right? I've done it a million times. When I finished I was feeling a little icky. I figured I would walk a bit and be fine. But it got worse. So I stood for a second. It wasn't looking good. So I tried to make a run for the bathroom, but I puked. Right there in the middle of the exercise floor. I tried to get it in my towel... but then I puked again. And again. And finally I made it to the bathroom and puked again. They pulled one of the female aerobics teachers out of a class to go into the bathroom and make sure I was fine and everyone was asking me if I was dizzy. HOW EMBARRASSING! I don't know how I'm ever going to be able to show my face there again! I should have gone running in the street. The street is a perfect place to puke. Everybody does it. But not so much on the exercise floor...

83.267 km is HOW far?!

I've done something crazy. After not getting to go to my race in Portugal I felt the need to do something that would really test my limits, in other words, punish myself. So when Depika's boyfriend, Xavi mentioned this 84.267 km hike with 5,980 meters of total climb - and just as much descent - I thought, "hey, I can do that!" How much exactly is 84.267 km and 5,980 meters of altitude? Well, onlineconversion.com says that it's 51.74 miles with 19,619.42 feet of elevation. Nothing, right? Well here you have the profile of the race:

And if anyone has any interest in doing this masochistic feat in the future, I'll give you the sight's homepage in Catalan:
http://www.cegracia.cat/mm/
and in English:
http://www.cegracia.cat/mm/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=27&Itemid=48

I won't recommend it or discourage you, but you can decide for yourself after reading this. I've added some pictures that I thought were fun to lighten up the mood towards the end.

The race started at the top of Coll Formic, or The Ant Hill (named for its shape and not its size), a name that strikes fear into the hearts of all Catalan cyclists for its famed steepness. I'd never been. At 3:00 in the afternoon Silvia dropped me off in Plaza Joanic and me and my backpack got on the bus. My backpack weighed about 20 pounds and contained:
~a huge pea-green raincoat, borrowed from Silvia
~a mini maglite flashlight with one extra battery (borrowed from Joolie)
~a fleece vest
~2 extra pairs of socks
~my camera
~2 cheese sandwiches
~a bag of almonds
~3 power gels
~2 power bars
~a bag of Werthers Originals hard candies
~a baseball cap
~deodorant (to prevent blisters)
~8 euros
~information about the course
~a 2 liter camelback bladder
~my house keys, cell phone (that's right, Pam), metro card, and other daily necessities.

The bus drove for about an hour to Montseny (which does NOT mean "breast mountain" as I once thought), and then grunted and roared another hour in the traffic jam to the top. The left side of the bus got a view of all the people peeing at the side of the road during the traffic jam. I did not see anybody pee, but this was my view from the bus. *note to self: vehicles are NEVER a good place to take pictures, I should stop doing that*:

When the bus finally gave up on the traffic jam and set us free to walk the rest of the way to the start it was cool and rainy. The way they did the start was, depending on when you turned up they gave you a time. Twenty-five people set off a minute starting at 5:30. I left at 6:49, about mid-way through. Who knew there were so many people crazy enough to do something like this (about 2,500)? Here's a picture of me at the starting line, looking like a big tool:

While waiting I talked to a woman named Sol who I recognized from when I'd gone to sign up for the "excursion". She looked really familiar, but we'd never met before the sign-up day. Sol means "sun", but the name did not fit her at all. She didn't hardly smile at all, and when she did it looked like it hurt. And her voice was one of those voices that makes you want to fall asleep or kill yourself. Anyway, we exchanged numbers because she's always looking for other women who do crazy things like this. She wants to start a club or a team or something. (I don't think I'm going to sign up). Sol will continue to turn up occasionally throughout this story. There were only three porta-potties (three porta-potties is vastly insufficient), so when I had to pee the second time I decided to forego the 20-minute wait and find a nice bush somewhere. This was hard, not for lack of bushes, but because there were people everywhere, no matter how far back into the woods I went. While I was looking for a nice, private place where not too many people could see my white ass I found a herd of big old cows grazing right around all the hikers. I took a picture, but it didn't turn out so well. They look more like big hunks of cheese than cows.

The start was uneventful. There were some nice views, from the top of the mountain of which I took pictures. The sun came out a little bit as I was walking along the top of the mountain and you could see the sunbeams coming down through the clouds with the mountains in the background. Here are the pictures I took before the sun set around 8:30.




Also on top of that mountain I saw a flock of goats grazing. Did you know that goats have sideways pupils? I didn't until this weekend. And here's another bad picture of the goats. Can you tell I'm a city girl?

On top of Monseny I met a guy who introduced himself as Pedro, but I suspect his name was Pere. I hate it when people with Catalan names introduce themselves as the Spanish translation. "Pedro" told me that he'd done the race last year in 21 hours. He wasn't going to lie to me, it was long and difficult, but the deciding factor would be the blisters. He brought a pair of extra sandals for just this reason. Since Xavi had forgotten to give me his head lamp, all I had for light was a mini-Maglite borrowed from Joolie. So as night fell I stuck with "Pedro" to take advantage of his headlight. In the last moments of twilight we passed by this cottage and a crude fence that I swear I'd seen before in a dream or something... Then "Pedro" and I got to this descent that felt like it took hours to get down. It wasn't quite rock climbing, but it was damn close. The rocks were wet and slippery from all the rain from the last week and there were thousands of people scrambing over rocks and each other to get down. It was the kind of climb where you can't concentrate on hurrying, but only on finding your next secure foothold in the dark. "Pedro", who kept slipping, commented on how sure-footed I was. I felt proud. Not only can I swim in the Pacific without a wetsuit, but I can climb mountains in the dark without slipping as much as "Pedro" with his booby sticks (hiking poles). I lost "Pedro" for awhile and when I found him at the bottom of the decent he'd already started to get some blisters and had sat down to take care of the situation.

For hours I went back and forth between trying to take advantage of other people's lights and turning on my own when I passed pockets of people. After a few hours we passed through a little town called Aigua Freda (Cold Water), where there WAS a fountain. I have no idea whether it was cold or not because I didn't stop. I was going to kick ass in this race and finish before the pack. Oh yes, I am hardcore. Directly after Aigua Freda we climbed a hill that went up 200 meters over only 3 kilometers. It was like climbing the Merrill hill (at UCSC) for an hour, but the ground was even and the dirt was hard-packed and I felt great. I got to the top sweaty and energized. Somewhere in the ascent Sol passed me running (I will refrain from a tempting pun about the rising Sun, you're welcome).

After the hill after Aigua Freda the night is a bit of a blur. My mind settled into the "edurance mode" where you feel like your only purpose in life is to keep going and it begins to feel like you've been doing this your whole life. You forget that this will ever end and your life before this day seems like ancient history. If you start thinking about the finish at this point you'll never get there. Checkpoints were few and far between and food as well, not like I could eat the food anyway. I did eat some cookies at one and some chunks of really bad (egg) tortilla at another, but I had to keep trucking and munching Power Bars on the go. I wanted to finish at 9am, mostly because most people don't finish till after noon, but also I wanted to get in a nap before going to volleyball with Silvia. I missed Silvia. Of course, I didn't take any pictures at night, but because I'm enjoying these photographic non-sequeters I'll show you a picture of Emma and her friend Sonia having an umbrella fight in motorcycle helmits:

I was truck, truck, trucking along, munching on power bars and sucking on hard candies and passing people left and right when suddenly my flashlight seemed to be getting dim. I had people around and I thought maybe it was because of the ambient light, but soon my flashlight gave no light at all. I changed the batteries, but it kept dimming about a minute after my turning it on. Sometimes less! I had no more spare batteries. Then we came up on another rough decent and my flashlight stopped working alltogether. It was only 2 in the morning, and there were many more hours of night to get through. I had a few close calls with twisted ankles, but had the luck to find a group of three guys, one of whom had run out of light but the other two had halogen headlamps and together we all got down the rocky descent and I stuck with them until the next check point going as fast as my little legs would take me to keep up with their 6.2 kilometers per hour. We passed a guy who was puking his guts out at the side of the road. The kind of puking where you're puking so hard that you're yelling but nothing comes out. Then he would make sounds like a horse. What was he doing so sick so early in the night? For over an hour I walked with the 3 guys with 2 headlamps without opening my mouth. Then one turned to me and said (in Catalan), "Women must be so much stronger than us, because they spend the whole time chatting and I can barely keep going let alone talk". Clearly, he thought I was Catalan, and in the dark I'm not sure if he knew I was a woman. We talked a little bit on the easy bits about who we were, why we were doing the race, etc. but mostly the only words we exchanged were "puddle", "look out for the rock", "this way". It wasn't really that I'd joined the group, but that everyone was there to help eachother along as long as they were around, and people would come and go at their own pace. We never learned each other's names and I lost them at the checkpoint. I was starting to get stuff in my shoes and the soles of my feet were starting to hurt. I got in line for food and picked up the lamest sandwich I've ever eatten in my life (that cheap white bread with sesame seeds that they use in gas station sandwiches, some shreaded lettuce, and about 1/4 of an egg crumbled up). When I turned away from the "buffet" I saw Sol looking miserable (as she always does). I asked how she was and she said she was freezing and thinking about dropping out. There were people lying around all over the ground looking exhausted, most of them looked like they didn't plan on getting up again. We'd just passed the half way point and this was the point where most people drop out. Sol was tough though. She'd met up with a friend at about nightfall who had convinced her to run it, and she'd been running ever since... until about 2 hours before when they came to a killer descent. She'd stopped running to get down safely, but he'd kept running, lost his footing, and broken his ankle. She had to help him all the way to the aid station (a trip that she said took about 45 minutes), and said that when they got there he was almost fainting from the pain. I asked how he'd gotten there, with "a couple of balls"? She said, "that's the expression, but really that's what happend. He really was tough." Speaking of testicles, here's a note I left for Maria a few months ago when she asked me to buy eggs for her at the supermarket:

They'd taken him away in an abulance, but she'd gotten so cold that she didn't know whether to keep going or go home. I cleaned out my socks and finished my sandwich and the two of us set off at a good clip. I was dying to pee, and for once we had to walk through a town for like half an hour before finding some nice, dark bushes. Then we set off with Sol and her light ahead and me scrambling behind (again, refraining from a pun about Sun's light). I could barely keep up, but I didn't want to admit I was struggling, until we got to an ascent where you need to use legs and hands to get from one rock to another and she pulled ahead leaving me in pitch dark. I called out for help and she looked back every few seconds to give me barely enough light to memorize the next few yards and try to catch up. When we got to the top she said, "best if you put yourself in front, because if not I'll keep going on without you". Sol was a bit of a bitch. But when I was in front of her I couldn't see where I was going for my shadow. So when we got stuck behind a big group I used my good ballance and my sure-footedness of a mountain goat to pull ahead of a lot of people and lost Sol in the crowd. I don't think she made a special effort to find me. At this point it was about 4 in the morning and I'd given up on going superfast and just tried to stay with the people with the brightest lights. At one point where the rock face dropped off (god knows how much) right next to us and the guy I was following had to give up and sit down. I had to stand there in the dark at the edge of a cliff and wait for another light to come along. To tell you the truth, I have no idea how I didn't fall or break something the whole night. By six in the morning I had a feeling that I wasn't even trying to see anymore and I was just walking over whatever and just catching myself when I slipped. Who cared? I was tired and I wished the sun would just come up.

I thought, the sun can't possibly rise later than 6:30, and there'd be light before that, but the dawn didn't even start until a little after seven. I don't even remember the sunrise. I stopped at an aid station to drink some orange juice and eat a doughnut (actually, Mica, it was "un donuts") and clean out my socks and when I left there was light. They say that when the sun comes up it's a lot easier because you know you've gotten through the whole night walking and now you could see Montserrat, but as soon as the sun came up and I was no longer firing adrenaline from not knowing where I was stepping fatigue set in * like that. We walked through a town that looked a LOT like Monterey with the steep hills and really nice houses with intimidating gates and alarm system signs. The hills were still very steep (the kind of thing that even I would have to walk my bike up), and the concrete was worse than trying to walk on slippery rocks and dirt. The town with all the streets named after birds seemed eternal, and I still couldn't see Montserrat. Finally, around eight thirty in the morning (now back in the woods) I came over a ridge in the mountains I could see Montserrat. There it was, still fucking far away. I took a picture. Looks close doesn't it? Now imagine like you have to walk all that way. Nah, you wouldn't feel like doing it either, huh?

I must have had another 20 kilometers to go at that point, some 13 miles or so. A half marathon. Of all up and down, up and down. Nothing was flat. I was starting to get a little disorientated. I don't know if it was from the exercise, or just pure exhaustion and fatigue from not sleeping all night. It took me about half an hour to do the calculation of how much I had left because I kept forgetting all the parts. Was I starting in kilometers or miles? Was a mile shorter or a kilometer? I couldn't remember. Was I at kilometer 65, or was that how long the course was? What was I trying to figure out again? Shit.

And on I trucked. Hours later, at the next check point I thought I looked at the map and saw that there were only 10 km left, but then the next time I looked at the map an hour or so later THEN it looked like there were only 10 km left. I think I thought I only had 10k left for about 5 miles. Up and down, up and down. I thought I had stuff in my shoes, but when I took them off to shake it all out I had huge blisters everywhere. When I thought I was stepping on pointy pieces of sand, I was actually pressing on big, bubbly blisters. I changed my socks, but it didn't help too much. While I was changing my socks a man I'd never seen before in my life sat down next to me and said, "Hey, it's the American!" One of the guys with the headlamps? I have no clue. I didn't much care about hurrying anymore. I was just going. Many, many hours (or years) later I got another view of Montserrat. I swear, I've never seen a more horrific sight in my life:

What? You think it's beautiful? Well look again. Look at all that space between where I am and the mountain. Around here I saw Sol again. Actually I'd seen her at the last check point while I was changing my socks, but just pretended like I hadn't seen her. She could see that I was not fine. I said that I was hurting, but nothing I couldn't handle. She said, "Tranquila, you have your music, your job now is just to keep putting one foot in front of the other." Maybe Sol wasn't so bad.

I reached the final town at the foot of Montserrat and there were hikers lying on the sidewalk and propped up on buildings all over the place. I refilled my camelback bladder and I think I only kept going because it annoyed me too much to see other people were still alive. We passed a train station and I wondered why I didn't just buy myself a ticket home. I really didn't care if I finished. I didn't know why I signed up for this damn race in the first place. I didn't give a flying fuck about my pride or about what people would think or that damn trophy at the end. I just didn't give a shit. But I kept going. I think because I'd started and I'd been doing this for my entire life and I just didn't know how to stop now. At this point the descents hurt so much that I couldn't wait for an ascent until it came and then I couldn't take that either. I couldn't even take the flats.

Halfway up Montserrat I got to the final check point. All I wanted to know was how much was left. It couldn't be more than a few hundred meters, maybe a kilometer at the most. I wanted to ask, but the guy at the aid station was smiling and so I certainly didn't want to ask him. I'd lost my map. I wonder how that happened? Everything that was put in front of me was a gigantic effort. There were a lot of newley felled trees from the storms that we had to climb over, and it was like climbing another mountain each time. Then we started to see fresh hikers coming down. Some of them commented to eachother how strong you must be to do this, but one guy who was coming down the trail with a fat girl said, "Look at this one, now SHE really IS moving slowly". I gave him the dirty look of a lifetime. Imagine my dirtiest look, and then imagine me half dead and covered with 18 hours of sweat and grime and give me a sunburn and blotchiness from dehydration and you might get an idea. It was a nice day, a perfect day for hiking, but the sun was killing me. It got to the point where every step I took I had to steady myself before taking the next one. Everyone that I asked how much was left said, "it's not far". Finally I lost it and started screaming at this guy, "just give me a fucking number!" He said, "you'll be there in 45 minutes, maybe more. Prepare yourself for another 3/4 of an hour". He offered me water to wet my head and I set every ounce of my will power to putting one foot in front of the other. I think I was thinking that I might have to go to the hospital and that if I fainted here then there would be nobody to take me there, so I had to get to the top before I passed out. I got to a turn where there was a guy sitting there with his head in his hands. He had a picture of a toddler around his neck and he looked like he was going to cry. I asked him if he knew how much farther it was. He said, "it's just around this bend and then several more stairs". I made it pulling myself with my arms on the railing as much as I walked with my legs past alarmed-looking tourists and got to the top of the stairs. Here in the home stretch "Pedro" passed me. I hadn't seen him since nightfall, which gives you an idea of how much I'd slowed down in the last 10k (and all those kilometers that I THOUGHT were the last 10k). I asked the first person I saw when I got to the top where I could get water. He pointed to the cafeteria and I thought I was going to cry. No, there was no great sense of achievement, just a need to attend to my most basic human needs: water and rest. I'd been walking all night, for 19 hours straight and didn't give a rat's ass anymore.

I got in line in the cafeteria, but with Spanish customer service it was quite clear that I would be there for awhile and I wasn't sure if I would faint or vomit first, but I surely wasn't going to make it to the front of the line to buy some water. I went and sat at a table trying to figure out what to do next. I saw no sign for bathrooms. I saw no way to cut in line. Everybody was avoiding looking at me, so I couldn't catch someone's eye and ask them to stand in line for me. So I just sat there being miserable. Some awful rich-looking northern European women made motions like they wanted to sit down and I just shook my head. Finally I stumbled back outside to look for a better solution. I stopped a guy and asked him if he had any water and he gave me the few ounces that he had left. Thank god for the kindness of strangers. He told me that if I needed more I would have to climb up the ramp to where the bathrooms and water tents were. I was about to give up and go get on the train so at least I could die in peace when I saw Sol again. "You made it!" she said. "I'm not okay," I said. "I know," she said. She said that I MUST get up to the top to get some water, or else I wouldn't get home. I wanted her to get it for me, but she didn't offer. Sol was a bitch after all. It took me about 15 minutes to cross the small parking lot and climb the stairs (maybe about 100 yards total), but I got there and I got water and lemonade. I managed to find a seat on a step and tried to gather my strength to get back to the train. I looked at the line of people there to pick up their finisher's trophies. There were between 25 and 50 of them, all standing up and waiting. There was no way I could stay standing for long enough, so decided "fuck it" about the trophy. I looked with longing at the first aid tent, but you need to present proof of a social security to get medical service, so I made my way back down to the train.

This is getting kind of heavy, so I'll give you a picture of the last time I was at Montserrat (I went in bus that time). This is Lola being a penis (because of the phallic rock formations):

I stumbled my best back down to the lower level. Before crossing the parking lot to the train station I sat on a bench to gather my strength, then I lay down. Then I decided to try to sleep for a minute or two. As I was drifting off I heard a toddler crying hysterically and the mother telling him, "Don't worry, sweetie, we'll never do this excursion, okay? Nobody's going to make you do it." I guess we looked that bad. Who cared? I was so disoriented that I bought a kid's ticket back to Barcelona. Who cares? And I fell asleep on the platform. Who cares? And I smelled horrible and sat next to tourists. Who cares? When we changed trains to go back to Barcelona all the smelly hikers were sitting apart because of the stench. There was a guy with a rat tail sitting next to me. I congratulated him, and he congratulated me. We compared stories and fatigue levels. He really made me feel not so bad that I was going to die. He wasn't literally dying, but he knew how it was. When the train came he and I and one other hiker took seats in the same group of four leaving one seat open for whoever wanted to take it. We all fell asleep immediately. Every time I opened my eyes there would be someone new sitting in the seat across from me and the last person would be standing in another part of the car, far, far from smelly us. Who cares?

When I got to the station Silvia was there waiting for me and smiling. I've never been so happy to see someone's face in my life. The whole time I was on the hike, even before my light went out and I started to feel sore, even before things started to go bad, all I could think about was that I still wished I was home with her. Not that I didn't have a good time, or that the whole thing wasn't worthwhile, but I just would have rather been with her. The first thing she said to me was, "you smell like a dead rat!" How romantic. But she helped me up to the street and then she didn't complain when I almost knocked over her motorcycle trying to get on it, and she only complained once about having to drive across the whole city so close to smelly me, and she bought me a beer to help with my circulation and she helped me to the shower and washed my clothes for me and lent me some clean underwear and pajamas to sleep in and she made me some food and she helped me to bed and she didn't complain once about how I couldn't go to volleyball with her, not even to watch.

So this is the part where I put my final thoughts. I don't really have some huge sense of accomplishment. I went because I wanted to find my limits, and I found out that they were at about 49.5 miles. I went to try to decide what my athletic goals would be for the coming years, and I decided that I don't want to work towards ultraendurance events. I went because I wanted to show Lorraine, my friend and own personal hero who's twice my age and runs 100 mile races (and sometimes wins in her age group) that I could do it, and I did. I went, I did it, and I'm glad I never have to do it again. Today and yesterday I've been surprisingly not sore. Yesterday I was able to go to a meeting and teach a class. Today I think I'm going to go swimming. So life goes on, thank god. And thank god life doesn't force us to do these things if we don't want to, just like the mother was telling the little kid. I like life just fine and don't need the accomplishment of walking 51.74 miles to continue to enjoy it. That's it. That's the lesson I'm walking away with. That and no trophy.

As Kat would say, "The End".

Splish Splash... with improved visuals

I had me quite an adventure this weekend. Being dirt poor is really getting old, so despite the fact that I'm completely broke I signed up to do a swimming thing on the Costa Brava this weekend. What no one told me is that there were no trains that went there... and that the first bus doesn't arrive until after the race starts. Well, not being one to have my plans foiled once I set my mind to something I went anyway. Luckily I was accompanied by a new friend, Monica, who was crazy enough to think that my plan to sleep on the beach was a good idea. Sleeping on the beach is illegal here. So at 8:30 pm on Saturday Monica and I piled into a bus headed north out of Barcelona. We arrived in L'Estertat around 10:45 and made for the beach. We found a little ice cream stand that when we were in the shadow it hid us well enough from the street, ate a picnic dinner and lay down to go to sleep. Not much sleeping happened. It was surprisingly cold, and the wood floor that we were lying on was hard. That and the beach cleaning machines came by every half hour and growled and shined their flood lights on us. Since illegal to sleep on the beach I guess that we were lucky that they didn't give us any trouble. So at dawn it was time to give up on sleeping and watch the sunrise. I'm up at sunrise all the time, but here in the city you never have a clear view of the sky at that time of day, so I hadn't really seen a sunrise since I was home. Here are the pictures:

Monica wandering down to the water just as it started to get light.

Monica taking black and white pictures of the sunrise. The islands you see in the background of these pictures are the ones that I would swim from in a few hours.

Maybe the not sleeping thing was worth it...

I don't know if I've ever watched a sunrise close enough to actually see the sun come up over the horizon like it does at sunset. Would you think I was stupid if I said that it never occurred to me that it would do that?

Then we wandered around the tiny little tourist town looking for the starting line with a surprising number of joggers, bikers, and one woman doing yoga on the beach. While we were looking for the other soggy homos (if you don't know, that's what I call my swim squad, which is a specifically gay group) a bubbly woman in her mid-40s came up and started talking to us. She hadn't trained for the race, she wasn't really a swimmer, but she'd done a race like this years ago and it was fun and she was studying the Islas Medes Natural Reserve (where we were) in her geography class, and she was going to swim it. Then she was going to quit smoking. Blanca and her family wound up being better company than the soggy homos. She offered to let us put our stuff in her car, and when it became clear that the soggy homos had no room for us, she even agreed to give us a ride back to Barcelona! Here's a picture of me and Blanca getting ready to get on the boat:

My hair's a bit out of control, and as a general rule I don't like photos of me not wearing any pants, but I take comfort in the fact that nobody ACTUALLY reads my blogs. Sadly, this photo is the last known whereabouts of this swimsuit. I loved that suit!
Then it was time for all 600 participants to get on a ferry and get dumped out in the middle of the sea. There were 5 ferryloads, and these weren't small boats. This is what it looked like:

When we got within about 100 feet of the island they told everyone to just jump off. No ladders, no water slides, just climb over the railing and hop in. Blanca was already in the water 6 feet below before I could finish saying "you go first". I looked under the water and there were little wormy seaweeds with fishies swimming around in them. Scary as hell. And on the surface 600 people in orange caps (some with seagull feathers stuck in their goggle straps like Captain America) and oh so many speedos. Then the Guardia Urbana (Spanish police) came out in a motorboat with the last contestant who had missed the last ferry, and it was time to start. This is as close as my zoom would let Monica get to the starting line:

There were kicking feet and scratching smacking hands all over the place that never really cleared up over the 1500 meters... At good moments it was like this:

But a lot of times it was like this:

Coming around the bend here my hand touched something that was squishy, and NOT A FOOT like I first thought. Jellyfish!!! Aah! Then my boob started burning. Yeah, that's right, my boob. Ok, not my boob, but my chest, but anyway...

And finally we came into the beach. The WHOLE time there was a guy practically on top of me on my left side. When I breathed to that side I was close enoug to kiss him on the shoulder. I hate that. I finished in 27 minutes, which I think is faster than I used to swim in Santa Cruz, but you can never really be sure. Blanca came in in just under an hour with a salty tongue but feeling great. The last guy came in, "destroyed", with 2 sopping seagull feathers in his goggles, but completely naked apart from that. We took showers in a SCUBA diving locker room where guys came in while I was getting dressed after my shower. Hey, I guess that's the way it works in Europe. I was so flustered that my bathing suit stayed in that locker room. Then we watched the awards ceremony, where I think they skipped me by mistake. I mean, 14th is good too, right?

In the car ride on the way home Blanca, Monica, and I made plans to do another one next month. I love races!!! I wish there were more around to do.