Year in Review (2009 edition)

As seems to be our trend for December 30th, we took the boys somewhere fun yesterday. This year, it was 7 hours in a car round-trip for 1.5 hours of fun in the snow!

We had very tired dogs by the end.

The only down side was the fresh powdery snow meant amazingly huge icy snow balls up both legs on the beardies. They lasted the entire 3.5 hour drive home and had to be melted with warm water in the bathtub.

In case there was any question as to HOW my dogs end up covered in snowballs…

What else is there to be said about the year that hasn’t already? It was hard and wonderful and amazing and exhausting. I made so many new friends, I spent a lot of time training with old ones, I became a better athlete, I started trialing Stanley in agility, I PRed in the 1/2 Iron distance, I finally went on my honeymoon, I became an Ironman!

Here’s to even more fun, excitement, friendship, hard work and accomplishment in 2010!

Year-End Totals

2008 Swim: 143,880 yards (81.75 miles)
2009 Swim: 262,170 yards (148.95 miles)
2008 Bike: 2,247.5 miles
2009 Bike: 3,430.5 miles
2008 Run: 735.4 miles
2009 Run: 741.4 miles
2008 Strength: 11.75 hrs
2009 Strength: 15.75 hrs
2008 Training Time: 385.3 hrs
2009 Training Time: 490.5 hrs

Wow. Just…wow! :-)

Jeff and my sherpa peoples made me IM AZ race videos.  Lots of never before seen footage!

Thanks, you guys are amazing!

The final preparations for the race

Race day

O Canada

Instead of talking about places I don’t like, let’s talk about one of the most wonderful countries around!

Reasons to Love Canada:

Family!

Stanley and Max have lots of family in Canada.  (Actually, come to think of it, I do too)  The beardie boys LOVE their sisters.

Hockey!

The greatest team sport ever is no better glorified and exalted than it is in Canada.

*Note: I did have to fan myself repeatedly after finding photos online of Doug Murray ripping his shirt off.  Phew!

There is one small HOWEVER on this item…thank heavens we don’t have to regularly see Don Cherry here in the US.

OMG, help me! I think I’ve gone blind!

Vancouver Island!

Everywhere we went up-island was just stunningly beautiful.  I could live here all 6 weeks of summer :-)

Equality!

Thank you, Canada, for recognizing a basic right that many Americans have yet to mature enough to deal with fairly.

Lululemon!

World’s most addictive clothing store, Lululemon is another product of Canada.

If Lululemon is a secret Canadian plot to take all of our $$…well, it’s working. 

Tim Hortons!

Perhaps another plot to take over the world by fattening us all up.

But Timbits is a way better name than donut holes.  And those iced cappucinos are like a gateway drug – I never drank any sort of coffee beverage until I was handed one.

People!

I’ve never been welcomed more by people who barely knew me before.  That reputation for Canadians being nice is well-deserved.

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So finally, in summary…dear Canada, you rock!*

*I’m excusing your contributions of Nickelback and Celine Dion to the world.

Post Edited

I wrote a whole post of thoughts I’ve had this week, snarky thoughts that were bound to piss someone off, from parents of human children to Floridians and New Yorkers, so I deleted it.

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all? With all that removed, there’s not much left to say today. 

I dragged myself out of bed in the dark this morning to hit the pool in the cold and do slow, painful drills in an effort to improve my pathetic swimming.  Good thing I had my wonderful Christmas-gift cupcake suit to keep me smiling!

Training totals for December 21-27:
Swim: ~3664 yards
Bike: 30.6 miles
Run: 7.6 miles
Strength: 1 hour
Total time: 6 hours

Merry Christmas to All!

Highlights from the last couple days

Banyan tree in Lahaina

Old Lahaina Luau

Swimming in Honalua Bay

Iao Valley

And my first helicopter ride ever!

If you want to see more pictures, and video clips, I made a too-long video of the experience.  It was amazing, and terrifying, and gorgeous, and nail-biting, and incredible! Thanks to Jeff for treating me!

Tomorrow, HOME to our boys!!!

Fun in the sun

Bear in mind, I know how silly this will sound.  But…do you have any idea how different it is to experience Hawaii when you can swim?  I’ve come to Maui several times with my family, in high school and after college, but I never spent any time on a beach or went out swimming to see what was there.  Because I could not swim.  I did scuba dive – petrified the whole time – but it’s not exactly the same thing.  Oh, Internet, the power of being able to just jump in and swim out offshore and look at things underwater with the knowledge that you know how to survive out there!  Not only learning how to swim but all my open water swims in rough murky Santa Cruz…it gave me a lot of confidence facing the occasional big swell or wave today.

I would swim every day if this were my swimming pool

Even more fun is all the neat stuff to look at.

Let’s go look over there!

My little friend didn’t seem too bothered by the papparazzi

Life wasn’t too rough outside the water either.

Despite all the fun and eating (and not so much drinking for me after that first night), I have actually been consistently getting my workouts done as well.  Today is 4 weeks since the most amazing race of my life, and my first week of training for a whole new year is done - lots of short, light easy sessions and technique work!

Training totals for December 14-20:
Swim: 3500 yards
Bike: 24.5 miles
Run: 10.1 miles
Strength: 1 hour
Total time: 6.3 hours

Aloha!

It’s been quiet on the blog front as I’m too busy enjoying our long delayed honeymoon on Maui.  But for your viewing pleasure, a few photos from the trip so far!

The view from our hotel

I went for a quick swim in that water and was somewhat astounded to discover the rock I was standing on was actually the back of a large sea turtle.  Really.

The hotel brought us a bottle of champagne.  I should not have had it in addition to my mai tais.  Thank heavens for ibuprofin and greasy food.

The banyan trees in Lahaina are all done up for Christmas.

My favorite part of the drive to Hana are the many roadside waterfalls.

Some of them are even swimmable!

It was raining and cool on the Hana side of the island and the water was VERY cold.

While that didn’t stop Jeff…

it did stop me!

Beautiful Hana

My favorite part of Hana: the Maui cows!

We decided to take a trip down the rabbit hole

and into a very large, very dark lava tube!

Melted chocolate lava flow!

That’s all for now!