A few posts behind: Rehobeth Beach

I have about a dozen half written posts in my drafts over the last month that never have been finished.. So I'll be posting a bunch over the next few days. I still need to add pictures, so bear with me.. they'll get up later.

From 8/31:

A number of us from Team Z went up to Rehobeth beach for a long training weekend. Why Rehobeth? Training in the ocean and on long flat stretches for Ironman Florida.

Since I had off Friday, a fellow teammate and I decided to make the hike up on Thursday night after traffic died down. Easy drive, got in around 10pm to an absolutely HUGE beach house. Seriously, there were 12 of us staying in it, and we could have easily fit 30. Grabbed dinner and went to bed.

Due to the tropical storm lingering along to coast, Friday was spent saying "lets go to the beach!" followed quickly by a roll of thunder and rain. It would clear up again, and then go back to thundering. No beach on Friday... Sad. Met up with the Z'ers in town for dinner and a few drinks, then off to bed for the 100 mile ride in the morning.

Woke up and felt great heading out for the ride. At least 50 people rolled out for the ride, so it was a great showing. The plan was 3 loops, each getting progressively shorter. I was instantly amazed at how fast I felt when I wasn't climbing hills. I'm a HUGE fan of flat terrain now. Unfortunatly, my airways didn't seem to agree. I felt like I was having bad asthma issues the entire ride. Around 55 miles in, it got to the point where I had tunnel vision because I couldn't breath. I called our fearless sag crew, and someone came and got me. I figured I'd be fine if I just laid down for a bit, but no luck. 45 minutes later I had Coach Ed inject me with my epipen to open my airways. I'm not afraid to use one, but he wanted to learn. So after giving him instructions and a very awkward bearhug on my leg later, he realized it wasn't so bad. Until he pulled out the needle and saw how long it was. I attempted to ride about a half hour later, but my thigh hurt to bad from putting a needle through my quad... so I ended up sitting around drinking long islands in the parking lot cheering on the other riders.

Sunday was spent on the beach. I swam about 2 miles in the ocean, getting used to being tossed around. Unfortunatly the jelly fish were out and about, making the swim a bit more uncomfortable than necessary. I had planned to get in one last time to do a swim around 4, but the jelly fish were in full force. One wrapped around my ankle as the tide came in standing on the beach.. So the plan was abandoned. :( At least I didn't get a jelly fish up the pants like someone else...

Oh yeah.. I forgot I blog.

An ultra busy few weeks after Ironman has lead to a minor void in the blogging lately. I'm back on track now and have plenty of entries to update.

Last Tuesday, I flew back to Ohio for my sister's wedding. I arrived into CAK from DCA after 50 short minutes, in comparison to my standard 5.5 hour drive. After how easy that was, I'll be flying from here on out. Now I just need to convince my mom to buy a car so I don't have to drive the minivan when I borrow it.

Wednesday was spent laying in the pool, helping my mom around the house, and visiting two of the three must-go places when I'm home: The A&W Root Beer stand on the circle and Stricklands (the third being Swensons, which I sadly did not get to). This particular A&W drive up has been around forever, and same as it has always been. One of the few places I know that is still cash only. There's nothing better than a coney dog with cheese, french fries, and a frosty mug of root beer. I'm slightly sad I didn't take a picture of it in all of its glory, but maybe next time. The pictures were swooped off the internet. Stricklands is a frozen custard joint that has been around since the1930's. Prior to becoming a franchise, there used to be two - Stricklands, which is located across from Akron-Fulton airport, and Stricklands II, which used to be beside the local grocery store, about 3 miles down the road. The original was only open during the summer, and II was open year round. Both had different "Flavor of the Day" which is actually 2 flavors, as well as chocolate, vanilla, and a frozen sherbet, and lasts typically 3 days. Best.Frozen Yogurt.Ever. My friend's family growing up owned it, so I ate lots of free ice cream. Unfortunately, the two owners had different visions for it, and it has since been franchised. Still the same machines that make the custard though. If I would have been home every day, I would have stopped by. Unfortunately, I missed Banana - one of my all-time favorite flavors.

On the way to my sister's wedding, we stopped by the cemetery to place some flowers on Dad's grave. Lucky for me, the construction crews were out in full force setting up the section on the other side of where Dad is buried. So, I grabbed my camera, and I finally have pictures to go with this strange entry. I'll add them into the post shortly, but for your viewing pleasure:

A view from the road.

Sod waiting to be laid on the front of Dad's section. Not quite sure why the dug up the grass.

A view of the vaults. Note that each one is also numbered with the grave number. In the background, you can see construction on the above-ground vaults for ashes.

Construction vehicles would grab a vault from the
back and place them into the rows.

Not the best pictures in the world, but there was a group of workers right infront of Dad's grave, and mom didn't want them to think I was nuts for taking pictures.

After the cemetery, we were off to my sister's wedding in Columbus, Ohio. Very beautiful wedding. I'll post some pictures from the photographer once I have them, but here are some from the occasion (not all of them are mine..):

On the way to the church


My lats and bad tan lines came too.
The rest of the bridal party is out of the picture.


Sister and Brother-in-law leaving the church







First Dance

Cutting the cake

Bridal Table

Classy. Too bad two of those weren't even mine.
And, ew. why are my fingers look jacked up? Stupid hyperextension..

Ironman Lake Placid - DNF Report.

It still pains me to type those three letters.

Lessons learned:
-Don't leave your Garmin on the cradle after it is done charging - it WILL drain the battery once unplugged.
- Don't ride the brakes without pulsing to give the rims a chance to cool down.

I had a GREAT swim - I've been beat up more in Oly starts than Ironman. I started a little to the right of center, 4 rows back. In hindsight, I should have started closer to the buoy line, as I got caught up behind a group of slower people. Came out of the water in 1:14, much slower than I should have, but alas, unscathed. Quick transition, and it was off to the bike.

First loop of the bike was uneventful. After turning my Garmin on in transition only to find the battery had almost died from sitting on the contacts, I decided to leave it off for the first loop. Kat loaned me her Polar, since she thought I was nuts for doing ironman without an HRM. I realized I took the first loop extra slow at 4 hours when I rolled through town, and planned to make up serious time on the second half.

Turned on my Garmin and planned to run it until it died. I went down the first half of the Keene descent barely tapping my brakes. As I began the second part of the descent (shown between the 55-70 mile marks), I was riding about 45mph, which was a bit out of my comfort zone. I hit the very steep section and rode my brakes hard. The brakes started to feel like the wheel was out of true. Suddenly I heard a crazy noise, looked down and saw my tube and about 5 inches of rim tape coming out of my front wheel. After pulling a Fred Flinstone to stop as I skidded down the hill, I had a sigh of relief that the road didn't claim my skin or teeth, and began to pull my front tire off. I burned my hand taking my wheel off, so I let it cool while I pulled my tubes out of my saddle bag. As I took the damaged tube out, I accidentally dropped my wheel on my spare tubes, which melted under the heat from the rim. I was able to flag down the SAG vehicle, who had no 650 stuff to help me out. So, I sat on the side of the road as they pulled away, balling my eyes out because my day was over at 1:15pm. Watched a few other teammates head down the hill, including Kai who seems to only see me in ditches on the side of the road. An ambulance picked myself and my bike up, and dropped me off at a run aid station, where after a few hours spent volunteering at said aid station and running barefoot with my teammates, I finally got a ride back to town.

Bluntly put, it sucks to train so hard for a single day, and for it to end badly. I've been through worse, so it isn't going to break my spirit (though, it was close on Sunday). I've signed up to do Florida this year since many teammates are doing the race - yay charity slots. I'm coming back with a vengeance on the MDot races. Plans are to either hire a trainer or work with one for a few run and bike sessions to see where I can improve and really blast the course. I'll need to get more comfortable in the aero position, as I'll likely be in it for about 6 hours.

IMUSA in Red, IMFL in Orange. Safe to say, I won't need my brakes.

So, following the rest of this week off, I begin training for the second Ironman in a year. I'll still do Nation's Tri and the Army 10 miler, but I will be scrapping Marine Corp, which falls two weeks before Ironman Florida.

Odd Facts about Cemeteries

I am sure this was the last thing you thought I'd be writing about with Ironman just around the corner.

My mom frequents Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery to visit my dad's grave. Over the past few months, she has called with interesting stories about the happenings around the cemetery (who knew they were so.. active?). Western Reserve has plenty of land to expand to, and with the rise in death rates of veterans, has been doing a lot of work in the cemetery. Adjacent to where dad is buried is a large urn garden. They have been constructing another urn garden beside the first one, which will hold another 5,000 remains. Beside Section 11, where dad is buried, they have been prepping another "section" of land for burials.

Ever wonder what goes into prepping land for burials? Well, here's the process, as accounted by my mom's phone calls:

Step 1: Dig up the ENTIRE section, 8.5 feet deep. Why not 6 feet deep? Double vaults. At OWRNC, both the vet and their spouse, military or nonmilitary, can be buried together. So, everyone gets double deep vaults. By entire section, I'm talking about a space for about 300 burials. Make everything perfectly smooth.
Step 2: Arrange the burial vaults with about a six inches of room around each vault. Gotta have a little bit of elbow room down there. :) Place caps on the vaults.
Step 3: Fill the entire lot with gravel. Yes, gravel. Ever wonder why Arlington National Cemetery (for the DC folks) looks so perfect, whereas most of your city owned cemeteries have a more "bumpy" look to them? Gravel. It prevents any type of ground sink that traditional cemeteries encounter when they backfill with dirt.
Step 4: Spread dirt over the top few inches of the gravel.

When the lot is going to begin housing deceased, the particular plot is dug up, the body is placed at the bottom of the double vault (or top if their roommate's already there), and then the gravel is replaced along with the dirt. Once a whole row is filled, the cemetery will lay strips of sod across the grave sites.

I keep telling my mom to get pictures of the construction in action, but she says she would feel weird snapping pictures. I'll update the post if I ever get pictures, but I happened to find this whole process very interesting. Something you never really think about - I had no idea there was such a science behind grave digging.

I'll update tomorrow once I'm finished packing for Placid - including a how to on ghetto-rigging some new decals for your race wheels.

Lucky number... 6?

It appears I have to rescind my recent post; no longer is it lucky number 5, my odds have moved back to 6. Another girl registered recently, as there are still community fund slots left. My guess are her intentions are to try to qualify too - I'd assume most people don't just wake up in the morning and register for an iron distance race 2 weeks prior to toeing the line. She could be fast, she could be extremely under prepared.

***Post edited for negativity. If you happen to have Reader, you might catch a glimpse of it. But, I was apparently just in a bad, bad mood when I wrote last night. ***


Work's been rough - got the layoff notice on Monday. I knew it was coming, but it doesn't make receiving it any easier. I suppose I'm young and naive.... I feel like I've done nothing but bust my ass for the company, took on jobs that I absolutely did not want, but was promised better things by taking them, and in the end, I was still screwed over. I suddenly understand why working for big companies make people calloused. It has made me calloused. I have money being thrown at me to stay, and a decent sum as severance benefits. I'm not sure that I'm going to take it though... How does someone wake up every day for 5 months knowing that you're only doing work to finish losing your job. I'm a very hard, determined worker. Everyday this week however, I've been plagued with no desire to even go into work, and have hardly done anything. What's the point - I feel like I'm cleaning up the girl before me's mess, so its easier for the folks in Oak Ridge. Why am I making their life easier? The company has officially made me extremely cynical at work.

I'm looking forward to this weekend - a massage, getting things packed up for Ironman, and a guy I used to be pretty close with is in town for some training. I went out with him Wednesday night, and realized how much I really did miss him. I'm looking forward to spending some more time with him before he goes back to Chicago.