This one is a little self referential but you can create them with any amount of contact info you want depending on the site you use. Very cool and way fun. And yes – I’m a nerd.

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Saturday was long run day – I had to run 2 hours.  It was also a day when many members of my club race at the Back to School 5K or 10K and those not racing go out and volunteer.  Many of my New Triathlete Program people (NTP aka newbies) said they would volunteer and I really wanted to be there to see them the day before our big triathlon and just to be a part of it all.  I also really needed to go see my foster kid for whom I am an advocate through the Court Appointed Special Advocates program (check out the national site to see more).  This child lives hours from me so I had to allocate 2 hours to run and 5 hours of travel time plus the visit plus I had to be up at OMG:thirty on Sunday so I needed to get home early.  I couldn’t work out getting the race in (I guess I could have raced 10K and then run another hour but there aren’t any showers there and racing wasn’t on the plan) so I didn’t go and it felt sort of wrong but very right.  There are things in life that really are more important than triathlon and race clubs and foster kids in need of an anchor is definitely one of them.

My 2 hour run was fine – it felt good and that was exciting because the run and I have not been such good friends lately.  Score!

Sunday was the day of the race I’ve been training the Newbies for.  Most of them had already done a shorter sprint and some had even done an Olympic distance race but this was our big club event and I was so excited.  I didn’t race but I did do the swim with a woman who was very nervous about getting run over by the swim waves behind us (our club gets to go in the first wave en masse and there was quite a mass of us!).  I was there to defend her water space and help her stay calm and I did and she exited the water all in one piece.  After that I ran up to the bike course to cheer people on and then I headed up to the water station to cheer some more and pass out water. Turns out I positioned myself incorrectly and missed some people that way but it was fun.  Then I went down to the finish line to cheer everyone in.

I really wanted o stay and be at the award ceremony and just hang out and talk to everyone about their race  and I wish I had because NTP had people on the podium! How great is that??!!  Alas – I had a long ride on the plan so off I went with my 2 new BFFs and a friend of theirs.  It was a tough, long ride and it was hot and windy but it was great.  There was a moment when I was sure I couldn’t do it and I really worried about how I was going to get out of there but some cold water and a PayDay later and I was fine and rode strong – no problem.

Elevation from gpsvisualizer (top) and from MapMyRide (bottom)

That's it - you ride almost 40 miles and this is what is there

We got back to the park where our cars were right about the time the Challenge Weekend Celebration BBQ was starting but we were sweaty and gross and really needed to get cleaned up.  I had neglected to bring clean clothes but my BFFs had several outfits each with them as well as soap and shampoo and cream rinse so we all used the outdoor, cold water shower and cleaned up in our tri suits and then put clean clothes on (in the privacy of the ladies changing room) and finally, finally headed to the party arriving a mere 90 minutes late to a 2 hour party.  Great.

But it was great because I got a chance to say some words about my fabulous Newbies who stepped up and trained and made their dreams come true.  I’ve hatched a litter of tri-junkies and I couldn’t be happier about it.  I’m so proud of them and so very happy to have played a role in giving them a chance to do something they might not otherwise have done.  I said my words and I handed out a little memento to each of them and then they took the floor.  One of them read a whole story about how there is no “I” in  TEAM and about how great the program had been and how she had made friends and accomplished something wonderful.  Another woman gave a speech about me that made me blush and made me proud and made me feel loved  and then they gave me something to remember this inaugural season with – a Garmin 310XT and a $50 gift certificate to Forward Motion Store, our primary benefactor.  Wow – just wowl  *Channeling Sally Field* -“You LIKE me… right now.  You  LIKE me!”  I’m so humbled and so happy and so very jazzed about my new toy!  But I’m more jazzed that several of the newbies want to ban together to train for an Oly.  Success!

Looking forward, one of the things possibly on my plate is getting a slot for IM Canada when I race Oceanside.  Because it is so early in the year the carrot they dangle to athletes is the potential to get a slot at any of a couple of NA Sports M-dot races and Canada  is one of them (but shhh… don’t tell everyone about this because it’s kind of a secret, okay?).  I have several friends who are going to race and a few more racing Oceanside so they can get slots.  It’s a possibility but one I don’t think I’ll take because this weekend I figured out something really important about me.

My “moment” came when I realized that triathlon is a fundamentally self indulgent endeavor but I am not a fundamentally self indulgent person.  I spend a lot of time volunteering and giving to others because I like it and it makes me feel good.    I feel good about having become an athlete, too but the trade offs cause me stress. This weekend was a great example of that where I was torn between being with my race club and being with my foster kid and being with my race club and getting in my training.  I had to just take a deep breath and let it go but it was difficult.  It all worked out in the end but in the process it made me feel a little crazy.

I’d like to do the NTP next year again and I’d like to help organize this year’s newbies to train for an Oly and I’d like to train with them.  This year my direct participation in their training fell off because I signed up for Beach 2 Battleship and if I raced Canada I’d have a worse problem because it is in August and the training would consume my whole summer.    So again – the opportunity for conflict and stress is huge and I’m a ‘want it all’ kind of gal.  I’m a problem solver, too so here’s the solution:    I’m going to race Oceanside which means training up  a 70.3 on  March 27.  I’ve also decided that  I’m going to attend IM St. George in some capacity.  If I love 140.6 after B2B I might do a fund raiser and buy a community slot for 2010 (I’d pay my $550 and raise the rest) and attend IM  St. George as a participant.   If  I don’t want to do that I can just go be a Sherpa and then sign up for 2011 on-site.  Either way my IM training and season will be over in early May at the latest  and I can get on with the business of playing, training  newbies, and racing shorter distance races.  Brilliant and perfect and what a great Monday it’s been.

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They are hosting my blog, too.  It’s very cost effective because I can deal with the technology and not be made crazy by the platform. My former host, the incomparable Amazing Hip runs a different platform and it out nerded me with the latest upgrade.  Jane left the building and I could not figure out how to get her back in so I fled.

The very lovely  Sisters Runner Susan and Runner Amy set up the blog and designed my masthead.  Fabulos-o, non?  OUI!  I hope you enjoy it as much as me – and yes I do mean I hope you enjoy the design as much as you enjoy reading my blog, if not more so.

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My benefactor, Jeff, has upgraded the platform and in so doing had to lay down a new template. The beauty of this plan is that it has anti-spam features which I desperately need. Spammers and email hackers should all be sent to jail – immediately!

Anyhow, I’ll be dressing the place up again anon although I’m kind of liking this clean look for a moment.

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I said I would review their new training site but that I needed a HRM to do it justice and so they sent me one – what a lucky girl!

The training site has a few things to offer. First of all, if you like house/techno music they have some for free download for your training pleasure. I prefer rock so I’m not using theirs but it has the right BPM so please, help yourselves.

They also have some training plans designed by Gale Bernhardt and Dave Scott. Specifically they have 2 beginner sprint distance plans and 1 beginner Olympic distance plan by Gale Bernhardt, 1 novice and 2 intermediate Olympic distance swim plans by Dave Scott, and a strength building plan by Dave Scott. Since I swim with masters and since I’m not a beginner any more I will be using the Dave Scott strength building plan. Developing greater strength to help me better my triathlon times is next season’s goal.

I will be also be mounting an “Abs Watch” series of posts in which I reveal my bare midriff as it evolves for what I hope will be your viewing pleasure. I took the first picture and let me just say it will not be revealed until I can compare it to the first picture showing some progress. I know I’ve done it before but apparently that was just a lucky shot. I’m not ready for you to see what I’ve going on just yet.

Getting back to my new BFF – I have tried it out a few times now. I did a very hilly ride yesterday on Mines Rd, coming up out of Lake Del Valle that looked like this:

The top of the scale is 1900 and the bottom is 650 for an elevation gain of 1250 ft. Respectable. In fact, I had sweat pouring off my face so yea – respectable. What I really wanted to know was how close to redline I was. Without a heart rate monitor there is no telling but with one I can tell you that my max HR was 162 – well below my max of 178. I love knowing that I have more to give if I need to so thanks, Timex!

I’ve also worn this device running twice. Today I even tried to use the lap button so I could correlate the HR to the mile speed. With this particular device I have to wear my Garmin 201 as well so with those 2 things and an iPod strapped to my arm I looked like Robo-Runner. I did a pretty poor job with the lap button (because with the iPod I don’t hear the Garmin beep at each mile) but I have figured out that on a normal run my HR averages about 145. That’s good information, too.

I expect this device will be most useful for track work and interval training on the bike. I’m going to use it to peg my VO2 Max so stay tuned for the next episode of “How a HRM Changed My Life”

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I was going to write a post about my crazy anxiety dream about the Escape from Alcatraz and I was going to tell you about how I didn’t get a job I really wanted and about how part of that dream was emblematic of how I am feeling about life right now but I just wasn’t feeling it. Then, this morning my sweet Humbly Anne called in tears to tell me that her computer – the one that was working fine last night when she turned it off, the one that is holding all of the files she needs to finish her graduate school applications, the one she was planning on working on all day today, wouldn’t start. The power came on but the disk didn’t spin and the Operating System never came up.

That reminded me that I have been meaning to admonish the whole blogosphere to back up your computers and to tell you how to do it. It’s really easy and the pain of losing a hard drive or a computer can be really severe. Just ask my daughter.

How you back stuff up is a function of how much stuff you have. If you have a lot of digital photos on your machine you probably want to burn those to a CD or a DVD for safe keeping. Many of us have lots of photos stored on-line at sites like Flickr and Photobucket but I know I still have a ton of stuff on my hard drive so I back it up to physical media because there are so many gigabytes and getting stuff off the CDs is faster than downloading it from the internet where I back up everything else.

There are a number of sites where you can easily back up all of your documents and it will run every day, automatically. I like these sites because:
1). They are very easy to set up. You download and install a small program and then use the easy, intuitive interface to point and click or drag and drop the folders you want backed up.
2). They run automatically every day to backup any new or changed files. The first time it runs takes a while but after that it is very quick and painless.
3). They are encrypted and very secure. In fact, if you lose your password you are hosed because the service doesn’t store it and it is used as your encryption key.
4). They keep your files in the same structure as on your hard drive (same folders and sub folder)
5). They compress your files so that 2 GB of storage space holds more than 2 GB of your data
6). If you use a laptop and it isn’t connected to the internet for the scheduled backup time or if your desktop machine is not turned on, the backup will run immediately the next time your computer has an internet connection.
7). Peace of mind is knowing that nothing will ever be lost.

Here are some sites:

eDrive – you can backup 2 GB for free or, for $4.95/mo have unlimited space on their servers.
Mozy - same as iDrive
iBackup – $9.95/mo for 5 GB. This is a little fancier in that it saves entire backups from earlier dates so you can restore from a point back in time. Not probably necessary for home use but nice.

I have used iDrive and iBackup and they are both super easy. I suspect Mozy is the same.

What should you back up?
Photos
Documents
Spreadsheets
Presentations
Databases
Graphics files
Financial data (Quicken, Quickbooks, MS-Money)
eMail stored in Outlook or another desktop client
Music folders
Anything else that is important to you

What shouldn’t you back up?
Software. You cannot restore software the way you can restore files – it has to be loaded. There are programs that can restore an entire drive, software and all but you don’t need that for home use. What you need are legal, legitimate copies of all of your software so that if you lose a drive or a computer you can load it again.

Another thing you can do to be double safe if you are working on something important right now is to save your document to an email on your internet email account. In fact, you can store lots of stuff in email but that isn’t reliable. If you use one of these backup programs it will run automatically every day and store any files that are new or have changed if they are in a folder that you specified should be backed up.

If using the internet and having your files on some strange server gives you the creeps then buy a large, external hard drive and learn how to use the software that comes with it. I suspect they all come with some sort of backup software that will run automatically but I don’t know. I prefer the on-line solution.

Another thing you must do is make sure you have legal, current copy of a virus scanner on your machine. The $40 you spend is well worth it because you can pick up a virus anywhere and a nasty virus can bring your system to its knees. McAfee , Symantec (Norton) and Avast are all fine

Please don’t ever find yourself wailing “My whole life was on that computer!” because it’s gone or dead. Practice safe computing by backing your stuff up and running a virus scanner so that you can dream dreams and not live a nightmare.

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