I've taken a few stumbles on a mountain bike in my day and one or two silly road bike fall-overs waiting for a stop light, but this weekend I had my first good road bike crash and burn. Yesterday, when the predicted rain didn't come, I decided to head out on an easy ride by myself. Doug was "mulching" and I didn't think that sounded like nearly as much fun.
As I nearly got to the turn around spot (ie, the farthest point from our house...thanks Murphy), I went to take a left hand turn and all of a sudden my bike slid out from under me and I had no time to get my feet out my pedals, so I fell on my elbow, hip, shoulder and noggin. Luckily, this was the first time out with my new helmet (an awesome sample from Rudy Project!), so it held up just as it was supposed to. Like all things, it happened so quickly that before I knew it, I was laying in the middle of the road accessing the damage. When I un-clipped my feet I saw a big puddle of liquid, my first thought was blood. Luckily, I quickly realized it was just from my water bottle popping open. Phew!
Elbow ding
(hip is sexy, but you're not seeing it, it's a little high:)
Once I scurried to the side of the road, I saw my elbow was bleeding, but my shorts didn't rip on my hip and my head seemed to be okay (I've gotten pretty good at self-diagnosing concussions). So, I realigned by handlebars that were horribly askew and tried to get back on and continue riding. About 30 ft. later I realized my front tire was flat and my hip was hurting, so I got mad, got off my bike and sulked for about 2 minutes and decided I didn't want to fix my flat, I just wanted to get home. Unfortunately, I didn't have my phone, so I flagged down some old people and borrowed their phone to call Doug. Here was the conversation:
Me - Hey, it's me, I crashed my bike and have a flat tire, can you please come pick me up. I'm by the race track.
Doug - You're okay right?
Me - Yeah, banged up, but I'm okay.
Doug - Why don't you try changing your tire?
Me - Doug, please just come and get me. My elbow hurts and I don't feel like fixing my tire right now.
Doug - I'll definitely come get you, but I really think it would be a great chance to try to change your tire in a stressful situation, it could be good practice if it happens in a race.
Me - Can we talk about this later? I'm borrowing someone's cell phone, can you please just come pick me up?
Needless to say, I didn't fix my tire, I walked my bike up the road until I saw Doug. He looked at me, decided I would survive and said "so, you didn't change your tire did you?"
I suppose that sometimes it's good to have a partner that is unsympathetic. It makes me not sweat the small stuff and makes me tougher...I didn't even cry when I fell. But sometimes I really just want someone to feel bad for me. So, when I got home I called my mom and told her all about it (and all about Doug's reaction) and of course I got the sympathy I was looking for.
Today I feel like I got hit by a car, but I'll survive and at some point I'll even get around to fixing my damn tire.
Last night we had the last soccer game of our season and it was a hard fought match that ended in a scoreless tie, 0-0. The score didn't reflect the game though, as our team dominated the whole time and had way too many near misses to count. The post was not on our side all night.
In the first half, I reached up weird for a ball with my left leg and tweaked my left butt muscle/hamstring and then with about 5 minutes to go in the game I ran down field to help on defense and when I went to clear a ball, my toe got caught on a rip in the turf and I overextended my ankle. I crawled off the field and hobbled home. When I woke up this morning it hurt like a mo-fo! So does my ham-butt!
My cankle
(You're not seeing a pic of my ham-butt, sorry.)
As much as I love soccer and don't want to have to give it up, I think it's probably the best thing for me to do. I end up on the ground far more than anyone else (I like to think it's because I'm aggressive, but I'm pretty sure it's just because I'm clumsy) and with more injuries. Maybe I am too old for all of this stuff:)
My 13 year old boy sense of humor got the best of me today when I got this dollar bill as change.
Isn't it amazing the difference a couple letters make?
Gearing up for the NYC Triathlon is different than any other race because I'm so involved in the actual event with work, that I often forget that I'm doing the race. This year we had 6 booths at the expo and I had to set up everything and work the event the first day. It's always fun to meet the other athletes and try to give the beginners pointers. You could tell these people anything and they would listen because they are all so nervous!
Race morning was a very early 3am wake up call, kind of miserable if you ask me. And leaving the house in rain doesn't help matters. I was in a pretty yucky mood all morning, through transition set up, the one mile walk up the Hudson and then the hour + wait in the pouring rain all added to the stank face. The race start got delayed because a car flipped over on our bike course and caused an oil slick and left a lot of debris, so we just hung out waiting for the go ahead. Once the race started, it moved pretty quickly. I gave Doug a hand hug as he headed off and then my wave was about 15 minutes after that.
Oh man, a 3am wake up call does not look good on me.
The swim was nutty. It's known as one of the fastest Olympic distance swims because you are going with the current of the Hudson River. This year, we still had a pretty good current, but we also had a head wind that caused major waves coming right in your face. I'm talking 2-3 foot waves hitting you in the face with nasty Hudson sludge water...not fun. I doggy paddled a fair amount to get around panicked swimmers who were getting plucked and saved from the water left and right. By the end of the swim I was feeling nauseous from being bounced around so much. *(edited to add - 2 people ended up dying in the swim and over 30 people had to be taken out of the water and put on rescue boats) After getting out of the water it was a 1/2 mile barefoot run to the transition area to pick up my bike.
I looked at this at every transition and it kept my spirits high
Unfortunately, I forgot what rack my bike was in (probably because I racked it at 4:30am and it was still dark out), so I ended up having to run around looking for it. Not a great use of time. Once I actually found my bike and got moving, I felt pretty good. The rain had left some pretty good size puddles on the highway that didn't give me any problems, but I know a bunch of people crashed out of the race by hitting a pothole in the middle of the puddle. On the way back we had a pretty good head wind, but the rain had stopped and the sun started creeping out, so it wasn't too bad.
Oh there you are!
The run was awesome. I started out feeling good and other than being out of breath and quite pooped near the end, I held my pace and did a 10K PR of 45:48! I ended up seeing Doug with 1/4 mile to go to the finish, so I crept up behind, scared him and then kicked it into my last gear to finish strongly. He was hurting pretty badly, so didn't want to go with me. Luckily, we still finished really closely to each other, so we recovered for a few and hit the road!
Somehow the genius camera person got a picture of the two of us together on the final stretch of the run.
I ended up finishing 8th in my age group and 16th overall for women, which I was happy with. NYC is always a tough race with stiff competition, so to be in the top 10 was great for me. It also qualified me to race in the championships of some sort in Des Moines, Iowa...umm, yeah, I'm going to take time off work, spend a lot of money to travel and I'm going to go to Iowa? I don't think so. (Spell check doesn't register Des Moines as a real place either).
Doug finished in the top 1/3 of his age group and overall men without training at all for this race. Turns out he's a really good big wave swimmer!
This is the most prep Doug had done in a few weeks for this race!
All in all, it was a good weekend for the Jamison's.
10 years ago Doug's good friends Dan and Gretchen got married in Santa Margherita, Italy in an abbey overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. I was still in college, but was able to skip out of school for a bit and go with Doug. This wedding was the most glamorous event I've ever been to and one I will never forget. Lucky for us, we get to relive it in 3 weeks!!!
Santa Margherita
This all came about because a couple weeks ago we got an invitation in the mail for Dan and Gretchen's wedding anniversary party in Santa Margherita. We thought about it, went back and forth "it's not great timing," "I'm busy at work at that time," "can we afford it?," "what are we going to do with the dogs"...and then reality struck. Of course we have to do it! They are great friends, they invited us to party with them in ITALY and how many other opportunities are we going to get to go to Italy on a whim? So, I'm working hard now to get everything done at work before deadlines, I've found a friend to watch one dog and Doug's parents to watch the other and we are using frequent flier miles to get there.
Our plan is to fly into Florence, spend a couple days there and then take the train to SM for the rest of the trip, (which is only 5 days). Florence will be galleries and city walking and SM will be beaching, hiking and hanging with friends. Now I have something to countdown to!
