Habari Gani? (What's the news?): June 2009

Rainy Reno

Just before the tri, we were in Reno. I had to attend and present at a conference (which went very well), so we thought we'd make it a mini-vacation. Bad idea.

It rained every single day we were there, except the day we drove to the airport. We planned on doing some hiking in Tahoe, renting bikes, running the streets of Reno...No. We spent a week inside a casino, where the blinking and buzzing and dinging numb your brain and you can never tell whether it's night or day.

We tried going out to the pool one day, but it rained. We went to Harrah's automobile museum, where they had tons of awesome cars and a pretty cool Ed Roth/Rat Fink exhibit. I got a sweet t-shirt. Ophelia talked to EVERY car we looked at. She's truly an Eddens and a Meyer. I fell in love the grills. Somethin' about those round light eyes and shiny metal mouths.

Mostly, when I wasn't at the conference, we spent our time at Circus Circus playing video games, which was actually totally fun. You can only gamble so much when you don't want to spend money and can't take a baby on the gaming floor, so House of Dead 4, Fast and the Furious and good ol' SkeeBall satisfied our need for a thrill. We also got to see Sam's sister Erin, who was in the process of moving from Tempe, AZ to Portland, OR. Pretty awesome. We don't get to visit with her much, and she and her friend Bethany stayed a day with us, with Bethany's dog PJ stuffed in a doggie dufflebag and toted along.

I'm thinking we'll never go back to Reno, except perhaps to pass through to Lake Tahoe. Reno is pretty much an armpit. I did at least get some cute pics though...

Harrah's automobile museum

A few of my favorite car faces

Sam snapped these photos of the Ed Roth hot rods

Rain over Tahoe

Tuckered out

We were at the pool about 10 minutes and then...

Tuckered out redux

Look, the sun! Oh...we're on the way to the airport.

Plug it, Daddy!

Triathletes!

6:34 PM | 3 comments

Sam and I finished our first triathlon on Saturday, and our team raised over $104,000 for The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. How's that for awesome!?!?

I did the 1000 yard swim in 24 minutes, which was a personal record for me. The fastest I swam it in the pool was 33 minutes, so the wetsuit makes a big difference. I did the 28 mile bike in 1:37 minutes. I was a little disappointed in my time. Technically, that would be an average of a little over 17 miles an hour, although my official race pace was 16.0 miles an hour. I did a good job of maintaining about 19-21 mph on the rolling highway hills, but those hills inside Innsbrook are pretty killer, and I crawled up some of them at 4-6 mph. I saw other people walking their bikes up hills, so at least I managed to stay on! I also had to stop at one point because I accidentally tore off my race number while shoving an empty goo packet into my jersey. That added a minute or so onto my time. But, I really felt good!

The run was a different story. I felt great coming into it, with the exception of one point where I thought I was gonna throw up on the bike. But as soon as I started running, I got hit with severe stomach and chest cramps. I felt like someone had taken a balloon and blown it up inside my body, and then proceeded to stab me repeatedly. When I got to the first mile marker, I stopped at the aid station completely convinced that I would throw up. Clearly the sports goos that I had had eaten on the bike to maintain energy had done a number on me. I drank a little water, took two electrolyte pills and pressed on. But the run course was very hilly, and I ended up walking most of it, with an average of over 14 minute miles. NOT good.

But, I felt great coming across the finish line, Sam and the team yelling my name. The run consisted of a loop that you ran twice, which was kind of a tease, because when you made the first loop you ran up to the finish line and turned around. When I came in to start the second loop Sam had already finished. His total time was 2 hours, 47 minutes. Mine was 3 hours, 43 minutes. That includes transition times. I took a little less than 5 minutes in both transitions, mostly because I took a second to kiss Ophelia, say hello to Lindsay and Jenny who were there watching O...and, it was so exciting to see Casey and Lana and Raleigh cheering me on as I ran up the hill from the swim!

This has been such a fantastic experience. The people on my team are really wonderful, and you know you'll find good people when you're doing this for a cause. At our pre-race pasta dinner, our LLS staff person had made giant posters of all of our honored teammates, including Hap and H.R., and posted them up with thank yous and motivational words. It was really cool.

I really can't recommend Team in Training enough. My sister Pam is training for a half-marathon now with TNT, and I think we should get a whole Eddens team together for an event next year. It's been so nice to spend this time with Sam. We're considering training for an Ironman or half-Iron, but training takes a lot of time, a lot of babysitting support, and I don't know if I can do it again while in school. But we're both doing two more tris this summer, at least. So come see us at The Big Shark New Town Triathlon in July, and the Lake St. Louis tri in August. I've posted a few photos for your entertainment!