Journal of Pier Luck

Last Thursday, we went to spin class and then I went to swim class while Dustin was doing his research job. Christine wasn't there, so I just did my own thing for an hour in the pool and I really did some sprints and pushed myself really hard. I swam a 50 in 45 seconds, so that's a lot better than I used to be (over a minute when I would try hard). Not that I really need to work on sprints, since we'll be swimming 2.4 miles for the race! Friday, we were off and went to the Team in Training Pasta Party at Anheiser Busch Brewery which was really cool. All of our teammates, including those from Gainesville and Tallahassee were there and we met them, enjoyed some pasta and got inspired by a speaker who was in remission from Hodgkin's Lymphoma. We were ready to do the sprint and see many of our teammates who had never done a triathlon before, and some who had never swam in the ocean before! On Saturday, we got to the race site about 6:15 AM for the 7:30 race. We were wearing...

Well, that bike ride in Clermont was the hardest thing I've ever done. It was actually harder than the half ironman, partially because of the heat. We didn't get started until after 9 AM and it was already hot. It got up to 96 degrees and there were NO clouds in the sky and no shade! We ended up doing 67 miles on and around a 12 mile hilly loop. We did the infamous "Sugarloaf" hill twice, which was the hardest, but also many other significant hills in between. We were going 4 mph on the way up and 42 mph on the way down the big hill. We were low on energy after 40 miles, but still managed to do 27 more, so that's pretty darn good and I am proud of us! Towards the end, after going up and down so many hills, we decided we needed to finish on some flats, but what is funny is that we couldn't find any! We drove all this way to find hills and then we couldn't find any flats! It was a bit ironic. Dustin apparently still hasn't figured out his nutri...

Once again, life has caught up with me and the blog has gotten the back burner. First of all, my grandma is done with all her chemo and now she has to wait over a month for another scan to see if the tumors are gone, so it’s just a waiting game now. She is in good spirits and she did VERY well with chemo, especially for being 80 years old. I am proud of her, and I know that sounds weird coming from a grandaughter to a grandmother, but I am proud of her strength and positive attitude and I could only hope that I would have the same if I ever was diagnosed of cancer. You know that is one of the most widely feared things in the US—getting cancer. So, we haven’t been doing our training calendar 100%. As I said before, life intervened and we had other things to do with the business and with fundraising. We got our Medicare number finally after 216 days of waiting, so now we will actually be able to bill for our services that we have rendered since October. We were also "spring cleaning...

The reason why I haven't been blogging is because we took a little dip in our training to recover from our race; it turned out to be longer than anticipated, but that's okay. I don't think we lost too much. Besides, we had our awesome friends in town (first Jeff and Kendra and then Tony and Susan a few days later). We boated a lot (3 days in a row with Tony and Susan), ate out a LOT, even at Ruth's Chris for Susan's birthday, and spent a lot of time on the beach and had a few cocktails, so we took a needed break from training. Last Tuesday, I did a 3.5 mile run and then Dustin and I did Yoga. Dustin had a sore throat and wasn't feeling like running. We did do an ocean "swim" last Wed with TNT and Roberta helped us with entries and exits from the water. Then, we forgot our running shoes, so couldn't run with the group, but came home, and despite us wanting to lie on the couch and watch TV, we got our running shoes on and did 5 miles down Kernan....