I got to see it myself last weekend at Kestrel HQ in Philly, and believe me when I say, it looks even cooler in person. Kestrel's Steve Harad couldn't keep the smile off his face while talking about the details of the new bike and moreover, how bloody fast it tested in the wind tunnel.

Can't WAIT to mount this bad boy!!!

http://www.xtri.com/features_display.aspx?riIDReport=5740&CAT=25&xref=xx

RIP, Richard. Thank you for all you gave to so many.

(video courtesy of Richard's sister)

Last weekend, I got the chance to spend some time with my parents. Dave was having some college buddies into town to play golf and be boys, so I vacated the house, took Riley with me and settled into the relative paradise we like to refer to as “Club 99” (for my parent’s address, 99 Mooncussers Lane).

Life at Club 99 is idyllic. They have a gorgeous water view, the old Chatham Light in the distance and let’s be frank; their refrigerator is a lot better stocked than ours ever is! I dig my parents, so I like getting to hang out with them from time to time.

While I was there, my mom asked if I could go downstairs and either claim, or move to the “trash pile” several boxes full of my old “stuff”. Stuff that had made the move with them from my childhood home in Short Hills, NJ to their retirement home in Chatham, MA. This stuff had been filtered once, 10 years ago, but it was time again to re-filter; some stuff may have fallen out of favor since then.

I was enthralled. Amongst the jewels of memories past, I found my “Lucky Box”; complete with lucky teddy bear that was affixed to balloons that were given to me at my first “Y Nationals Sendoff Party” when I was 13. Amongst other “lucky” trinkets, there was a lucky quarter, a lucky penny, and the rip top from the single serve Total cereal box I had for breakfast before some swim I deemed good enough to save the box top as “lucky”. There was a caricature my Y coach had made of me (he was an amazing artist, and a character as well!) called “The Dede Bird”. It kind of looked like a stork with legs up to its neck. Yep…I guess that fits.

The crown jewel I found was my old training logs from Stanford, and my years as a post-grad swimmer. Man….I could swim. I poured through the volumes of swim workouts, stunned by how fast my body used to move through water. Of course, I never appreciated it at the time.

I even had notations of sets we did that made me cry in my goggles.

With former Stanford coach, Richard Quick’s passing last week, it seemed a fitting tribute to sit and pour through all those old workouts. I may not have always loved the man. In fact, often times I was either intimidated by him or just too tired to try to communicate better with him. According to my notes, he made me cry more than any descent man should ever make a girl cry. But one thing is for sure; while my day-to-day communication with the man has long since ended, it is clear that he’s left an indelible mark on my life.

I don’t cry as often as I used to in workout. Sure, part of that is maturity. Part of it is the fact that you can’t conceal the tears as well behind sunglasses as you can in goggles and since I do most of my training with my coach, and don’t want to be seen as a pansy, I suck it up a little better than I used to. Most of it, though, is the way I view physical challenge now. It’s different than the way I used to. I can thank Richard for that.

I chatted with one of my best friends from college (and today) and we remembered our former coach. “He made us so damn hard,” she said. That he did.

RIP, Richard. You inspired us to be great then, and if I close my eyes now, I can still hear that distinguished ‘yelp’ you used to cry from the side of the pool, and it inspires me now.

To the 4 loyal readers of my blog,

My apologies, but I had to shut down the "comments" feature on my blog. I seem to be under spam attack. I would be getting 57 comments to each blog, which is great. Problem being, only one or 2 were genuine comments. Most others were from SPAM-y sources, so to escape from the spam-a-razzi, I have disabled the comments feature from my blog.

If you wish to email me, you can still do so thru the "contact" section of my website.

Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience!

But I appreciate the interest never the less!

http://www.capecodchronicle.com/sports/sports_061109.htm

I was excited to return to Floripa for Ironman Brazil this year. I had to miss the event last year due to injury. Being 2nd here in 2007, I wanted to try to come back and do just a little bit better!

I arrived on Monday. While it's only an hour time difference from Boston, it's a long trip and I wanted some time to recover from the long travel. Ken Glah and his team at Endurance Sports Travel took excellent care of me all week. I can’t say enough about their level of professionalism and support. In fact, at one point during race week, I got some of the best advice I could have gotten from one of Ken’s staff. I went in to ask for help and Gaby looked at me and said “You look stressed. You should go eat some dessert.”

I settled in quickly, but my bike had some other ideas. It started to freak out on me; a broken shifter, a tire puncture and lastly, a busted stem, all in the days leading up to the race. It seemed the race would either be dynamite ...or a disaster!

I had some fun in the pre-race week as well. I met the entire team from Saucony in Brazil. They became my adopted family for the week and took care of me as Dave would have if he’d been there. Rodrigo got me to a pool so I could pool swim just once; as Karen says, better for my head than my body….but it all counts! I got to do some promotional stuff with them as well and had a blast meeting tons of Brazilians attending the expo who were excited about the race, and hopefully excited about Saucony!

I tried to put all the stress of pre-race week behind me as my feet hit the ground out of bed on race morning. My friends at Kestrel had done a fantastic job in helping me to resolve all of my bike issues and now it was time to race.

I feasted on my pre-race meal of unsweetened applesauce, a banana, and some Infinit drink at 4AM, followed by a Zone bar at 5. Got to transition and took care of all my business and before I knew it, we were at the start line.

The buoy placement was a bit odd. The first turn buoy was not straight ahead of the start line, but far to the right. As it turns out, the turn buoy moved further and further right as we swam toward it. On the beach, race officials decided to abandon the swim cut off time because we were all chasing a moving target for that first buoy. How's that for an added twist?!

Water conditions were quite difficult as well. Very choppy! I felt great in my BlueSeventy Helix, however, and with the added work I'd done this season on the Vasa Ergometer, I felt like I was powering thru what were less than ideal conditions.

I ran from the water into T1 and was greeted by my motorbike escort who pointed at his bike marker which read "1 Lugar" (first place). He gave me the thumbs up as if to say "good swim". And we were off. My goal was to have “1 Lugar” follow me the entire ride!

On the bike, I had some nutritional problems. My Infinit drink mix splattered everywhere on the cobblestone section and I lost, maybe 100 calories. About 15K into the bike, I noticed my gel flask which housed another 300 calories was gone. The Velcro had slipped off the flask due to the condensation and was lying somewhere on the road.....well behind me. So I pretty much had 300 Infinit calories to tide me over to special needs. I'd have to switch to Gatorade to make up the deficit.

At the first aid station, I grabbed a Gatorade, but 5-thumbs Griesbauer here dropped it almost instantly. Next aid station, I was going way too fast and launched 3 bottles, grabbing none. Finally, the third aid station, and final before special needs, I managed to grab a Gatorade and get it down.

And then it came right back up, all over my beautiful Kestrel.

Relieved to finally get to special needs, I reloaded my Infinit inventory, and pressed on. Monitoring my wattage, I felt strong on the bike, but well under control. I could see that the women behind me were....well, still behind me. My lead seemed to have grown to somewhere around 6 minutes by the end of the bike.

I knew that there were some great runners in the field; Heather, Lisbeth, Charlotte, Sara, Fernanda; all tremendous athletes and fierce competitors. They'd be coming for me until 20 yards PAST the finish line.

Running had never been my strength, but I have been working tirelessly on it with Karen, with Alex, my running coach, and with Jesse who helped me with some very useful gait analysis. I was determined to have a good run.

My pacing was on, but the hilly section definitely took some wind out of my sails. After the hills, I struggled to regain my pace. I was off about 10 seconds per K than from before the hills. My lead was increasing, however, so I did my best to maintain form, monitor nutrition and not do anything stupid!

In the end, I came away with the win. I savored every second of that finish chute; high-fiving the spectators, blowing kisses to the crowd, waving and giving a little fist pump. In the end, I celebrated just about 11 seconds too long. I wound up missing the course record by 11 seconds. Apparently the announcer was shouting "She's going to get the record if she can just get across the line". My friends from Saucony Brazil who were there as a major sponsor of the race were yelling at the announcer to "Say it in English...she doesn't understand Portuguese". But it was too late. I came up 11 second short....but it gives me every reason to come back and do it just a little better next time.

Tremendous thanks to all my sponsors; Saucony, Kestrel, The Zone, Fuel Belt, Team Psycho, BlueSeventy, Oval, Infinit and Vasa. And to my coach Karen who puts up with my endless BS and makes me laugh when I want to cry. To Eric, Alex and Jesse for making me stronger and leaner. To my Team Psycho training mates who push the pace early and often every day in training. And to my husband Dave for whom I don't have the words to thank enough.

Stay tuned for "Ironman Brazil, Part Deux, the Aftermath".....coming soon!

So the saga did not end with (insert bike shop name here) and Headset Boy. Oh, no. That would have been far too simple.

I arrived in Brazil, reasonably without issue. Made my way through Sao Paulo OK. My connection to Florainapolis was on time. Easy peazy.

I unpacked my bike and on Tuesday (my first full day here), took him out for a spin. My legs, surprisingly, felt great. Though the shifting was just a wee bit off on my bike. I figured putting the race wheel on and such – just needed a tiny barrel adjustment or something.

Ken Glah staffs an amazing group with all his trips, and so since I am linked with Endurance Sports Travel for the race, I figured I would take advantage; I brought the bike to his very capable mechanics. With little worry, I went about my day and returned later in the afternoon to retrieve my bike. Johnny Lin, the mechanic whose English is far better thatn my Portuguese, explained that he did not have good news for me.

He’d adjusted the barrel. Nothing. He swapped out the cable that headset boy had installed. Nothing. Finally, and with a bit of a head scratch, he disassembled the shifter and bingo. Busted. Now a right SRAM Red TT shifter was not something that Johnny and his team had stocked in their bake-shift bike triage room here at the hotel and who would blame them (though wouldn’t that have been an easy fix).

Instead, I flew back to my room and frantically put everyone I knew into panic mode. My ever-patient husband Dave raced home and sent one to me via Fed Ex with the hope that it would make it here by Friday. I called Steve Harad from Kestrel who was minutes from boarding a plane in China for a 48 hour trip home. He immediately called his local distributor who set about a plan of his own. Meanwhile, my friends at SRAM busied themselves with trying to locate one as well.

Scramble, scramble, scramble. Meanwhile, the rest of Ken’s staff here tried to calm me and kept repeating “no worries”. In fact, my friend Gaby who has been SO helpful to me here told me, ”You look stressed. You should eat some dessert.” So I guess the core diet has done its trick as well…I look skinny…and stressed!

In the end, my wonderful support team got the job done. SRAM was able to locate one through a distributor. Ken’s mechanics went to the expo and fetched it for me and installed it and even gave the bike a onceover to make sure nothing else went awry.

Finally, I slept well last night….only to wake up and realize (gulp)…I have an Ironman on Sunday.

Thanks to a great team of sponsors and supporters. I could truly not do it without you good folks!

Meanwhile, Karen went into calming mode. She provided me with this list of suggestions for learning how to cope with the“no worries” attitudes of folks who live on Brazil time (which is so similar to Smyers time, so that’s why I sought her advice on this one) in my high-strung, type-A head. These gave me a big chuckle and so I figured I would pass them along for any of you other type-A’ers out there.
Tips for a type-A on getting by in a “no worries” admosphere:

1. Set your watch back 30 minutes--that way when you show up 5 mins early, you will really be 25 mins late which should be about right.
2. View all time schedules as suggestions rather than firm commitments..
3. Try to squeeze twice as many things in to the time available--that
way when you run over, you will end up on their schedule.
4. Never pad your time requirements for unforeseen traffic or walking
from car to destination, etc. That is conceding time you need for
other things.
5. Have a glass of wine before going places--it will take the edge
of any sense of urgency.
6. If you still have to wait despite all the tricks above, repeat the
phrase, "Like water off a duck..." until you mean it.


Good luck, type-A’ers. I think we can do it!