No Blues for Me!

The one good thing about feeling really really really really crappy all day on race day is that the post IM blues.... well, they don't really exist. I would much rather NOT relive that day, thank you very much! However, the weeks following IMLP have been quite awesome.

I don't have many good pictures of me when racing IMLP. I looked sick and scary during the race, especially at the end. The photos of me during the race simply provide photographic evidence that nausea and dehydration in the extreme are not exactly becoming.  So we'll just skip any more pictures of that, and I offer you a slew of other pictures instead.

Here is a picture from the next day at the awards ceremony--the podium of men/women 40-44. You can see Ange and me up there, and between us is my friend Stacey, who placed 2nd in our AG
.

Right after the awards ceremony we went cliff jumping. Ange's brother, Jeff, and his wife, Leigh, found this place when they were  hunting around for things to do on Saturday before the race.

Okay, I admit--I was really lame and didn't get in the water. I still felt sick, and just couldn't handle a jump! But Andy jumped and I sportingly took pictures. The kids loved it. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.

When we got home from Lake Placid I immediately re-packed and headed up to Maine with the kids. We stayed at my parents' awesome house on the ocean in Cape Elizabeth. Alina and I ate and ate and drank margaritas while we ignored the mayhem of our six kids as they danced, stomped, ran and yelled around us. It was fabulous. Jordan and Maria (Alina's oldest) went to kayaking and paddle-boarding camp during the day. The camp was at Kettle Cove where Ted's (a tri friend from Cape) daughter, Maggie was the instructor.  They loved camp and Maggie and now Jordan is begging for both a kayak and a paddle board. At the end of the week Alina actually splurged an DID get a paddle board! She and Maria are hooked.

Here are our other four kids at Kettle Cove playing while Maria and Jordan kayak.

We spent a lot of time just hanging around the house. It's a pretty sweet spot, so there is not a great deal of incentive to leave. The pups loved it, too.

 Maria and Ernie playing tug.

 Lara and Dara sitting by the frog pond.

 Maria, Noah and Ernie wrestling.

 Hazel being a very good girl (for once).

Jordan. Just standing there.

We also managed to get up to Ocean Park (30 minutes south) to get in some family time with the Holts and some beach time.

Here Maria an Alanna (cousin) make a break for the ocean while Lara re-thinks her desire to take the plunge.

On Friday we had a huge party in Ocean Park--the "fiesta"--to which a ton of my extended family on the Holt side came. Laura, my sister, got Max (Alanna's miniature pony) and gave the kids pony rides. Awesome day, I must say.

I'm back to training.
I love training.
And I especially love training in Maine.

I had a few short and fast bike rides this week. (Riding in Cape Elizabeth is FAR less hilly than in my section of Massachusetts, so I feel like a rocket when riding there.)
I had a few slightly slow but enjoyable runs along the ocean, and I had three awesome swims.

On Monday I went to do my swim workout in an outdoor pool in Portland. Perhaps unsurprisingly, outdoor lap pools in Maine are rather uncommon, so swimming in one is a super super special treat. Alina watched the kids while I did my workout. (She is a tres good friend, no?) On Wednesday and Friday I swam in the Atlantic off Old Orchard Beach.  The water is SO warm right now--I swear I could've gone sans wetsuit. But I didn't. Too much icky seaweed to wrap around my ankles. Anyway, on Wednesday the water was pretty calm so I swam all the way from Ocean Park to the Pier in Old Orchard and back. It's about 2.2 miles round trip and I felt awesome the whole way. On Friday it was a little stormy out to sea, and the swimming wasn't so fab. One of these days I will learn that if I swim very very fast on the way OUT, it is unlikely because I have become part shark overnight. Rather, it's the current. I swam out 15 minutes on Friday afternoon, and then turned around. It took me 32 minutes to get back. I swear to you I was swimming in place. I would take a breath and look to the shore, and I would be in front of the same beach house-- for ever. I just didn't move.

Training for Kona really hasn't started in earnest.
But really? I can't wait until it does.