Quick Oly Tri Check-In, OWS, and Tri Club

Three quick things:

ONE:
Just a quick note to let you all know that Pharmie and I had a GREAT time at the Liberty Triathlon today out in Maple Plain. My full report will come later, but I can say that I finished with a nice Olympic Distance PR!! We saw a lot of people out there that we knew, and many of them did AWESOME!! Big congrats to everyone!

I’ll have more on today’s race early next week - for now I’ll leave you with a photo that rockstar Cathy Y snapped of me coming out of the water this morning:

Thanks Cathy! I NEVER look that good exiting the water!
I don’t know what you did, but it worked!!

TWO:
So let’s backup to Thursday evening. Pharmie and I headed to Lake Nokomis for our first open water swim since our 70.3 in NOLA 2 months ago. (And I needed to try out my SUGOi Tri Suit in the water.) The water was COLD. Here’s Pharmie thinking about getting her upper body wet:

Here she is 2 minutes later, still TRYING to get herself farther in the water:

We both swam for just a few minutes to get used to open water again. Here’s Pharmie finishing up:

I did something REAL stupid when I got done. I was taking off my wet suit, and I had it around my ankles. I had my left foot in the air as I was trying to get the suit off my left leg. I started to lose my balance, so I thought I’d quick pull the suit off so I could catch my balance. Well, I DIDN’T get the suit off, but I DID manage to bend my thumb all the way backwards and sprain it pretty bad as I quickly tried to pull off my wetsuit. It HURT! Right after I did it, the ball of my hand under my thumb swelled up HUGE. Here it is after just a few minutes - it doesn’t look that bad, but notice the how big it is by the NASTY shadow it’s casting on my hand:

Two days later, it still hurts, but not as bad. Now it’s turning purple. It still makes Pharmie a little queasy to look at it! The good news is that it really didn’t hamper my swim/bike/run today, but it slowed me up a little in transition: it was hard to pull off my wetsuit or to put on my socks. I survived.

THREE:
Yesterday morning, a few of the CVA Tri Club students did their first brick! (If you’re out of the loop, I’m helping to train a number of students at the College of Visual Arts [one of the colleges where I teach] so that they can finish their first sprint tri in about 6 weeks!) They were going to do a hard 10 mile ride, followed by a solid 2 mile run. Here’s Cynthia and Jamie heading out down the school’s sidewalk:

Jamie never came back because he ended up helping a woman on Summit Ave with her bike; she had some cable and cassette issues, and Jamie knows a bit about bikes. He helped her for quite some time, and then headed home to finish his workout. He’s a real nice guy, so I’m not surprised that he stopped to help a stranger for so long!

Trent and Cynthia got back from the bike at about the same time. Here’s Trent in the upper corner headed out on his run, and Cynthia in the lower corner hopping off her bike:

And then Cynthia headed out on the run:

Trent finished up (in THOSE shoes!!) about 19 minutes later:

Nice job, Trent!

And Cynthia was just a few minutes behind him.

Today, at the race, Sarah and Evan (2 CVA Tri Club students) came to the race. The triathlon got them SUPER PUMPED UP to do their triathlon in a few weeks!! I’m glad they had such a good time!! Thanks for coming to cheer you 2!

So, make sure to stop by Monday to put your name in the hat for a free pair of shoes!! Really!! And then on Tuesday, I’ll put up my race report from today! Have a great weekend everyone! Enjoy the weather!!

Update: Pharmie just put up her race report with some photos - check it out!!