Courtenay Brown

Am I too old to handle a new job, a birthday party, my regular training load, and discovery of a new awesome activity all in one week? Obwiously not. These four things plus a raw-food dinner on Thursday night that was essentially like "here, body, digest this giant pine tree! It will be great!", that made things a little rougher than necessary, but clearly I survived :) . Work rules. This is a pleasant surprise, I was bitching and moaning before I started, oh waa it's going to be boring and everyone is going to be boring and I'm going to be so bored. But it's not boring at all, and it's kind of trippy to be working in a company ...

...except the lake was so COLD!!

Notable occurrence of the weekend: I went sailing, and I had fun! Like legitimate fun! Ben and I sailed his boat from where it was docked, in Ballard, under the Fremont Bridge and through Lake Union and past UW and through Portage Bay and up to the top of Lake Washington! It took us about 4 hours, on Saturday evening, and it was really fun. I am not super at sailing, especially compared to Ben's companions on his two sailing trips last month (one with Bob, Bob, and Robert, obviously on that one I also lose out because my name isn't Robert or one of its derivatives, and the other with Christine and her mom who ...

Amy Kloner and I head into the water at Eagleman --- I've been taking a week off from training, starting on Monday. Then this coming Monday I will resume training AND AND AND be starting my new job with Amazon! But the week off has given me some much-needed time for relaxing, regrouping, and reassessing. As for relaxing, top activities thus far have included: riding a horse on Monday (for the last time in a while :( ), and shopping at Target, ostensibly for work clothes but really I just wound ...

Oh my god, I am leaving the ranks of the unemployed. No longer will I be a triathlete bum. I got a job! A real one! Not a like, oh here organize a bunch of stuff over the next few weeks and I'll give you some money. This one is a real live job. A few weeks ago, a recruitment firm in Seattle contacted me about a part-time contract accountant position at Amazon. The experience requirements were pretty hefty, so I thought I was a long shot at getting the job, but might as well try. Then I had two phone interviews last Friday, and thank god Amy arrived at our homestay for Eagleman 20 minutes before my interview ...

Unreasonable pre-race freakouts commenced early this time, and violently. (Although, I think that my paltry 3 hours of sleep on Tuesday night could not have helped matters any. I woke up at 1:01 a.m. yesterday and could not not not fall back asleep. On the plus side, I am all caught up on the past three months of cheezburger.) So back in April when I raced Oceanside 70.3, they handed out this magazine with all the WTC events in it, course descriptions, last year's top-5, etc. For Eagleman, I happily noted that it was a wetsuit swim. Yay! But happily = naively. Of course it's not going to be a stupid wetsuit swim since now I have my ...

Yesterday, my usual ride Cosmo had a bent shoe, so I didn't ride him. Instead I rode this horse: Perfect to a Tee wins 1999 Maryland Million T-Bone is retired from racing now, he foxhunts and trail rides and occasionally shows. He's a gem! I love stories of thoroughbred race horses retiring to fulfilling new careers. It used to be that thoroughbreds dominated the horse show arenas as well as the tracks, but in recent years showing tastes have turned to warmbloods from Europe. This is kind of bad news for thoroughbreds, because demand ...

This morning I got up and two of my favourite kids came over for breakfast! Cora and Nathaniel. Pre-race breakfast After a lot of butter-laden waffles, we headed out for some Tennis Court Sprints. We're off Cora attacked from the gun (as you can see she is not even in sight in the Start photo above), and held her lead past the Final Netpost Turn. ...

So it looks like I won't have my Garmin Forerunner 310XT in time for Eagleman 70.3 next week. MAJOR TRIBULATION. Ugh. This will be my 4th race this year and the 4th one with no powermeter. I sold my SRM a couple of weeks ago, received my new Quarq Cinqo (with SRAM! Yay!) last week, but the Garmin, which I will be using as a head-unit, won't be here in time. Crap-tastic. Should I (gasp) race with a HEART RATE MONITOR?!!? I don't know if I can deal with one of those awful chest-constrictors for a whole entire race though. So I will once again suck it up and pedal cluelessly. And hard, of course. I know that I shouldn't be ...

The other day, my mom marched in from the barn and announced: "Courtenay. Sijui is BANNED from her STALL." (Sijui is my horse, I got her in 8th grade and now she is retired at my mom's house.) Why is she banned, I asked. "As SOON as I let her in to eat, she always PEES. It drives me MAD. I JUST cleaned it! She is BANNED." See technically, Sal and Sij are friends Then yesterday... deja vu. Sal marches up to make an announcement, hands on hips and feet splayed as usual... "Courtenay. Sijui is BANNED from her stall. ...