Courtenay Brown

Our pool, in St. Edward’s State Park, is closing at the end of December. It is not scheduled to re-open. I’m really sad about this. Even though I won’t be in Seattle much in the coming months, I think it’s a shame to lose this great facility. Obviously there are a lot of issues involved, but I do feel that in a major metropolitan area with a pool system in such high demand that masters and youth swim teams get assigned 4:45 a.m. (yes, a.m.) practice times, the only reason a pool fails is poor management.

(not this bike)

In other training news, I rode my bike this weekend! Twice! It was great. I took a full two months off the bike, from September 27 to November 28, and I have never taken such a long break in my entire cycling/triathlon career. The first 20 minutes of my ride felt impossibly hard, and I was glad I set off with a head start on Ben, plus extra glad I rode my road bike which doesn’t have a Quarq to tell me just how much my cycling had regressed! Then I fell in love with cycling all over again during the next three hours, which BY the WAY I would like to point out that when I wanted to pack a banana in addition to a bar and a gel, Ben gave me the wonky eye. “Do you really seriously want to ride 3 hours today? I don’t. I’m doing 2,” and then he had some grand shortcut plan, and woo 3 hours 20 minutes later we arrived home and stood in the kitchen in grody cycling clothes inhaling 3 pieces of bread, a slice of pumpkin pie, some Ultragen, two bowls of cereal, mashed potatoes, and some other stuff.

Then on Sunday I decided to keep up my cycling dedication and ride for an hour (but guess who was on the couch during this time). I don’t recall my sits bones ever feeling so rebellious!

It’s kind of funny, re-discovering fitness.