Honestly though, I’m not sure they are very effectual. I think I need some regular medical compression tights. The Skins don’t have feet on them, even though I pull them over my heels and ankles, I still get really fat toes and feet at the end of a travel day.

So anyway, yesterday I left the east coast and now I am in Bend, OR! It was a typical Courtenay Brown Keep-Life-Interesting Travel Day, i.e. 12+ hours with at least one delay, dire need of antiperspirant, and a few instances of getting lost. I got up at 4 a.m. (!?), my mom drove us to the airport because she had a flight to Montana that left an hour after mine, but on the way she wanted to stop at the barn and check the rain gauge, then she wanted to drive cautiously, then we got to gossiping, then I almost missed my flight. I didn’t though. I sat next to a nice teen-aged girl from Kenya who was on her way back to her home in the U.S. after graduating from her Kenyan high school.

Then on the next flight there we sat on the runway waiting for thunderstorms to pass, so I got an extra hour to sit next to Mr. Portland Super Hipster. He mostly watched old movies on his iPad but he also did some graphic design work on his MacBook Pro (17″), received a jillion text messages on his iPhone (while we were on the tarmac of course), and took handwritten notes about something on his teeny lime-green graph-paper notebook with a fancy pen. I accidentally spilled apple juice on his leather boots and tight jeans, LE OOPS! but his well-coiffed hair and logo-less gray T-shirt went unscathed, as did his full-sleeve tattoos.

When I got to Bend, first order of business was to sort out my sunglass situation. My Specialized glasses were stolen last weekend! I was so bummed, I loved those glasses, and I didn’t bring any others with me. So. I bought my first pair of Oakley’s!! Pricey, I know, but they are super cute. Option b. was to get a $40 pair of Tifosi’s that I would race in this weekend and never want to wear again. Good sunglasses are kind of important. I don’t have a sunglass sponsor, so, might as well buy them in a state that doesn’t have sales tax!

Second order of business was to chill with my cousin and his family – the kids are 11 and 8 years old, and they are excellent unicyclists! It’s pretty adorable to watch. Colin is confident that I too will be very good at unicycling, because I am “such a good athlete” (his words, not mine). I think I’ll wait to test his theory until after Pacific Crest on Saturday.

-turning on BOTH overhead lights in the kitchen
-standing in front of the fridge with the fridge door open
-sitting still
-shopping
-eating donuts!

Proof that Sal does it too!!!

I got home from training, we sat in the kitchen working on the crossword (“maxernst” and “iceax” were my contributions, very worthy of my one-armed-dance of celebration), decided maybe we could sit on our computers and not talk to each other if we wanted, then decided that we could just go to our rooms and not talk to each other and nap if we wanted.

That’s what we’re doing.

Also I did some shopping. Online of course. A few months ago I decided to donate all my high heel shoes to Goodwill – my feet/legs/back/self just couldn’t deal anymore, and what is the point of having cute heels if all you can do in them is sit on the couch. Then earlier this week I strained my big toe somehow, and the shoes that REALLY bothered it were my flip-flops! Nooooo! Life is taking away every opportunity to be girly! So today I got some pink Terra Plana Yukam shoes on Endless – I have another pair of Terra Plana’s, I really like their vivo barefoot line because they feel great on my feet and I don’t have to walk around in hipstugly (hipster+ugly, made that one up myself) Vibram Five Fingers listening to “Born to Run” on my iPhone 4 in order to get my barefoot fix. (Incidentally, I already set my alarm for 12:01 a.m. on June 15 so I can order my iPhone 4…)

Oh, and, my uncle just told me that he likes my sister better than he likes me.

It was so hot – low to mid 90’s all last week through the weekend, with lots of east coast humidity and a new and starving population of bugs. I sadly realized that, just because I have survived hotter temperatures here, that didn’t make the heat this time around any more bearable. Especially since, when it was a hundred degrees a few years ago, I wasn’t really doing any serious training. What makes it particularly tough is my mom’s house is 200 years old and it doesn’t have air conditioning, so there’s not really any relief from the weather unless you go into the basement (SCARY!!) or drive into town and bum around Whole Foods, which, by the time you navigate the impossible wreath of one-way-roundabouts-going-the-wrong-way that some geniushead put all around Annapolis Towne Center… well… ugh. Sitting at home on the porch motionless (except for the iced-tea “bicep curls”) is kind of the best option in h-o-t weather.

Oh, I did make my brother get up early and photograph me and CeCe last week. I remembered one reason why horse people are dumb… I just about got heat stroke in this getup! But it was fun, and I love the photos. For the one and a half of you who haven’t already seen these on Facebook, here you go!

 

Well the family reunion has been and gone. It was really fun. I’m exhausted, which is confusing, because I think I washed maybe one dish the whole weekend! But staying up late, getting up early, and playing tag (which, man, that gets kind of boring after about 5 minutes, but when one is proving to one’s siblings and cousins that one is not a stick-in-the-mud, one has to play tag with little kids), all are exhausting I guess!

But I don't WANT to swim in Aunt Sally's Above-Ground Swimming Pool

So how did this impact my training? Eh, not sure. I’m tired but somehow everything isn’t sucking. I planned a rest week for last week, so I could be bright-eyed (read: in a good mood) for the reunion, and so that I wouldn’t have to do a lot of training when everyone was in town. I learned my lesson from previous years… Ma, when did everyone play tennis/go sailing/visit Alice/do that cool thing in that photo? WELL. YOU were off on a BIKE RIDE. Missing out can suck sometimes. So, no regrets this year, I pretty much didn’t miss out, but I also didn’t feel at all rested after “resting”.

The cool thing is, my training has actually been going well. It has been going well the whole time I have been home, I’m getting it done and the stuff that’s supposed to improve is improving. The conscious decision to enjoy time with family, to allow my ideal training schedule to get derailed by whatever random thing is happening on that day (this afternoon I spent a half hour tromping around the pasture helping my mom catch Fox, who can be so obnoxious sometimes, then I gave him a bath because he looked like he needed it, THEN I went and recovered from my track workout and prepared for my blessedly decent threshold intervals on the bike, yes I did take an unintentional nap on the floor, but hey)… anyway, consciously being flexible has helped me subconsciously set myself up for success in training.

Oh look at me, I just learned that having balance and perspective is a really good thing.

Little Nathaniel, Mikey, and I enjoying Christmas 2007

Little Nathaniel's favorite breakfast, waffles, June 2009

Yesterday we had a party at my mom’s house and Little Nathaniel came! I spent a good half an hour being entertained. “Guess what?” I give up, Nathaniel, tell me! “I asked Cora for two chicken wings but she told me to go climb a tree which I did and and and she still didn’t give them to me and then I got on the tram-po-line and my friend bounced me on it!” Well how was I supposed to guess that?

and and and and and THEN…

We were at a table with Big Nathaniel and some of my cousins and friends, six people in total. Then dessert was served so Little Nathaniel went inside to get some, he came back out with a plate that had exactly TWO cookies on it! He handed one to me (SIGH!).

But then giant mean terrible Big Nathaniel grabbed the other cookie, which obvs little N got for himself, and ATE it. My brother can be an a$$, can’t he, taking a cookie from a four year old? So I gave Little Nathaniel mine and we all made Big Nathaniel go get another cookie for the child, but apparently he took the entire plate of cookies, so pretty much now we can add my mom to the list of everyone who is mad at Big Nathaniel for being mean and terrible and rude. Way to ruin the Family Reunion, Than.

Still. So cute: the little guy likes me! His second cookie was for ME!!

It wasn’t a total rest day though – one thing I found in the wake of my back injury is that complete inactivity is not good for me. I have to keep moving! So this morning I went for an easy run with my brother and Alabama Tasker, who belongs to Charles, then I went for an easy spin. Sometime soon I am going to devote a whole post to the cycling around here, it’s amazing. And of course I rode the horses – I know I complained about Fox the Dingleberry the other day, but after our neighbor Irene (not the twins, different neighbor) called my mom to ask WHO that LOVELY RIDER was on Fox because obviously it wasn’t my mom, well, I decided that maybe I should maximize my time of being lovely. I’m even patting the horse and telling him he is a good boy – flattery does wonders for both of us.

Aly jumping off the porch (and over Sal's flowers, good doggie!)

Separate note: yesterday I went to visit my high school for the first time in many years. The place has exploded architecturally, there are literally twice as many buildings as when I was going to school there, and everything is so fancy! Especially the athletic facilities – state of the art cardio and weight room, huge new gym with all kinds of sports capabilities, two new turf playing fields… these girls even have a full time sports medicine specialist?!?! Fifteen years ago, if you wanted to work out outside of P.E. class, you got a jump rope and went to the dorm basement. Oh, or you could get on one of the ancient spin bikes, the ones with the moving handles and fan like what Desmond had in the hatch in Lost.

I asked if the athletic facilities were the best in the area. No, apparently all the schools are really stepping up their game (har de har har, get it? Game, like sports?). Then I asked if it was producing better athletes… Not necessarily, the top athletes are still at the same level as girls in years past, it’s just that every parent thinks their daughter is a D-1 athlete, so they really pay attention to the facilities when they are choosing a school for little Annabelle Rose or whatever the “in” names are these days. (BTW we had a ton of Courtneys and Courtenays when I was there!). I do hope that in some way it’s producing better athletes, or at least healthier and smarter athletes! It was a really cool visit, interesting in ways that I completely didn’t understand when I was in high school, and I am already looking forward to my reunion next year.

Speaking of reunions… Tomorrow, the family descends. I’m excited! And somewhat rested up for croquet, tennis, and leading the little ones around on Munchie the pony.

Also, my daily “strength workout” has doubled from riding one horse, CeCe, to riding two! My mom wants me to ride her dear sweet precious baby. Ugh. Fox and I have a long history of each thinking the other has an attitude problem. Whatever, he is just a horse, but a big obnoxious one who on Friday managed to run over me and cavort (loose) through the strawberry patch and break my Garmin FR60. Lesson learned, I save the adventuring for CeCe and I make sure to tell Fox “I HATE YOU” in my most dulcet tones .

World's Smuggest Horse, post Strawberry Patch

And I ran a half marathon yesterday. The past two years I have raced the Columbia Triathlon on this particular weekend, but my back injury cost me a few weeks of swimming and biking and left me feeling kind of not-fast, so I got on the internet and looked for a good candidate for my first ever open half marathon!

The Maryland Half Marathon was a great choice. The course was challenging and beautiful, it was a reasonable 1-hour drive from my mom’s house, and I really enjoyed it. My “strategy” was to head out with my heart rate in the low 160’s for the first two miles, have a PowerGel, then gradually bring it up to the 170’s by mile 8, have another PowerGel (caffeinated this time ), and then get my heart rate into 180’s for the last 2 miles. I started wearing a heart rate monitor in my triathlons for the first time this year, and my heart rate in the half-marathon portions of SuperFrog and Wildflower stayed in the mid-160’s, so I kind of arbitrarily decided that for this race I should have a higher heart rate, but what do I know?

The plan worked out well. A girl ran in front of me for the first half of the race, ranging from 10 to 40 seconds ahead, and I was in second. I stuck to my plan and at mile 7 found myself passing her (and I was super annoying and chipper: “Hi! Wow, these hills are RELENTLESS, huh! Good job!”, I wouldn’t blame her if she gave me the look of death.) Then I just kept running. Then I realized that maybe I was going to win! It was pretty neat. The race was a benefit for the cancer center at the University of Maryland, after the finish I met two little girls who are both being treated at the center. They were super cute.

Awards

Baltimore’s Channel 13 interviewed me (omg), here is a link to the article on their website (not sure why they had me spell my name for them…) and on the right side you can see a snip from the evening broadcast (where they cut out the part that said I won! Hey!).

I’m excited for the next time I do a running race!

Anyway, tons has happened since I last published something on here. Thing one, my aunt Betsy and uncle Tony and I lost our taste buds to a bad batch of pine nuts, and it’s totally Trader Joe’s and China’s fault. Ugh, talk about unpleasant – I’ve been going through a period of nutritional apathy lately and getting a bitter taste in my mouth every time I ate something was just making it worse! So last night I got on google, remembered the gross pine nuts we all ate on Tuesday, and stopped blaming it on Tony for feeding us possibly mildewy peas from his garden. I’ve been doing the ginger remedy (as if I needed an excuse to buy tons of Gingerade kombucha!!) and it seems to be working.

Thing two, the cat had a very exciting encounter with a lizard yesterday. The cat is kind of old and fairly simple and definitely unathletic (it takes her a full minute to inch herself off of a chair). But she cornered a lizard with a very brief display of speed across a corner of the courtyard, stood there vacantly long enough for me to get my camera and alert Tony and Betsy, and then got scared when Tony tried to show her how to pounce. Then she seemed to totally forget the lizard was even there. I photographed it all in very poor, but thorough, detail:

At first I thought it was a snake – look at that tail!

Here Tamu, this is how you pounce.

I cornered a which? Where? Huh?

Obviously, everyone emerged unscathed and intact.

Thing three, the usual… Train train train recover recover recover!

My time in San Diego is winding down. I’m sad, I’ve really really enjoyed being here. I’m leaving for Wildflower on Thursday, then spending a few days in San Francisco before driving to Colorado Springs/Boulder, then flying to Maryland. So exciting!

My mom, his big sister, did indeed have an opinion. Tony and Betsy should fly into Philadelphia and then drive along the eastern shore instead of through Baltimore because even though Wilmington is a nightmare, overall that way is prettier, although every time she goes through Baltimore she notices that it’s way faster, but through Baltimore on that particular Friday afternoon they would likely hit a lot of beach traffic. Then she asked if I was behaving myself, and I yelled “hi sal!” across the breakfast table to the speaker phone.

In other news, I think I ate something. I don’t know. Today every single flip turn made me want to throw up, all 123 of them (I counted). So after all my training, I had frozen yogurt, supposedly it had active cultures in it, and here’s hoping that tomorrow goes a little better. I might call my mom and see what she thinks.

In other news, I think yesterday’s earthquake was all my fault. Yesterday afternoon I was standing in my aunt and uncle’s kitchen in San Diego, talking to them about Easter and the church service they went to with my aunt’s aunt who is 100. I asked if they thought the minister really believed that Jesus came back from the dead and flew up to heaven, or if he took Easter a little less literally, because I don’t understand a lot of the literalism out there in certain organized religions. Then suddenly the cat came running into the kitchen and stood there meowing, then the whole house started shaking, then my uncle (the structural engineer) disappeared, then Betsy and I called out asking where is the safest place to go, then some things on a shelf fell over, then the quaking stopped and Tony reappeared. Then he informed us that the safest place to go is outside under the front doorway, where he and the cat went. Well, at least we know for next time .

Then I called Ben to tell him how exciting it all was, and he pointed out that I should consider going to church, considering that I was just nearly smote for questioning the bible on Easter.