Courtenay Brown

I did gymnastics in third and fourth grade, when we lived in Manila. I loved it and made my mom come and watch me practice, which must have been deathly boring considering my best move was the penny drop off the uneven bars, with loads of assistance from the teacher. I was terrible. [caption id="attachment_3144" align="alignnone" width="200" caption="March 2, 1988"][/caption] Here is a family photo from Manila that one of my seven half/step/awesome sisters recently posted on facebook. It's from her 14th birthday. My mom was taking the photo, so she's not in it. The first thing I noticed was that cake - totally not the work ...

"This is Boulder. We don't get pale, we just get cold!" - Michael Lovato So cold right now Indeed indeed. When it comes to swimming, Boulder seems to think it's in the tropics. People swim outside, regardless of whether it's 13 degrees (yesterday) or 9 (Friday, when I actually wussed out and went to the indoor short-course yards pool, oh how inferior, at North Boulder Rec Center. Julie Dibens and Mirinda Carfrae were there too. But yesterday, since it was New Year's Day, my indoor options were closed and I had to suck it up). Luckily, I bought a swim parka at the ...

On Wednesday I went to office hours (no I did not call her "dude") to discuss my complete lack of a paper topic with my professor. Now I might have a topic. During the conversation she asked how everything was going in general, and we talked about one of my other classes, Scopes & Methods in Political Science (a standard course in poli sci graduate departments). It's one of those classes where, in the reading, after I finish rolling my eyes over all the "intellectual masturbation", I feel like I understand the concepts. But then I show up to class and after two and a half hours of multi-syllabic complicated-sentence-structure discussion, I'm kind of like wow, I don't think I ...

I wore my Skins on the plane yesterday and a woman asked me that. I wanted to say, "if by 'triathlete' you mean some expensive doohickey that is fairly ineffectual and obnoxiously athletic-looking, then yes, these are triathlete pants!" But I just told her they are my compression tights, and yes, I am a triathlete, how did she guess. 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 my Later Gator suit from SplishToday I had a little encounter with "if you're never going to be the best, then why bother trying." It's an encounter I've had many times, so thankfully I've learned to deal with it efficiently and effectively. 1. Call someone who won't be available and leave a message, 2. (optional) post on twitter detailing how awful everything is, 3. maybe shed a tear, and then 4. get on with swimming (it's always something to do with swimming). I bother trying because even though it sometimes sucks, it usually ...

Today I turned to Ben and absent-mindedly asked "so. What kind of nap are you planning to take?" To me (and him) it's incredibly obvious that this is a training question infiltrating non-training life. What kind of run are you doing, are you going to the track? What kind of ride? What kind of swim? What kind of nap? * Nap intervals? Nap LT? What?? The question, and its obviousness to me, both mean that obviously I am even more boring than the endless stream of WTC announcements. All I think about right now, even subconsciously, is training training training racing training. I'm really hoping I can score a rec center guest pass for when I'm in ...

In this case "it" is not someone's kid, but is instead Lady Gaga's insidious, insipid single "Poker Face". Eric Cartman went and made it AWESOME. I mean sweet. Just try to disagree with me... Speaking of mu-zak, I went and bought myself a ticket to see Ghostland Observatory at Showbox SoDo this Friday. The 21+ show is on Friday night, and the all ages show is Saturday. I asked the girl at the box office if one was better than the other. "What kind of question is that? Do you LIKE being at a show with a bunch of high schoolers?" Also, in order to "afford" this ticket (thanks, ...

So my 5.5 year old laptop made a solid bid for its retirement a couple of days ago, in the form of a failing video card. I'm actually typing on it right now, since it's not completely dead (yet), but if I am lacking in my usual verbal clarity and awesomeness it's because I'm typing through flashing blue and yellow rows of miniature vertical houndstooth patterns that look like those Magic Eye pictures where you had to cross your eyes to see the dancing purple lion. Ugh. On the positive front, I got a sweet deal on a refurbished MacBook Pro!! I've been obsessively checking my order status all ...

This big party? For ME?!?! On Monday I turned 31! Yay. Here's all the awesomeness that happened. -I got a book about Genghis Khan from my mom. She says "it's the BEST book I've EVER read, oh it's just FASCINATING" so here's hoping my achilles heals in time for Longhorn 70.3 so that I can read it on the plane. -I also got a phone call from my mom. She sang me Happy Birthday! -Phil Spencer hand-delivered a giant smorgasbord of awesome presents "from him and Ben" which means Ben was on the phone offering occasional advice while Phil did ...

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 ...