Courtenay Brown

Today I was on the phone with my mom. About whom I’d like to say three things:

1. Her nickname is Adventure Sal, because she constantly doing something inspiring/exhausting. Here is a photo of her hiking the Milford Track in my U.S.S. Pelelieu hat that I insisted on getting in the 7th grade and then was too embarrassed to wear since it is pretty bright, and during my formative years I spent 89% of my time worrying about what people think (as opposed to now, when I am down to ~63%).

2. I know it’s weird that I call her Sal. My brother and sister do it too. Occasionally we call her “Ma” but usually it’s “Sal”. Recently I learned that this came about because, when I was a baby and learning to talk, my two older sisters from my dad’s previous marriage were always at our house and since she wasn’t their mom, they called her Sally or just Sal. So I did too. Then Than did too when he was learning to talk, and same with Sarah. I always thought it was because she didn’t want to be called “Mom” or “Mommy” but I guess I was wrong (however, I do feel that my mom is occasionally revisionistic with her histories)(love you sal!).

3. My mom is a conversational *master* of the obvious, even leaden, segue. It’s awesome. For example today…

“I am so excited all my BABIES are coming home for Christmas! And all three of you are SINGLE!”
…….weighty pause…….
“Does Sarah have a BOYFRIEND?!”
…….additional pause……..
“Do YOU?!”

Poor Sal, “always the last to know”, she says. She saw that I am going to Seattle on Thanksgiving for ten days because she reads my blog! So maybe you guys are wondering too. I am going to visit Ben!

Assuming I make SIGNIFICANT packing progress on this apartment, god.

I found some lipstick when I was going through my bathroom stuff, and I couldn’t remember if I liked the colors. So I tried them on. I remembered that I liked them, L’Oreal Raspberries and L’Oreal Rose Serenity (since I am pretty and serene like a rose, right).

Then I forgot I had on lipstick and continued “packing”, which at this point in the evening has degenerated to about 2 hours of seated strategizing ’cause I am over it and just want to throw everything away, except the lipstick of course.

Then I kissed Kitty on the nose, because I love it and he hates it, and now he has lipstick on! He hates me.

———–

Tonight, I have lost count of how many cups of Smooth Move tea I have had. I found it while working on the kitchen and tea sounded good.

Tomorrow… we still have this stupid porta pottie situation at work, wherein the only bathroom is a completely exposed porta pottie out by the road and it’s shared by me and 9 construction guys.

Crap.

Whilst “packing” tonight I dropped my blender on the floor and it shattered everywhere. Smoothie season is officially over. But I didn’t take a photo because already, here in the very earliest stages of my packing mess, I can’t find my camera charger. I did however find my remote-alarm-fob for my car, and I fixed it by replacing the battery (I am so clever!), which will be very important when I move down the mountain and back to places where you don’t leave your laptop sitting on your passenger seat overnight in a manually-locked Honda Civic.

I got two job rejections today. The first interviews seemed to go well, “test” steps seemed to go well, then I didn’t make the cut. I wonder if part of the problem (besides the fact that everyone hates me of course) is that I don’t desperately want a job?

I mean, I do want one, I do want an income, and want something gratifying and edifying and not-triathlon in my life, but I have a feeling that for these jobs I am applying to, there are like 300 other applicants who reallyreallyreally want the job and are totally on top of their game when the hiring person calls them. Whereas I only really want the job, and am busy fiddling with my bike or re-defining “off season” when they call, and then when the person does get me on the phone we just wind up chatting about triathlon or Excel or my really stupid answer for “what’s your biggest weakness” which is: I don’t have much tolerance for stupidity. Job people don’t have much tolerance for intolerance. So it’s a stupid answer. So then in my head while I am talking I realize that I am stupid for saying that, which means I can’t even tolerate my stupid self, then I mumblingly try to make myself sound nice, and someone else gets the job.

Sigh. At least I won’t have to use up any vacation time for my upcoming vacations.

Furthermore, the good thing about being on the market for a new job is that one can justify the purchase of new cute shoes, provided they are on sale of course, and please note my inspecification of quantity of pairs of new cute shoes.

… i.e., trying to get a bunch done while simultaneously talking on the phone, blogging, looking for the laziest possible way to make dinner, and telling Kitty how cute he is (if you don’t believe me, look to the left, he is SO CUTE and he loves sunbathing, just like me!!!).

Sorry for the freakout last week. Moving is just really stressful and makes me swear even worse than Kelly. But now I have a loose plan, complete with temporary housing and holiday plans, and things aren’t looking particularly desolate on the job front.

“Loose plan” involves renting a U-Haul this weekend, snagging some strapping young men to help me pack my things into it, driving it down to the Bay Area (OMG hopefully I don’t have to stop somewhere to pee because how do you PARK those things?! Or back them up?!), cramming my things into a storage unit, and then returning to Tahoe to finish up work and clean the apartment, etc. I bought Clorox wipes today at Target in anticipation of this.

Ugh so I have a lot of organizing and packing to do in the next few days. A lot. But I’ll be all moved out soon and THEN I have 10 days in Seattle to look forward to!!!!

Off season is great and everything, I mean I have no complaints about sleeping in until 9 a.m. and having time to play and having significantly less spandex to launder, but this year, right now, I wouldn’t mind if I were still training and racing. It would give me something else to focus on besides the fact that I am MOVING in TWO WEEKS and I don’t know where to and I don’t have a job and I am freaking out and I fucking hate it.

I hate that I feel stuck up here on top of this fucking mountain, I hate that the economy is fucking tanked because it’s really putting a damper on my forward progress, I hate that my sweet innocent cat (who, can I please remind you, I did NOT want to adopt because of situations EXACTLY LIKE THIS ONE) is somehow going to be a victim here because he’s going to be in transition too and kitty rolls with the punches even worse than I do, and I really fucking hate the fact that amidst all this, I am not training and thus I illogically feel like a fatass.

God.

(Oh, also I hate being illogical.)

I might have to go into high-gear efficiency mode pretty soon. Re-home the fish, be open to the possibility that someone other than me, someone with a house and a life and an income and no propensity to pick up and kiss a cat who hates being picked up and kissed, might provide a happier situation for kitty, take a bunch of ill-fitting clothes down to Goodwill in Reno, put the couch and table and chairs and CRAP on craigslist, and move on. Move forward. Get out of here and get ready for next season and, major side bonus, be somewhere that has more than like one person to train with.

So see, despite the stress and fuckings and all that, I am excited about moving. I would just really like to have some answers, some definites, an idea of maybe which airport to purchase holiday flights out of, etc. It’s one thing to throw all your stuff in your car and be free like a bird when you are 22 and just out of college. Quite another thing when you are 30, and you (stupidly) have 4 animals and 5 bikes and living standards that have long since matured past the dorm room, and there’s no way in hell you can fit all your stuff in your car.

The combination of: my weekend heroics, a full season of other heroics, stress regarding my upcoming move (which is STILL surrounded by question marks, even though it’s only 2 weeks away), AND a lot of All-You-Can-Eat Sushi with full-salt soy sauce rather than that nasty low-sodium stuff for old people, anyway all this has rendered me a little bit useless and a little bit quiet.

Sorry about that.

Oh but I’d like to share a story about how awesome it is to turn 10.

Yesterday was my little cousin’s 10th birthday. On Monday, she went to bed sooooo excited that she woke up at 1 a.m., then she woke her sleeping parents to announce that it was now her birthday. They sent her back to bed. She woke up again at 5:45, and this time was smart enough to wake her little brother and drag him with her to their parents’ room to again announce that it was her birthday and can we please start celebrating now. Parents had no chance that time .

I am sitting in the Vegas airport waiting for my flight home, and I’m totally cracked out on caffeine still from today’s race (do recall that I stayed caffeine-free till race day and it was a long race with lots of gels and a Neuro1 so OMG I’m wired and talking a million miles an hour).

Silverman was a perfect way to end my season! If you just want to know how I did without hearing the gory details, just skip to the bottom, but since my flight has been delayed like 2 hours thanks to airlines maintaining their normal flight schedule despite the fact that 1 of the 4 (i think?) runways here at McCarran is closed, I am going to indulge myself in a nice long play-by-play. Lucky you!!

So yesterday’s weather was beautiful, mid 70’s, sun, and barely any wind. But for today’s race it was in the low 60’s, cloudy, 10-20 mph winds, and RAIN. Yes I know it’s the desert here but I swear, there was rain. And thunder. WTF? Suddenly my decision to bring my disc wheel seemed incredibly stupid. When I packed, there was no inclement weather forecasted for race day, but I should have considered the fact that even in ideal conditions this is *not* a fast bike course and thus totally not a disc-wheel course (which Hi I did the race last year, so I have no excuse! I should have known better! Lesson learned…)

Adding insult to injury the wheel flatted in transition before the race, when I was topping off the air in my tires. Crap. But I fixed it since I am so skilled with all things bike-mechanical (ha).

Then I got all sunscreened and wetsuited up and went down to the majorly wavy water. Swimmers from the full-distance race were slowly staggering in (except for Dawn from Splish, who did the swim leg of the relay with no wetsuit and totally spanked everyone, she came out of the water first!). And kayakers were getting blown all over the place. And then this powerboat went by dragging a kayak filled with water behind it, I guess waves splashed so much water in it that it started to sink. Then they announced that all half-distance athletes needed to get out of the water and go up to the changing tents to stay warm. Then it started pouring with rain, and then it thundered.

I was kind of stoked for a minute, I mean I am NOT a great swimmer and I have just been waiting for the day I luck out and do a race where the swim is canceled! But on the other hand, I have been working so hard on my swim in the past 2 months and I reallyreally wanted to see how much I have improved. It’s kinda hard to do that if they cancel the swim!

Then suddenly they decided we would swim and like 2 seconds later we were off. I felt great about my swim. They don’t have splits posted yet but my very casual self-timing seemed to indicate something in the 36-37 minute range. Three months ago at 5430 I swam over 40 minutes! Yay for improvement. Thank you SOOO much Jen!

The bike started out awesome. I felt super strong and even though it was windy and I had a stupid disc wheel, whatever I can handle my bike and I can deal with adversity, so just ride, right? Then I flatted. This was at mile 20. Somehow the valve on my tube spit in half? How does that even happen? Then of course my brand new spare tube had a hole in it? So I just stood there helpless and crying for 10 minutes as all the people I had passed over the previous 20 miles passed me back. Then a super sweetheart guy stopped and gave me his extra spare tube!!! And I was off again, trying to pull a Chrissie Wellington (although a. I am not Chrissie, b. I was not in the lead, and c. I had half as much distance as she did at Kona to overcome a setback). I counted 12 girls ahead of me because the course has a turnaround, by mile 48 I had passed all but two of them. Then I flatted AGAIN on that stupid disc wheel that I hate. Seriously what the crap is with me and flats?! I have gotten more flat tires in the past month (remember I flatted at my last cross race) than I have in my entire cycling career, I am not even exaggerating. But 12k to go and no tube and no patch kit (stupid of me) and not much chance of a second good samaritan, so my only option was to just ride it in. I admit I shouted a lot of FUCK FUCK FUCKs!!! (sorry to all the kids standing along the course, sorry sorry sorry!) and just kept my speed up as much as possible. The last 5k of the course has a lot of turns and it was super sketchy and it felt like riding on ice! Ugh.

So, obviously my bike split was slower than last year. But when I flatted that last time, I took a peek at my average wattage for the ride so far, and it was 23 watts higher than last year’s wattage, and 15 watts higher than my best half-IM this year. I’ll TAKE it!! I come from a bike racing background and so I figured I had seen my potential on the bike and wasn’t going to get better, but maybe I was wrong. I am really thrilled that I have improved my cycling so much this year even though I am training less on the bike. Quality vs. quantity maybe? I have no idea but like I said, I’ll take it.

So on to the run, where I am sure I looked like a total disaster area because I had road dirt all over me thanks to the rain and I was kind of pissed off a little bit so I had a scowl for the first couple of miles and THEN I caught a glimpse of my shadow at like mile 8 and my hair was all over the place under my visor! OMG what was I thinking! My race photos will all be awful! So I fixed it.

I actually had an awesome time on the run. It’s a hilly run, you basically go up from mile 1 to mile 9 and then head back down to the finish, but somehow it’s still easy to get a good rhythm because you just go up and up and more up and then eventually down. And, no chance of getting a flat! Somehow despite my dumbness on the bike, I was running in second. The winner (Beatrix Blattman, who was second to Alicia in the full last year) was 15 minutes ahead of me at the first turnaround. We high-fived as she passed, I got the chance to hang out with her and her husband for an hour this morning during the delay and she is really awesome! Then I just kept trotting along and next thing you know I was at the finish. It’s always like that at races, they are over before you know it! I finished 10 minutes behind Beatrix so that was cool that I made up some time, but she had a super cushy lead on me and she’s doing IMAZ in two weeks so I am not really patting myself on the back for the fact that oooooo I ran faster than the winner. Instead, I am patting myself on the back because I think that was my best run spit this year?! Again, no official splits are posted yet, and my self-timing is fairly casual, but I am suuuuuuuuper proud of a ~1:36 on this course which I am going to try to paste below.

silverman_run_profile

So I finished second! My goal was to beat last year’s time by 30 minutes, I only beat it by 20 minutes, but I feel fairly confident that my equipment shenanigans cost me at least ten minutes (I did look at my watch while I was standing on the side of the road). So yay, I have improved since last year! Which I certainly HOPE I have improved, I mean I have a full year of triathlons under my belt now, and that belt is one or two holes smaller than it was a year ago thanks to all this multisport training. So, it’s not like me being faster is some breakthrough revelation!

And even though I didn’t win the race, this was a great way to end my season. It’s great to have the validation that I have improved. Even better, I learned some really important lessons today, not only about equipment but also about my mental toughness. It would have been really easy to call it a day after that flat at mile 20. It was tempting. It’s been a long season, I have had more success than I ever expected, I didn’t need this race to prove anything to myself or anyone else. But then as soon as I got back on my bike it was game on. I really wanted to know exactly how much better I have gotten. Then after that flat with 12k to go, when it definitely would have been easy to just call it a day, I was too angry to even consider it. It made me DETERMINED to get out there and run my heart out and conquer adversity, or at least give it a run for its money. Because next year, I will not be seeing the front of the race very often. I need to practice being far behind, pushing myself to my limits even when the podium is 20 minutes down the road.

But next year is a long way off… right now, time for a little off season fun .

Thanks so much for reading!