First, a recipe.
Tri For a Cure is on Sunday, and I woke up Monday with the slightest sore throat. I coughed. Twice.
I then FREAKED OUT. Because there is no way I want to do my first ocean tri, the event I’ve been training 5 months for, with a chest cold.
So I started to self-medicate with all the nutrition tricks under the sun. To an insane degree. And I mean insane in the “mentally unstable” kind of way. But it made me feel more in control, and when you’re “medicating” with whole foods, the side effects aren’t just benign, they’re spectacularly positive and probably just what I need going into race-day.
I won’t regale you with all my insanity (eating sauteed swiss chard for breakfast, drinking turmeric and matcha powder mixed with hot water, etc.) but I will share this delicious and refreshing recipe I came up with for a cranberry refresher. It’s hydrating, packed with antioxidants and polyphenols, and ginger has been used as an anti-inflammatory and purportedly has immune boosting benefits. I don’t know how well these are studied, but since ginger is healthy and delicious and I’m fine with the placebo effect, I tossed it in there for a lovely little zing.
Cranberry Ginger Lime Refresher
Makes one large (16-20 oz) or two small servings.
1/2 cup frozen cranberries
3 frozen strawberries
1/2 cup ice
1 teaspoon fresh ginger root, peeled and diced (more if you love ginger!)
1 lime, peeled and sliced in half
3/4 cup water
Add ingredients to a high speed blender and blend until smooth. Tastes refreshing, but not sweet; replace some of the frozen cranberries with strawberries if tart isn’t your thing! This is not smoothie consistency; it’s much lighter and less creamy.
In other news….
I’ve been having a blast in Maine with family! My parents bought a beautiful vintage O’Day, the sailboat is in great condition with most of its original interior still intact. Went out and had dinner with them on the boat at the mooring while they did some work on it; it’s going to be amazing when they get the sails on! Heck, it’s amazing now. It was so beautiful sitting out in the harbor with the wind in my hair, kids at their other grandparents, relaxing and having dinner as twilight approached.
Tri For a Cure…
Is almost here!
Swim
I can’t WAIT to stop having dreams about the open water swim in the ocean. I know I’ll make it, it’s just a matter of what story I’ll have to tell afterwards. I hope it’ll be one where I’m surprised by how well it went. I’m worried it’ll be another slow zig-zag backstroke nightmare fighting panic for twenty minutes and lucky to make it out of the water without resting on a kayak.
Time will tell.
I just know that it’s all in my head in terms of how well it goes. That’s both good and bad.
If I could exert mental control, I could front crawl the entire thing. I don’t think I have that much control, but the next level will be reigning in the fear of breathlessness enough to actually revert from backstroke back into the front crawl (face down in the water) so I can get some better sighting in without treading water (which is a great way to really panic because of the effort it takes to keep your head up).
I can do it.
But will I?
Bike
…I didn’t buy the Craigslist bike. I went to a bike shop up in Portland, Maine to get SPD-SL pedals to put on the bike when I tried it, and they told me the bike I was going to look at was probably not the right size frame and I shouldn’t buy a 48 cm Cannondale.
So… I emailed Mike at Landry’s in Natick, MA; he’s the one who fit me on my 48 cm Cervelo. He said I could go either way depending on the bike frame, because at my 5’3″ I’m right in the middle. He was nice enough to email me back at 10:45 at night the day before I was supposed to go see the bike, and then the next morning did some online comparisons between the frame sizes of different manufacturers, and looked at the Craigslist listing, and gave me advice on how the bike should feel and what price he thought would be reasonable. I called Landry’s to thank him, and he wasn’t working. He’d done all that research for me on his day off. So I could buy a Craigslist bike. That he’d get nothing for.
I realize I gave them some business getting my Cervelo fitted and buying accessories… but seriously? That’s way above and beyond. He’s such a nice guy.
Anyway… push come to shove, I got worried about the 48 in Cannondale, and the price of the craigslist bike, and after trying a Trek Emondo in 50 cm that I borrowed from the shop in Maine, am going to look at one from Landry’s in a less expensive gearset than was available up in Maine. I’m back in MA for a couple days to get Will’s cast taken off (he broke his arm, they gave us a waterproof cast, life has been good) and I’m going over to Landry’s this afternoon to see if the Trek they have will work, and if so, get it fitted and possibly ride it on Sunday. If not, I’ll ride my Cervelo – moving my hands to shift isn’t the most efficient, sure, but I’ve put some miles on that bike and she and I are still friends.
Run
Yup, that will happen Sunday.
Last weekend I got to see Greg run the Old Port Shipyard Half Marathon. He did it in 1:28 something, like 20 seconds shy of a PR. We were eating brunch by the time it would have taken me to finish the same race. I love watching him run. He glides. It’s beautiful. I run like a zombie, shuffling forward, continually impressed that I’m even moving forward. Greg runs like an antelope, like “oh, are we running? I like running!”.
I love seeing him run. It makes me want to sign up for fewer races together, because when I run I never get to see him.
That’s what’s going on with me.
There’s still time left to donate to my Tri For a Cure Fundraiser! Together we’ve raised over $2,000 to fight cancer. Thank you 🙂 The messages people have left in support mean the world to me! Can’t really believe how different I am as an athlete than when I started this journey in February 🙂
Donate to fight cancer and support my triathlon journey! http://mainecancer.donordrive.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=donorDrive.participant&participantID=2244
Going to go eat some kale now.