Tomorrow looms....

Well, 11 hours and counting until I'm setting up on site for my first tri. Yikes!! This week has been full of excitement.

The first thrill of the week was battling the wetsuit monster. So, back in July, I got a really good deal on a wetsuit. Unfortunately, I underestimated my appetite, and got one that I could "shrink" into. Needless to say, between the stress eating and the exercised induced munchies, I've only lost 5 pounds, not the 20 I had planned. Oops! I was looking at having to swim without a wetsuit tomorrow. At first I hadn't thought it would be that big of a deal, but ocean swimming looks a lot warmer in July than in October. As the Tri club practices changed from "no wetsuit" to "wetsuit optional" and now to "wetsuit recommended," I realized that if I wanted to have any fun (not induced by hypothermia) I'd better find me a wetsuit that fit, fast. I googled "wetsuit rental San Diego" and found a great site that was founded by a former triclub president. I ordered my suit and waited anxiously for it to arrive. When I tried it on Wed. night, horror ensued. I forgot to have a nice cool drink with me and the fan on. I'd barely gotten it past my knees when I had a MAJOR hot flash. Plus, do you have any idea how hard it is to get one of these dang things on?? It was like putting on the pantyhose from h**l. I ended up freaking out, taking off the suit and needing a medicinal beer.

Thursday I tried again, this time having the medicinal beer before I tried to put it on. I got it on, but then we couldn't get the zipper to work. Needless to say, I had visions of me looking like an over microwaved hot dog, and I gave up. Ben worked on the zipper as I hugged the dogs, and finally got it unstuck. (He reassured me that it was the zipper, NOT my physique that made it stick.)

Then the most wonderful man in the world called me right before his lunch break and asked if we wanted to give it a try again. He drove home, we suited up, and then we trudged to the bay. It was great! Those things are REALLY buoyant. My biggest problem was that my butt was so buoyant my head kept going underwater. Oh well. No worries about drowning as long as I float on my back. :)

I also had an interesting revelation about Meggie. I was re-reading my posts, and I noticed that back in July Meggie was barely able to run/walk (60 sec / 90 sec) 20 minutes without being totally exhausted. Wow has she come a long way!!! She's totally super dog now. Monday Ben and I took the dogs to the Fiesta Island dog park for a run. The dog park is huge but ugly as sin. It looks like blasted moon rock and only has 2 trees. So, Ben and I brought the mountain bikes and road around the perimeter for a while at 8-11 mph. The girls ran right along side us! Meggie and Nanner kept up a run for over half an hour. And they weren't even whooped when we were done! They rested for a bit, but had tons of energy again within an hour. Talk about Iron dogs!

Well, I need to go rest up and lay out my stuff for tomorrow. (An advance thanks to Ben, John, Dad, and Ginny for coming out at the crack of dawn to see me race!) Wish me luck.