Sunday, July 1, 2012
Friday, January 28, 2011
chirp chirp chirp
I could give the classic excuse for my absence in blogland (I have been busy - it's true), but really I am daunted by the the prospect of summarizing the entire 2010 race season. Also, I get frustrated by any attempts to move photographs around and edit my content on blogger. It keeps me from wanting to post any pictures at all, thereby preventing any desire I might have to blog in general. Perhaps I'm untalented when it comes to technology and blog editing. The truth is that I would rather play outside than do just about anything that involves sitting in front of a screen. So I am remedying that by posting a ton of pictures in random order, explaining them as I see fit, and I will thereby hopefully get anyone left out there caught up to date. Once we're all on the same page, I'll really start throwing down blog style. Heeeeeeere we go:
The Superfrog bike went relatively well. Especially considering that my bike was the only discipline that I had not worked on over winter. Windy, flat and fast |
Okay. I guess we're at the IM Coeur d'Alene finish line now. That's my smartass finishing shot. I was happy with my new run PR but unhappy to have finished 4th for the 2nd year in a row. |
Rewinding the season back to Wildflower. Charisa sent me this hilarious shot of the two of us looking particularly uncool during the swim warm up. |
She also sent me this picture of me running. I wasn't feeling particularly spunky at this point, but gosh darn it, I love that race! |
Perhaps my favorite picture of the season. That's my darling sister Cass who wasn't afraid to hug my sweaty arse after IM Cd'A. After the race she joined the Bozeman tri club. Woohoo. |
That is me getting sweaty. The look in my eyes is one of terror as Kelly was hunting me down. |
After a cold, wet spring, it turned into a lovely summer for riding in the Palouse |
My favorite time of day for light on my favorite road for riding |
The backyard lilies got really tall |
An adorable entrant rolling into the finishing shoot at the Ironkids race in the Philippines. I love the google/glasses combo. |
The following pictures take place in Southern Bavaria. Aaron and I traveled to Immenstadt for the ITU Long Course World Championships last July. My race went very poorly (flat tire, fallen seat post, and jet lag induced funk), but I somehow ended up in the top 10 (8th overall, 1st American). The bike course was the hardest, most beautiful ride I have ever done in my life. It was probably made harder by the fact that I did not realize my front tire was flat until the final 10 km descent. I just wondered why I was completely unable to control my bike on the insanely technical course.
I wish I had taken photos of Immenstadt and Oberstaufen, where we stayed. They were quintessential Bavarian villages. Sadly, it rained (hard) every day we were there, with the exception of race weekend. The day after the race, determined to hike in the Alps, ended up on this foggy, rain-soaked ridge line.
Aaron attempting a slightly more technical route than we expected to take on in our running shoes. |
Ridge line take 2 |
Cinderella castle |
The gondola that transported us into the cold, rainy Alps, where pleasant, hardy European trekkers abounded. I loved that I didn't see a single child whining about the weather |
When the sun briefly emerged, I couldn't shake the chorus of the Von Trapp family. Aaron has video of my rendition of How do You Solve a Problem Like Maria. I am not going to post a link. |
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Olympics, Swifts, Wildflower, Biking, and Spring Break
This was the view of my xc skiing heroes during the men's pursuit. Marcus Hellner, Lukas Bauer, and Axel Teichman all in the same frame.
Then it was time to focus on my own athletics again, and with full-on gold medal envy, I begrudgingly participated in the national cross country championships which were taking place 400 meters away from my work. So I went to work, took a lunch break and "competed" in a national championship 8km cross country race and returned to work an hour later. Not a bad gig.
In the end, I finished 34th, which put me (barely) in the top half of the field of 76. And I only ran 1 minute per mile slower than this chick! In my defense, she has an Olympic 10km medal to her credit. And some really little shorts.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
48 hours in San Diego
Shelby getting gasoline. Riveting, I know.
Still at the gas station. Despite what this looks like, I am not giving the #1 sign with my freakishly long index finger. I was actually explaining to Shelby why your nose stops smelling farts after it starts smelling them. There really is a physiological explanation for this.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Everything that happened when I had a camera
It's 2010 now, and that's a good thing. Practically speaking, it's really all just a continuum anyway and arbitrary human designations describe any given date. That is, of course, unless you subscribe to the theory of relativity in which timespace is not at all linear. But I digress. For my intents and purposes, a new year means a new triathlon season and I have every reason to be stoked about it all.
To begin with, I just like the sound of 2010. Twenty ten. Two thousand and ten. Two thousand and nine never really jived with me. I like this twenty ten thing much better. Secondly, I got to begin the new year with an outdoor ride, as the city of Spokane seems to have been spared the barrages of winter that crippled us for the past two years (and seem to be blanketing the rest of the country in cold and snow). Two thousand and nine presented what was for me the first unwhite Christmas in recent memory. Another good reason to be done with the blasted year. And now, a week and a half into this twentyten, I have an armchair pulled close to the fire, three adorable cats and a computer competing for prime lap space (mine), and really, life is good. Yet I can't help but wonder when this dog lover became a cat lady?
Of course, I can't complain about how 2009 panned out. I ended the season on a mildly disappointing note, with a sub-par performance at Kona tricking me into thinking that the whole season was a bust. In hindsight, however, I know that I made my typically slow, steady gains throughout the season, and I really made my season into what I wanted it to be. I raced in 3 Ironmans, 6 half Iron-distance races, and I additionally did a super-fun smattering of sprints, Olympics and Xterras. I raced in my favorite local events that I was sad to have missed in 2008, I experienced some new, top-quality events (Ironman Canada, Hulaman), I got married, I got hit by a car, and I got humbled by Madam Pele once again. Life is fun to learn.
After returning from Kona, Aaron and I decided to embark on what was meant to be the first of a year long series of honeymoons. With our vacation budget substantially reduced due to his bursitis episode (and that was with health insurance and an HSA), we decided to keep it on the continent for this go-round and when torn between Nova Scotia and Copper Canyon, Mexico, the hurricane forecast sent us North and East. To the homeland of Coach Dan. Our plan was to explore the Cape Breton Highlands and to then ferry over to Newfoundland to see what there was to see, but the distances proved vast, and we relied mostly on our own feet for exploration. So it turned into a week and a half of trail running/hiking/slogging. We covered about 15-25 miles each day, and though the pace was never fast, we experienced a lot . We especially experienced a lot of wet, as is the nature of trails in deciduous forests in late October, we learned. It sure was a pretty wet though.
Day 1: Still dry
Pretty birch trees in fall
A solitary blue heron
the first time we realized that wet feet were inevitable
. . . and cold . .
but it was worth it because it was beautiful
and occasionally there were bridges
and insanely cute sciurids
and dramatic light effects
along with short autumn days
our first taste of snow
moose blocking the trail
and my favorite wildlife find - an Eastern toad! Cool, eh?
After tooling around the Cape Breton Highlands we drove to Baxter State Park in Maine to climb Mt Kathadin, the highest point in Maine and the northern terminus of the Appalachian trail. We considered just running up it like we had everything in Nova Scotia, but ultimately decided it would be better to pack lunches and warm clothes and that turned out to be the right decision. The peaks in the West are a lot higher, but East Coast trails are decidedly harder. They don't bother with switchbacks and instead take the most direct route to the summit. I had some similar experiences hiking in Vermont, but I have to say, it was even tougher than I remember. The mountain didn't look terribly intimidating, but there was a lot of ice to contend with on the trail, and it was STUPID cold at the top.
Despite our wanting to find him a friend, Jeremy was relatively unimpressed with our new additions and spent a lot of time defending his territory.
Conversely, children and kittens are cute. Especially when the child is a dimpled one.
Otherwise, life continues in the Cooper-Scott house. I finally feel like I'm really back in the training groove and I've even been able to eek in some skate skiing. My favorite time to go is just before sunset. It's such a peaceful way to bid farewell to the day and the sunsets and shades of gray are so much more spectacular on the mountain. Of course, they're shades of gray that my camera does a miserable job of capturing. Just trust me, it's amazing.
The gloaming. My favorite time to ski.