I've been TAGGED!

Six word Meme

The Six-Words Meme was originally started by Smith Magazine. Legend has it that Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. His response? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Last year, SMITH Magazine re-ignited the rencountre by asking our readers for their own six-word memoirs. They sent in short life stories in droves, from the bittersweet (“Cursed with cancer, blessed with friends”) and poignant (“I still make coffee for two”) to the inspirational (“Business school? Bah! Pop music? Hurrah”) and hilarious (“I like big butts, can’t lie”). So now, I've been tagged by dread pirate to write my own.

Huh.

I’ll try this out, no promises.

I did the Atomic Man Duathlon last weekend – the Little Boy course was 4K run, 15 K bike, 4K run. I’ve never done a duathlon before. The cold weather was nice - my arms were chilly to a bit numb for the first run. I went out conservatively, mostly because Geekgirl had just told me to: "don't go to fast in the first run, cuz you know you have to bike and then run again afterwards!" That, and I wasn't sure how biking after running would go. The hill on the Little Boy run course felt easy. Hills usually kill me, so I must be getting better.
Run: 20:45. (8:18 pace per mile)

And Now: on to the bike - I wasted a bit of time in T1 getting my riding gloves on. Not sure why I felt like I needed those for the 9 mile bike.
T1 - 1.34

My pink/magenta steel steed did me proud. No wind, which was so nice. I passed several people.
I feel good, dada nana dadana…

Then, several more people passed me. Ooops. My rankings tell the tale: out of 99 racers men and women – my time was 38th fastest for the run, 53rd for the bike (!!!) and then 29th for the second run. Perhaps biking is my weakness? The nice part is that I'm actually starting to enjoy biking a little these days- must be the great company in dread pirate and swtrigal. Anyhoo, the hills on the bike were not terribly steep or long, just kind of constantly rolling.
Bike = 34.01 mph = 16.4

I actually prepped for T2, undid the velcro on my shoes, took off my gloves while riding. Almost forgot to unclip at the line, and risked falling over at a dead stop right in front of Geekgirl, who had volunteered that day and was calling out race numbers.... It was nice to avoid that (narrowly). Maybe no one noticed….
T2= 0.48 Hey, my T2 time was second fastest in the top ten women!

The second run went fine, although I didn't really push it - I kept thinking I had a lot farther to go, and that I should save it for something down the line. I got a little warm. I hate getting too warm. I don’t mind sweating because I am working, I just don’t want to be sweating for no reason. Then when I realized I was almost done - the volunteer said 0.2 mi to go - I passed a few more people. Hmm, I have a little too much left in the tank. On the last 1 block uphill I could have tried to get the 3 women in front of me, but I decided not to. I had been catching up to them steadily, and I felt pretty good. But, I wanted a chance at a good finishing photo, and I wasn't sure I cared about an additional 15 seconds. Of course, now I think it would have been cool to beat them to the line. Oh well. Besides, my finishing photo looks horrible.
Run = 20.38 pace = 8:15 per mile Faster than the first go around!

No horking, could have been faster.
Imaginary standards means I can’t stop.

I should have tried to go faster on the first run and faster on the bike. Who knows though, I might have just blown up had I pushed it. So I'm happy with my first Du ever.


I thought I'd finish in 1:30 or so, so I was STOKED to finish in 1:17:44.
Didn’t know I could do that.

Hee Hee - a very good start to racing in 2008.
We’ll just ignore that Quadrathlon incident.

I'm no Hemingway, no surprise there.
I'll go back to lab now....