Tara and I did this race this morning. We thought about doing it earlier this week because we had to do 10 miles today anyway so why not try it in a race situation, though it was only 9.3 miles. We registered at the race because you never know w/ us what our plans might be the night before and if we'll actually get up in time to do the race. Tara picked me up just before 8am and we drove the ~40 minutes down south. Got there in plenty of time to register, stretch and relax. It was cold, maybe 20 degrees if that and there was a strong headwind in a few spots but it wasn't raining or snowing and the roads were mostly clear, though around the water stops it got icy because residual water from the cups thrown on the ground was freezing. At the start we were waiting around and this chick turns around and it's Janet! We had no clue each other would be there. It was just a nice surprise to see her. We hugged and checked out her facial scars from the nasty fall she took running over New Year's weekend. Tara and I had done the Tufts 10K w/ her in October so they had met before. The race went well. We definitely weren't 'racing' just doing a 'comfortable but not too comfortable' pace; I felt I was trying to push a tiny bit and at least maintain a constant pace. After the race there was good food: scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, potatoes, yummy!

1:25:20 for 9.3 miles
9:11 minutes per mile
265 out of 345 overall
82 out of 137 female
20 out of 32 age group

for an awesome run this afternoon. Our scheduled long run for this weekend was 9 miles. We didn't go to Joslynn's long run this morning because I was out late and we didn't want to have to get up so early. I didn't go to bed until 4am got up at 10am and by 11am was planning to meet Tara to go run on our own. We weren't sure of the sidewalk conditions but decided we'd go for it anyway. We ran along the Charles on the Boston side, over the Mass Ave. bridge, down Mass Ave. to Harvard Sq. and then some more before we turned around at 4.7 miles. We got a little off track on the way back but got to give Tara a little tour of MIT and point out where my office was. We got to 9 miles about a mile away from my place so we started walking but it was so cold we kinda started running again to get back quicker. Walking to Tara's car we passed Starbucks and I saw RR in there so on the way back from Tara's car to my house I stopped in Starbucks and had RR buy me a green tea latte. I had a hat on but the end of my ponytail was exposed and it was frozen together like an icicle. Yuck! Once I got home and into the shower I had the hot water on full blast but it still wasn't hot enough. I'm still cold! Gotta get ready for the CRC Holiday Party tonight, starts at 6:30p.

The Bill Rodgers Jingle Bell 5K that was to be tomorrow night has been postponed to the 23rd because of the snow we're supposed to get tonight. That sucks because I doubt I'll be in Boston on the 23rd so I can't run it.

She did this IM this past weekend and came in first in her AG. Her marathon time was 3:28 after swimming 2.4 miles in 1:03 and biking 112 miles in 5:55 for a final time w/ transitions of 10:31:56. I can't believe how much she's improved since we first met on Team Envision way back when. We used to be running partners but I moved to KS for vet school and over the years got slower while she moved to DC and got much faster.

I feel like I'm back in vet school sharing my juicy details. 4 years of lovely blogging can be found at http://vetschool.heathermartin.net/weblog/, if you've yet to read. Anyway, as I thought might happen if my site was found, the posts I've made about my running club have come back to haunt me. I've spoken on the phone w/ an officer and just now received an email from a teammate both asking me to censor myself in some way. As much as I can't stand to be censored, especially as some blogger chic in Boston, that's been blogging since 2002, and just out to share my life mainly for family and friends, and all those I've somehow helped interested in veterinary medicine, etc. I have decided to cave and do it. I have to admit I did it once before about a year ago when my intern roommate asked me to remove something and it pissed me off then too. Anyway, I don't want to cause trouble, I'm just here reporting my news. This isn't the best day for me to try and write something worthwhile after all that has happened since yesterday so I'll just divert the attention and tell about my crazy 24 hrs.

Last night my friend Jason came to town from Mississippi for a long weekend and to see family and friends. Nathan and I met him to go see the Pops w/ the Cowboy Junkies at Symphony Hall. I haven't seen him since 2004 at the last Sheila Divine show where I came to Boston from Kansas and he came in from Mississippi. So it's been awhile. We all used to work in the same lab. So the concert was great, I think it was my first time at Symphony Hall. I was a bit stressed because I had to give a seminar and CPC today besides do my journal club articles and start my shitty class tonite but since I never see Jason I made the sacrifice. When I met them it was 6:30p and I figured I wouldn't be home that late and I could just stay up and finish it when I got home. Well the show ended and led to a drink at Jason's hotel, he was staying at Jury's and I was curious to check it out since I've walked by many times, and that led to his room where I was in turmoil: my seminar, I need to finish!, or stay anyway and figure I'll get it done somehow. So I stayed and eventually kinda snuck out at 4:30am, he snores and I wanted to try and get a couple hours of sleep before trying to finish up my seminar and all the other stuff. So I went to bed about 5:30 for a couple hours, made it to work to finish my stuff but forgot my connector for computer to projector so had to waste time going home to get it, had to quick write up my JC articles, meet w/ the pathologist to go over my CPC, I screwed up printing out my handouts, sorry!, then I didn't even get to go to JC because a quail was very sick and needed to be euthanized and necropsied and I finished just in time to get to Harvard for my first class, 6-9pm ugh! then a phone call about the whole running club thing and now I'm censoring the whole thing. So to summarize, I haven't eaten anything since last night at the Pops, running on a couple hours sleep, got through my seminar and all though it probably sucked, blah blah blah blah blah

The CRC is the Cambridge Running Club which I joined a few months ago after being on the waiting list for several months. A bunch of new people were welcome to join at the same time so I met some great people really quickly that I looked forward to seeing at track every week.

CENSORED! The rest of this post was deleted.

I was at Training Weekend with my triathlon team Team EnVision this weekend from Thursday night to Sunday morning. We stayed in Waterville Valley, NH at the Golden Eagle Lodge. Overall I had a good time but it would have been even better if I was in shape.

Drove up w/ one team member that I've never met so that was new and interesting. We got there too late to get the pizza at registration so I just got my reading materials about the weekend and went to my room. I stayed in a room w/ 2 different girls, so there's 3 new people right off the bat. I was the second one to get there and soon after the third girl came. I asked if they met thru TE and the older one said 'We met at her birth.' They were sisters. So they were my roomies for the weekend.

I didn't wake up for swimming on Friday, already being lazy, but I made up for it. I got dressed to go running and on my way downstairs I found out about a bike ride that was leaving so I went back to my room and changed into biking clothes and got my bike. I can run anytime but I never ride. The girls I went w/ ended up doing a 38 mile loop which I knew for me would be too much but I went along and got dropped quickly, though they did wait for me at the turns and stuff. Though after 10 miles I told them I had to turn back because 38 was too much. So I did the 10 back alone and it was all uphill. I just wanted to get thru it w/out having to stop or get off and walk so I managed that at least. It was a good 20 mile ride w/ plenty of hill in it. Later that night I went to the pool and got taped by Bill, I think he's TriFury's swim coach. TriFury was up there too and some of our events were open to both teams. I only swam about 300m but we were more concerned w/ the taping part. I found out I don't look abnormal swimming and that my left arm is better than my right, makes sense since I'm left-handed. So that was real helpful and now I have at least 15 things to think about when I swim now. I also went to a seminar by Coach Patrick in the afternoon about self coaching yourself on 10 hrs a week. At our dinner that night we had a guest speaker Molly Zahr we did her first triathlon in 2002 and recently won Lake Placid. Her story seemed unbelievable; she had never run before just to run, was a basketball/softball player in school, was 'overweight', has lost 70 lbs. since starting training and now is looking to turn pro. All I wanted to do at that moment was go compare our triathlons because her first was Danskin and I did Danskin in 2002 so I thought if I had beaten her that year, it was her first, then maybe there was hope for me, though when I raced Danskin I was in really, really good shape and she didn't make it sound like she was. I couldn't check the results then though because I went computer-less all weekend and I also tried to go soda-less which I didn't accomplish but I took in much less than usual. I had a bottle of diet Pepsi and a can of Diet Coke and that was it, and I had none yesterday, so it was an accomplishment for me.

Back to the story, when I got home yesterday I looked up the results:

MARTIN, HEATHER    Bib #1283    F    25-29

Overall Rank    Class Rank      
200 of 1384      42 of 273       

Swim       Swim Rank    Trans1
0:17:03              440    0:04:50

Bike         Bike Rank    MPH     Trans2   
0:38:53             191    19.1    0:01:32

 Run        Run Rank    Pace
0:21:34           156    0:07:26

Final 1:23:54

ZAHR, MOLLY    Bib #1495    F    20-24

Overall Rank    Class Rank    
76 of 1384      6 of 95

Swim        Swim Rank    Trans1
 0:17:10             463     0:04:05

Bike        Bike Rank    MPH    Trans2
0:34:21             14    21.6    0:01:55  

 Run         Run Rank    Pace
0:21:28            148    0:07:24

Final 1:19:01

Looks like she got me in the bike. But like I said this was at my peak of fitness, so far at least, and for her she was just starting. Guess I have my work cut out for me.

After dinner we had some breakout sessions on different race distances so I went to the half-IM, full-IM sessions and there were only a handful of girls that were talking about their IM training and I was just kinda listening hoping some of their guts would rub off on me. Then to bed.

Got up Saturday morning for swimming. My roomies were kinda teaching a beginner swimming clinic. Not that I'm a beginner but I wanted to see what else I might learn. Mostly just swam though I didn't keep track of how far. I was in the pool for an hour. After, quickly showered up and got changed into biking gear for the Bootcamp. The Bootcamp consisted of a 6 mile bike loop and included a 3 mile uphill. Then you get back to the transition area, drop your bike, put on your sneaks and do a one mile running loop. Then a couple different Bootcamp exercises and then do the whole thing over again as many times as you want. Most people did it twice, though a handful did it 4 times. After the first one I sat out the second because I wasn't sure I could get up the hill again so I rejoined the handful left on the third go-around. After that I was done. Went back to the room for another shower and a little rest, then to a nutrition seminar and a core body seminar where we did more exercises and stretching. Then made it to dinner and had pasta and a glass of wine and there was live music. This older couple sang and played guitar and we were supposed to go up and sing and all w/ them but I didn't know the words well enough to the oldie songs they were doing. They were the musical entertainment at dinner last year too I found out and after last year's team performances by some of the girls, a repeat was expected. Eventually a group of us left searching for dessert. It was the second night in a row that we didn't get dessert, we think it was to save money or something, though if we knew that, we would have paid more! TriFury was having dinner in the same place as us and they had brownie sundaes. We never found dessert in the deserted little Town Sq. so we raided the vending machine and I had a Snickers. Then to bed.

Got up Sunday, missed swimming, my shoulders were very sore from riding, and instead just ran a couple miles on this trail that had lots of rocks and technical spots so it wasn't much of a run but still tough, more of a run/walk. Then it was another shower and packing up to meet my other teammate for the ride home. Of course that's when it started to rain the hardest, trying to get the bikes on the roof rack was awful and we were completely soaked. Eventually made it back to Boston to rest and watch movies: [Shopgirl] (http://imdb.com/title/tt0338427/), Music & Lyrics and enjoyed both.