January - It's a wrap (almost!)

Yes - January, despite my sense of lackluster motivation and a slow start, ended up being a good month and has concluded on a positive note.  Returning to work after the holidays is always a bit brutal, but the Jan. schedule at the school where I teach is pretty awesome and allows for much socializing.  Add to that my birthday and some solid training weeks, and the month rounded out quite nicely!

Yes, my birthday - another year older but not necessarily wiser.  I used to hate having a January birthday (mainly when I was a kid because I wanted a pool party which was never possible, not even in South Texas), but I've obviously gotten over that and now embrace getting older.  I think that, once I'm closer to the big 5-0, I might enjoy celebrating it a bit less, but for now, I'll continue to raise a glass to my health and happiness.

Drinking a home-made margarita by the resident mixologist and sporting a great little Smartwool pullover that my parents got me - total win!

With my birthday, I didn't move up an age group, sadly, but hopefully it will be a good year for me in the 40-44 group!  My actual birthday was filled with some star power - I attended a CalTri season kick-off meeting and met the very inspiring Hillary Biscay who talked to the group.  I admit that I didn't know who she was until I got my first Smashfestqueen kit, but then I started reading about her and wow, she's pretty amazing.  And I really do love the kits that her company makes - the designs are awesome and the kits are comfortable.  Anyway, I wavered - to introduce myself as a fan girl or not?  I finally decided that it would be kind of silly to not say anything to her, so I ended up talking about how great the kits are, showing her a picture of me wearing the Fly kit, and then we blabbed about triathlon. I was a little starstruck, I must admit, and she was very nice.

Hillary with Maik Twelsiek - the following photos are courtesy of CalTri (and Harrison Shao)

No pictures with Hillary but Harrison snapped one of me with Maik - he only came in 11th at Kona this year!  He was swiping my credit card so that I could make the following purchase:

I know, I know!  Another kit. But so cute and I love the fish scales on it!  And Maik also talked with me about the St. George course - and the hills!

My "real" birthday celebration followed - Michael and I spent an afternoon hanging out at LA's Grand Central Market , visiting the Hudson River School exhibit at LACMA and eating and drinking quite well.  To be honest, there might have been a bit too much over-indulgence over the course of the month, but how can I complain about *having* to spend time at some of my favorite places - Amigos, the York, Golden Road Brewery and POV (this last place has forever ruined pizza elsewhere for us) with friends.  Also, I had my first ramen experience - since the days of Top Ramen - at Tsujita.  The LA Weekly claims that you can find better ramen, but you have to get on a plane to do so.  I'm not a ramen expert, but I can say that it was one of the most decadent meals I've ever had.

Perhaps my favorite part of the meal (except for the ramen) - Glad that no one died while we were eating the ramen!

I mentioned drink, and I know that serious triathletes and runners eschew alcohol.  Sigh.  Obviously I'm not one of those serious athletes, and I've developed a recent crush on the Old Fashioned and variations of said drink (such as the Claremont).  Also, Golden Road's "Better Weather IPA" is one of the best beers I've had in ages which I would drink on a more regular basis except that it has 9% alcohol or something ridiculous like that.  In other words, it packs a punch.

Despite a month of eating and drinking a bit too much, I would say that the rest of my training regime is on track.  Yes, despite my mid-month groaning and moaning and belly-aching, it's been a solid training period.  I started off the month with a great run in Boulder on New Year's, and I started today with an early morning long, slow distance run.  Many of these have felt like a slog, at least at one moment or another, but I enjoyed every moment of today's run. I feel that some of the training is beginning to click, and I'm looking forward to a more focused month in February.

A fair weather rider

We've enjoyed some rather chilly days and weeks in the LA area this year.  Obviously I'm not comparing the temperatures here to those far-flung northern locales, but compared to last year, it's been damn cold!  Currently, I'm wearing a wool sweater, wool socks and we have a fire crackling away for the evening.  Michael refused to take the dogs out for a walk this morning because there was frost on the ground, and at one point a few weeks ago, Gus, our ever-so-agile labrador-beagle mix slipped on some ice in the back patio.  I keep wondering if this is the "hell-freezes-over" moment in humanity's history, but other apocalyptic signs seem wanting (unless you count the pope's resignation - holy smokes! This is the first time since the Middle Ages that a pope has willingly - I suppose - stepped down).

As much as I like that the cold weather affords me the opportunity to wear wool sweaters to school and to bundle up in the mornings, as I begin to think about different races and the training involved, I curse the colder temperatures.  Yes, this is yet another example of my total lack of hard-core badassness.  I admit it - I am a fair weather rider.  A wimp, in other words.  There are, after all, several reasons I live in Southern CA, and the weather does make the list.  While we have our seasons here (May Grey, June Gloom, Santa Ana winds...) and there are extremes that come with them, most of the time, I can find a way to train outside, even if it means I drive to the coast, usually in search of cooler temperatures, for a ride or a run.  There are some hot days in the summer, and, apparently, some cold days in the winter!

Running in the cold, while it isn't much fun, is not unbearable nor unfamiliar.  Last year, I ran in Boulder and Taos when the temperatures were in the 20's.  Cold, yes, but not intolerable.  Riding in the cold, however, is another matter altogether. As yesterday proved, I am NOT prepared for even slightly cold weather riding.  Honestly, if I weren't starting to think about upcoming events (months away, but still there), I wouldn't have plopped my thin-skinned butt on the saddle yesterday.  However, I've committed myself to at least one ride per week in February and then upping the number when March and April roll around.  So far, I've enjoyed these rides - last weekend's was awesome and made me happy to be back on the bike.  Yesterday's ride, however, made me realize that I seriously lack any cold-weather riding gear.  Okay, not "any" since I have leg warmers and bike gloves, and really I have enough winter gear to layer up for a ride, but it feels unfamiliar and uncomfortable to be so cold on the bike.  Not that I started out cold - I began the ride climbing several miles as I headed part of the way up the Angeles Crest Highway.  It was an AMAZING day (always is after a rain) - lots of dramatic clouds and sunlight peeping through and freshly green mountains that went on and on as I looked towards the eastern range.  I wasn't hot on the climb, but not cold.  However, once I turned around and started the descent, I knew that I was in for some suffering.  At first I couldn't decide if the excitement of the decent would cancel out the wind chill factor, and initially it did.  Once I finished the decent and continued the ride, I started to curse my serious lack of circulation - cold hands and really f-ing cold feet!  I cut the ride short because, by that point, my feet were totally numb and I just couldn't get warm.

In my defense, I do think that it was about 52 degrees when I started the ride and, when I returned, the temperature had dropped to about 48 degrees.  Not freezing temperatures, I admit, but when you're zooming downhill and there's a biting wind, it's cold!  Fortunately, looking at the temperatures this next weekend, we should be back to normal LA digits - ah, the 70's, how I will welcome you!

Back in the saddle

It was a great weekend - just what I needed to fully re-energize and recover from all of the travels and to begin to focus on the 2012-2013 academic year.  To kick off the weekend, I managed my first post-Boulder race work-out on Friday with a spinning class, which was the perfect reintroduction to the wide world of sports/fitness.  During the school year, I can't normally go to an 8:30 am spin class during the week, so this was a last hurrah for the summer, and Rod, the instructor, had us working with heart rate monitors.  Obviously this is an effective tool for training, and it made me think about yet another investment for the future but not the present.  I definitely pushed myself during the class, but focusing on my heart rate was a change, rather than just try to decide what it meant to me when the instructor says "You should be at a 5 in intensity".

The spinning class set a nice tone for a weekend full of cycling adventures.  And some misadventures with the news about Lance Armstrong breaking and dominating much of the cycling world news, despite the fact that 2 major races were going on (the USA Pro Challenge and the Vuelta a España).  I think that I read all of my free articles at NYTimes.com between Friday and Saturday just to see what experts had to say, and obviously there is no consensus but plenty of buzz about it with opinions all over the place.  We also spent many hours on Friday, Saturday and Sunday watching coverage of the USA Pro Challenge which concluded yesterday.  Saturday's race ended in Boulder, and we wished that we could have been a part of the throngs of people out cheering for the cyclists (Michael's brothers were there - I was rather envious!).  I've become a huge Jens Voigt fan, not because of this Road ID commercial (although I do like it), but his tenacity and his motto "Shut up legs".

In addition to reacquainting myself with certain muscles that I hadn't used in awhile, we satisfied our Mexican craving on Friday at Amigo's, a favorite, especially because of their pitchers of margaritas. We celebrated the birth of a special little lady, and we also celebrated the fact that her mom could drink with us again! Over the pitchers (as usual), a friend proposed the idea of joining him on his weekly Sunday morning brunch ride.  It seemed like a great way to get back on the bike - a no-pressure, social ride.  Yes, please, sign me up!  Yesterday morning, we rolled out around 9:00 am, heading east to Pasadena and then further east to the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area, a part of LA that we had never, to my embarrassment, explored.  I knew of its whereabouts, that it did exist, but biking there - that never crossed my narrow-bike-experience-mind.  Rob led the way, fortunately, because we traveled along surface streets, through towns that I usually associate with an exit on the freeway: Arcadia, Temple City, Irwindale - where were we?!  And then, after hitting a fairly industrialized part of the eastern landscape of the LA area, we made a few turns and suddenly connected to a bike trail!  It was a great day for a ride - calm, for the most part, and I saw, in much closer detail, parts of LA that I usually ignore or dismiss.  The bike trail around the Santa Fe Dam was a beauty - well-maintained and also well-used.  On the return, we traveled a different course, hugging a bit closer the Angeles National Forest as we headed to Pasadena via Sierra Madre.  Our lunch destination was another old favorite: Lucky Baldwin's where we restored our energy with some food and brew!  I also learned that a post-ride IPA beer is a great recovery drink, but then the 5-miles or so uphill to get back home don't feel quite so good.

The Sunday ride was the perfect way for me to enjoy Sunshine again and to get my legs spinning without too much pushing and pulling thanks to a relatively flat route.  Rob, our fearless leader, kept a kind tempo - he stressed that it was a relaxed ride which I appreciated.  For me, this might be one of my favorite rides of the summer, probably because I had such a different attitude going into it.  I have enjoyed the fact that Michael and I spent time on our bikes when we were in Oregon and Colorado, and we loved our explorations up and down PCH this summer.  However, many (all) of those rides served a fairly singular purpose - train, train, train.  I focused on speed, mph, elevation gain and loss, and on miles, mainly on miles, as I needed to add more each week to feel prepared.  So, the rides had more to do with going a certain speed and distance and less to do with enjoying the experience of riding.  Yesterday's ride was truly about exploring the city and sharing a Sunday morning (and part of the afternoon) ride with friends.  It made me think about cycling in a different way, one that is less about using it to push myself and more about fun.  I would like to add miles this fall, but more than anything, I'd like to shift my approach to cycling in general and go on rides not because I *have* to but merely because they offer possibilities of fun, socializing and exploration.

So, it is good to be back in the saddle, in both a literal and figurative sense, and I can't wait for my next ride!

Friday night adventures: "In Wonderland"

Despite the fact that we did not celebrate the big V-day for a variety of reasons (nice use of double "v" there), such as grading quizzes and someone taking an art class and two people not really seeing each other that day, our Friday night more than made up for an overblown, commercialized and fabricated tribute to love and romance.  Can you tell how I feel about the whole day?  I certainly don't mean to be a total cynic, but I'm skeptical.  Not about chocolate, wine and flowers, but people (corporations - oh, wait, corporations ARE people now thanks to the US Supreme Court ruling) telling that I'm either supposed to give them or receive them on a certain day.

Back to last night which was not, fortunately, a forced romantic holiday.  It was, however, Friday and the perfect reason to venture out of our usual local haunts.  We braved crowds and traffic and found our way to LACMA (LA County Museum of Art).  My parents gave us a membership for Christmas this year, and this was the first moment that we could to take advantage of our new membership status.  One major advantage of the membership is that we can spend as much or as little time as we want.  Last night, our main purpose was to see the exhibit "In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States". And see it we did!  I thought that it might be packed like the Tim Burton exhibit we saw over the summer, but fortunately it was super calm and we could take our time and really enjoy the art we saw (or enjoy the art that we liked).  It was well organized - great information and well laid-out.  I definitely liked some of the art but not all of it, which seems pretty standard.  I was, however, excited that they had quite a few works by Remedios Varo.  She's a Spanish painter who left the "madre patria" after Franco took over in '39.  I saw an extensive exhibit of her work when I was in Mexico City back in 94 (long time ago!).
These were two of the works on exhibit - the first one is called "Creation of the Birds" and the second is "Woman Leaving Psychoanalyst".  I like to imagine that she is carrying the head of the analyst, or of her father?!

There were plenty of paintings by Frida and some other women artists.  The photographs by Lee Miller, who was Man Ray's assistant but became an accomplished photographer on her own, were pretty great too.

This, however, was not my favorite:

Don't even ask me what this is...

After that exhibit, we also spent some time wandering around the California Design exhibit which we both loved, of course.  It is strange because I certainly still feel like an interloper here in Southern CA, someone who is just visiting (for a few years), and this exhibit perhaps reminded me why I feel like a visitor in such a glamorous place in terms of the "American experience".  I don't think that I'm expressing this very well, but so much in the exhibit was familiar from movies and my sense of America in the 40's, 50's and 60's, but this is certainly not a reality that I've ever personally lived, I've just experienced it through film and TV.  So, that brings me back to California.  Some of my favorite items from the exhibit - the Airstreamer and a nice little surfboard. Both are so Californian!

By the time we wandered through these two exhibits, museum headache had started to take hold (or it was a hunger headache), and we decided to leave in search of food.  Our first choice, Plan A, was way too busy at 7:30 pm on a Friday night.  The second choice, Chi Dynasty in Los Feliz, was pretty slammed but they had a few two-tops, so we sat down with no problems.  It was quite fun to be back at Chi Dynasty - it literally had been years or at least a year and a half since our last visit.  What I like about Chi, in addition to their food, is that they also make great drinks.  I had a St. Germaine cocktail that was awesome.  The dining experience as a whole was not amazing, mainly because there was a table of loud, shrill girls (heavily-made-up 20-somethings) sitting next to us, and their conversation made my ear hurt.  But the food hit the spot, and it was good for us to leave our usual restaurant haunts!

Sad to say, by the time we arrived home, I was ready for bed - apparently  an exciting night on the town for us ends at 9:00 pm!