2013 Goals

A little late, I know.

Last year's goals were obvious - Xterra Nationals and USDAA Nationals.  This year?  Xterra Nationals seems the likely choice.  I loved the course last year and it's the same again this year.  But in my experience with races and national events it's rarely as special the second time around.  But as I run and ride my bike I imagine myself grinding my way up Wheeler Canyon (the start of the bike course at Nationals) and feeling so much stronger.  These images come to me without thinking about them or summoning them, I'm riding along and suddenly they're there.  Deep down I suppose I'm fooling myself if I'm thinking I'm not going to nationals again.  But the prospect of the 7 1/2 hour drive and hassle and expense does not thrill me.  I've had this experience, maybe it's time to move onto something else.  But nothing else springs to mind, just Wheeler Canyon over and over again.  So for now I'm shooting for Xterra Nationals again.

I'm hoping to qualify in 3 races rather than 4 but that depends on how many people in my age group rack up points this year.  Last year I could have qualified with only 2 races but I had no way to know that ahead of time and it would have been a nail biter.  If things start looking iffy, I'll add in a 4th race.  Or maybe say to heck with it, if I can't do it with 3 races then I stay home and go to DOCNA Champs.  Because in order to fit in 4 races I either have to do Curt Gowdy, a hard, technically challenging race just 3 weeks after another race or I have to do Mountain Champs, another hard race, just a week before another race.  And the big lesson of last year is that I need time for recovery between races if I want to be able to train hard over the summer.  So for now, the race schedule looks like this:

June 1 (Saturday) – Xterra Lory, Fort Collins, CO, 1/2 mile swim, 12.2 mile bike, 4.8 mile run

June 29 (Saturday) – Lookout Mountain Triathlon, Golden, CO, 525 yard swim, 10 mile bike, 5k run

July 20 (Saturday):  Xterra Mountain Championships, Beaver Creek, 1 mile open water swim,
                                 15.5 mile off road bike, 5.75 mile trail run (tentative, not likely)

July 27 (Saturday):  Indian Peaks Xterra, 1000 m/1093 yards open water swim, 21 k/13 miles off                                  road bike, 7 k/4.35 miles trail run

August 24 (Saturday) – Xterra Buffalo Creek, CO, 1500 m/1640.4 yard swim (68-72 degrees),
                                      22 mile mountain bike (1 loop), 5 mile run

September 21:  XTERRA Nationals, Snow Basin Resort, near Ogden, UT, 7 hrs., 27
                         mins./510.66 miles, 1500 m/1640.4 yard swim (2 laps), 17.7 mile bike (3400’
                         climbing, 7300’ high point), 6.1 miles run (700’ climbing)

The Lookout Mountain Triathlon is on road except for the run.  It's a short race, a hard training day.  I mostly signed up for it because I like it, doesn't count for Xterra points.  I won't taper for it but I will go hard at race pace.

Xterra Buffalo Creek is sort of a new race.  I did the short course version of it many years ago then the race was no longer and now it's back under new management.  I'm excited, it's a great course but a long hard climb at the end of the bike, excellent practice for nationals.  I've never done the long course and it is long, a longer bike than nationals at 22 miles.  But I'm excited to try a new race and I love the trails at Buffalo Creek.  Can't wait to get up there and check out the course.

I may do a new off road triathlon in Fruita in October but we'll see.  I might not be up for a 4 1/2 hour drive just a few weeks after nationals and it's only a sprint distance which is fun but maybe not worth all that driving, expense, etc.

Agility goals?  I gots none.  No big events anyway.  I'm not going to Tennessee for USDAA Nationals, out of the question, and if I go to Xterra Nat's. then I'll miss DOCNA Champs again.  So far the goal for agility this year is to run and have fun, try new handling moves, run faster (me), sharpen up my skills.  I'll enter USDAA's Masters Challenge events (ie the international style courses) since that's the stuff I like to practice.  Strum turns 8 in March and I'm not a big fan of old dogs doing agility so I'm not sure how long we have left.  I think we're at that point where I'm in a 'savor every run' type mode rather than having any big sort of goal.  Would be nice to pick up the advanced jumpers, snooker and pairs legs that we need to get into masters in USDAA but those are our easiest classes so I'm sure those legs will come soon enough.

The focus for me right now in my triathlon training is strength.  I've been going to boot camp regularly and it's making a world of difference in my strength.  It feels so good to have upper body strength and especially core strength.  The plyometrics are doing worlds of wonder for my bad knee and sprinting at agility is so much easier.  This month I'm going to start going to the 'hills and drills' workout which is sometimes track work/intervals/stair climbing and sometimes hill repeats.  It's a bit early in the season for track workouts but it's only once a week and I want to be able to ease into it this month then put some real effort into it in the coming months.  Running is starting to feel a lot more like running and less like shuffling.

Most of my more challenging goals for the year are related to my business so I'm o.k. with easing off the goals for hobbies this year, at least in agility.  My trial schedule so far looks like this:


January 11-13:  USDAA, FRAC, Boulder County Fairgrounds, Longmont (18 minutes)

February 9-10:  DOCNA, FRAC, Boulder County Fairgrounds, Longmont (18 mins.)
March 8-10:  USDAA, FRAT, Douglas County Fairgrounds, Castle Rock, Team (1 hour, 4
                      mins., 61.38 miles)

April 27-28:  DOCNA, FRAT, Denver Dog Sports, Denver (43 mins.)

May 11-12:  USDAA, FRAC, Adams County Fairgrounds, Brighton (42 minutes)

May 18-19:  USDAA, ACAT, Pueblo (2 hours, 10 mins.) (probably not)

June 23-24:  USDAA, DAPPR, Black Forest (1 hour, 45 mins) (probably 1 day only)

August  9-11:  USDAA, FRAC, Hansen Arena, Laramie, WY (2 hours, 5 mins.) (tentative)

August  17-18:  DOCNA, FRAT, DeKovend Park, Littleton (1 hour, 42.17 miles)

Aug. 31 - Sept. 2:  USDAA, FRAT, location? (tentative, depends on location and # of rings)

Sept. 19-22 – DOCNA Champs. (probably not)

October 5-7:  USDAA, ACAT, Fountain (1 hour, 50 mins.) (tentative)

November 8-9:  DOCNA, FRAT, Jefferson County Fairgrounds (43 mins.)

November 15-17:  USDAA, FRAC, Boulder County Fairgrounds, Longmont (18 mins.)

December 7-8:  DOCNA, FRAC, Boulder County Fairgrounds, Longmont (18 mins.)

I think it's funny that I have only 1 or 2 trials that are 2 hours or so away, 1 that's a little over an hour away and the rest are 43 mins. or less with 4 of them being only 18 minutes away.  So lucky I have so many trials so close, I hate driving and staying in hotels never mind the expense.  Very spoiled, I know.

Kangooing Is Not A Crime

Yesterday's Kangoo Class was all kinds of excitement.  We sometimes have class on the tennis courts of our instructor's townhouse/condo community and usually my worst fear about this is that someone on the heavily traveled bike path will stop and take video and the atrocity of my attempts at 'dancing' in cumbersome bouncy boots will become the next YouTube sensation.  However we do occasionally have the problem of some angry, balding middle aged guy, Mr. Enforcer, stomping over to inform us that we cannot be on the tennis courts in our bouncy boots.  The instructor explains that the boots are designed to be used on hardwood floors which are much more fragile than tennis courts and she can provide the documentation if necessary.  I've been going out there for nearly a year now and I haven't seen any effects from our bouncy shoes on the oh so precious tennis court surface.  Anyway, the angry man usually ends up stomping off and leaving us in peace.

Except yesterday's angry middle aged man was not to be placated.  When first lumbered over with his obese Basset Hound and loudly demanded we vacate the courts I bounced off away from him and let the instructor deal with it.  I'm not a fan of conflict or angry middle aged men with wheezy Basset Hounds, especially early in the morning, and it's not for me to interfere anyway.  But this time she tells us we'll have to leave, he's on the HOA board and he's threatening to call the cops.  At which point I realized that it's a good idea I bounced away while she was talking to him because if I had heard that I would have burst out laughing right in his red, power mad face.  Oh what I would give to hear a recording of that conversation with the cops.  Unfortunately, the people who want to be on HOA boards are the very people who absolutely should not be on HOA boards.

If it was up to me I would have told the sad little man where to go and carried on with class.  Because I promise you, the Boulder cops are not going to show up to haul away a few women wearing bouncy boots on private tennis courts.  And on the odd chance that they do, it will be after they've stopped for lattes and breakfast bagels and hassled some homeless people and shot an elk and Kangoo class will be long over.  But I don't have to live under the HOA jackboot of angry middle aged Basset Hound man so I kept my yap shut and we moved to a different location and I avoided getting dragged away, bouncy boots and all, into the paddy wagon while yelling, 'Kangooing is not a crime' and singing, 'Know Your Rights'.  Now that would make a great YouTube moment.

I love Boulder for its beautiful scenery and access to the mountains but nothing can beat the entertainment provided by the sad folks who don't realize how good they have it living the life in the bubble.

Strummer Finally Gets to Play

Poor guy, I took him out to the agility field because they had set up one of the trickier looking Masters Standard courses from last week's USDAA trial and I wanted to give it a bash.  He's been out there maybe once in months and months and he was so excited when he realized where we were going, whine-moaning his head off in the car.  But when I got there there were too many people so I decided to take him for a walk on the nearby open space trails and wait for the folks to leave.  But he so excited for agility, he was having none of this hiking business.  He was tense and stressed and kept trying to figure out how to get me to turn around and getting the leash wrapped around his neck.  Stress sniffing.  It was not a relaxing walk. 

Forty minutes later the people had left but a new person was there and then someone else showed up and long story short, I packed up the poor wound up guy and took him home.  I felt so bad for him.

So today I skipped my masters swim work out and took him back to the field.  Thankfully we finally had the joint to ourselves.

This was the course:

Strum had a beautiful run on his first try, a few wide turns and a possible refusal between 11 and 12 but otherwise clean.  I tried a few different handling choices to see what worked best for us.  Between 5 and 6 I started off with a front cross and got a big wide turn and almost an off course at the teeter.  Keeping him on my right worked the best and got the tightest, fastest line.  The dogwalk was tricky, I ended up being way far down the line of the dogwalk when he came out of the tunnel, got eye contact to cue the dogwalk when he came out and did a rear cross on the flat between the dogwalk and #8 jump.  Not the prettiest sight in the world but it got the job done and he got his contacts the 2-3 times I tried it.

The trickiest part of the course was between the #11 chute and #12 jump.  My initial thought was to stop as he exited the chute, call him in to me a little to re-set his line then send him on his way to the jump but he came out of the chute with too much speed, standing still confused him and left me in his dust.  I ended up with refusals, a run by, even a couple of times where he turned around the jump to his right because I had confused him so badly.  I suppose you could front cross and bring him around intentionally but that would waste a lot of time.  In the end  I ran up to the jump and was standing near the jump with my shoulders facing the jump when he got out of the chute so he knew where to go and could set his line himself.

The threadle at 15-16 caused some people a lot of problems at the trial but it turned out to be really easy.  A forward send after the A-frame and pretty much all I had to do was rotate my shoulders to the 16 jump, there was so much space between and the angles weren't bad at all.

I initially tried a front cross after the teeter but this caused a wide loopy turn because his teeter is so darn fast, I couldn't get ahead of him.  Instead I kept him on my right and rear crossed which gave me a nice tight turn.

Very fun course, I'm looking forward to finally being able to enter Masters Standard at our next USDAA trial in March.

I took some pictures with the iPhone just for the heck of it.  I felt so bad for him losing out yesterday that I stayed extra long playing with him at the field.  It was in the 40's with a nip in the air but sunny and it didn't take much to have his tongue hanging to the ground.

Chilling out in the shade with his favorite chicken toy.

Worst picture ever of a jumping dog but oh well.  He still cracks me up with his goofy expressions.

A splattering of snow on the Continental Divide.  Snow pack is scary low.

I didn't feel so bad skipping masters because I did get up and go to boot camp and I'm still not feeling 100%, stupid head cold.  Double workouts today was probably not a good plan anyway.  And who can deny this face?

Fun With Threadles

I managed to pick up a head cold at the trial over the weekend, so many people coughing and sneezing and the cold temperatures, it was hard to avoid.  At first I thought it was just dust in my lungs and sinuses but by Tuesday I realized that it was a cold.  It's been years since I've had one, not so much fun but at least it wasn't the dreaded norovirus, ie stomach flu, that's been going around.  In any case, not much triathlon training going on this week despite the wondrously warm 50 degree days though I did make it to Kangoos this morning.  I think I managed to bounce out the last of the congestion so hopefully should be good to go for the weekend.

I did get an agility practice in yesterday.  My training partner set up a truly evil but fun international course.  Very challenging when your brain is already foggy.  Here's a video of the course map and someone else doing the course.



And here's someone with crazy mad distance skilz doing the same course and proving that you don't need to be young, fit and fast to kick butt on those challenging international courses.



I lost Strum to the tunnel/weave discrimination a couple of times but we got it eventually.  He did surprisingly well on the rest of the course though we did it in bits and pieces at first and not nearly as nicely as those ladies in the videos.

We did a second, shorter exercise on the same course but I don't have the map for it.  Seems you could do all sorts of stuff with that set up if you were so inclined.  By the end of the practice session the threadles seemed like the easiest of the challenges out there.  There was a threadle in one of the Masters Standard classes at the trial last weekend and people were doing some interesting things to handle it.  The course is going to be set up at the training field this weekend so I'm going to make an effort to get out there and try it.  It looked like fun, except for a dogwalk/tunnel challenge.  But I need to get out there and practice some dogwalks.  Strummer's been doing awesome with them lately but still, we had trouble with a turn this past weekend and it's been months since I've touched a dogwalk outside of competition.

So glad to be done with the week of temps. in the teens and single digits.  Ugh, that was not fun.  Bring on the warm and sunny this weekend.  Can't wait to get back outside and into action.  No more lazing about.

FRAC USDAA Trial

Strum had about the best weekend I could hope for, getting the 2 remaining legs he needed for his Advanced Standard title and winning Steeplechase Finals.  So so happy to be able to enter Masters Standard at the next USDAA trial in March.  Finally.  We only picked up a Gamblers leg in the games so we still need Q's in all the rest to totally move into Masters but it's the standard legs we struggle with so I was over the moon to get those so easily.  This was his first trial entered in Advanced but he moved up for one standard run at the last trial so we were able to complete the Standard title.  Funny that it took him nearly a year to get his Starters Standard title yet he got his Advanced Standard title in his first 2 trials.  I think we do better with challenging courses.

Both rounds of Steeplechase were a lot of fun.  Round 1 was somewhat technical for a Steeplechase course, lots of E's.  Strum and I made it through but had a fault at the broad jump and a missed weave entry on the second time around.  But the little stinker is so fast that we still made it to finals.  Just.

Steeplechase Round 1

I almost didn't hang around for Round 2 because they switched the running order so it was at the end of the day on Saturday rather than on Sunday.  I was through with my runs at 1:45 p.m. and would have to sit through Starters Standard and all 3 levels of Pairs to get to Steeplechase Finals.  I didn't enter Pairs because I didn't want to be at the trial super late.  But the course looked fun so I decided to wait for a bit to see how things ran.  The judge was very efficient, Pairs went quickly and I was 2nd dog on the line for Steeplechase so the wait wasn't too bad and I was done at around 5:20 or so.   Round 2 was a pure speed course, very fun and perfect for Strummer.  Glad that I stayed.  And the money I won was exactly our entry fee so we got 2 tournament runs for free.

Steeplechase Round 2

Steeplechase Finals



I also have video of Saturday's Advanced Standard run.  Not as nice as his flawless run on Sunday but a good view of his good dogwalk contact.



I think my Flip is on its last legs.  The quality looks terrible.  Sometimes I hear a little piece of something loose rattling around in it and other times I don't hear it all.  I don't think that's a good sign.  I'm not thrilled with the idea of giving people my phone to tape me so I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  Maybe I'll try smacking the Flip around a little, sometimes that does the trick.

A very fun weekend but so cold.  Sofa king cold.  Single digits in the morning working up to a high in the mid-teens each day.  Thankfully the heat was on in the arena but it wasn't toasty warm, especially Sunday morning.  I was very happy to be done with my one run by around 9:00 a.m. on Sunday.  It was 10 degrees when I got home and I was glad to be snuggled up in my house and not freezing my butt off at the arena for the third day in a row.  These extreme temps. aren't normal for us but it is normal to have a few cold snaps like this throughout the winter.  At least it wasn't so cold that I was shivering like I was at the trial a few months ago when there was no heat at all.

Poor Strummer doesn't do well in the extreme cold.  He has sensitive feet and he'll sit on his haunches with his feet up waiting for me to warm his tootsies when his feet get too cold.  Which take about a minute or 2 of walking across the parking lot.  Somebody had to come to my rescue and warm his feet for me because my hands were full and he was sitting up refusing to go any further just 10 yards from the arena door.  The person rightly called him a 'Sissy Dog' but obliged him anyway.

Fun courses this weekend, I've always liked Tim Verrelli's courses and he's a nice judge and so efficient, the trial ran quickly.  Unfortunately Strummer seemed to like him too much and almost jumped off the table to say hello on one of his Standard runs.  He was laying down on the table and wiggling his whole rear end during the table count.  I couldn't lead out at the count at all, had to stay on top of him or he would have jumped off to snuggle the judge.  Such a goof.  I guess it's a whole lot better than being worried about the judge.

Overall I'm happy with the weekend, especially considering we've practiced only once in the past 6 weeks.  Strum only missed one dogwalk (Gamblers) and 2 weave pole entries.  He had 2 knocked bars but those were both due to my handling errors.  I was more rusty than he was but after the first day I started to remember how to handle.  Hopefully we'll get more practice in before the DOCNA trial next month.


 Trial Stats

Advanced Gamblers Q, 2nd place

Advanced Standard  Q, 2nd place

Advanced Standard Q, 1st place

Steeplechase Q, 5th place Round 1, 1st place Round 2

Titles:  Advanced Standard
            
Dogwalks:  3/4 (75%) 

A-frames:  9/9 (100%)

Weave entries:  4/6 (67%)   popped out in one Standard run

Knocked bars:  2, both were obvious handling errors

Teeters:  4/4 (100%)

Table: 3/3 (100%) fast, perfect table, almost jumped off table to say hi to judge

Off courses:  1 in Jumpers due to me trying not to over handle and not handling enough, 1 in Standard when he didn't turn off the dogwalk and took a jump right in front of him instead

2 refusals both due to me not supporting a jump.

1 broken start line stay during his last run of the trial (Standard).  I went out for a long lead out and took my eyes off of him and I know he was a little nervous on the start line when I left him.  I let him get off with it, it was really more my fault, shouldn't lose contact with him like that when he's worried.

iFlatulence

Stupid smart phone decided to launch a protest called Occupy My Weekend but after much googling and driving around town to find good cell service and way too much time on the phone dealing with the Sprint Airave which is my least favorite electronic gizmo ever I finally got it working.  Except for the iFarts.  On the first morning I started hearing them at 5:20 a.m.  An urgent sounding beep accompanied by a vibration noise.  Every few minutes.  Like an irritating toddler demanding attention.  I figured out it was the email alert which I thought I had already turned off but somehow not quite.  So I turned it off again but only succeeded in getting the beeps to stop.  The thing was still vibrating at every email.  Tiny little iFarts telling me every time Living Social has a special on colonics or somebody has an incredible investment deal for me if only I'll send them the password to my back account.  iPhone is not smart enough to understand that I don't need to know about this stuff at 5:20 on Sunday morning.  Or ever.  I was starting to worry about developing Phantom Ring/Vibrate Syndrome where you think you hear the phone vibrating/ringing but it's not. 

But with a little more googling I finally figured out how to stop the iFarting without turning off all the vibrating.  Now if only I could figure out how to make it vibrate enough to give me a massage.

I experimented a little bit with the camera and so far I'm unimpressed.  The sales guy was going on about how awesome it is and took a picture to show me and of course it was blurry.  I took this over the weekend and I think I'll stick with my cheapo point and shoot.

However the video camera looks promising, might be better than the Flip anyway.  I want to start doing videos for my business website and I was thinking I might have to splurge on a better video camera but maybe this will do the trick.  Unfortunately I don't see how to attach it to a tripod but maybe the engineer in me can figure something out.

USDAA trial this weekend and until yesterday Strum hadn't had any practice since the DOCNA trial 6 weeks ago.  I lost my indoor training partner to her former partner who came back from an injury and we've had snow on the ground since X-mas and temps. in the 20's so we ended up with an unplanned break.  Felt so good to practice yesterday though.  Strum got some tricky weave pole entries and I had a chance to shake the cobwebs out of my handling.  I love practice, didn't realize how much I missed it and I feel a lot better about the trial.  I'd like to pick up some more Advanced legs and get into Masters so we can enter the Masters Challenge classes.  Wish they'd let any level enter them like they used to.  They're so unpopular, you'd think they'd want to attract as many people as possible.  Ah well, I guess that's motivation to get into Masters.

Steve Jobs Finally Ropes Me In

I'm happy to say that I made it to Jan. 2013 without ever having owned a single Apple product.  Because if you ask me, Apple stuff is a huge incredible rip off.  Don't even start to tell me about the wonderful design, blah blah blah.  I don't buy it, I think it's one of the biggest, most cleverest advertising/scam rip off schemes ever.  When I was shopping for laptops for my business I found a PC laptop for $400 that was plenty powerful and did everything I needed it to do and more.  The equivalent Apple laptop was around $1600.  Now unless that thing cleans my toilets and scoops the dog poop out of my yard there's no way it's worth an extra $1200 or 4 times the amount of the PC.  And what the hell do I need an ipad for?  I already have too many gizmos in my life and I don't need more of the bastards sucking up time and electricity and frying my brain and my eyeballs.  Yes, I know I sound like a crotchety old fart.

I don't have many requirements for my cell phone but I do use it for my business and it's important that it performs a few simple yet critical functions.  Like ringing when I have a call.   Or leaving a voice mail when I can't answer the phone and then telling me about said voice mail.  Telling me if I've missed a call.  Letting me check my email.  I don't think the phone needs to be all that smart to do those few simple things.  But aside from the email, which is sketchy anyway even on a good day, it ceased to do any of those things reliably.  According to Sprint this was because I cancelled my free trial of voice to text voice mail which turned out to be completely useless, sending me text messages that were sometimes amusing but mostly gibberish that resembled nothing close to the original message.  And they wanted me to start paying for the privilege. 

Sprint was unable to fix this over the phone so I had to go into the Sprint store this morning which involved me clearing my entire morning because things never go smoothly when I have to go in there.  I'm surprised Starbucks hasn't set up shop in there.  The guy listens to my tale of woe and looks at my phone with a sad expression.  He's not a fan of android and in May I'm entitled to a new phone for free but if I take it early I can get a new $450 i-phone for only $45.  This is my cheapest option for a new phone, the androids will cost more somehow.  They're going to have to wipe my old phone clean to re-set it so I'll have to set the whole thing up again and then do it again in May when I get a new phone.  And I'll probably continue to have problems because, well, I don't quite understand why but the guy is sure the android will continue to disappoint and why don't I just cross over to the dark side and be done with it.

I'm appalled at the idea of a phone costing $450 but I'm only paying $45 so I guess I'm o.k. with it.  I feel a bit dirty but I agree to it.  Then he informs me that I'm going to have to buy a $35 plastic box to house this thing because the screen is made of glass and if I drop it it will shatter.  Unlike my android which is made of plastic and had no such problem.  Because Apple is such a genius with design and all.  On the plus side, the plastic box is a blinding shade of hot pink so I won't lose it in my black bag.  At least somebody was thinking about design even if it wasn't Apple.  Oh yes, and this stupid smart phone does not allow you to talk into it to search for things in Google or create a text from voice like my old phone did.  It was one of the few cool things it did reliably and super trendy cool awesome design i-phone does not do this.  Unless I want to pay an extra $100 for the creepy lady talking phone.  And I don't want to.

Somehow this simple transaction takes 30-40 minutes because they're having some problem with their computers and printers and software and hardware and I'm not even twitchy about all the waiting because I totally knew it would happen and I cleared my morning so what the heck.  On the plus side, after the salesman is finally capable of running my credit card, he takes a good long time to help me with the phone.  Sets up stuff for me, shows me how to navigate, even calls my phone to assure me it works.  Except at first it doesn't.  Phone doesn't ring or even twitch.  Apparently smart phones are too smart to actually answer the phone.  Way too busy doing more important things like checking the stock market and making incendiary political posts on Facebook.  Eventually he gives it a good kick in the ass and gets it to work.  And 2 hours later I'm finally out of there.  I try to call Jonny from the parking lot and realize I don't know how to make a phone call.  I push loads and loads of buttons but nothing seems to work.  Because Apple products are so intuitive and all.  Finally I manage to push the right combination of buttons and miracle of miracles, I get Jonny on the other end.  He calls me back and the phone rings.  Hallelujah.  Now if only this thing was smart enough to get Strummer to stop going off his head and trying to bite the phone whenever it rings.  But I guess that's a whole 'nuther issue.


Who needs smart gizmos?  Plastic watering cans are where it's at.

And because Apple is so awesome I still can't load any apps onto it.  I click on the app store button and the little loading wheel spins and spins and has been doing so for the past 2 hours.  Can't record a voice mail greeting either because voice mail is unavailable.  I suppose I'd better clear tomorrow morning's schedule.

2012 Wrap Up

2012 was a good year as far as goals went and in general.  The main triathlon and agility goals were Xterra Nationals and USDAA Nationals and I managed to qualify for and compete in both.  Given all that can go wrong, sometimes simply making it to the starting line is a huge accomplishment and making it to the starting line of two major national events in the same week felt like a big deal in and of itself.

Random photo from yesterday's backyard shenanigans.  The snow can melt any time now, really, I won't mind.

Work

My favorite accomplishments of the year though had to do with work.  Over the course of the year I helped someone get over a 30 year old fear of heights and return to hiking, biking, driving in the steep Colorado mountains with no fear.  I helped a bunch of people quit smoking and develop healthy relationships with food.  One of my clients had an autoimmune disease go into remission and another had an infection heal enough that the doctors stopped talking about amputating just as a side effect of sessions unrelated to the medical issues.  I helped an artist with a project that ended up getting displayed in galleries in NY and LA.  I helped a cheerleader get over hear fear of back flips after an injury.  I've seen some amazing stuff in my office over the past year and I imagine I'll see even more this year.  I also moved from a shared office space to a space all my own just 2 miles from my house and so far I love it, the best business decision of the year. 


Triathlon

This was my first year competing in 4 races during the season and then a national event.  It was a learning experience, hard and grueling at times but I'm glad I did it.  Nationals in Utah was an amazing experience, probably the nicest race course I've ever been on.

Xterra Curt Gowdy with its long, difficult, technical bike course was another big deal for me.  I've never competed on a course like that and it was a huge accomplishment for me, getting over those fears and building my technical skills.  Technical riding still isn't my favorite thing but it's nice to know I have it in me to handle it if I have to.

I got a lot braver with the large mass swim start by the end of the season.  It's a nice feeling to know I can handle that too.


Agility

Strummer's big accomplishment this year was qualifying for and competing at USDAA Nationals.  So proud of how he handled the challenges of that trial environment.  He freaked out a bit at feedback from the loudspeakers a couple of times while warming up and at times seemed a bit overwhelmed but once he stepped in the ring he put on his game face and did an awesome job, running with speed and focus and joy. 

I had a lot of fun too, way more than I thought I would.  I was even o.k. with having only 3 days to recover from Xterra Nats.  Though I don't recommend trying that at home.

Looking forward to 2013 but that's another post.