Reporting here from sunny Phoenix.
The trip out west was a long one. Up at 2:45 am, at O’Hare by 3:45 am, walking to get coffee by 4:00 am, realizing nothing is open in O’Hare before 5 am….
Enter momentary meltdown.
Nothing open. No food, no water, no coffee until touchdown in Phoenix at 8:30 am. Darted off that plane straight to…coffee.
Found Sherpa Thomas shortly thereafter. We people watched and talked until Chris arrived a few hours later. Then we all headed down to Tucson to visit our mothership, Trisports.com. They’ve been generous sponsors of Thomas, Chris and myself for several years now. Finally met Kim, the face behind the emails. Toured the facility. If you’re looking for top notch service and selection, head to their store. As far as triathlon shopping experiences go it was like walking through the Millenium Falcon. It doesn’t get much better than that.
I insisted on taking a hike. The day was beautiful and we had spent too much time inside. We headed out to Sabino Canyon to walk some of the trails. There is something about the landscape of the southwest that inspires. It was immensely quiet. The green of the cacti, blue of the sky, tan of the sand – it is very earthly and confident the way it all stands.
The walk was very leisurely and enjoyable. Not sure my heart rate cracked the top of zone 1. We did see some crows heckling an owl, a deer and a lizard. Thomas jumped like a little girl when some bug tried to mate with his head. Chris got a cactus needle stuck in his knee. I wanted to see a bobcat. We proved that 3 people hooked on technology have difficulty reading 1 real paper map.
Afterwards, we headed back to Phoenix but first a stop at the grocery store. To Chris’ dismay, we loaded up on lots of good food. I’m on a big pomegranate kick lately. If you haven’t tried one, they are in season and on sale right now so give it a go. They are messy to open and take about 5 minutes to pick all of the seeds out but if they are ripe you won’t be disappointed.
Today is here now – Friday. Thomas almost had a fit because he said it looked like I was wearing one compression sock. “There is no way, woman.” For the record, I had two on but one leg tucked under my butt. I’m planning on some coffee soon and they it’s time to get outside.
I’m sure we’ll head to the swim at the race site for Chris – not me! I’m in the off season and honestly it feels good to be done. The minute I knew I was sick there was no question – DONE. The hardest part about Ironman is not the training – it’s arriving at the start line uninjured and healthy. Well, I didn’t get there. That’s ok because there will be more in the future and now my body can rest. Listening to our bodies is not always the easy thing to do but at a certain point it is what you have to do.
I’m not sure what else we will do today. Chris wants to go tequila sampling and got a head start on that last night. I just checked in on him – he is awake but has really bad bed head. While he survived the tequila shots they seem to have messed up his hair. I’m hoping today we do something outside – sunny and 86 degrees – need to take advantage of that while I can.
