Wandering Illustrator

See what I did there? With the puns?

I spent last weekend in Washington, DC to run the Nation's Triathlon, and what a weekend it was. There were of course copious amounts of kickassery that were experienced whilst hanging out with the Bea, who drove up for the weekend because he is awesome and, as he explained it to my friend Amy, he "loves DC" and thinks I'm "kind of ok, too." My parents also flew out from Nebraska to cheer me on because they are wonderful like that (and also, any excuse to travel, I think). And I was able to reconnect with the aforementioned Amy, one of my good friends from high school, who works for the State Department and is currently stationed in DC after a two year stint in Turkey.

Home base was a snazzy hotel with wonderful beds, semi-transparent bathroom doors, secret stairways, crazy-expensive in-room internet, and a delicious breakfast buffet that resulted in a violent case of food poisoning once I got home. So, you know, you take the good, you take the bad and there you have...well, the facts of life to be sure, but also the Washington Hilton.

Friday was spent settling into the hotel, having lunch with my parents and some family friends,

losing a metro pass or two, and doing a lo-ot of walking to see the monuments and whatnot. Question: does anyone know why the Washington monument is lighter on the bottom than the top? My guess is they started to clean it, ages later got halfway up and thought "...eh. Good enough." We had dinner with Amy on Friday night at this great Turkish restaurant where we ate tiny portions of delicious, expensive food, and basked in the glow of Amy's awesomeness as she conversed with our waiter in flawless Turkish.

Saturday was Team in Training-tastic. The Bea and I met up at the race site along with the rest of my Team. We collected our bikes from the transport truck (SO handy) and proceeded to put the pedals and bike computers back on and made sure everything was in working order. After getting body marked with race numbers and ages (so it could all rub off by the next morning...that didn't make much sense to me), we sat in on a triathlon info session and then I took a quick dip in the Potomac for a practice swim. The water was actually kind of...nice. The temperature was great. It was murky as hell, sure, but I didn't really want to see what was in there anyway.

That evening we took a short walk through the Dupont Circle area in search of a grocery store - DC really does have some charming neighborhoods. The area we were walking in sort of reminded me of Meg Ryan's character's neighborhood in You've Got Mail. Love. Sunday night was the TNT Inspiration Dinner. There was lots of food, lots of people and lots of money raised for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society - about 760 TNT athletes raised over 3 million dollars. Screw you, cancer.

After getting almost no sleep Saturday night, I was up at 3:30 Sunday morning to get ready for the race. I met my Team in the lobby at 4:00 and we caught the first shuttle over to the race site. It was pouring down rain - and it would continue to do so for the next 3 1/2 hours, at which point it would reduce to a drizzle that would hang around all the livelong day. The start time got pushed back 25 minutes due to the rain and some mixups with the shuttle situation, so that meant I had time to kill until 9:05, when my wave (the 26th wave of the morning) finally took off.

The swim went great! My last Olympic-distance swim (which was also my first Olympic-distance swim)

took me nearly 56 minutes. This one took me 39 minutes. Woo! The course wasn't too crowded (only got punched in the face once - not bad), the water temperature was great, I could see the back of the Lincoln Memorial as I swam, and the buoys were enormous, which made sighting (read: swimming straight) super-easy. A perfect start to the race.

I ran to the transition area, squished barefoot through the mud between the bike racks, and made the change from swim gear to bike gear. I snagged my bike out of its spot on the racks and took off running for the Bike Out sign.

The bike part started off so well. SO well. Thanks to my spiffy new bike computer,

I could see that I was averaging 19mph. 7 miles into the 25 mile course, I was passing people left and right and thinking "Oh my gosh, this is going to be the best race EVER! A little rain can't get me down, WOO H...DAMMIT." My rear tire was flat.

So I pulled over and began the tube-changing process. And I'm pretty darn fast at changing out tubes thanks to a whole lotta practice, so I had the tire off and tube out in no time flat. But then there was a teeny shard of metal stuck in tire that WOULD NOT COME OUT. And then the new tube turned out to be defective. And then the second CO2 cartridge didn't fill the second tube the whole way. And as all this was happening, literally hundreds of people were zooming past me on the bike course. You have no idea how heartbreaking that was. But, 20 minutes later, I was back on the road. I rode the last 18 miles with a partially-inflated rear tire and a fully-inflated righteous indignation, which I'm pretty sure added another couple mph's to my speed.

The run went great. It continued to mist a bit, but the temperature was lovely.

As I was cruising along between miles 1 and 2, I caught a big object in my peripheral vision, looked to my left and Oh Snap. It's the Washington Monument. Like, right. there. The entire triathlon course was peppered with moments like that - it made it such a fun race. 6 miles clicked by pretty quickly and just a bit over an hour later, I could hear the finish line approaching. As I ran in, I saw Bea on the sidelines, and then my parents, and then I heard my name being announced, and then I crossed the finish line - 3 hours, 48 minutes, and 10 seconds after I started.

Now, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed knowing that if I hadn't had the flats, I would have broken 3:30 (!!!), but I'm still pretty ridiculously pleased with 3:48. 20 minutes faster than my previous Olympic-distance tri? I'll take it. :)
EDIT: And here's a great little race video put together by the good people at the Washington Post.

Post-race, I spent a little time at the TNT tent and then dropped my bike back at the transport truck, hopped on a shuttle back to the hotel, took a shower, and was finally dry for the first time since 4:30 that morning. Spent awhile that afternoon talking to Bea's friend Daniel (who rode up from Georgia with him) and then popped into the TNT Victory Celebration to congratulate all my participants, who rocked out their own races. Then Bea, Daniel and I made our way to Chinatown, where we met up with my parents and their friends at a surprisingly authentic German restaurant. We enjoyed the polka-tastic stylings of an old German woman and her accordion (spoons and yodeling included free of charge) while eating some delicious German food - par for the course for my family, but probably not something most people do on a regular basis, I would guess...

And that was pretty much the trip. Loved every bit of it (flat tires notwithstanding). If you made it to the end of this, I salute you.

Worst running playlist ever.

I took off around 8:45 this evening for what promised to be a lovely 6-mile run. I pressed "Shuffle Songs" on my iPod, started running, and spent the next hour being slowly, sadly, oh-so-gently urged to succumb to a deep, song-induced depression. Observe:

Sodom, South Georgia - Iron & Wine
Pastures New - Nickel Creek
Hold Me Now - Jennifer Knapp
The Fatal Wound - Switchfoot
Closing In - Imogen Heap
Close Your Eyes - Jump, Little Children
What If - Coldplay
Paperweight - Joshua Radin and Schuyler Fisk
Time And Time Again - Counting Crows
Heard Them Stirring - Fleet Foxes
Fire and Rain - James Taylor
Clear the Area - Imogen Heap
The Moment I Said It - Imogen Heap
Ashes of American Flags - Wilco
Look Around - Blues Traveler

Luckily the exercise-induced endorphins were sufficient to stave off any lasting effects of these not-at-all-exercise-friendly tunes. And then Hysteria by Muse came on as I was cooling down, so that was awesome. Also, great weather (86 degrees right now - bliss!).