If we’ve talked in the last month or so, you know I’ve sworn off all triathlon-related websites/media/social-media/etc for the sake of my sanity.  I’ve also sworn off writing about said sport*, because when you spend hours and hours training each day, who really wants to write about it?  And does anyone really want to read about it?

However, as I prepare for my first foray into race directing (Littlefoot Triathlon on May 17th), I did make my way over to Slowtwitch this afternoon.  My intention was to scan message boards for people’s favorite awards/race momentos, but then I was drawn to my all-time favorite recurring article on Slowtwitch, Jeff Henderson’s pieces on his experiences as race director.  This one is my favorite, as it spoke of triathlon as art and not in the cliche human performance sense, but in the art of putting on a great race.  Check it out, it’s a quick and worthwhile read.

http://www.slowtwitch.com/RD_Aids/Henderson_s_2010_RD_diary/On_Design_1153.html

…also feel free to share what your favorite race awards have been (aside from cold hard cash, obviously!).

*Except for random and sporadic entries on the Riptide blog.

From projects on the Boston Tea Party in 5th grade, to attempting to dupe my friends into thinking I found a real pirate map, when I was a youngin’ I was always in need of a way to make stuff look old.  My parents were smart to keep the matches hidden, and I was left with dabbing tea bags on crumpled and ripped up paper.  It was always a let down!  In the end it looked like I had left my notebook out in the rain, or at best, the cat had peed on it.

Now that I’m older and have access to things like matches and coffee grinds, it’s easy to make stuff look old, and you can too!

Supplies:
- paper (preferably with something cool on it, find some good old-looking fonts at dafont.com and get to work!)
- coffee grinds
- matches
- water
- shallow baking sheet (but make sure it has at least a 1/2″ edge
- oven

How-to:

1. Take paper and crumple it up.  Tear it if you want to, but I prefer not to put any intentional tears into it.  If you are going to burn some of the edges, this is a good time to do it.  You can also do it at the very end.  If you do light the paper on fire it’s important that you barely let the flame catch the edge of the paper, and then blow it out right away.  This is best done over a metal sink, with a ready supply of water nearby.  If you’re well practiced, you can also hold the flame close enough to the paper so it darkens, but does not actually light (I like to think of this as a very authentic effect, since real-deal pirate maps were quite obviously read at night or in a cave, by candle- or torchlight.)

2. Lay it on the baking sheet.

3.  Dump a serious amount of coffee grinds on top.  Put them all over the place.  Huge clumps add more color later.  Today I got lucky and had fresh coffee grinds, which worked especially well.  I just dumped them on and added enough water to cover the paper.  In the past, I’ve just made a really strong cup of coffee (so strong you wouldn’t even think to drink it).  Pour that on top and then you can also add the grinds too.

Today I was making a gift certificate for an event Powder7.com is sponsoring for a ski area in Vermont.

4.  Let it soak.  Go do something for a few hours.  The longer you can leave it, the better.  Today I let mine sit for about 5 hours.

You can see all of the grinds and just enough water to cover the paper. The more water you use, the more diluted the grinds will get, so you want to use the minimum.

5.  Carefully lift paper off of baking sheet and drain water.  Wipe baking sheet clean and dry, and place paper back on it.  It’ll have some stubborn grinds sitting on it, and that’s perfect.

6.  Heat oven to 200 degrees.  Once heated, slide baking sheet into oven.

7.  ”Bake” for 8-15 minutes.  Check frequently, I can’t stress that enough.

8.  It’ll start to curl up around the corners, which means it’s drying out.  It should feel pretty dry when it comes out.

Fresh out of the oven!

To top-off the presentation, I’ll either tri-fold it or roll it up, seal it with wax, and secure with a knot of twine.

I added a few more burnt edges, and called it a day.

Whenever I fall off the blogging wagon it’s usually due to 1 of 3 things:

- training is not going well
- work has been busy so there’s no time for side projects to write about
- instead of writing, I contemplate quitting blogging

This month, it was a combination of all three!  Things are on the up and up now: I’m almost fully recovered from a whopper of a cold that’s left my training diary in shambles, Cyber Monday is behind us, and I’ve convinced myself to keep blogging.  All is well.

In a little more depth…

Training isn’t really going horribly.  I’m really enjoying running again, and look forward to staying with the guys for as long as possible on Sunday mornings.  Some times this is 9 miles, other times it’s 40 minutes.  Swimming is so-so.  I’ve made some improvements to my stroke, but haven’t spent too much time in the pool the past couple of weeks because of being sick.  I’m not dealing with the bike right now.  Some rides here and there.  Nothing significant.

Hands down this is the best time of year at work.  Obviously because ski season has begun, and sales are up because Christmas is a comin’, but it adds an element of fun to the whole thing knowing that what we’re selling is going to make a lot of people really happy on Christmas morning.  It’s super corny, but totally true.  A couple of weeks ago Jordan and I went on a little reconnaissance mission to Lake Tahoe, and after we were done with the work aspect, we were able to run on the flume trail near Incline Village and collect giant pine cones, among other things!  (See all the photos from our trip on my Flickr, here)

That’s it for now.  The first post is always the hardest.  But I’m back on the wagon, and I promise not to fall off until next November.

View from the trail leading up to the flume trail.

After 70 minutes of climbing, on the flume trail at last! Um yea, the run was an hour fifty...

Sunset on Lake Tahoe.

Proof that we did some work too -- a shop dog that is almost as big as ours.

I look forward to this time of year because it’s one of the few opportunities I get to do anything with print design.  Riptide is starting its hunt for 2010 sponsors so we’re starting to roll out the marketing materials.  The 2010 Team Preview is a summary of our 2009 accomplishments and a look at what we’re planning for 2010.  Also included is all the information potential sponsors need about what is involved in sponsorship and why it benefits them.

Very simple cover with a little gloss.

Last year was the first time I took on a print project like this and learned a lot as I went along. I was very careful not to repeat those same mistakes this year. Though we print out copies of the guide, it also has to  be easy to view online.  Last year’s guide was so heavy that the file took forever to load on our website.  So this year, I opted for the super clean and simple look.

I scrounged the internet for famous quotes that went along with each section of the book.

After last year’s printing debacle (I waited until after I had designed it to figure out where to print it), I knew I wanted to use Blurb.com and plan for that from the get-go. I got caught up playing with their book-making software, BookSmart, and laid out the entire book in that, using Fireworks to create the graphical text.

Each returning athlete from 2009 has a photo with his/her background information.

All was well until I went to print it as a PDF so I could upload it to the Riptide website. Blurb doesn’t let you know that when you do that they watermark it to death, rendering it useless for use in public. I went back and made each page into a PDF using Illustrator (I still don’t have InDesign…definitely my next big purchase…that or a Powertap…) and then compiled them. BookSmart is definitely a great little piece of software, but next time I’ll do it all with Illustrator, or hopefully InDesign.

The photos really make the book, and I can't take credit for a single one. A huge thank you to David Liu and Beth Mackenzie.The details.

Despite the BookSmart incident, Blurb really impressed me. It’s so nice when you send something off to print and it comes back exactly how you imagined it would look.  Highly recommend!

The details.

Swimming totally redeems itself!

Last night we got back into the Thursday night Riptide tradition of Team Goals: a bunch of all-out 100s, with an in-water start.  Swimming still hasn’t been going too well, 1:20s are usually a struggle, even with decent rest and I haven’t swam all-out since August, so I didn’t have incredibly high hopes for the workout.  The one “good” thing about Team Goals is that it’s a short practice, rarely over 3000y.  Last year I started off around doing these around 1:12s, then by Christmas I was hitting all of them under 1:10, and eventually got to a 1:05, but mostly hovered around 1:06/1:07.

Last night they were on the 4:00 (for non-swimmers, this means if you come in at 1:30, you get 2:30 rest).  Of course I got put in the lane with my fiancé/business partner/roommate/co-Gully owner/aquatic nemesis.

First one.  All out.

1:14.  There is no way I can do that again.  I am totally spent.  How can I possibly feel so awful and out of shape?

Second one.  I’m still sucking wind from the first one.

1:16.5.  I quit.

Third one.  Obviously I didn’t quit.

1:17.  Ok I’m done.

Fourth one.  I can tell that Jordan thinks I’m starting to feel sorry for myself and I want to prove him wrong.

1:11.  Yay.

Fifth one.

1:07.5.

Sixth one.

1:08.

Finished!

I needed that swim!  Maybe I didn’t reach my triathlon peak at the age of 24 after all.  And as for my aquatic nemesis?  He had a good workout and is now off to Texas this morning to race the Austin 70.3 on Sunday.  I think his Tweet says it best:

jordanj191 After a race season with a broken chain, broken tibia/torn meniscus, giardia, flat tire/crash I’m due for a good race Sunday!

Loyal blog readers!

Powder7.com and Colorado School of Mines Outdoor Recreation Center are teaming up to bring the latest Matchstick Productions ski movie to Golden!

When: Friday October 30 at 7pm

Where: Colorado School of Mines Campus (Colbaugh 209 — click here for a campus map)

What: The Golden premier of Matchstick Production’s latest ski movie: “IN DEEP: The Skiing Experience”.  There will be free swag (from Powder7.com of course!), burritos, and a costume contest!

How much: $10 per person/$5 for Mines’ students with valid school ID — all revenue goes directly to the Colorado School of Mines Outdoor Recreation Center

Watch the “IN DEEP” teaser here.

Come check it out and support a great program.  For more information call 303-237-7547 or email us at info [at] powder7.com

This year it’s been really hard to get back into training.  I’m an all or nothing type of person, and lately the nothing option has been very very tempting.  Last weekend I felt like I was getting back in a good grove, but had some sort of cold thing going on during the week so only swam Monday, Wednesday, Friday.  Not surprisingly, I got back out of the groove and back into wondering why am I doing this?  Sports have been a huge part of my life since I started playing soccer when I was 5…maybe it’s time for a change.  Pick up a new hobby, something to keep me busy, and experience life from another perspective.  No pressure to get workouts in, no traveling all over to races, ….I could sell my bikes and buy a really sweet camera and get into photography, just for fun.  Or maybe become a hardcore backcountry skier and take some avalanche courses.

Friday night I got to thinking that even though all that stuff sounds awesome and fun…it’s not me right now.  I pictured myself, 20 years from now, telling my kids that yea, one summer I had this crazy idea to become a pro triathlete.  So I did it, raced three times, and in my first nationals I got lapped out by the narrowest of margins and got a nice DNF next to my name.  Then I quit because I figured the whole thing wasn’t for me.  Not exactly a good role model, huh?  Wouldn’t it be much better to say, I got lapped out in my first go at ITU, but I buckled down and worked like crazy to get my swim together, and the next year I went back to nationals and finished in the top-10?  So with that nice revelation on Friday and watching Kona all day on Saturday, I think I’m officially ready for the winter.

This morning I met up with the Vista Trail group, and suffered through 94 minutes of running.  Sonja came and another girl, Bre, and we hammered away together to keep up with the guys.  It was exactly what I need right now, in perfect company, and on the most beautiful trail I have EVER seen.  If you’re somewhere around Denver/Golden/Boulder, come run with us every Sunday at 9am.  =)

Now I’m off to the gym for some core work, and then the POOL — dreaming of my next go in the Black Warrior River all the way….

PS- We got snow here yesterday and it’s absolutely beautiful here right now…unfortunately no pics from today’s run, but I got some yesterday:

Pedestrian bridge near home.

Favorite run close to home.

The mountain tops are still covered by the clouds today. Can't even see the School of Mines' "M".

Gully's favorite spot on a snowy day: under the covers.

While perusing some ski forums yesterday I came across the K2 Pink Chase, an event at Keystone that pits teams of 3 women against each other, racing to cover the most vertical feet in a 6 hour span.  It’s a fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.  I immediately contacted my  two fittest (and most competitive..) ski bunny friends, and they were more than up for the challenge!  On December 12th, Sonja Wieck, Michelle Ford, and I will compete for the overall championship: most vertical feet, most money raised, and most spirited.

To learn more about the Pink Chase click here…if you think you can take us down, click here and sign up

To donate to our team, Bunnies for Boobies, click here.

Thursday morning (post-swim) Jordan and I drove up to Aspen for a quick business trip.  The mountains were getting some snow and driving over Independence Pass was absolutely beautiful.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have our camera, so all I have is iPhone pics.  Though not great, they give you an idea of how amazing fall is in the Rockies:

Along 24 between Leadville and the turnoff for Twin Lakes.

Coming down Independence Pass into Aspen.

An aspen grove on the Western side of Independence Pass.

So much color!

October First was the day!  My glorious month of cinnamon bun eating and sleeping in has come to an end.  Now it’s time to get to work in the pool!

One of the best things about training with Riptide is that Sean gives us total control of our off-seasons.  When I told him I was feeling run-down after Tuscaloosa, he didn’t try to talk me into racing one more race.  He knows that all of us have been training hard long enough to know when we’ve had enough.  He let me disappear for two weeks before I had to be back in the pool, swimming just 2-3 times per week so I wouldn’t be starting from scratch later on.  I came up with the October 1st start-date for the real training to begin and when I started outlining my winter plan he pulled in the reigns.  I was getting froggy.  One step at a time…

So this morning I dragged myself out of bed at 6 and made my way to the rec center in the dark.  It wasn’t easy…I’ve gotten really used to sleeping-in and not doing much of anything.  I can totally see how people who don’t workout regularly have a hard time forming a routine.  The first few days are so brutal.  For me, it helps to think about how much I’ll enjoy it once I’m actually in the pool, and even more so how much more I’ll enjoy racing with all of the yards under me.

For now, it’s only singles in the pool, doubles will come later this month.  My big plan for the winter is to step it up a few notches and tag along with the guys on all of their rides and runs.  I will be the annoying little sister of the team, it’s a role I fill naturally.