swim, bike, run, repeat

i spend a lot of time stating the obvious.

for example, over the last couple days i've come to the conclusion that it's really nice having such awesome friends.

i say this after a recent night of boy-chasing during which i was reminded that there's just no substitute for a good wingman, and there's absolutely nothing like having two good wingpeople at once. more on that story later when, um, there's more of a story to tell.

meanwhile, my friends continue to manifest their awesomeness in other ways.

ck continues to drag herself out of bed very early on sunday mornings to join me at ohio street for swimming and pep talk. she's an excellent swim coach, good company, and, like me, has at least one near wipe-out per bike ride because she's distracted by some incredibly hot guy on the lakeshore path.

[as an aside, i feel compelled to confess that i'm having alot of trouble keeping my thoughts to myself on the lakeshore path. as my blogmate has already explained, you can't exactly cuss and holler on your bike at the various idiots in the way that you can when you're in your car with the windows rolled up. people just don't respond so well to "get your *^% ($#C@ head out of your $#% you stupid %$#@^ &*%$#@!!!" i do wonder though, how they'd respond to more positive feedback. there are a lot of really beautiful people on the lakeshore path, and part of me really wants to tell people how fantastic i think they are. i'd like to think that i'd respond really well to comments like, "wow pretty skinny blond girl, you're running really fast!" or, "please don 't think that i'm trying to take you home, sir, but you and your six-pack are smokin' hot and i really respect that." i do know that as one of very few women cyclists out on the path at 6AM, i have absolutely no problem with the amount of staring that happens by a small subset of the very many male cyclists (the women runners couldn't possibly stop and stare or say anything encouraging... because they're running way too fast for that).]

and the collective triathlon coach comprised of my blogmate, mb, ck, and bikemyers have been very nice in their pointing out that it's probably time to start tapering already. they successfully executed a very slick, multi-phase plan of attack. i paraphrase as follows:

ck:"you know you're going to have to start tapering soon, right?"

jo-na: "you don't have to listen to me, but bikemyers is going to tell you that it's time to start tapering and you should probably listen to him."

bikemyers: "you are super-well prepared, and you're going to do great, but please start the taper, it's the right thing to do."

mb: "have you started tapering yet?"

so thank you, lovely friends, for summoning boys to bars for me, for showing up to be emergency wingmen at said bar with 8 minutes of notice, for coaching me to triathlon, even when i have no idea what's good for me, and for listening to my long boring stories about boys and triathlons. it hasn't gone unnoticed. i owe you one.