Races and parties

No, I didn't do any races, unless you count my mad dash to make it to my 8:30 class after swimming.  But my 2011 race schedule is coming together. For sure I am doing Age Group Nationals on August 20; that is my A race to beat all A races. I have also signed up to do the Pumpkinman Sprint again in September. The other for-sure race on my schedule is the local Whately sprint triathlon on June 25--probably not an A race, but it's so close and so fun, I really can't resist.

The rest of my schedule is a little up in the air, so if there's anyone reading this who has opinions about what I should do, feel free to weigh in. I'm leaning toward the Mass State Tri (Olympic) in mid-July as my last (or first, in chronological terms) A race of the season; I did this last year and had a good time, despite feeling rather dead of leg that day. I would love to find another Olympic tri to do in June, but I can't do Pat Griskus, because my husband has dibs on that day for the Patriot half, and I don't feel like trying to get a babysitter for 4 in the morning or whenever I'd have to leave. I can't do Mooseman, because I have another commitment that weekend, unrelated to triathlons, but linked in that both activities require me to wear funny clothing.

In the early season my coach is gung ho about the Shamrock Duathlon, which I'm willing to try. She is particularly fond of their prizes, which are probably more relevant for her than for me, but I see they have post-race beer as well.  Plus they claim the bike course is "exhilarating"--gosh, that sounds like fun!

I have been toying with the idea of doing the Season Opener on May 8 in Hopkinton. Blogger Kim is apparently doing this one. (Although if you look at the pictures on her blog, I think you need to ask yourself, would I take her advice about what is a sane thing to do? OK, I've met her in person, and actually she seems quite sane, or at least able to pass for it.) I have a bad feeling about the temperature of an open water swim in MA on May 8, but frankly I have a worse feeling about pool triathlons, so maybe I should just suck it up and try this. If anyone's actually done it before and survived with their nose and other extremities intact, I'd love to hear about it.

When I'm not obsessing about my race schedule (or working), I'm throwing birthday parties. Charlotte turned 8.  Twister was played.

The signs taped to foreheads are a remnant of the first game, where I wrote out lots of celebrity and character names, and they wore them on their foreheads and tried to guess who they were.  Thanks to Traci for giving me this idea.  Just taping the names on their foreheads was apparently, like, the funniest thing ever. Especially when the name was Justin Bieber.

I baked this awesome (in the sense that the recipe is awesome, not necessarily my rendition of it) caramel cake:

Later on Patrick and one of the cats played Twister as well.

And somewhere in there we had another snowstorm, delayed opening, endless shoveling, blah blah blah.