Asheville swimmin' and mountain bikin'

Wow, I'm finally getting caught up on my blogging. This feels good. And I'm getting paid. There's not a whole lot of traffic or phone calls coming in to where I'm working right now (Duke Faculty Club), but someone's gotta be here for those that do. So, umm, what I'm trying to say is that blogging is fun, especially when it doesn't feel like a total waste of time.

Click here for pics of the Asheville swim, and then my mountain bike ride afterwards.

http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r153/norcal2carolina/?action=view¤t=aadc5af6.pbr

So this is the 2nd weekend in a row where I've left my house before sunrise, driven a long distance, swam in a race, ate lunch, then rode my mountain bike, and then drove home. Whew. All this fun I'm having sure is tiring.

The drive to Asheville was so super easy, I'm not joking. Why did I think that it was a 3.5 to 4 hour drive to get there? Nah, it's more like a little tiny bit over 3 hours to get there, and that's to the west side, where the race took place.

The open water was held in Biltmore Lake, which I thought was going to be on the property of the Biltmore Estate, but sadly, it wasn't. Instead, it was the focal point of this fancy neighborhood with HUGE mansions, Range Rovers parked in driveways, perfectly done-up women power-walking and gossiping with each other (a bit like the Desperate Housewives show!)

The water was nice, just cold enough to want to swim fast. Dawn and I warmed up for about 10 minutes, then stood outside shivering as they did the pre-race meeting that described the course. 1 lap around the triangle-shaped course for a half mile (me), and 2 laps for those doing the 1 mile (Dawn).

Race was good. I started out way too fast for my sickeningly low aerobic level, so the first 7 minutes, I felt pretty good. But the last 7 minutes, that's another story. Let's just say that my arms felt like they weighed 50 pounds each. So I finished in about 14 minutes, not bad, since I barely swim.

I dried off, wrapped my blanket around me and stood around with Dawn's husband on the shore. When we saw Dawn coming in, I got my camera ready to take a pic - I love that pic of Dawn where she's smiling real big and her shoulders look huge and muscle-ly! Dawn was pretty happy with her swim. I think she did her 1 mile in about 27 minutes - great time!

For post race food, they gave us fresh fruit (some of the best strawberries I've had in a long time), nutri-grain bars, and Gatorade. They also had hot cocoa for us to drink at the ceremony, which was so nice!

At the awards ceremony, both Dawn and I got 1st in our age groups, so we accepted our awards with lots of excitement! The award was the hand-painted piece of pottery that can either be a coaster, or a paper weight, or a small trivet on the kitchen counter top.

After the ceremony, I said goodbye to Dawn and her hubby as they left for a few days of vacation up in the mountains. I left in search of lunch, buying a sweatshirt (I forgot to bring one, duh) and then I headed towards Asheville School for the pool portion of the meet.

My pool events, umm, they sucked. No other nice way to put it. I had that pain in my right leg, so when I bent over to grab the block on the start, it hurt. So my starts sucked (well, they always do, actually - I've never really been a great starter, except for relay starts) and I was off my normal swim times by 1 second on the 50's and 2 seconds on the 100. No big deal - I know I'm out of shape, so it didn't bother me. But, I was the only woman in my age group, so I ended up getting 1st place points for all 3 events I swum. :)

After the pool meet, I went in search of some nice singletrack to ride. I ended up at a small college nearby called Warren Wilson College. I found some great trails - a little mix of everything; climbs, flat spots along the river, descents, roots, rocks, mud, smooth dry dirt, bridges, etc. The views of the Blue Ridge mountains were amazing from the ride!

After I cleaned up from riding, filled up on gas, bought a Subway sandwich for dinner and a DQ Blizzard for dessert, I was off and driving back home. I was fine until I got past Morganton. Then I got really, really sleepy and I knew I had to pull off to take a quick nap. So nap, I did, for about an hour. Then I was rejuvenated enough to drive the rest of the way home. I think I ended up getting back home a little bit after midnight.

Very fun day! Very well organized open water and pool meet! I hope next year, more DAMA-ians will come out for the Asheville meet.

Pier-to-Pier swimmin' and Wilmington mountain bikin'

Alright - another remix! This time, I've got pics from the Pier-2-Pier and my mountain bike ride at the Blue Clay trails afterwards.

Click here:

http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r153/norcal2carolina/?action=view¤t=18d33b18.pbr

I didn't get a picture of everyone who attended from DAMA - sorry! Altogether, we had 11 people representing DAMA! Yahoo! :)

The Pier-2-Pier was really nice. Perfect water temperature, clear blue skies, not a shark or jellyfish in sight! The pictures in the remix tell most of the story.

What it doesn't tell is that I left Durham at 5:45am to get there in time. And that by the time I was done with the swimming, hanging out with the team at lunch, riding my mtn bike, then driving back home, I was exhausted.

I definitely want to do the Pier-2-Pier again next year. This time, as a registered swimmer, no more bandit swims for me!

Hope you enjoy my pictures! I'm having fun with the "Remix" tool.

Now I need to figure out how to add music to it. Hmmm?

2nd annual DAMA E-O-S party

Click below to see a "remix" of pictures from the 2nd Annual DAMA End-of-Summer BBQ

http://s143.photobucket.com/albums/r153/norcal2carolina/?action=view&current=23535654.pbr

It was really hot that day - I don't know exactly how hot, but let's just say HOTT. Above 100 degrees. I had reserved the big picnic shelter at the West Point on the Eno park in North Durham - the BBQ started at noon.

Rob grilled the food, everyone brought something to share. We had all kinds of goodies - watermelon, cookies, pasta salads, some yummy dips and lots of Gatorade and waters.

After we ate, it was time to participate in the scavenger hunt. So I split the group up into 2 teams and pitted them against each other to see who could find the hidden items, answer the questions, and work together to finish first. This time, there were prizes for the winning team. (coupon for a FREE small LocoPop)

It was so hot that some people didn't participate in the scavenger hunt, and that is my only sadness about the whole day. It was just too dang hot to really enjoy ourselves.

The whole BBQ gathering lasted for about 3 hours, then we all went home to rest in our air-conditioned homes. I fell asleep, woke up dehydrated. Grrr. At about 7pm, I went outside and the temp had fallen to about 78, pretty nice for late August. I thought to myself, hmmm, maybe next year we'll have the BBQ at dinnertime? But I don't know if the park stays open after dark?

Someone (Greg?) got everyone to pitch in for a thank-you gift for me. So I got a really nice note full of "thanks Danielle, swimming with DAMA is so much fun!" and the like, and I got a super nice gift card to a restaurant called Four Square - which I've heard is really good. Thanks to all who pitched in to get that gift!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy seeing the pics from the BBQ. It took me forever to successfully publish that "remix" thing of pics - the site kept stalling while I was adding the captions to the pics. All total, I spent probably an hour putting it together!

Whew...who knew this blogging thing would take up so much time?

Catching up...finally! Too many activities, not enough time to blog them all

Way back in early July, I took an overnight road trip down to Beaufort, SC (pronounced "Byoo-fert" in SC, and "Bo-fert" in NC) with Heidi, Karen and Derek. But Derek didn't drive down with us, as he had big plans to stay in Charleston with his new fling, Doranne, whom he met at the Charleston open water swim back in May.

Funny thing about the drive down on Friday night - us girls stopped in Florence, SC for dinner. We settled on Ruby Tuesday, which was jam packed and they quoted us a 1 hour wait for a table, to which we said, hell no, let's just sit at the bar. So we're eating our dinners, enjoying normal conversation, when this older man interrupts us somehow and starts asking about where we're from, where're you going...etc. So we tell him that we're swimmers and we're doing a open water race in Beaufort, and he's super interested in us, you know, being kind of flirty, in a dirty old man kind of way.

He's sitting next to Heidi, and he grabs her arm and says "Oh my! You're strong" and so Heidi feeds some more oxygen to his fire by flexing and smiling, and explaining that she's been a swimmer since she was 10 years old. By now, the old guy is practically drooling over Heidi, and Karen and I are enjoying the show. Heidi tells the old guy, "Hey, maybe you shouldn't be flirting with me, your wife is gonna get mad." The old guys replies, "Wife? Her? No, no, no...this isn't my wife. This is my best friend's wife!"

Okay, so this guy is full of crap, and he's just having fun flirting with Heidi, so we decide to play along. When he asks us what our names are, we give him fake names (I said I was Elizabeth - do I look like I could be an Elizabeth?) We kept chatting with this guy for the remainder of our dinner, which wasn't long, but it was still funny. Back on the freeway, speeding down I-95 along with all the others...really, no one does the speed limit here. I was pushing 78 the whole way and getting passed like Ricky Bobby on his first lap after his accident.

For dessert, we munched on some homemade chocolate chip cookies that Heidi's hubby, Jeff (he's so good, he's like the male equivalent of Rachel Ray), made for us. By the time we roll up on Beaufort and start reading our Yahoo Map directions to our hotel in Port Royal, it's around 11pm. We're tired, the sugar in the cookies is wearing off, we want to go to sleep, we just wanna find the hotel. So while Heidi's reading the directions to me, I drive past a Port Royal policeman who the immediately flipped a U'ie, lights flashing and sirens blaring. Crap! I look at my speedometer and I'm doing 45. I have no idea what the speed limit was, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't 45.

So I pull over and respectfully follow the officer's commands and answer his questions. From the looks of it, he can tell we're from outta town. Heidi still has the Yahoo Maps directions in her hands, Karen is in the backseat half-asleep. We tell him that we didn't know what the speed limit was, and that we were looking for our hotel. I apologize to him, and smile (ahh, that dang blasted smile of mine, I know it softened him up!) He takes my reg/insurance/DL back to his cruiser and scans my driving history. He likely sees that I've only had 1 speeding ticket in my life, and that I'm an upstanding, law-abiding citizen of Durham. So he walks back to my truck, hands me my stuff and says "slow down, have a good night!" and hands me a ticket, which makes my heart sink. But upon further inspection, the ticket wasn't a ticket at all, it was just one of those warning tickets! Of course this makes me smile and let out a big sigh!

2 minutes later, driving at the correct speed of 30mph, we find our hotel, check in and hop in bed. I think we all fall asleep pretty quickly, and I remember sleeping like a bear in hibernation.

Up in the morning, register for the race, take a few pictures...you know, the usual pre-race excitement. Here's a pic of me and Heidi after we'd been numbered. Good Lord, I look really tan!



Soon after, Derek and Doranne come strolling up to register, put on sunscreen, and chat about the looks of the competition. Here we all are, ready to race.



We get on the shuttle that takes us to Port Royal for the start. At the pre-race meeting, we learned that for those doing the 4 mile swim, they'd be finishing in Beaufort, whereas those doing the 2 mile, would finish at the dock near the hospital. They said, just keep the buoys on your left, and for those doing the 2 mile, just look for an extra orange buoy that will signify where you're supposed to cut left towards your finish.

Water temp was nice, maybe 80 degrees, not too hot. Water was kind of salty - and the visibility was average (I could see my arm pulling in the first half of my pull, unlike swimming in Falls Lake, where you can barely see a fish that swims an inch past your nose).

I was feeling pretty good - the current was nice. I found that I could do breaststroke and really emphasize a decent glide like I would in the 200 Brst, and I was keeping up with those around me, who were all doing Free.

So I never saw that extra buoy I was supposed to see at the 2 mile cutoff. I ended up swimming past it, then stopping and asking a kayaker/volunteer "where is the 2 mile finish?" and they said, "Right here, go straight that way!" Oh crap! So I have to beat out this current to swim to the finish, and oh man that was tough! I had a burst of energy, and this helped push my through the current, towards the hospital dock where I'd finish. But it only lasted a minute, then my arms were just toast. And as someone who never trains for swimming, I'm not used to swimming through that pain - some lactate tolerance sets would be nice...for myself, if I swam, that is!

So I finally finish! I barely have enough strength to use my arms to climb up the ladder on the dock. I really thought I was one of the last ones to finish the 2 mile race. But since it was my first real open water race, and I don't ever train, no worries, who cares if I didn't rank well among the competition.

I took a shuttle back to the 4 mile finish and waited only a minute of 2 for Heidi and then Derek to finish. We pose for a picture, all sweaty and gross, covered in salt water slime:



When they announced the winners for the 2 mile, female age group 19-39, they said, "In 1st place, Danielle Newton from Durham, NC" and I just about crapped my pants. I was so shocked! I went up to shake hands with the promoter and pose for pictures and accept my prize.



Heidi also won 1st place in the women's 4 mile 19-39 age group, so here's a pic of both of us, showing off our prize money.



Here's a pic of us 3 being funny after the race - resting on some horse & carriage rest area.



After we got cleaned up and checked out of the hotel, we went to lunch at this place in downtown Beaufort. I don't remember what it was called, but it was in an old, renovated pharmacy, you could see the old Rx painted on the wall. The food was good. I bought the first round of drinks with my prize money, and then Heidi bought the 2nd round. We were done after that. Here we are at lunch:



After lunch, we walked along the river, which was a city park, complete with these cool swinging benches.



Then we decided to be big time dorks and videotape ourselves swinging really high on the swing, and then jumping off. This is either going to make you laugh, or make you wrinkle up your face and think, "man, they're nerds!" But I don't care what you think. I had fun doing the swim and hanging out with Heidi and her friend Karen on the 4 hour drive down there. I look forward to next year's race - I know I wasn't the only 2 mile finisher who didn't see the extra buoy on the finish.

Enjoy the video.



Bye for now, more blogging later, on all the fun I've been having.