On Being A Crazy Chicken Lady... But Not Bulletproof.

I really should update more often than just every 2 weeks... I'm like, should this post be about my chickens or another weekend race update? How about a little of both? Important things first...

So Peepers is living down the road and I go visit/feed him 2-3x/day. He just sort of hangs out in the tall grass and I walk up and call to him and he comes running! He's become super tame, understands our routine, and eats like a champ. I'm sure I look like The Crazy Chicken Lady sitting on the sidewalk petting and feeding this wild rooster, but whatever! In all honesty, I sort of like having this chicken I get to go visit and feed. He's totally my little buddy.

Snow has been MIA for the last few weeks and I'd pretty much given up hope that I'd ever see him again... but then this morning my neighbor sent me a picture of Snow saying LOOK WHO WE FOUND! I was super psyched and couldn't wait to get home to go find him myself! So it appears Snow had just migrated down the road. I actually thought that maybe it would be good to bring Peepers down to join him... so Crazy Chicken Lady indeed, after I found where he was living, I drove back up the hill, called for Peepers, held him in my lap while I drove down to Snow's new home, and brought them out to meet. Peepers actually seemed super happy! He perked up and clucked happily and ran right to Snow's side. Snow then responded by clucking like mad (not a happy cluck) and ran off! Well shit. Apparently Snow went away b/c he didn't want to be with Peepers. :( I thought best for Peepers to get to go back and live where he was comfortable- he's a bit neurotic and anxious and I thought another 'move' might throw him over the edge, plus maybe best to just let Snow be since that seemed like what he wanted... So I drove Peepers back to his home that he knows and he seemed ok when I left. Later this afternoon I went back and he was indeed just fine, then I went to leave some food for Snow and guess what?! I found him on the sidewalk hanging with a mama hen and her 3 little baby chicks! (No wonder he didn't want another roo around!) Obviously those are not Snow's babies but if those two hang together long enough then maybe I'll be able to post pictures of little hybrid silkies running around down there... ;) We'll see how that goes.

Here at the home front Ellie lays an egg every day and it's become a daily game for me to go hunting for it. She's not really that creative in finding hiding spaces (and our backyard is not really that big!) so I win the game fairly quickly each day.

Having been separated from Peepers and Snow, Ellie is mostly a loner these days but she seems to be handling ok. She does have 3 little chicks (my new ones White, Elsa, and Goldilocks) who are growing up before her eyes. They've recently moved into her coop and she makes sure they know who is QUEEN. They are definitely a bit afraid of her- she can't peck them too much though because they are quick and agile and know to stay out of her way now. They are much less friendly with me, I think because they have each other, and they've been trained by Ellie to quickly zip out of the way if anything/one comes near them. Maybe one of these days I'll win them over by feeding them treats... though until they get bigger and can fend for themselves a bit more, Ellie doesn't let them share in any treats. #Bully

Onto the racing news... It was another double race weekend of swim race Saturday and Triathlon Sunday... In a snapshot, you can get a feel for how they went this round from Twitter today...

Brief summary of the swim... This was a new one in the series. It was 1.9 miles; started in some gorgeous water and ended near a river mouth that made the water brown and nasty. If I cared more maybe I would have figured out how to get up there and scope it out by practice swimming it (ie a lesson in how to avoid reef), but I did not do that, so consequently spent much of the swim wondering where the hell I was going and then feeling grossed out by the brown water and frustrated by my lack of ability to see anything, including the reef/rocks I was landing on. We are seriously SO spoiled with these opportunities to swim and if our waters don't look like this all the time, we bitch and moan. Get out your violin, right?? Nothing new to report. Not my best effort but still ended up 2nd age group so it was fine. 4x swims down, 4x second places. One more try in 2 weeks- 2.3 mile finale- wanna guess what will happen??

If I'm honest I'd admit that I felt like trashed shit yesterday afternoon... just full body stiff and tired as can happen when you've swam like I have the last week (a lot, and most of it very hard). I employed pretty much every recovery technique I know hoping that I'd feel better when I woke up this morning, and for the most part I was successful in that effort. As successful as one can be when #PanicResting anyway. Side note- have you ever tried rolling your lats and right under your armpit/upper triceps on the TP roller? OMG. That was worse than my calves or glutes or feet... Maybe not worse than adductors though.

So this morning was Tinman, a local triathlon I've successfully avoided for the last 7-8 years. It's not a bad race or anything, but I just employed a stubborn boycott of it because of the intentionally short swim... it's 750M swim, 40K/10K. I'd understand the short swim (maybe) if logistically it was impossible to fit in a longer swim, but HELLO we have access to the entire freakin' ocean. I'll save my rant about that b/c if you know me you can guess what it is... Anyway, this year decided to do it just because I'm doing all the local races and saw it as an opportunity to keep practicing running hard 10Ks.

This 'race report' will be boring because essentially I don't feel like I raced very well and nobody likes to hear a lot of excuses, so I'll save those and just summarize by saying that I led out of the water, biked very (too) hard for about 20K then felt myself fading... Had a decent lead on my wave in T2 but since I ran like a freakin' elephant (and mentally completely caved- But which came first? The elephant or the cave??) I wasn't able to hang onto my lead... weird like I didn't even try which is probably the most frustrating thing hours later. I could live with just not having a good day but not even trying doesn't sit so well right now. Anyway, I have some theories about why I've blown up like this in a few races this year. My gut says that since in training I'm working more on my TOP END, I actually for once have a TOP END, which seems like a cool thing to have, right?? Except when I use that TOP END in a race, I blow up and fall right off the cliff. I think since I've never really trained to have a top end before, and therefore never had one, blowing up in a race was never something I had to worry about... I could never go hard enough to blow myself up! But now I can. So I have to be careful about that because being at the bottom of the cliff with 5 miles left to run is not a fun way to race. I think I'd prefer to go back to being just strong and durable, like you are when training for an Ironman... but maybe if I get a top end and then also get back my durability I'll be bulletproof like I want to be? Right now I am not bullet proof.