Deadline

Well guys I hate to do this…. but I’m gonna need to set a deadline for t-shirt orders.  The orders have slowed, and I’d like to get them into production.  The only fitting way to do this will be to set the deadline for ONE MONTH prior to the race itself.  I know this is last minute notice, but it means that the t-shirt orders will only be accepted up until midnight of May 21st (that’s this thursday for those of you sitting away from your handy appointment book).  This means that all of you that are on the fence need to go ahead and bite the bullet and order your shirt.  It also means that you need to turn up the heat on any friends and family members you know will be sad if they miss out on this opportunity.  If you have been under a rock and are unaware of the t-shirts please do not cry, just scroll down and check out all the info under the appropriately named “T-SHIRTS!!!” blog entered last week.

That said….. I’ll tell a story.  I just need to figure out where to start?…

It was a cold and rainy day (typical for portland, oregon) in November of 1983…. hmmm, maybe I don’t need to start back that far, but that is when I met the nice lady named Sherry for the first time (after I allegedly peed on a nurse, but I don’t recall that detail).  I know what you’re saying , ‘get to the point Andi!’  Point is, Kelly and I have always had a huge support system with our parents.  They might not always get why we’re doing something, or even what we’re doing… but they’ll support it by-golly.  They rarely missed swim meets, soccer games, softball games, bball games, lacrosse games, whatevery games, and on and on.  So I’m not sure that my parents understood the ironman at first (who could?), but they are clearly big fans and supporters of Kelly, and they will be in Idaho adorned with bells, cowbells, Team Preddy Tees, loud voices, maybe some signs, cameras, and in true Cragen-style a cooler full of booze.

And more than just supporting Kelly, they also support me supporting Kelly… it’s a whole chain of love and support I tell ya.  So that brings us to a lovely dinner that I had with my moms and sista on sunday.  We ate at a place called Eastside Cafe and I highly recommend it.  Anyways, we had some amazing convos a lot of which went like this:

kelly: I did blah blah blah while training this week…

mom: you did what? holy be-jeeezus.  Andi you need to put that in your blog, I can’t believe Kelly just said that blah blah blah was easy.  Yeah, put your spin on that in your blog to make people realize how ridiculous this training is.

So that’s my goal, I’m hoping to recall all the things that Kelly said at dinner.  And since I’m a HUGE fan of lists, that’s how the rest of this blog will roll.

• The first ridiculous thing Kelly started talking about was that this past week was her “easy” week.  I learned that with this training she does cycles of  two ‘hard’ weeks and then an ‘easy’ week, wash, rinse, repeat.  But let me explain to you a little something I call perspective.  Kelly’s ‘easy’ workout that she was talking about was still a multiple hour bike ride followed by 10-20 minutes of running.  She was actually beaming because she was so excited that she could finish her weekend workout before noon.  After picking up my jaw I saw that my mom had the same reaction – who in their right mind considers that a ‘light and easy’ workout?….
• On to the next… on this above mentioned bike ride she was out with some of her good friends/training buddies.  One couple she was out with is easiest to describe as the downright nicest people you will ever encounter — seriously, no exaggeration.  The male counterpart to the duo, we’ll call him Fred to keep his identity hidden, was feeling a little under the weather and made the wise decision to turn back.  But what should happen during this ride? – a big texas downpour – huge raindrops, flashflooding on the roads, truly dangerous conditions.  However, there wasn’t much they could do but keep riding.  I believe it was 3 of them riding together at this point, risking their lives for the love of their sport, when they saw a man running to them.  You guessed it, it was Fred.  Here’s the funny part though…. actually I’ll go back to the dinner convo for this:

kelly: so then there was this guy running to us….

mom and me: oooOOOooooo Fred came to get ya’ll!!

kelly: well he had switched cars with his friend so he didn’t have room to drive us and our bikes back.  But he brought us rain jackets.

mom: he couldn’t squeeze ya’ll in?

kelly: well, the car he had traded for the weekend was a smart car.

mom: BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I’m surprised he even had room for the jackets in a smart car.

kelly: well he was so nice he drove behind us with his flashers on so that we wouldn’t die in the storm.

mom: BAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, like a smart car, a car smaller than your bikes, was going to protect you from anything.

kelly: UGH! mom, he was driving his wife’s normal-human sized vehicle, you’re missing the point.

(I still don’t know what the point was, but I will never get the image of the line of bikes and a smart car in the pouring down rain out of my mind)

• One last story.  This rain was clearly not planned for on this ride.  And kelly always rides with her cell phone — it’s the smart and safe thing to do.  So clearly when the rain came she was concerned about the life of her phone.  But she was so proud because she had a wrapper from some food she had eaten on the ride and had the idea to put her phone in that (kinda like a rain jacket).  Let’s go back to the convo…

kelly: thus my ingenuity saved my phone, isn’t that awesome?

andi: very awesome!

mom: well, but when I called you earlier you said there was a horrible whining/ringing sound in the background.

kelly: well yeah there’s that.

mom: and didn’t you say that some of the buttons weren’t working?…

kelly: well yeah there’s that.

andi: so you didn’t actually save your phone?

kelly: it’s partially usable.