Almost there... Four days until IM 2009

We leave tomorrow for Neshotah. Andrew's parents, who we have stayed with on a separate occasion (The Mindless Self Indulging of June '08), have offered up their place of residence as a crash pad for us traveling souls. Not that it's far away from home, but getting into Wisconsin will take the edge off, albeit we're several days out of race-time.

On Thursday, we're traveling to Whitefish Bay to stay with an IronWoman friend of mine. In between these two pad-hopping we'll be picking up our race packets, swimming in Lake Monona, and trying to stay away from the anxiety.

Caleb at The Bike Shop hooked me up with a new race kit and even screen-printed it for me. Of course, I had to go all-out with the "shimmer" ink, which I mixed 10:1 with elastisol paint (provides the paint stretchy-ness so that when I put on a tight-fitting tank, the ink doesn't split my Brooks logo in half!). I think it looks B.A... No?
I tried to look even more bad-ass but Adam's camera handling skills proved an unworthy venture. I was chatting with one of the girls on the xc team at Tech about the big races over Labor Day weekend in the Harbor. She told me that a friend she was with said she wished she had muscles as big as mine. I took that as a compliment :-D

I did a nice little swim in the pool today for about half hour. It was strange... my shoulder started to twinge and get sore when I breathed out the side I normally do. So I switched sides, and my shoulder stopped hurting, but I thought that pain was a little odd. I've been swimming just fine for the past eight months without any issues (well... other than my calves cramping up during every swim for about three months straight), and now this? Yikes.

And not to mention that on Sunday's run, the top of my foot hurt, as if my shoes were tied too tight, but they definitely weren't. I got worried that it was a developing stress fracture or something of the sort (remember, I'm paranoid?!).

Hasta la vista for now!