How I ran in my first Boston Marathon, but didn’t

Some higher power really, really didn’t want me to run Boston this year. First an Achilles injury struck me down, so my last long run was an insufficient 2 hours 45 minutes completed eight weeks before the race. I hadn’t run at all in seven weeks. But my doctor told me he thought I wouldn’t rupture my Achilles if I did run Boston, I’d just set back my healing. That's all I  needed to hear. I prepared for pain.

At the Expo

T-1 week until race day. I go for a 2-hour bike ride and feel off. Sluggish. No energy. Two days later I have a fever and can’t move or eat anything except soup made of 98% water, 2% noodles.

T-3 days until race day. I go to the doctor because I'm not sure I'll be able to get on the plane to Boston the next day. The doctor puts on a facemask before entering the room, then does all he can to examine me without touching me too much, paranoid I have a late case of the flu. I do have a fever. It’s 101. I don’t, thank goodness, have the flu. I get a Z-pack and an inhaler.

T-2 days until race day. I pray the three Z-pack pills I’ve already taken will destroy every evil thing in my body, and, as an unintended but miraculous side effect, repair my Achilles to their pre-Birkebeiner form. I still have a fever. I want to run.

At LAX, the Boston marathoners form a little circle in front of our gate. You can tell who they are because they’re all wearing Boston jackets, mostly from last year, but one guy had the balls to buy the new Halloween themed 2012 jacket before running the race. Also, they're all talking about Boston.

The runners are surprised to find out I’m participating. When I breathe it sounds either like someone’s popping corn in my throat or slowly opening a rusty door. What’s left of my voice is a gender-neutral smoker’s rasp. Now would be a good time to prank call someone to say, “I’m watching you.”

Karen, a best friend from college, picks coachubby and me up from the airport in Boston. We are crashing at her place. When we walk 10 minutes to get ice cream that night, I realize I can’t walk and breathe at the same time. Unless I’m eating ice cream. I contemplate how I’m going to supply myself with ice cream throughout all 26.2 miles of what promises to be the hottest Boston Marathon ever.

T-1 day until race day. To discourage people like me who really, really don’t want to have to qualify again and are therefore willing to destroy themselves to complete their one Boston Marathon, the BAA has decided to allow deferrals to next year. Perfectly rational, healthy racers might need medical attention on the course. People like me who are undertrained and overheating without moving should not be hogging the hot EMTs. 

I thank 88-degrees for both being my favorite temperature, and, apparently, hot enough to scare race organizers into letting me run next year without having to qualify again. Clearly, none of them were raised in Phoenix.

Race day. Karen and I drop coachubby off at the busses in Boston Common. I return to Karen’s place and pass out. When I get up just in time to watch the race start on T.V., I put on exactly what I would’ve worn to run: hot pink compression socks, rainbow colored tiny shorts, and a blue tank top. Sparkly nails complete the ensemble. If I can’t run and must feel like crap, at least I will look like I can run and feel awesome. I take two puffs of Albuterol but still have a hard time walking the two miles to Mile 23.

 

We set up camp alongside the T. We cheer for wheelchair racers, for the pro women, for the pro men. For that guy in the checkered spandex. We get text message alerts of coachubby’s whereabouts so we’ll be ready to cheer when he runs by. 

He never runs by. I get a text from his cousin: Jimmy bonk? I don’t know, I write back. I haven’t seen him. Maybe he’s fighting an EMT who’s trying to give him an IV for heatstroke. He has a history of doing that.

I get a call. It’s coachubby. He’s at mile 24, where am I? I’m at mile 23, I say. I clearly suck at spectating. Oh, I wanted to see you guys, he says. I’m moving really slowly. You can probably catch me.

And so I run in my first Boston Marathon.

I take off down the course, cell phone in hand. People applaud my pace, held for all of approximately 10 seconds. Cops don’t even flinch when I run by. It’s exhilarating! I’m in the Boston Marathon! It’s the first time I’ve run in seven weeks and I feel…awful. I duck under a rope and back onto a sidewalk after about 20 seconds. I walk toward mile 24, sucking air. Then the coughing attack starts. Tears jump out of my eye sockets, snot dumps out of my nose. I can barely breathe. I spot a half-drunk water bottle in a windowsill. I grab it without breaking stride and down it. I’m still coughing. I sit on a curb next to two teenage boys guarding their family’s coolers. One of them hands me a water. Then they whisper to each other. I tell them I wasn’t running—that I was supposed to but couldn’t because of this, and made a motion to my snot and tear-covered face.

I find coachubby by the family waiting area. He’s done. He did it. He ran the hottest Boston Marathon in history, earning permanent marathon rockstar status. He survived my fever and the sympathy non-training he did when I couldn’t run. He gives me a hug and lets me eat half of the Hawaiian sweet rolls out of his post-race goody bag.

Ouch, he says. Yeah, I think. That pretty much sums it up. The last two months. The last week. This day: Ouch.

We begin plotting my debut at the 117^th Boston Marathon, where I plan on running for more than 20 seconds. It will be glorious.

How I Got Hypothermia on a 50 Degree Day in Los Angeles or My First Road Marathon

Ethiopian runner, Markos Geneti, shattered the Los Angeles Marathon course record by two minutes on Sunday. Joeseph D’Amico ate only McDonalds for 30 days before the race and set a personal record of 2:36:14. Heck, a 400-pound Sumo wrestler set the record for being the heaviest person to complete the LA Marathon—ever. It’s like no one cared it was the stormiest day in the city’s history with 2.54 inches of rain pummeling downtown L.A.—an inch more than the previous record set in 1943—and wind gusts of up to 40 miles per hour. Except the reported thousands of runners evaluated for hypothermia and the 26 runners taken to the hospital.

I was one of those 26 runners.

***
Oh my God. I’m going to pass out. I can’t feel my arms!

I’m walking down San Vicente Boulevard in the pouring rain, drenched and holding my arms up to my chest.

“Don’t slow down or you’ll freeze!” a runner yells to me as he passes by, chugging through the last two-and-a-half miles of the Los Angeles Marathon on Sunday.

Too late.

Another runner stops to walk with me. “You can do this!”

“I’m pretty frozen. Don’t walk because of me!” I say. He jogs off.

There’s no way in hell I’ll be able to walk two more miles. I’m going to pass out.

Just then a lady in scrubs signals for me to come over to her. I hobble across the newly formed river that was once the eastbound lane of San Vicente.

The lady takes one look at me, then opens up the back doors to an ambulance to reveal a teenage boy covered in blankets on a gurney and two pretty EMTs. One of them strips off my shirt, socks and shoes, puts a blanket around me then tries to take my temperature with a disposable thermometer. It doesn’t register.

“Can you get in the front seat? It’s a lot warmer up there,” she says.

I try to stand up but my legs don’t work. My quads have gone rogue. I drag myself into the driver’s seat with my arms, then rest my head on the steering wheel directly in front of the heater vent. I have company; a man who looks about my age sits in the passenger seat, contemplating running the final 2.2 miles. He looks at me, then jumps out of the ambulance. We’re at mile 24.

The EMTs hand me heat packs and more blankets. I’m not shivering. I’m trying to control my heart rate by breathing against pursed lips.

I’m going to pass out.

Another plastic thermometer gets shoved into my mouth. Again, nothing registers.

“We’re going to take you to the hospital to get you warmed up, OK?” someone says. I start to cry.

“It’s OK. You’ll run another marathon.”

I don’t care about the marathon—I’ve run four before. I can’t feel my arms.

A gorgeous man opens the ambulance door and puts me on a gurney. I wish I had put cover up on the giant forehead zit that my visor is no longer hiding.

I’m lifted into the back of another ambulance. Hottie EMT and his buddies say how crazy it is—how so many people are “dropping” at mile 24. The EMTs can’t keep up. They’ve already taken half a dozen people to the hospital and more are pouring in. Hottie EMT and the ambulance driver try to get my vitals. They can’t get my pulse. They ask for my social security number and I spit out nine numbers—I’m clearly coherent. Oh well, they’ll get my pulse at the hospital.

I begin to shake like a spaz.

The doors slam shut, the siren starts, and Hottie EMT stares at me, failed marathoner number seven. So embarrassing.

***

I wanted to run a 3:30. The only other marathons I had ever run were at the end of Ironmans or on Catalina Island and my only strategy was to not walk. That worked well. But for a stand-alone marathon, I wanted to run. I put my 10K time from February’s Redondo Beach 10K into an online calculator that told me I could run a 3:23 marathon. I decided 3:30 would be a good goal. I didn’t wear a Garmin and decided I’d rely on a pace group to get me to the finish. I was in the back of the chute with the masses at the start, not seeded, so when I finally crossed the start line, I was over two minutes behind the pace group. I ran to catch up.

I zig zagged around walkers and joggers, passing the 3:50 pace group early on. I ran a few more miles and saw a little flag up ahead. That had to be the 3:30 group. I got closer and read the sign: 3:40. It began to rain. I pressed on, concentrating on a man in a tutu up ahead. When I got closer, I realized it was my friend, Guillaume.

“Where the hell is the 3:30 pace group?” I said.

“They’re going way too fast,” said Guillaume.

I kept going. The wind blew. It rained harder. Then I saw Jason. Just the weekend before, Jason and I had decided we’d run together since we both had the same goal. I blew by him looking for the pacer.

I finally caught up around 10K. I thought I’d settle in with the 3:30 group, and I did for about another 10K. Then they started to slip away. I couldn’t let that happen. I wanted to run this race for my Grandpa—I spoke at his funeral six days ago. I wanted to qualify for Boston for him. For me. I kept the 3:30 group in my sights until about mile 18, then I started to slow down. The rain poured relentlessly. The wind picked up. My muscles screamed. I never paid any attention to the scenery, noting for a split second when we ran by Grauman’s Chinese Theatre. I noticed when we crossed under the 10. We were so close to Santa Monica. So close to the finish. Jason ran by me.

I slogged through Veteran’s Park, soaking my shoes in a stream I didn’t have the springiness to jump across. My orthotics absorbed the water like diapers. I got colder. The rain picked up. The wind blew. My muscles throbbed. I slowed down. I got colder.

As I passed under the 23 mile banner, I stopped running. My legs stopped running. I couldn’t move my legs to run. Guillaume ran by me. I began to walk along the grassy median. I got colder.

***

My watch is still running when I arrive at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. If I were crossing the finish line right now, instead of  moving into a hospital bed, I’d clock a 4:15. Instead, I’m learning that Hottie EMT’s name is Robbie—right after the ER nurse takes off all of my clothes in front of him and asks when my last menstrual period was in front of him. Robbie leaves to rescue more waterlogged damsels in distress while the ER nurse covers me in human bubble wrap—a plastic, air-filled blanket that blows up full of hot air. I shiver. My heart rate shows on a screen, hovering around 100. My normal resting heart rate is around 40.

The ER nurse turns on March Madness and lets me hang in my cocoon. She comes back to take my temperature. It’s now an unshocking 96.9 degrees.

“Who’s going to pick you up?” she says.

“I only know two phone numbers by heart,” I say. Coachubby’s and my mom’s. My mom lives in Arizona and Coachubby is most likely waiting for me by the meet up letter Z, like we had planned, because how many people’s names start with Z? His phone is at home. I call mom.

“Hi mom. I got hypothermia.”

“What?!”

“I’m fine. I need you to go on Facebook and look up our housemate. Go to his Facebook page. In the upper right hand side it says ‘send message’. Tell him I’m at the hospital. He has a smartphone. He’ll get the message.”

Duke sinks several more baskets while Michigan tries to catch up. I call my mom back.

“I think I poked your friend Mo,” she says. “What’s a poke?”

“Oh my God.”

“Let me know when you get home.”

I try to sleep. Then the nurse comes in.

“Your husband is here to see you. Do you want to see him?”

Do I want to see him? Nah, I’ll just stay here naked in my bubble wrap all afternoon.

“Yes!”

Coachubby walks in. Our housemate got the message and dropped him off. Coachubby died late in the race too, he says. He wanted to run 2:50. He ran 3:05. He qualified for Boston. Jason ran a 3:30.

I am an idiot.

“Not fair,” I say. “Now I have to run another one so we can run Boston together.”

The nurse drops off a pair of hideous gray sweat pants for me to change into. My other clothes are wet and my favorite blue shirt with my race number didn’t make it into my “patient belongings” bag. I look like a homeless crackhead. Coachubby gives me a piggyback ride through the rain and puts me in the back seat of our housemate’s Prius.

Back at home, the rain still pours. The trees shake like the wind will uproot them. I imagine we’re in a hurricane. I lie on the couch and decide to check the race results for my splits. The Los Angeles Marathon website says I ran a 3:36.

Now I wonder who has my shirt.

The Tahoe Sierra 100 Mountain Bike Race-- So F'n Easy

“This is gonna be so f*(#ing easy!” Jimmy says.

It’s just before 6:30 am and we are straddling our mountain bikes behind a couple hundred spandex-clad ultraracers. Me, my husband Jimmy, and our friend A-ron. (Thus named because I’m Erin and he’s Aaron and it gets confusing.)

The sun hasn’t come up over Soda Springs, CA, a tiny ski-town northeast of Lake Tahoe just off of the I-80. My numb hands ache as we wait for the countdown to the start of Tahoe Sierra, a 100-mile mountain bike race with a reported 13,000 feet of climbing that shares part of its route with the Western States 100 ultramarathon.

Somewhere up ahead is my friend Holly, the silent killer. She’s tiny. She’s unassuming. And she’ll kick your ass. If she weren’t so dedicated to performing surgery on mice as part of her graduate mechanical engineering research at Stanford, she’d probably be pro. I am not racing Holly.

The race director, Jimmyboy, mentions something about the race being hard. Something about bears and mountain lions. Then something about loggers and hunters.

“This is gonna be so so f*(#ing easy!” Jimmy repeats the motto he adopted from an adventure race he ran with his college buddies.

“Ha!” grunts the guy next to him.

“Five! Four! Three!” Jimmyboy counts down. “Two! One!” And we’re off, rolling down double track through the twilight. The dust glitters in a cloud that engulfs my face and immediately latches onto my nose.

I re-discovered pink zinc just before the race and thought it would be the perfect nose-cheek protector for an all-day adventure. It smells like a coconutty beach, just like it did in the ‘80s. But after 10 minutes of riding through “moon dust” in a fat-tired peloton, my coconutty pink nose has become a dirt trap.

This must be how healthy, non-smokers get lung cancer, I think as I look at the dude next to me. He’s wearing a surgical mask. The guy just ahead of me has a bandana covering his mouth. I try to hold my breath, but that doesn’t last very long.

We turn a corner to face a short, steep sandy section. People are falling left and right. A few men tiptoe their bikes around the carnage while I ski down on my feet. When I get to the bottom, A-ron and Jimmy are already out of sight.

I’ve only been riding 15 minutes and my legs are sore. I know the boys are infinitely better riders than I am, but I don’t want to be out there alone—something about bears, remember?

The Toughest Endurance MTB Race There Is?

The race director for the Tahoe Sierra 100, a 100-mile (actually 92.7 miles this year) mountain bike race has officially freaked me and my crew out.

Coachubby, a friend from LA (A-ron) and a friend from Stanford (Holly) and I were all revved up to do the race this Saturday. We signed up months ago. We dreamed of the scenery, of the single-track, and in A-Ron's case, of the Pop-Tarts. It was going to be an epic day of awesome. Then the race updates started flowing in.

Here are tidbits from updates received on September 3, 4, 5, and 7:
Sept 3:
For all of you that may try to go out and try out the course this weekend. May be a few motos out there, hunters and crazy beer drinking 4 wheel drive people...There was a bit of Eco Terrorist action on the logging operation that was going on up there yesterday.

OK. Not bad. Nothing that's not usually on a mtb course. This is going to rock. It didn't hurt that the email closed with: 

Don't forget that your here to have fun!! We all will be partying after the event at Ice Lakes Lodge so please come by and enjoy the full bar and food here at the lodge as it looks out over Serene lakes.

Party on.

Sept 4:
Saw a Nice big bear out on the trail today. Never saw one person or bike all day.

OK. Bear. Bears live in the forest. Chances are slim the bear will care about me when there will be several other meal options on the trail. 

Great weather. 82 in the high country at 6700 ft.

Rock on. Warm weather is my best friend. Yogi can hibernate while we ride.

Sept 5: 
Just to clear the air about this being a fast race course.
Mohican 100 fast times: 7:33 under 9,000ft of climbing
Lumberjack 100. Fast times 6:33 9,000ft of climbimg
Cream Puff 100 fast times 9:44.00 about 17,500 ft of climbing
High Cascades 100. Fast times about 8:37. 13,000ft of climbing 11,000ft of climbing ( single track)
Leadville 100 ( almost all fire road and out and back) 12,000ft of climbing ( record set by Levi this year 6:15.00)   Roadie course
Break Epic. Fast times 8:31.00
I would say that the Tahoe Sierra 100 is a fast course with the fast time of 7:24.00 and about 13,800 ft of climbing depending on your GPS and the course only being 92.7 miles.

Cool. Good riders will finish fast. The climbing surely qualifies this ride for DA status. (Disappearing a**.)

Sept 7:
This is your last chance. 

To what? To bail?

This is a hard 100 mile race. This is not a roadie course. There is rock, dirt, lots of dust in some places, bears, cows, hunters, mt. lions, Big trees, small trees, white torn, buck brush, loggers, miners and a few things I may have forgotten. Oh ya, Mary Jane growers!!

Praying I will not be shot by Elmer Fudd, eaten by Yogi Bear or Simba, or stomped on by Cow. At least if it gets really bad, we can all zen out with the help of the local farmers.

Combine this update with the one from Aug. 16:
Just another heads up there are some cattle in the high country free grazing in the forest. Some of them are very big bulls!! If you run across any of them just yell and they will move. I have seen a few bear moving around in the last two weeks. They're just black bear and will run before you get too close.

And now we have full-on bearanoia. Seriously? They'll run away? As a wise friend once said, you don't have to be fast, just faster than your group. The bear will eat the slacker. There's some motivation.

I never said that this was a easy MTB 100. I just said it was a fast one.

And with that, Coachubby and I will fly out to Tahoe tomorrow to embark on a bear-hunter-mtn. lion-miner-logger riddled race. I slapped a red rear tire on my bike to up the rad factor. Or mask the blood.

This should be epic.

Outside Magazine Is Pretty Freakin' Cool

Yo! My blogging efforts have recently been hijacked by Outside Magazine's blog. This week, I got to speak with my fifth grade teacher, who happens to be one of the world's most inspirational people, Erik Weihenmayer, 19-year old professional surfer, Sage Erickson, and one of the stars of a new surf movie, Chris Christenson.

It's been rad.

And when I'm not at Outside, I'm outside, training for the Tahoe-Sierra 100-mile mountain bike race, and Ironman Arizona--with 2 bum hamstrings and a pissed-off rotator cuff. I met a spiritual healer while searching for a place in Santa Fe, but thought she was a little off her rocker. Maybe I should give her a shot...IM will be hard to finish with no run or swim training...

The Original Pain in the Ass

"Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing," says the 5'6", 32-year old, short brown-haired dude who pulled my pants down and was jabbing his thumbs into my butt.

Let's back this up a bit.

I went to physical therapy every day before Christmas with one goal in mind: to fix the pain in my ass.

My left butt started hurting November 6th. By mid-December it still hurt, and stopped me from running the California International Marathon. I was not pleased. The pain in my ass was becoming a true pain in the ass. Something had to be done.

And so for four days straight, I walked over to PT to have my pants pulled down by a brown-haired, lawyer-wannabe-turned physical therapist/bar mitzvah DJ, then have my left bum manipulated, stretched, stimulated with tingly pads, and iced.

Merry Christmas to my butt.

In order to decrease the awkwardness of the situation that broken butt syndrome (aka piriformis syndrome) creates, I tried to chat up Dr. DJ. Maybe it would keep his eyes off of the, um, prize.

"What's the most common injury that you see here?" I asked.
"Oh, usually a lot of lower back pain."
"Do you get a lot of older people with that problem?" It seemed like a logical question. One that would conjure up images of his grandma and keep his eyes off of my left butt cheek.
"Well, this one woman came in when I was an intern."
"Uh huh." Good. Grandma stories. It's working.
"And she told me she was having intense back pain."
"Uh huh." Maybe she hurt it picking up the dog or something.
"So I had to ask her how she did it to get an idea of what I'd do to treat it."

"That makes sense."

"Then she blushed and got all embarrassed."

"Oh God!" I scream.

"You don't even know what happens next!"

"No! Freaking-A! That hurts!" He found the evil spot.

"Oh. Well, it's supposed to hurt."

"OK, continue."

"She tells me she did it having sex."

Holy Lord this is awkward.

"So I go to tell my attending, since I have to ask permission before doing anything since I'm just an intern. He says I have to get more detail so we know how to treat her."

He squeezes out more lotion and jabs his thumbs into my butt. Coachubby is gonna love this story.

"Uh huh."

"So I have her write it down on the treatment form. Turns out this lady was freaky-deaky and hurt her back on a sex swing."

"No way!" I start fiddling with my wedding ring.

"So after she left, we took her name off of the form, and framed it and put it up on the wall."

"Ha. That's...funny," I say.

Dr. DJ pulls my my pants back up over my left butt and begins to stretch my hamstring. That innocent stretch never seemed so awkward. It was a relief when he had his young, blond sidekick take me to the "stim machine", where he wiped my bum down with alcohol and stuck pads onto it.

Maybe it was all done in that order to make "bum stimulation" not seem as embarassing.

Either way, lesson learned: Do not injure your bum. Fixing it is awkward. And a pain in the ass.

All Systems Pissed

Perhaps it was my decision to do an Ironman-style workout weekend last Saturday and Sunday--without any buildup--that led to my demise.

3 people joined me on a grand cycling loop from Stanford to the ocean and back last Saturday, totaling 70ish miles. I sent out an email to the Stanford Tri Team, and got lucky--the people who came were all excellent cyclists who proceeded to kick my bum.

In my mind, of course, I had excuses for my sluggishness: I just ran my first track workout of the last half a year on Friday, after doing a 1000 meter time trial in the pool, my first swim in a month.

Sufficiently fried Saturday night, I did not sleep. I'm not sure why. You'd think a few days like that would knock a girl out. I then woke up Sunday morning to go with two highly esteemed tri-team members to Castro Valley to run a 17-mile trail run.

Yes, I was prepared to do that--I'm training for the California International Marathon on Dec. 6. No, I wasn't prepared to do that within several hours of leg bashing in the pool, on the track, and all over the South Bay.

I'm in debt to the creators of Red Bull.

Here's the kicker: My legs are still pissed. In normal Ironman-training mode, this would not happen. I would recover. But in sleep-must-go-because-I'm-doing-super-cool-stuff-for-school-that-is-more-important-than-anything-else-but-I-will-not-cut-out-training-anyway mode, my body has imposed a 10-minute mile minimum on my legs.

This speed will not get me to Boston.

I now, however, have a much greater respect for the corporate bigwigs who do Ironman--fast. They are far more important and busy than I ever was while I was training for an Ironman, yet somehow manage to get their training in, then run a Boston-worthy marathon time to cap of their IM.

Amazing.

24 Hours to Destroy a 25 Year Old Knee

Smart athletes can tell the difference between pain-pain and injury-pain.

Apparently, I'm smart on the inside, but have a tremendous ability to override reason with narrow, misguided focus.

The pain started somewhere around midnight during the Boggs 24-hour mountain bike race.

It was a 24-hour race, it was supposed to hurt, right?

Deep down, I knew it wasn't good pain. But I wasn't going to not ride for 24 hours. That was the point of the race.

I kept riding. My knee got worse.

I rode hills for the first time since Boggs today in an effort to gauge just how evil my knee is actually being.

I passed an older man on a fancy LeMonde in a fancy Ironfly kit while pedaling up a steep incline. I thought I was really chugging along, passing Mr. Fancy.

"Hi!" I said.
"You're doing great!" he said as he pulled up beside me, matching my effort.
"So are you!" said I.
"I'm 86!" says he.

Thus, I realized my 25-year old knee had gained approximately 60 years of wear and tear in 24-hours. (Either that, or my mtb saddle was too low...and the knee will heal.)

Now, 10 days after Boggs, I'm praying the lasting, point-specific pain in my inner right knee will somehow heal itself in the next 9 days, even though it hasn't in the past 10. 9 days are all it's got.

To prove my dedication to healing the rogue knee, I have iced it with peas, and done things against the very grain of my being, like taking Advil more than once a month, and sitting in icy-water. I hate cold. But I love my knee more. It should know that.

When the 9 days are up, it's showtime at Race Across Oregon. I'm asking my kneeright to at least hold off of the injured-pain until mile 526. Please, oh please.

And for fun, check out the only photos taken at Boggs. Coachubby spent the rest of the time making me pb&potato chip sandwiches.

Start!

Can you find me?

Just before the start.

Thank you, sir, may I have another loop?

Pre-race meeting. Spot the Erin?

Qeee chilling before getting dirty.

Attention Triathletes! Want to get Really Pissed Off?

Looking for an excuse to raise your blood pressure, throw everything off of your desk, and yell at the next person you see? Unlike your last boss, you probably need something absolutely infuriating to incite a foot-stamping, voice and finger raising cussfest in your office.

And why would you look for an excuse to become a loathsome tantrum-throwing maniac? Well, some pure emotion is good for the soul sometimes. Pure, angry emotion. In regulated doses. And to wear this anger off, you might just go harder at your next workout.

So without further adoo, I introduce this month's edition of PO'd NOW!

To start, read this LA Times Blog article about the 59-year old doctor who's road rage led to the severe injuries of two cyclists, "

Brentwood doctor pleads not guilty to injuring cyclists

Then, if you're not already blowing the top off of your PO'd-ometer, read the comments.

Then be glad you don't have to ride the streets of LA, where car culture, despite the best efforts of bike advocacy groups, still rules, and people with huge egos and cars compensating for small other things use the road to deal with their personal issues.

Share the Road signs are a great start, but even better would be a sharable road--with bike lanes. Because nobody really likes to share, especially in Brentwood where, to make a fabulously sweeping generalization, entitlement is far above understanding on the motive-o-meter.

Now get out there to ride your anger off! Cyclists use the road for their personal issues, too. Just don't pull a CTT (Christopher Thomas Thompson) and speed ahead of an annoying car only to slam on your brakes in front if it moments later. That won't turn out well for anyone.