It's still going, the Ballou Skies Facebook page now has 608 members.. However, I have ten jars of peanut butter still in my office and trust me, you don't want me to eat all these myself (although I bet Marit could give me a run for my money!!). As I said on my other blog post last week - just sign up 30 people for the page and you are golden! Email me and I will send you this lovely prize package for FREE including peanut butter etc.
In other news, it was a stunning weekend of weather here in Pittsburgh. Am I allowed to call the weather stunning?! Well, if I'm not, too bad, it was beautiful, sunny and mostly dry!
I had a spectacular last little longish ride on Saturday and a ten mile run yesterday around North Park. From Saturday at 3:00pm until 9:00pm I worked on my USAT Level One coaching certification. Somewhere it had slipped my mind that yes, I actually have to PASS a written test before I can get my certificate. Well, I had no idea how not really hard, but TIME CONSUMING this thing would be! Within an hour, I had only done about ten of the multiple choice and I still had about sixty to go, plus fourteen short answer, plus TWO long essays. Wow.. I just put my head down and kept going the entire way until I got to the two long questions.. then my brain was fried and I decided I needed dinner!
Sunday was a fun day because we had our beginner tri group at the Washington Oval doing transition practice! I wouldn't even say I'm amazing at transitions, decent, but not amazing. Chad, my fellow coach for the program & good friend, told a great story about how when he qualified for Kona in 2007, the guy who was next in line to get the slot actually swam, biked and ran FASTER than Chad, but all of his transitions were really slow and Chad out T1 & T2'ed him.. and hence, secured his victory! Just goes to show you, you have to be good at ALL of the race, not just the swim, bike and run!
So, we lectured, and then - we practiced! It was really a great time!!
Each group of three was timed so we had someone to "compete" against!
Chad set up his bike and went over how everything would work..
We talked about everything from skinsuits, trisuits, to proper T1 & T2 etiquette (no, you can't be moving other peoples stuff - none of that!)
Chad did a practice run through. Usually he has his shoes right on the bike, but for the sake of our group, was willing to put them on in Transition.
I of course practice my silly poses and sweating my hiney off while wearing my wetsuit in the middle of a 85 degree day! I really was sweating within SECONDS of putting this thing on.. it was a good chance to practice though, you just never know where those seconds will pay off!!
Group number two, ready to throw down getting out of the "pool" (or grass as we call it).
Peter won the beginner group. You should have seen him. He was NOT messing around!
Angela made the quick T1 and even had to pull her bike off the ground to get it going! Then her pedal broken about 10 seconds after she mounted the bike.. darn it!
All in all, it was a fun day with a lot of laughs and tons of really great questions. I enjoy this group so much. They really do brighten my day and make me so happy I became a coach to help others get started!
Hope everyone enjoyed their weekend!!
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