A "Formal" Curling Experience

Ok, not your typical bon spiel.... But the Mayfield Curling Club hosted its Women's One-Day Spiel last Saturday.  Keeping with the color theme that was started with the Inaugural "Lilacs and Lace" Spiel of four years ago, this year's theme was the "Blue Bridesmaid" Spiel.... 

Of course, bad bridesmaid dresses were encouraged to be worn.  I was a bit skeptical that people would participate in wearing dresses.... not the most practical in 40 degree weather while curling.  Also, I didn't have any dresses!  Lucky for me, I had a choice of bridesmaid dresses to pick from since my friend, Karen, had a closet-full of bridesmaid dresses.  I braved the cold to throw one rock in my "formal" before putting on my regular curling clothes!

Definitely not recommended!

I was actually excited to curl since our team was 3/4 of our Senior Nationals team.  Dee, our skip, was not available.  Otherwise, Tracie (vice) and Sue (lead) were part of the team.  We had Diane from MCC step in to complete the team.  This ended up being good practice for Nationals.

We ended up playing teamw from Columbus and the Cleveland Skating Club.  We played very well together and were able to win both of our games.  Because it was a points spiel, we barely got knocked out of 1st place by another Mayfield team and ended up in 2nd place overall.

We have a few more practice games scheduled with all members of our Senior Nationals team so am hoping for a successful tournament in North Dakota in February.

Training for a 48-Hour

Having signed up for Across The Years 48-Hour, I've been trying to figure out the best way to train for the race.  Two weeks ago, I went to Texas for the Ultracentric 24-hour.  My thought was to run at least 100 miles at a moderate pace to see how things went.

In Houston, I met up with Jamie Donaldson and we ate our pre-race meal in of all places Cleveland, Texas at the local Pizza Hut. 

The next morning, we drove to the race in a nice park setting about 30 minutes away.  As we drove the .6 mile loop, we noted the rolling hills, a fairly steep downhill at the mid-point and a short steep uphill at the end of the loop.  Pretty much at that point I decided that 100 miles would be a good place to stop.

Jamie and I got to catch up before the race with fellow 24-hour teammate Amy Palmiero-Winters, who was also running the race.  Here's a picture with our Drymax socks before the race!

I put on my I-pod right away as the race was very small and lonely!  The weather was partly cloudy and got warm after a few hours. Given the hill at the end of each loop, I walked every loop which ended up being every 6 or 7 minutes. I wanted to experiment with walking breaks at this race as I am planning to take walking breaks during the 48-hour but this is a little more frequent than I had planned. I also tried something new, Hammer Perpetuem solids - coffee flavor.  These worked really well and were easy to ingest until I got sick of them after about 12 hours.  Further experimenting, I tried some longer shorts that had a pocket in the back.  The pocket was nice but the shorts drove me crazy.  I ended up changing into shorter shorts at the 12 hour mark.

I hit the 100 mark around 19:15 and called it a day.  I tried to get some sleep and then watched Jamie keep looping around the course.   She was very strong and ended up with almost 137 miles.  Jamie had a great run given that the course was a bit challenging.

Now, on to actually run the 48-hour.  I just need to find enough music for the I-pod....