Tri, Tri Again!: BDv.37: Public Speaking and Triathlon Winning!

My favorite thing about this pic? Scars. That big one on my neck, the nasty one on my arm. For me this pic denotes the reason for persistence beyond disaster more than any of the others ever taken.

My birthday is tomorrow. I just read over my post from last year for my birthday, and it's a lot of the same thing; glad I'm not in the hospital, yadayadayada. I have gained weight since then, I was right on track with that one! My time for walking has not consistently significantly improved, but that's a matter of time right now. I talked about swimming 1000 yards for the first time since I was hit, and this year if they wouldn't have canceled it I would have raced 1500 open water. Here are the posts I'm referring to in case you're interested: October 2013 Posts

BIG things for me include continuing on this determinational (my term!) speaker path; that talk I gave to the UL Softball team solidified to me that that's what I want to do, speak with athletes and other determined people. My amazing friend Annette and I are going to give our first joint talk together this week for the UL Disabilities kids. We ROCK together; this is my favorite blog post of mine you should read it: 2014 (Inaugural) Zydeco Half Marathon Race Report by SPECIAL GUEST Annette Coussan (with commentary by me) ;) I am super stoked about this direction in my life and I'm going to start putting my effort into it, starting right now. It's been hard finding a direction to try to get income with, but I think overall this is a good one.

ALSO THE BIGGEST NEWS YET! This is what makes this birthday the best ever When I was racing, that brief time in my life before I was hit, I got 1st AG at the Miles Perret Triathlon at UL. Two days ago I did the swim leg of a relay team for the UL Tri, which is basically the same course. Mary Hays of GEAUX RUN asked me and Sarah Tennison, swim coach at Swim Fit, if we would do it with her. We came up with the name "TriAngels" because I love a play on words, and Sarah drew this awesome symbol for us:

SO cute, right? I had not met Sarah before we had decided to relay together, but she is so happy and charismatic, and focused; I loved her instantly. Somehow the three of us quickly made a winning team, and we WON the relay for this race! This is a non-sanctioned short sprint tri; 200 yard swim, 8.5 mile bike, and 2.5 mile run, so the competition isn't as fierce as for other races. Having said that, we were 18/106 OA (I'm going to include guys and girls), my swim was 82 (so I beat about 1/4 of the people there, and I thought I would be last!), Mary was 16th off the bike and Sarah 16th off the run. I've got some fast friends ;) But honestly, we pulled it together without ever racing together before and we rocked it. Love these girls, I hope there will be chances for us to work together in the future.

Mary going into T2