Kathleen's Adventures

Today I am thankful for the Monsignor Kelly High School class of 1999. We had some good times together, many of us going to school together from preschool through college. We're having our 10 year reunion this weekend. I'm not thrilled at the idea of going solo tonight but I will try to make the best of it. I just spent 4 hours baking so I hope everyone likes the dessert. I think this is the first time I've baked for this many people - 80!

Today I am thankful for my best friend in the whole wide world, Kelly. We've known each other since we were in diapers. We grew up across the street from each other in Beaumont where our parents still live and where our moms walk together in the neighborhood each morning. I'm thankful she called last night and we probably talked for a good hour - I needed it. I'm thankful she will always be there.

So, people on facebook have been starting a thing where you say something that you are thankful for each day between now and Thanksgiving. The more days you go, the harder it will get apparently. There are fifteen days left between now and then, so we will see if I run out of things to be thankful for not (I don't think I will, but we will see). So for Day 1, I am thankful for my mom. She's pretty awesome. I didn't necessarily always think so, but now I do.

Anne must be one of the luckiest girls around . How awesome!

(as in ran through my weekend, the weekend before IMFL). Jon and I went to New Braunfels/Gruene/San Antonio the weekend before IMFL for Tour de Gruene and Halloween at my sister's house. It was an awesome weekend - action packed and tiring, but awesome. I did the "recreational tour" ride Saturday morning and it was the prettiest ride I have ever done. It was only 30 miles too, which made it that much more awesome! We rode from Gruene Hall out to River Road which runs along the Guadalupe river. We did an out-and-back along the river, with about 20 miles being right on the shoreline. We crossed all four river crossings twice which just added to the gloriousness of the ride. I wish I would have taken pictures, but I was by myself and just not motivated to do so. There were places along River Rd where I thought to myself that someone has had to have ridden into the river at some point during Tour de Gruene's history. The banks of the river came right up to the road in som...

Since when did my age group get so tough? It may not be very big, but gees, there are some fast ones. Looking at the FL results, you had to go 10:22 in my age group to qualify for Kona (darn, I was only off by a few minutes...), which is the fastest qualifying time of any female age group. Also I didn't even crack the top half in my age group with my little 12:47. My time in any other age group would have been top half no problem. Oh well - good thing I am not anywhere near trying to qualify for Kona , or placing, or anything other than just improving my own time - it could get pretty frustrating! I guess all the age groups just change with time. M35-39 used to be by far the biggest group in the first ironmans I did, but at IMFL M40-44 had 402 men while M35-39 had 385.

A full IMFL race report will be coming soon, but I always like to wait to get all the pictures first so I can put them together with the report. I probably should start on it soon though because I may forget everything. I have, of course, run a few numbers though that I think are pretty neat. Here is a comparison of my finish times for my ironmans and how I finished compared to the rest of the field: IMAZ 2007, finish time 15:31, 79th percentile IMAZ 2008, finish time 14:40, 58th percentile IMCDA 2009, finish time 13:29, 61st percentile IMFL 2009, finish time 12:47, 54th percentile So, obviously finish time/placement can vary greatly from race to race. IMAZ '07 was my first and I was happy to finish, regardless, but looking back at it now, I realize that race still had some pretty rough conditions (winds 20-25mph with gusts over 35mph). For comparison, the 79th percentile at IMFL this year was around a 14:25 finish. IMAZ '08 was the year of the awful heat - as in 97 degrees. Th...