My experience with giving up dairy

These days it seems like everyone is giving up dairy for one reason or another. As someone who has experienced some mild lactose intolerance, especially as I get older, it's definitely something I've considered doing.

Then a few months ago I went through a period where it seemed like even my protein shakes -- which should have no, or next to no, lactose in them -- were bugging me and I was having issues with gas and gastric distress that just wouldn't go away. So it seemed like it was time.

I didn't quit cold turkey, mostly because I didn't feel like throwing out pounds of perfectly good protein powder. But I gradually cut back more and more until I was pretty much not consuming any dairy as far as I could tell. (It's in everything so I may have been getting trace amounts here and there.)

And I sat back and waited for all the wonderful things that were supposed to happen when you give up dairy. You know, the bloating to go away. The gas. Losing 10 pounds. The works.

And waited.

And waited.

Dip 'n Dash #1: Bottom Podium for the Win!

With the cancellation of the Splash 'n Dash race series due to the drought, there was a big hole in my training schedule. I love that series and miss it a lot. However, there is the Dip 'n Dash series down in Santa Cruz as an alternative. Its only drawback is that you have to drive all the way to Santa Cruz on a Sunday morning.

I did my first (and only) Dip 'n Dash last year when I went down to Santa Cruz to practice for a race and stumbled upon it. My carpool-mate and I were the only females doing the swim-only division so we podiumed! I had enough fun that I decided to use the race bucks I won last year to enter this year’s series.

For this first race in the series, I was treating the whole thing more as a workout than a race. My only concession in training was to not run after our Sat. bike ride since I had to run 4 miles here and didn’t want to run two days in a row. Plus, 4 miles is a lot for me. I’ve only started doing that consistently a few weeks ago.

Finding my "lane"

I love Wednesday. It's my favorite day of the week! Mostly because it's swim day.

There's something magical about swimming to me. I like getting into a rhythm and then concentrating on some little aspect of my form until it's so automatic I don't have to concentrate on it any more. I like the feel of my body moving through the water.

Sometimes I'm slicing through the water. Sometimes I'm pulling myself strongly as if there's a cable under there and my strokes are moving the cable against a pulley. Sometimes I'm fighting the water a bit before everything settles down and we make friends again. I like it when everything comes together and I feel like a real swimmer.

California Sprint Triathlon: A Triathlete Reborn

I did it! I finished my Sprint triathlon that I have been training for all season

I've been looking forward to the California Sprint Triathlon for months. It was going to be my Come Back party. I invited my mom to come out and watch me race and my whole family ended up gathering for a party afterwards along with my fellow New-to-Multi-Sport peeps that I've been training with since March.

When I first signed up for the race, I had modest goals. Mostly just to finish the damn thing. Maybe not get the dreaded motorcycle escort on the bike portion like I did during the AquaBike last year.

Then I signed up for the Mountain Bike race at Wildflower as a tune-up and to practice. My goal then became to do this race in no more time than that one even though the course here is longer. So under two hours, basically.

But somewhere along the way, I got ambitious. My training was going really well and I was getting faster all the time. By the time race day rolled around, I had set some pretty fast time goals for myself, perhaps not even that realistic.