Mette Ivie Harrison's Blog, page 113

ALA and perspective

There are a few people in my life who make me remember whenever I see them how lucky I am to have achieved my dream of being a writer. I am going to go see a bunch of them at ALA this weekend. I'm looking forward to it very much. I am a bit nervous about the airport because I've had a couple of bad experiences flying, but ALA will be fun.

I know that in real life, I am just me, with all my flaws and problems. But it is nice now and then to get out and feel as if I am "Writer Mette Ivie Har...

The Princess and the Snowbird cover story

Meanwhile, back in the writing world . . .

I have been asked at conferences a lot lately about authors and covers and how much power an author has to change a cover.

My standard answer to this has always been--absolutely none. The publisher chooses the title and the cover of most books, and the author chooses the words between the covers. At least, that is the way it always had been for me, but with The Princess and the Snowbird, there was an interesting story around the cover that pleased an...

triathlon race #5 Coeur D'Alene Ironman

I've got a longer account of this on my website here, if you're interested.

I trained for this race for about five months. It was the end of June in 2006, and I look back and marvel that I was able to do an Ironman at all, with what amounted to very little time to train. I also spent the winter of 2006 doing a series of running races about every third Saturday, from 5k up to 1/2 marathon. Then I hired a coach to help with the triathlon training and he told me I had done too much racing and ...

race report Provo Tri

No swim caps, no timing chips, and some unpleasant biking terrain didn't ruin this race for me. I will admit, my finish time was not what I had hoped. But the swim was wonderful, not at all cold, but not too warm, either. I let myself go as fast as I could on the bike, and dropped several minutes off my best time. My run was, as a consequence, quite a bit slower. I knew it would be, but it was an experiment to see how much slower. Enough to know that I shouldn't do that again, if I want...

exercise tip #1

There is a reason that Gatorade has sugar in it. That reason is to help you go faster. I have proven this to myself over and over again. When I use plain water to do a workout, I am slower than when I use Gatorade. Yes, if you are trying to lose weight, then you won't use Gatorade. But as I have said before, you can't lose weight and improve speed at the same time. You can't fuel your body to do that. You will end up at a slowish pace without fuel.

The low calorie or no calorie Gatorade...

triathlon race #4 Turkey Tri 2005

This is perhaps the most difficult triathlon to write about. I had a stillborn baby born late August in 2005 and was heartbroken. I had been itching to get back to training, and now there was a need to take myself away from the grief and pain of losing my daughter. I will admit, not all of it was healthy. I certainly started running far earlier than I should have (about a week after delivery) and a woman in the neighborhood who is a runner and a nurse saw me and really chastised me for ri...

triathlon race #3 Turkey Tri 2004

Maybe I am trying to put off writing about this race. It isn't a particularly shining example of anything. My transitions were horrible, my run was so-so, my bike pretty much the same, the swim a huge pain because people were in my way. This particular race is done backwards, run, bike, swim, because it's in November and it's too cold for people to get out of the water, wet, and get onto a bike. But if you do the swim last in a heated pool, it's not so bad.

So now I will do one of my rants...

"I don't like to run"

Interrupting the race reports to bring you a piece on why you don't like to run.

I hated running until about 7 years ago. I had bad knees. I had a back that made funny creaking sounds even when I walked. I was not an athlete. So I get it. The thought of running made me shudder in disgust or wince in pain. People who liked to run were very, very strange. Perhaps they needed therapy. Of course, there were the real athletes out there who liked running, but they were born different. They ...

triathlon race #2 Ogden Valley 2004

I still didn't have a bike of my own except for the combo dirt/road bike I borrowed from my husband for training. I had arranged to rent a bike for one day, picking it up the night before the race, but my husband and I got to the store too late so I had no road bike. I went over to a friend's house who was a biker, but he is a good seven inches taller than I am, and even with the seat post down as far as it could go, I couldn't feel comfortable on his bike. So, it was going to be the dirt ...

triathlon race #1 Jordanelle 2004

I did a marathon in May of this year, and while I finished it, I was hurting pretty seriously for several months afterward. Mostly my own fault, since my longest run before the marathon was 6 miles. So my knees were severely hurt and I couldn't run for months after. Nonetheless, the marathon had given me the confidence to try a triathlon. I knew the swim wouldn't be a problem for me. And I started spending time every day on line, reading up on some tips for training and racing, figuring ...