Bill and Cathy McArthur on the Road 2011: 9

  Monday, March 14, was another in a long string of beautiful days. Cathy taught her exercise class in the early morning. Bill did some shopping at Publix and then drove to a Nissan dealer on Pine Ridge Road to attend to a safety recall dealing with the steering column. Bill also asked for a complimentary inspection of the car and it passed without any problems. When Bill got home we ate lunch and then Cathy headed out for an exercise class at the gym. Bill worked on catching up with his online journal. Then Bill researched the cycling and running courses for the upcoming Sarasota duathlon. We had an early pasta dinner while we viewed part of "Wilde" and then went to country line dancing at the clubhouse. When we returned, we decided that we'd had enough of "Wilde" and watched the chick flick "The Romantics" - just quirky enough to be interesting.

  Tuesday, Bill went out for an early 16 mile paddle to Rookery Bay. It was beautiful on the water. Cathy went to the gym and Publix. Bill registered for the 2012 edition of the Goofy Challenge. Cathy registered for the Disney Half Marathon. We heard that Son Bill had registered for the Goofy Challenge, Stacey had registered for the Half Marathon, and Sarah and Billy had registered for the kids run. After a late lunch, Bill went to Pat Borucki's park model to fix a cursor problem on her Dell Inspiron laptop. He spent about an hour on the job. Windows Vista thought her touchpad was a PS2 mouse, so Bill had to download a new touchpad driver from the Dell website. After installing the driver, Bill was able to disable (nice phrase!) the touchpad. Bill continued to walk to LVCC to meet with Primo. He stopped at the bridge on the way back and chatted for a while. Cathy was out on a walk. We had quiche for dinner and viewed "Volver" - excellent movie.

  Wednesday, Bill helped Cathy carry her equipment to the clubhouse for her class and for a coffee gathering afterward. Bill did his stretching and exercises. After lunch, we drove to Naples Cyclery to pickup the Comet. Then we drove to Staples and printed out some materials for our weekend trip to Sarasota. We also had Cathy's exercise program scanned to a PDF file and copied. We stopped at Starbucks on the way home. We held the last Computing Workshop for this season. We had a small crowd for the final session. We had quinoa and a frozen meal for dinner and viewed part of "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" on streaming NetFlix.

  Thursday, Cathy went to meet with Elda and to the store. Bill rode his bike for just one lap (5K) to test the bike's readiness for Sunday's race. Then Bill went to our neighbor Ward's house to fix a problem on his computer. He spent about an hour there. During lunch, Bill prepared a simple pasta dish for the St. Patrick's party that night. After lunch, Bill called Party Marty and invited her over to bring a song that she wanted to shorten by taking out a verse in the middle of it. Bill had downloaded a trial copy of GoldWave, a sound editor, to help with the process. Bill and Marty played the song over and over to discover where to begin and end the part of the song to excise. Bill had to use Media Player to "rip" the song track from its CD. Then, Bill edited it and saved the edited version as a mp3 file. He delivered the new version on a thumb drive on his way to meet with Primo at LVCC. (Later that night, Marty verified that she was able to burn a CD and was satisfied with the new version.) When Bill got back from LVCC, he changed into a green shirt. Tom and Jean Reilly joined us and we went to the party via the bridge. We stayed at the party until about 9:30 PM and then headed home. Bill and Cathy viewed the rest of "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" when we got back - we enjoyed the movie and the whole "Millenium Triology" of which it is the third part.

  Friday was another nice day. Cathy went to her exercise class. Bill had typed in the workout and set up a website for CathyMcArthur.com. He found on online webpage editor, NextEdit, which he suscribed to on a monthly basis. We discovered that we have to use Mozilla Firefox to get the editor to work correctly. Bill turned to packing for the Sarasota trip. He also drove to Office Max to print out the FAQ page for the duathlon. He stopped by Starbucks on the way home. When Cathy got home, we worked on two new playlists for her music for the exercise class. We synched to her iPhone. After lunch we drove to Office Max to print out her exercise class sheet and a tutorial for fixing flats on the road for a bicycle. We went to the bridge for Happy Hour. Then we had a pasta dinner and view "The Town", one of Ben Affleck's minor works. The best thing about the movie was the great views of Boston.

  Saturday, we both tried to sleep in a bit. We had a few errands to run before driving to Sarasota for the Gator Half Ironman triathlon/duathlon. More information about the event was located here. We left Naples at about 11:30 AM and were slowed by traffic as we neared the Venice area. We headed for Fleet Feet Sports for packet pickup. We stayed at AmericInn near the transition area for the event. Bill worked on preparing his gear during the rest of the afternoon. We took a short walk to see what the route to the race would look like for Bill in the dark on Sunday morning. About 5:30 PM, we drove to the transition area and put Bill's bike and pump in the rack. Then we drove to Cafe Italia for a good pasta meal for Bill and a good veal meal for Cathy. We watched NCAA basketball on TV and Bill's iPhone until heading to bed.

  Sunday came early for Bill as he arose at 3:45 AM. He grabbed his food bag with two bagels and raspberry jam and went down to the lobby breakfast room. Bill toasted his bagels and was able to get hot coffee. Bill took 3 extra strength Tylonols to help with the pain which was coming his way later. Bill took a Gu Roctane shot before leaving. Bill headed out at 5:30 AM with a fleece on, carrying his backpack, and with a headlight. Bill walked to the race site. He stopped by the porta-potties before entering the transition area. All but one of the potties were locked, so the wait in line was a long one. Finally, Bill arrived at the transition area, picked up his ankle chip, and got his body markings. Bill took another Gu Roctane shot. Bill got his area organized and headed out for a little light jogging and to hit the porta-potties a last time. Bill arrived at the duathlon start about 5 minutes before the start at 7:34 AM. There were only 7 duathletes and Bill came in last on the run:

Bill couldn't make his mind up on whether to push this first run or not. Bill took his time on the transition to the bike. Bill had a pretty good bike leg, but was a bit hampered by the wind. He averaged 18 mph and felt good about that. In Bill's hydration cell, he had put 32 ounces of G2 and 12 ounces of G2 mixed with 4 Gu Roctane shots. When he first started out on the bike, he took a sip from both straws. Then, every 5 miles he took a sip of G2 and every 10 miles he added a sip of G2/Roctane. At mile 50, Bill drained both containers.

Bill took his time again on the transition. He forgot to remove his sunglasses, but that turned out to be a good thing. Bill's main goal for the event was to run the entire half marathon at the end of the race. The temperature had reached about 85 degrees with a burning sun. Bill was carrying four 6 ounce bottles of G2 mixed with a Gu Roctane shot. He drank a bottle at miles 5, 8, 10, and 11. He was carrying 4 Gu Roctane shots and took 3 at mile 10 and the last at mile 11. Bill could have pushed a bit harder in the run, but he didn't want to be forced to walk any of the distance:

Bill finished in 5:56 with a smile. Here's the weather profile that shows the temperature and the wind:

We didn't wait around for the awards ceremony. Cathy got the car and parked close to Bill's station in the transition area. We loaded the car over the fence. Then Bill went to a porta-pottie for the first time since the start of the race. We headed down I75 and were slowed by an accident near Arcadia. We finally got back around 4:00 PM. We organized our stuff and then Bill finally got a shower. We had leftover quiche for dinner and then went to the last couples dancing class led by Tom and Jean Reilly. We did 5 different dances. When we got back home, Bill watched "Toy Story 3" and Cathy took a shower.

        Bill and Cathy