denver r&r 1/2

It was wet. When we parked our car near 16th street. "Should we jog?" Jogging to the denver convention center to pick up race packets, sampling gels, balls, bars, juice, yellow tomatoes. He let me shop. Unsuccessful, though there was the egyptian skirt, the bustier, and others. We ate dinner with mads & connor at an italian place: garlic bread, ravioli, a carafe of chianti. We camped out at W&M's place, took a shower in a clawfoot tub (favorite), slept beneath a jean comforter with their dog Rossignol, asleep at our feet. We woke up at 5:40, tried to look r&r, had a too-large cup of coffee, toast with jam, wheaties. We borrowed a couple beautiful road bikes and biked the couple miles to the race start downtown. The sun hadn't risen. As we were biking, hands cold, I felt uneasy in coffee and also in love with being awake early, and doing this, and doing it with him.
I liked feeling cold, hesitant but not in taking off my pants. Jumping and goosepimpled at corral 6, probably 12,000 people back. They started us off corral by corral. The first mile was walkscowling, the second dodgescowling, the third maybe a little better, but by then I had to poop. We found a lone porto. Off again. I could feel the weight of the pavement on my legs, my new shoes too thin. I kept remembering a comment from a former coach, "Feel everything." I had ideas of times, or a place. The end was 1:29, 4th in my age group, perhaps 131st out of 15,000. Whatever this means, it encourages me. If I could actually truly train, I wonder what I'd make of myself. I have a secret goal.

Afterwards we biked around town & took me shopping (addiction; or what does my mother keep calling it? "It's not an addiction, you're not addicted, you're consumptive..." or something like that), where I found the ideal pair of 80's spandex pants circa memories of a spanish candy-ass girl I've been remembering since last summer. The race was finished by 9, so we had breakfast with mads & connor at a small pastry joint around the corner from their place. She lives in the 40-50 year-old gay part of town, and it was more than fantastically evident. I made friends with a guy at a coffee shop, simply sipping the top off my black to make room for all the sugar. We had a 2-minute in-depth conversation on declaring space to people who don't register that other people live, ending with his whisper in my ear, "Tell them, 'Step away from me.' This close." For breakfast I had a toasted turkey, brie, and strawberry sandwich with sliced bananas, grapefruit, grapes, and oranges on the side. Unfortunately my intestines were in a slump. The sun was filtering through the trees in gay-town, the air was cold. I could see myself living in that place.

We slumped around, another clawfoot shower, will made us perfect pepperjack cheese sandwiches. We met up with mads & connor again, our double-dating weekend bonanza, played frisbee in the park, whined about calves, slumped around, slumping, snuck greek into a theater & watched Drive, which us girls loved, which the guys did not.