we arrived at the airport looking sharp. i'm pretty sure the lieto brothers will now forever know me as "compression chick" (long story). we also dubbed sara as "flannel." sweet styles.
one of my bags didn't make it to boise. or so i thought. turns out an old man mistook it for his and left me with his pom-pom luggage. minor delay. lesson learned: always get luggage before picking up the rental car. btw, check out out rad rental TRUCK (good price too!):
i got to play driver the whole time. loved it. except for my poor navigational skills. we survived.
our home away from home was such a nice change compared to the usual cookie-cutter hotel rooms, ya know with the mini coffee makers, bad decor, weird smells and life of living off stale bars and packaged oatmeal. yuck. instead: we stayed in idaho's version of shangri-la...
...and had the best "mom" ever. she was so hospitable. she cooked awesome food, gave us free reign in the kitchen/fridge and cleaned up after us despite my best efforts to wash even one dish. definitely an unexpected surprise! 
this was the man of the house:
i really tried to fall in love with 'stache cat. (fyi, i'm not a big fan of cats, at all.) and in all honesty, he wasn't that bad at all, but no. i couldn't fake it. i am a dog person. cats don't do it for me. sorry.
i ate well in boise. i had plenty of good ol' spuds, duh... although, i prefer sweet potatoes any day (had those too, of course).
speaking of food. we found the boise co-op thanks to molly from zoot, and it quickly became my favorite place! i think sara was slightly freaked out/surprised by my uber-healthy eating habits. i crave healthy things like other people crave junk food. weird. i.e. check out my co-op special, a couscous/black bean/fresh turkey/salad thing i compiled, with a kombucha...
ok. enough food talk. the race expo was the same old. saw some friendly faces, which is always nice. got recognized thanks to the blog. sweet! the big highlight was spooning with sara on the "compression-like recovery" bed (which i don't buy into at all, sorry!).
we explored downtown boise and got in trouble in urban outfitters. bad girls. 
hm. what else. we met up with ian on friday to go to bike drop off together. he gave us the inside scoop on the pro meeting and filled us in on his life with coach dirk, etc. he also gave us a good laugh when questioning the appropriateness of where his mom was aiming when taking this shot ;) .....
oh, back up. sara & i did a little pre-race ride to make sure our bikes didn't fall apart after building them. too bad my seat post didn't slip then! wtf?! oh well. it was so nice having open, endless roads and no stoplights. the constant smell of manure took some getting used to, however.
this storm came in quickly and we had to race it home.
good thing we did go on a ride... sara needed a new chain, bad. while we were there, i saw eileen swanson and said something along the lines of, "heeey, i know you from blog world!" crazy what these blogs do for our networking! 
anyways, on race morning, i was nervous mostly of my unknown fate. we watched some soccer, i didn't understand much but i tried for the sake of sara and my boyfriend. then i was bored and just was waiting to eat again...passing time....
then the race happened. got that blog out the way already! post-race we chowed at pf changs then i got to play "mom" to sara and cheer her on/take pics for her 5th place podium finish. all races should have awards that go five deep!
i stalked the pros some more. they must have gotten the memo that black and jeans are the way to go...
then we met up with our new friend cortney (thanks for introducing us, ian!) and the girls went out for some beers in boise. oh, our new friend denny was there too. sara met denny on the run. she cracks me up with her people-meeting skillz. we didn't even get started at the bar until past midnight and lasted until 3 a.m. ish. i needed those beers. to this day, i'm still needing a drink with all that's happened :)
fun characters come out to play in boise at night (the guy in this photo was tagged as matt lieto on FB... hmmmm, secret life?) 
and then before we knew it, we were leaving. i was really sad to go so soon. it truly was an awesome girls trip, and this blog doesn't even do justice to how much fun i had with sara. definitely more triathlon girls trips in our future!oh yea, fyi, i was nervous about using a soft bike bag to travel, but my bike survived just fine! even on the way home when my re-packing of the bike was less than stellar.
so the new news...
the injury is not going to make a miraculous recovery in t-minus 20-something days until vineman. i still am unable to run for more than 5-10 min without getting major pain, and continuing to train hard (even without running) then race hard would be dumb. nothing would heal or get better, and chances are i could make things a lot worse. because this isn't kona on the line, i've decided not to risk it and i pulled out. i'm young. there's time.
new plan: work on a full recovery and beyond. i've done a lot of thinking (ya know, the whole "why me?!") and i think i know why this happened... as this year continually got more busy, i put my own training needs on the back burner. i was neglecting the little things to keep myself strong and injury-resilient. even my training log disappeared. well, all that caught up with me, and now i really need to take a step back to work on the foundation before i expect to put in some miles.
in a way, i'm excited for this new challenge. i'll, of course, be sharing my journey as it unfolds.... i do expect to be able to race again before this year is over, so don't count me out yet! and i'll still be highly involved in the triathlon world... maybe even more so with all this extra time :)
last but not least... a couple of the recipes are in the comment section of my "Food" blog. more to come. enjoy!
