Lake Austin Spa Photos

For the past four years, Mom and I have spent a long weekend at the Lake Austin Spa in Austin, TX. We love it. It's relaxing, the food is yummy, the yoga and activity classes are enjoyable, the other guests are always interesting and the pool in the pool barn is shady and addicting. 

I've never taken a camera before, but this year I took some practice shots with my new Cannon 5D Mark II. I think they turned out pretty well. All in all, I don't think I really captured what it's like to go to this place or how Mom and I keep going back to the same spa resort but always end up with a different experience.

Enjoy!

Flowers and Gardens

Pomegranate

Persimmons

Eggplant

Animals

These two ducks live near the yoga deck

These two geese live near the activity deck. They were named
Will and Kate and are never more than three feet away from each other

A pretty, lazy cat

This squirrel caught me taking his picture

Will and Kate again

In the Water

Mom getting on the aqua bike 

Mom on the aqua bike

Paddle boards on the activity dock

Paddle boarding lesson

Me being awesome at Paddle boarding

Wine Tasting in the Kitchen

Flowers picked from the grounds

Wine tasting

 Just Around

Walkway in front of the hotel rooms

Shady hammock

Trumpet creeper is everywhere

A sitting room near the lobby

One of the three resort pools

Mile marker on the trail

The water sports dock

The library

Landscaping along the trail

A viewing area along the trail to the spa building

The Yoga Deck

More on travel

A Triathlon in the Capital

Austin is filled with so many places with cool, inviting, colorful and retro signage that it's a little overwhelming. You've got two days and two nights and a million possibilities to explore. There just isn't enough time for it all.

The Capital of Texas Triathlon was the highlight of our Austin weekend, but we tasted a few other activities that the city has to offer, my favorites being a drive by Town Lake (SO many paddle boards and kayaks), a Radny Foster concert (Keith Urban signs his songs Raining on Sunday and I'm In, Sara Evans sings his song A Real Fine Place to Start, the Dixie Chick sang Godspeed (Sweet Dreams)) and lunch at Threadgill's (Tuna and Spinach Salad was awesome).  

As you can tell from the last two posts, I was nervous going into this olympic distance triathlon, which is the longest triathlon I've completed so far. I'm usually a bundle of nerves the night before a big race, but the nerves showed up a week ahead of schedule. The swim went smoothly, and the bike was really fun, but I had some trouble with the running.

The swim was in Town Lake, which is really a river, and passed underneath two bridges. My family was able to stand on one of the bridges and find me in the water, which was really cool because they can never pick me out of the swim crowd.

The water was SUPER COLD at 70 degrees, but once we got moving, it felt perfect.

I took it really easy, finishing the 1500 meter swim in 30:52, not tired and ready for the bike.

I was worried about the bike route; I was sure it would be full of Austin's rolling hills. And when I realized that it was a lap course, and that I would be doing four laps, I freaked out a little. But it also made the perfect spot for my fans to sit and wait for me.

There were only three difficult hills (well, times four, so twelve), the rest of the route was relatively flat. 

You know that face you make when
you're really exerting yourself?
Well, mine looks like a smile.
 It looks like I'm smiling
in all of the bike pictures.

The scariest moment on the bike was when the wind almost blew my tires out from under me. After that, I got really low into the handlebars when I past that same area and didn't have any more wind related problems.

While I may look really cool in this picture,
I was actually very, very scared of falling
because of the wind.

I finished the 25 mile bike in 1:54:58.

The hardest part of the triathlon was the run. Even though I felt great and was smiling during the bike, somewhere along the way, my feet fell asleep. I noticed it a few times but didn't think much of it. But when I got to the transition area, I had to walk my bike in because I could run. My feet were asleep! And once they woke up, they really hurt.

I can't remember if I was tired, or hurting anywhere else or any other contributing factors, but I that if I didn't have the foot problem, I would have been okay.

See? I'm smiling. And I was not a happy runner.

So the run was disappointing, and was more of a walk with a few moments of slow running, and there were moments when I was sure I was going to quit because it was taking me FOREVER, but I finished it. I finished it! In 1:34:54, but still, I finished.

So now I've accomplished that. I'm one step closer to an Ironman. And I know how to diagnose my foot/bike problem (shoes too tight, socks too thick, clips to far forward on foot, seat position).

The best part of this race, and the part I forgot to post about originally, is that when I got started on the bike, I looked to my left and saw an old man in a nude colored thong bikini bottom riding a bike on the sidewalk. It was hilarious! I had to ask some race watchers if they saw him too, just to make sure I didn't need to turn around and go to the medical tent. But no, it was just a little piece of Austin saying Hello.

Side note: other really cool Radney Foster songs: A Little Revival, Angel Flight, Until it's Gone, Everyday Angel and so many many other songs that you would hear and think, "I've heard that somewhere..."  Here's more

(Side note two: These race photos are from Brightroom.com, and my mother in law, but while looking for pictures to post, I came across http://www.ericwynn.org/. Excellent and Inspiring sports photography/photo illustrations. Check him out! My favorite, or one of them, is the man with BELIEF written across his face.)

I Eat Triathlons for Breakfast. Part 2.

This is me, motivating myself. I still feel anxious about this race. I've got less than a week. And I need to stop operating from fear and start operating from fact.

Swimming is your thing. You can swim a mile. You've won swim meets. You have first place medals and ribbons. You have people cheering for you. Coach David ran along a pool, rolling his arms and cheering you on even when you swam for a different team. You finish in the top five of your age group. But even with all of that, if you need a break, take one.

From http://www.trifuel.com/forum/16606/motivational-sayings-or-signs-or-mantras

You can own 25 miles on a bike. You've done it before. The second ride you ever did was 30 miles on a 40 lb. steal frame bike. You and your bike are both 20 pounds lighter now.

You are a slow runner. That's okay. You've run more than 6 miles before. At mile six of the White Rock Half Marathon, You were thinking about highfiving little kids and eating giant greasy cheeseburgers and drinking beer.

People think you eat triathlons for breakfast.

From http://www.bpr.com/triathlon/poetry.htm

You motivate people.

You choose what you think. These are your mantras: You can move. You have legs. You have freedom. You can do things that other people can't do.  Find your strong. Strong is what's left when you've used up all your weak. Just don't quit, go slow, but don't quit. Don't worry about what doesn't happen. You don't hurt. You can still breath. This is a will power thing, and you have will power. You're a runner. You're a triathlete. You're Katie and you eat triathlons for breakfast.

I Eat Triathlons for Breakfast. Part 1.

Next weekend is a big weekend for me. It will be my first olympic distance triathlon, which is twice as long as any triathlon I've completed in my past two years of triathloning. The swim is just under a mile, the bike just under 25 miles and the run, 6 miles.

Up until now, I've felt confident about this race. I haven't been worried. I've always finished, no matter how hard or intimating a race seemed. Like my friend Katie H. said, I eat sprint triathlons for breakfast. That's not actually true, but it sounds nice.

But now I'm scared. What if I can't do it? What if I can't even finish the swim? I've got all these thoughts racing through my head: It's a long race. It's in one week. I'm not ready. People will be there watching me. My family has a hotel room and my in-laws are bringing the camper. This is an event, and it's in Austin. Austin is hilly. Isn't Lance Armstrong from Austin? I wonder if he'll be there.

Even this morning during my swim, I was motivated by fear to keep going. I'm all for getting yourself through a hard workout, but that was too stressful for me. I wan't to feel proud after a workout, not doubtful.

But then I found this post/draft that I wrote in July 2010, about halfway through our big summer sales project:

I've been worried, scared even, about a big project at work.  Lets just say that I assumed "The Project" was about one eigth complete, while at the same time last year, the same project was about half way completed. Hence the fear.  The dread! I expressed this concern to my boss, ever so calmly.  After checking the figures,we discovered that said project is, in fact, right on track.  Half way complete. "Oh," I said, "I don't know why I was so worried." My boss replied, "It's because you're operating from fear, not fact."

That's what I'm doing now. Operating from fear. My goal today is to get back on track, to stop operating from fear and start working with the facts. I'm about to give myself a giant pep talk.

Triathlons can be fun too

Most people think of triathlons as impossible to accomplish tasks that crazy people invented to torture their bodies. 

They are, but they can be fun too. My two friends and I completed the Lake Tejas Triathlon relay this past weekend. I'm pretty sure we don't feel tortured at all. Throughout the day, we actually described this race as "laid back".

Because we signed up for a relay in a sprint triathlon, we all had an adequate amount of physical activity to complete. I swam about 400 meters, Nicole ran three miles and Katie H. biked 13 miles. All three legs were the perfect amount of physically challenging for each of us. Just enough to touch that competitive nerve but not so much that we had to sleep for three days afterwards.

If your exercise goal is a 5k run, why not make it a group goal and do the 5k run as part of a triathlon relay? It's a great way to get other people invested in their own wellness and yours, and you automatically have two fans cheering for you. 

This race was in it's first year, so it was less organized. Less intense. Everyone was having fun. I brought my dog, which I wouldn't have been able to do if I was doing the whole race myself. He had a blast playing with the little kids, swimming in the water and eating all sorts of things.

We made a day of it, but it could have easily been a nice weekend camping trip. Even though we really were in the middle of nowhere, I could have stayed at this lake forever. It was more of a swimming hole, with a sandy beach area.

And if you have ever completed a race of any sort, you know that random people cheering for you on the sidelines make a huge difference. We did that too. Cooper (the dog) enjoyed it just as much as we did.

If your looking for a short trip idea, I think this is a great one. It has nature, physical activity, competitiveness and a group of friends right there with you. And one happy dog, who is now bathed and brushed and much cleaner than he was in this picture.