It's official

There I was at school about to run into a meeting when my phone starts ringing.

me-"hello?"
"hi jody this is wipeout" (a person not the actual balls calling me)
me-"this better be good news"
"well you tell us, are you available Oct 15th, 19th and November 3rd?"
me- "um yeah"
all along I thought they were doing more interviewing type stuff. Then all of a sudden I realized I was actually going to be on the show!

So apparently they film 3 times. All 24 people go the first day. Then if I don't suck really bad I will make it to the next round. And then if I make it past that I make it to the finals.

Sooooooooooooooooo my strategy. I am going to practice jumping over stuff and will probably let the kids at school punch me instead of evading their swings.
I will probably not cover my eyes in the shower to get used to having crap in my eyes,,,which I hate!
Not sure how to prepare for the spinny things that are inevitable but perhaps I will take some dramamine.
Oh and since I know they are going to call me the "master pee-er" i am going to likely wear a diaper.

Reactions so far:
"You can borrow the diapers from my classroom" undisclosed teacher at my school
"I thought i was f*#*ed up but you are REALLY f&#ed up" Mark Buonomo
"Jody you CANNOT wear a diaper on national TV!" Brian Merrill
"Jody please don't hurt yourself" Tiffany Parrella Crooker

I cannot make any promises

I will have more info after my drug test and physical next week. Lots of LA trips for me in the future!

SLAM

Bri has gone and done it. He bought a bike on Friday and shoes and some other stuff. Of course I had to pick up a few things for myself at the bike shop (pink helmet to accentuate the slight pink on my bike & compression socks.) So these socks can be worn during workouts as well as after to aide in recovery. I hav pretty much been wearing them all weekend and I wore them during my soccer game today soooooo we'll see.

I was suffering a lil bit Saturday morning but sucked it up and trecked on over to Coronado to meet up with some friends for my run. I was pretty much struggling, and was finding it hard to keep up for most of the way. Towards the end I started feeling a lil better and ran down onto the beach and decided to run through the soft sand for about a mile. That is some hard shit! My heart rate was high and my pace was LOW but it was beautiful and calming, and its what the navy seals do. So yes what i'm saying is I am kind of just like a navy seal. EXCEPT they do it with a bit more ease and muscle and way more other stuff. I finished my 7 miles and did some sun salutations on the beach and it was great.

We made a trip to north county and took the dog to the Del Mar dog beach and just enjoyed the day. Then last night I went to see Kathy Griffin live! It was pretty hilarious. They were filming a show for bravo and it will air on Nov. 3. I was a bit tired so hopefully they do not catch me while yawning, that would be embarassing. I was in my element there though. I was planning on wearing a shirt that said "fag hag 4 hire" but that foiled so I went dressed normal. It was definately the place to find my gay husband, I really blew it though. No such luck.

Last night was another one of those wild animal kingdom kind of nights here at the merrill casa. The frigin raccoons were going after it all night, screeching and thumping around. I think I slept a whole 3 hours. We had a semi early wake up for the pats game with some friends. Had some yummy eats (bri made a pulled pork, and laura and I made eggs benedict with the pork) YUMMO!! Pats pulled a W but the Petos Locos (my soccer team) not so much. We played the same team we played week one and lost by alot. We only lost by like 7 points this time BUT what I realized (6 games in, i am real quick) is that girls get 2 points for scoring. The opponents have a girl on their team that is big boned (she is big I am trying to be pc and nice) and just hangs in front of the net and shoots the ball in. She actually was sitting on the bench I was going one on one with a guy on their team and she ran off the bench and pretty much right in front of the net without me knowing and would score. THAT was their move, so sneaky and should be illegal but whatever. I am getting a little better each game and it helped to actually have subs today so thatI could push it a little bit. Best part of the game was that I nutmeg'd a guy! I think that is what you call it when you kick the back between the defenders legs. Not sure how I pulled that one off but it felt good, real good. I also got a few headers (who cares that the people going up against me were way shorter). Worst part of the game was getting body slammed by the big boned girl and she literally took my breath away for a little bit. Good times!

the boston in me

I was just remembering a part of my run last night that I failed to mention. I think of this because my rolfer was just in Boston and she said all she wanted was someone to tell her to "go F#@K yourself!" She could not find a single person to do this. That must have been fresh in my mind as I went out for my run.

My house is in a very cute neighborhood, however at the other end of my street it is rather urban and sometimes scary. At one point I hit a light and since there were no cars coming I ran across (too many people in california wait for the signal to cross even when there are NO CARS), all of a sudden a car with some houligans decides it is going to GUN IT for me to teach me a lesson. What did I do? I still ran right in front of him with my nice long middle finger right in his face the whole street while smiling of course. It felt good.

I did run immediately into the supermarket for a few minutes just in case they came back around....i'm tough, but not that tough!

nose pickah

Today was my 7th session of 10 for my rolfing series. Todays theme was "out of my head" and I certainly was out of my head by the end of the hour. This consisted of Roz releasing my neck muscles, which we do every week so that wasnt so bad. HOWEVER have you ever had someone strongly massage your gums, mouth & jaw?? Given all of my issues this year with my jaw and face problems I was dreading this session yet looking forward to it at the same time. Pain is pretty relative when you know it is going to end. The sensation is almost as if your muscles are actually tearing. She released the muscles from the outside of the face then inside my mouth. When she got to the area of my problems she felt a major blockage and I felt like I had fireworks going off in my head. At first your muscles relax then they almost feel like they are trying to eat the finger that is pushing into the face. It is really nothing that I can explain. It took alot of deep breathing to get through todays session, that is for sure. At the end she stuck her pinky finger pretty much all the way up my nose. Apparently there is like a sphincter kind of thing and if you slowly ease your finger in there, then it allows you up into an area that is great for clearing your head/sinuses. As she was about to do it I opened my eyes saw her with her plastic glove and her finger just hovering and I totally lost it. I mean it is all pretty ridiculous. What I did notice once this was over was I am standing so much taller and straighter than ever before. My shoulders are not so rounded out anymore and I am sure I will continue to notice the differences especially as I continue to practice the yoga and pilates.

Back to abusing my body...I sent in my paperwork to mentor for the upcoming spring season for the Lavaman triathlon in Hawaii!! This basically means that I will have a small group of teammates that I can slowly corrupt into people who will be comfortable talking about peeps and poops. Brian is still on board so this weekend we need to get serious about finding him a bike. Which means we should get ready to drop a whole lotta cash. It will be well worth it! I am very much looking forward to sharing some of this experience with him. I am going to have a field day with pics of him in spandex,,,,oh man I can hardly stand the anticipation.

Training this week was pretty lax.

I did some swimming Tuesday and am thinking I really need to step that up. Perhaps the new speedo I bought will make me WICKED FAST!! I am hoping that with the pilates and yoga that I will get a little stronger in the water and not get lapped by 10 year olds...a girl can dream right? I suffered through another pilates session with the tough instructor. What made it even tougher was he kept using my machine as the example, so then while everyone was starting the exercise I was just getting on trying to figure out what hand to put on what strap and where my leg should go and all that fun stuff. Rather frustrating but I will not give up until I have a rockin 6 pack. Somehow though I think that having a red velvet cupcake after every pilates session may impact that 6 pack. Darn sweet tooth!

I do feel like my body is changing a bit and I am able to stretch further than I ever recall. I am hoping all this conditioning and rolfing will give me an edge to this seasons training.

I am getting back on track with running and did a quick run through the canyons tonight. I am really hoping to learn more about heart rate training this season.

Okay this post has pretty much been a verbal diarrhea and I apologize. That is what happens when it is too hot to sit with a computer on my lap to type. We are in a bit of a heat wave if you will. I will not complain though because there are literally a few months of hot weather and thats it. More beach days to come for us!!!

bumps in all the wrong places

Since my foot has been aching pretty consistently since lets sayyyyy January I decided to take this Saturday off from my prescribed 7 mile run and return back to yoga. Since I have been doing yoga level 1 for a few months now I figured it was a good time to step it up to yoga 2. Luckily there were no smelly men there because yoga 2 is way more popular so you were pretty much packed in like sardines. I actually for a moment knew what it felt like for some of my students at school who have a hard time being super close to people.
Things I realized:
Yoga 2 was way hotter than yoga 1
I had the prettiest feet BY FAR in the class. Some of these chics had some seriously messed up feet ( i realize this is probably sacrilege in yoga to judge people but seriously cover those things up and certainly don't bring attention to them by painting them with polka dots!)
I now know why everyone uses towels ontop of their mats, because I was slipping and sliding all over the place.
I am in fact a sweater
I can be quite limber when it is 100 degrees.

I will definatley go back. I could tolerate the heat and got a better stretch due to it. However I do like the overall flow and moves of yoga 1.

Since I missed last weeks soccer game I knew today was going to hurt. Especially when I knew there would be no subs for girls yet again and since it was close to 100 degrees on the field. I suffered through the game and we ended up winning. The move of the game for me was perhaps when I had the ball about to hit me in the stomach so I quickly turned around and let it bounce off my ass. My ass actually made a pretty good play. I started to feel really off towards the second half and just sucked at life really. Then when the game was over I started sneezing uncontrollably. Then I got back and got the chills even though its about 90 degrees. THEN I decided to look down my throat since it kills and it is covered in bumps. This is not good. One of my cherub students last week thought he was funny and blew a snot rocket pretty much in my face. This was right before he told me he was "in the hospital" because of his throat. (the funniest part was that once I chastised him for doing that and begged him to use a tissue, he took the tissue and blew the rocket right into it.....it was so awesome I had to laugh). I guess sharing is caring!!

To round out my weekend post I would like to share a story about Friday night and how I tried to pay it forward. We were driving back from the beach and I saw a man walking his bike in his bike shoes and had a bad flat tire. Since I live close to where he was I swung home, picked up an extra tube, and even the co2 cartridges to fill it up. I went back and found the poor slug. He flat out refused my help! "well I don't even have a pump" my reply "i figured that so i brought you the co2 cartridges" "i'll just walk home really." Even though he did not take my assistance I felt that it was still a good deed and that hopefully kharma will come back around one day when I need help on the road.

Kharma

It seems as though my bladder problems have transpired to some students at school. We ended the day today to the sound of the Niagara Falls. I look over and a student who will remain unnamed....had let a geyser go on the speech office's floor. I am not quite sure if she understood why I asked her if she had eaten pounds of asparagus, but lets just say it was rather pungent. I had the honor of cleaning it up. I hadn't really cleaned bodily fluids at school in a while so I thought I was due. I asked her if it would be okay if I came over to her house and peed on her floor. One may think this was inappropriate, however after sopping up a gallon on warm urine with the school's "paper towels" (which are really like pieces of paper) I was not amused, although she was plenty amused. This reminds me, I have to shower. Happy Friday!

Master Pee-er

My audition for Wipeout was changed to an earlier time today, so I had to scoot out of work around 9 and make my way to Burbank for the interview. I had my whole outfit together.
Old school sweat band...check
every medal I have ever won from a race....check
t-shirt with "unathletic jody the most unathletic athlete ever" t shirt that was mostly spelt out in big red balls....check check
dolphin shorts....check
knee high athletic socks....check
old school nike's....check

sadly I already owned this whole get up.
I was expecting people to come with crazy get ups, but that was not the case at all. There were a few headbands and some cops in uniform but that was really it. Disappointing for me I was looking forward to some major people watching. They are casting for a show for "america's finest" so there were lots of cops, firemen, teachers and the such.

I waited for about two hours and they finally called my name. I got up sounding like a pack of dogs with all my medals clanging. I could not even tell you what I said when I got in there. I may be an over the top person who loves attention and can not get enough of the spotlight. However when you have two bright lights in your face and a real life camera its kind of nerve wracking!

I was first asked what my nickname would be for the show. I had a few ideas and the casting director decided that I should be called "the master pee-er" due to my stories about how great I did at peeing my self during the triathlon. I am pretty sure that if I do make it on the show I will probably have to wear a diaper because I know there will be some spillage that day. Although it is mainly in a pool so I will have to try my hardest to get it done while under the water and not running around the course.

They then asked me some adjectives to describe myself. I started with "karaoke queen" and told some stories about winning karaoke contests for interpretive dancing and such. They asked me what my last performance was and I broke into my Rick James "super freak" for them. It was a good performance.

I am not sure how this came up, but at one point I showed them my ass. ONLY because I have a GIANT horrific looking bruise on it. It is either from me getting pushed over by a student last week and landing on a medal bar, or from this weeks rolfing session... either way it is horriffic and they were grossed out. sweet.

What I was most pleased about was they were extremely interested in my efforts for the leukemia and lymphoma society. I thought they would rather hear about the stupid funny stuff!!
At one point he asked me if I was a "hero". I don't know where that came from, but apparently my story prompted him to ask me that. I said i'm sure I am to some people, but I bet that those people are actually my heroes. hmmmn.

At one point he looked at me and said "now lets face it, you are a tiny girl". Okay bud I have never been referred to as tiny. I immediately flashed my guns, and he said "what am I supposed to be looking at?" I then turned around, flexed my ass as hard as I could and said "check out these guns buddy!" I think he was trying to get me fired up about why I felt I could complete the course. I simply pointed to my medals and said if I could finish all these races I can certainly bounce off a few balls, fall down on my face, and still finish the course. I practically do that everyday as it is!

All I know is I had him laughing his butt off and at the end he said it would be a "travesty" if I did not get chosen for the show. They film from September til February and they said they still have over a 1000 people to interview and will not call until it is your month to show up. Until then I will be prepared. I will bounce off as many things as possible. I will jump on top and over things. I will spin around in circles and practice my "battle cry."

WaWaWa WIPEOUT

Not sure if any of you recall a few months back when I applied to be on the show Wipeout, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I got a call from the casting director this afternoon and on Thursday I have my "interview" in LA.

Basically their email to me with the details states that I need to dress up like a jackass (check I can handle that although I am not sure what to go with). However my outfit will be my schtick with the show, the person I want to identify myself as to the nation. Do I want to be "cameltoe extraodinaire" in my purple suit? Do I want to be a donkey? Not so sure about this one. I am thinking about going with the theme and motto of my blog "the most unathletic athletic person around" and wear all of my medals from races but with my helmet and knee pads and wrist guards and such and just fall alot.

I also need to come up with 3 unique adjectives to describe myself....
most of mine are not adjectives (i.e. masshole really a noun). I basically need adjectives to describe the fact that I talk about bowel movements on a regular basis (perhaps inappropriate?, foul?) and that I thoroughly enjoy watching people hurt themselves and fall, especially if they are over the age of say 70 (no self control, immature, asshole, my fathers daughter?). I mean really how do I describe myself using just one word besides AWESOME of course?

I need a nickname and a battle cry/victory dance to show them. Its when they show you at the top of the obstacle course and you yell out something that could or could not sound like something asian and do something with your arms so that you can see your sillouette do it at the top. (karate kid move? the football block? ridiculously flexing my non-existent muscles?)
Bri thinks I should go with my michael flatley's lord of the dance move that I typically can only do when intoxicated. I could always do my lanky arms flailing one way while the rest of my body goes the other. I could go for my rainbow arm to the ground in the back while I hump the air.

And finally, how do I want America to remember me by? Hopefully not as the girl who died during the filming of Wipeout!

GO GO GO GO GO

Isn't she sweet? This is Les the scottish triathlete that whooped my ass every Tuesday night during my season. (it is blurry because my hands were likely shaking after the workout from fatigue) She trains lots of triathletes and has a "braveheart brick" every Thursday night in Mission Bay. After a truly LOOOOOOOOOOONG day (and don't you people complain about sitting at your desk, when some of us get full out malled at work, and then fight with lots of begrudged school bus drivers cause THATS fun to do) of work I decided that I needed a good workout to get rid of the nasty feeling I had all day. It did not help that I was fragile due to two nights in a row of animal activity that caused both Belle and I to be up growling (belle not me) from 3am on.

Anyways I made it to the workout and there was quite a turnout and a variety of people. I certainly missed Lesley's rants "GOGOOGOGOGO JODY come on, come on come on, use those long legs girl, come ON" its really amazing in her accent.

I would like to ask fellow athletes a favor though. Please don't say "i'm sooooooooo slow" about yourself. Especially when you are running past me over and over again. You can only say you are slow if you truly are slow. I don't care, noone cares. If I cared about being slow I would certainly never do anything. Instead of feeling inadaquete next to the seasoned triathletes all around I just worried about myself and my personal improvement. We started with about a 10 minute spin, then did a 10 minute run. Then we did some windsprints. We got on our bikes and did 5 minutes of 30seconds hard, 30 seconds easy. THEN we started our workout.(yeah)

our set:

6 minutes on the bike (30 seconds standing above threshold, 85 rpms, 30 seconds sitting at threshold, 95rpms) and we did that six times.

Then off our bikes as gracefully as I could manage and off running. Well it was pretty much sprinting for me. I was actually running at a 8:30 pace for some of it which is super fast/sprinting/puking in my mouth fast. We did about a half mile up two small hills. Then we repeated two more times for a total of 3 times on the bike and 3 runs. We were timed and I did the first whole set in 10:31, second set 9:56, third set 9:51. Not bad for being totally fatigued and not in the best shape. Below is the amazing view I had while doing this. Not bad huh?!

please make him stop

I bought a package to the pilates studio that I went to last week because I so loved the workout. Welllllllllllllll tonights class was a bit more hardcore than my little "intro" class last week. Walking in I thought the instructor looked cool. He had that little surfer guy look with bloodshot eyes, didn't know he would be my nemesis. This shit was out of control. I could not even do 80% of the stuff and never even broke a sweat because I could not even wrap my head around half the stuff. I was twisted and contorted while on a moving glider. It seemed that we spent most of the time doing all the things that sucked last week but for a really long time and did none of the fun things that we did last week. Apparently there are levels to the classes and I had no idea. I feel like it if were yoga it would be the class where people are standing on their heads and look like cirque du soleil performers. Every part of my body that is the weakest was focused on in just about every exercise. I just kept looking at LG with that "what the F*#A!" look on my face. Oh and I swore. ALOT. I will be sure to try to email the owners to see when the more beginner friendly classes are because I don't feel like I got anything out of that. Its never fun to feel like a complete idiot/weakling/incompetent/pathetic individual. Its a darn good thing that there is a fantastic cupcake place underneath the studio. It may perhaps be the only thing that keeps me going back. I sure hope it gets easier!! Red velvet cake makes it all a little better though.

not in my house

awwwwwwww Belle misses her papa already!!

I am happy to report that my soccer team Petos Locos pulled away with our first W of the season! We had an 8am game which meant yes we would be up early but at least it wouldn't be super hot! Of course the girls had no subs again but I didn't really even feel like I needed one because the weather was so great. This W could also be attributed to the fact that it was the only white boy/girl team that we played. At one point some guy was trying to come down into MY area and I decided to yell in his face "not in my house buddy!" and stole the ball, at this point the game was close, but soon enough we would pull away and won 12-5! Sweet victory!

I rounded out the summer with getting a pedicure and picked possibly the ugliest color they had...canary yellow! Why not?!

We met up with some friends last night at Coronado and had a bonfire on the beach. I can't believe we have been here a year and just finally spent an evening at the beach like that. It was pretty awesome, and I think I took down about 4 s'mores. Good times

When we were driving to the beach we noticed that there were TONS of people down the park at the end of our street. Lots of people cookout there and have get togethers. Last Labor Day weekend was when Belle and I almost got taken out by a drunk driver who smacked into a whole bunch of cars, drove on sidewalks, and plowed through the park pretty much with his car all banged up. This year we drove home from the beach and could not get down our street because there were about 30 police cars, news trucks and that awful yellow tape. Of course I took to the web and found out there was a shooting there and that they are looking "for someone suspicious" and that a man got shot in the head. NICE!

the sweet spot

Today consisted of a few athletic endeavors. I convinced one of my running buddies from work who trained for her first half with me last year to sign up for the Silver Strand Half Marathon and training started today. We met up at Mission Bay and ran 5 miles. She brought a friend she met at the dog park which was fun for me because she just did the full Ironman in Arizona last April. Of course I was picking her brain about training. Always a fun thing when you meet people you have lots in common with totally randomly (we have the same dog sitter as well). Its always better to run with people and way more motivating to gab it up and talk about anything and everything (typically with runners/tri people it is usually bowel movements of the loose nature), and soon enough we were finishing up our 5 miles around the bay.

Hours later I went back to the bay for second athletic endeavor of the day: Paddleboarding (see picture above)
I was meeting friends there but since they were late and my time had already started I decided to get out there alone. Luckily I watched a youtube video (apparently its all about finding the "sweet spot" on the board) about it last week so that helped a bit cause the guy there just pointed said "board, life jacket, paddle" thanks bud. Luckily I am a total natural and figured it out pretty quickly and was cruising around. My friends eventually showed up and by then I was an old pro giving them pointers. Perhaps the most amusing part was the crazy fish that kept jumping out of the water, all over the place. I was tempted to smack one on the head with my oar and bring it home for dinner but I probably would have fallen off. Since its been a while about posting about peeing myself I feel I should share that I peed myself as soon as I got on the board while kneeling. I mean I didn't want to swim in the bay if I didn't have to so I peed and then pushed water onto myself with the oar to cover it up. I am so crafty like that. I think i'll end on that note.

LuLu John

We hit up Del Mar race track yesterday, where the turf meets the surf. We only made it for 3 races but got to see the beautiful horses and racetrack. It would be fun if they had a people race on there....will have to look into that. Of course we lost money and I just bet on the ones with cool names. The last race I decided to go with lucky #11, but was advised to bet on two horses, so I did. Guess who won? #11! Oh well I bet wrong on it, and not to mention I lost my ticket so even if I bet correctly I would not have won jack.

I like to pretend that I won though, that is also fun.

And to point at things that are not happening so that the picture looks more interesting.

Anyhoo we had a great dinner right on the water with some of my tri friends and my old coach so that was great to catch up and my dad got a chance for story telling time which is always entertaining.

Once I figure out how to upload pictures right from my new pimped out phone I will add more pictures, but til then here ya go!

Oh by the by, I know I mentioned that the rolfing I am doing might make me taller. Wellllllllll I had Dr appointment this week and they always measure and weigh you and turns out I have grown and am officially 5'9', which is convenient because thats what I used to tell people anyways. For some reason when people ask how tall I am and I say 5'8 they are just not satisfied, so I usually say 5'9'. I am thinking once the rolfing is done ill probably try to get into the WNBA.

As for the title of my post, one thing I learned about the horses names is that they are alot of times a combination of their mother and their fathers names, so if I were a horse I would be LuLu John. Off for more fun before my dad has to leave tomorrow night!

super athletic

This is a pilates machine to most, to me it was much like a torture device that bordered on some sort of S&M device with its straps and chains. A friend of mine I met through training invited some of us girls to her friends pilates studio for a free trial. While I have done plenty of fake pilates videos and classes at the gym in the past I really had no idea what to expect. The instructor/owner was wonderful and gave very clear directions, but not so clear to someone who is totally clueless. So I just looked around to see what everyone else was doing. I was in between my friend Lisa and some dude. Everytime I looked at Lisa I cracked up because I knew that I looked WAY more ridiculous than she did, and she looked pretty ridiculous at times. All in all it was a pretty amazing workout and could possibly be worth the money. At one point towards the end we were lying on our backs and each ankle had a rope tied around it and we had to do big circles and things like that. I looked to my right to the only man in the group and this guy was flexible. Of course having diarrhea of the mouth I saw "Are you sure you're a guy? Guys should not be able to do that shit" nice. I think he winked at me too. Creepy. Anyhoo I made it through unscathed and we immediately headed to the cupcake place downstairs. I am pretty much in neck and shoulder spasms today which means it was a good workout I guess! Come to find out it was a level 2 class because she heard that we were all "super athletic" and that we could handle it. Totally super athletic