The sleeping thing hasn't gotten any better. I have even cut out my 4:00 tea. I'm kind of scared of sleeping medicine, and anyways the over-the-counter stuff is just Benadryl, which I take as it is. We'll see.

In other news I signed up to do a triathlon on July 5- a sprint triathlon, which is embarassingly small- 750 m swim, 28 k bike, and 5k run. The next level up is an Olympic Triathlon, which sounds much more impressive (Olympic vs. sprint!) and is only twice as long. I thought that was the only one availabe and I was going to do it, with the goal of not being last, but when I saw you could do a sprint one on the same day, I opted for that. The bike for either one will be easy and a 10k run would be doable (though I would have had to have trained like crazy to be able to do it after a couple of hours of swimming and biking)...

... but it turns out I'm a truly horrible swimmer. One thing that never helps is that I'm always thinking back to a presentation by a College Board rep when she was talking about why they put the essay portion first when they added it to the SAT: "For the same reason they put swimming first on a triathlon. Because if they put it last, you'd drown."

I have started going to a local pool and I thought it would be like how I didn't ride a bike for years but was able to finish the MS 150 without too much training. But, you know, I haven't swum laps since high school, and even then maybe I wasn't too good? Who can remember. I canswim 750 yards on my back without stopping, even without touching the floor of the pool or pushing off on the sides because the swim will be in a lake. But I don't think I'll be allowed to swim on my back. We'll see when my registration booklet arrives.

As for swimming the breaststroke- there are 2 lap pools at this place (a warmer 25m and a cooler 35m) and I've gone from not being able to make it to the end of the 25 m to making it to the end of the 35 m (only to cling to the side, gasping for air). I'm hoping to get a few swimming lessons. A few times I went to the pool, and there were people working there spoke English to me, but lately no dice. So I have to find out how to ask for swimming lessons in Chinese- but I will only pay for them if they're in English.

The good news is that since I've given up on my Olympic dreams (hee-hee) I can concentrate on being fast for the bike and run and don't have to worry about just enduring to the end. So my chances of embarassing myself are less. Also I won't have to stress so much if all the instructions at the race are in Chinese because if I miss something and mess up I won't have to worry about dropping dead if I somehow miss the turnaround in the 10K or something.

Here's a link to the race- it's all in Chinese except the "Yes I can!"