Amy

Just a short note for completeness/future-looking-back sake.

Went out for a solo 80 mile ride through the hills. Rode with Kenny for a few miles until he realized I was serious about going my own pace and got tired of dropping back to ride with me. It was hilly. It was headwindy at the beginning. And the roads were particularly bad in spots, which I don't remember from past years. I launched my rear bottle twice before I finally just jammed it into the back pocket of my jersey for the rest of the ride. Not hugely comfortable, but better than constantly reaching back to check on it, then having it launch anyway.

Things got pretty sparse for the middle and end of my ride, probably a combination of less 80 milers after everyone else branched off, and the fact that most of the 80 milers were probably faster than me. Then things picked up a bit when the Real Ale route joined with the Hill Country Ride for AIDS (San Antonio?) for several miles. Except everyone I saw was wearing a HCRA bib, and I became convinced I had taken one of their turns or missed mine, and I was going the wrong way. I figured at the worst, I'd end up at THEIR finish line and call Matt to come pick me up.. wherever that was. But eventually they turned left and we turned right (and then I saw one of their riders having gone the wrong way, and told her I thought so, and hopefully she turned around).

It was an okay ride. With the hills and the headwind, I started out pretty slow. Picked it up some in the last miles, but still slower than in past years. I also just couldn't get comfortable. I was in and out of my aerobars every few minutes, trying to get comfortable, but it wasn't happening. I was pretty glad to be done when I was done.

Of course then I had a run off the bike. And while it wasn't 100 degrees like last year, it was in the low 90s, and it was full sun, and it was hot. And this year they only had one aid station, at mile 1. I slogged up and down and up and down the hills on the shadeless highway. I ducked off into the tall weeds on the side of the highway to pee, ending up with sawlike grass in my bike shorts. I just let it chafe all my butt-flesh off, because I didn't want to stick my hand down my shorts on a busy highway. And eventually I got down to the farmer's market where I turned around last year, stood in their cold section for a second enjoying the shade, then turned around and slogged back. I was happy to see the man laying in the grass on the side of the road had moved, so presumably wasn't dead. Just.. drunk? Hungover? Tired?

With a mighty positive split (the opposite of what I was assigned), I finished up my run, deciding that 42 minutes was close enough to 45.

So I didn't feel great about my ride, but I got some solid hill work in, and a good run off the bike in bad conditions. And I drank my beer and enjoyed my chopped beef sandwich (mostly the many pickles I put on it).

And that's really about it for supported rides this summer. Now we go it alone and unsupported through August. Oof.

I'm just going to make a S&D race report template that begins, "I really didn't want to do this race.." Because I swear I say that every time. But it was possibly the truest it's ever been this time! If we hadn't already paid for it, odds are high we wouldn't have shown up. But we had, and we did. And hey, at least it was still unseasonably cool, having rained earlier in the day!

To drive home how uncommitted we were to this race, we put our transition stuff waaay up the hill, maybe halfway up, where there was no competition, because nobody wants to have to run that far up the hill barefoot. But I was just there to go through the motions, so it didn't matter.

(I told Daniel my plan was to draft off him during the swim, but since the guys go off 3 minutes before the women, I needed him to just hang back when the gun went off. He wasn't willing to accommodate my request. Jerk.)

I lined up behind the fast swimmers, and ended up behind Catherine, figuring I'd draft off her for as long as I could, which turned out to be about 3 seconds when they said Go. Damn, that girl can swim.

As soon as I was swimming, autopilot kinda took over. My arms were stupidly fatigued for having raced only 300m two days before, then a 45 minute recovery swim the day before, but I just swam as strong as I could without killing myself, and made it around the loop without incident (and really without drafting at all; I'm a horrible swimdrafter).

Got out of the water and started my slog way up the hill. Now my feet were all soft from swimming and all those rocks and stickers were not comfortable at all, so I ran way over to the left where it was grassier, and also ran across peoples' transition towels whenever possible. Was that rude? Probably. But it sure felt better.

Got to my shoes and did my standard "start to put on one shoe, almost fall over, decide to put on other shoe, wobble about, etc" maneuver until both shoes were on, then charged up the hill. As I was running up, I heard Catherine behind me say, "Is that Amy?" Being that I was incapable of producing words at that point, I gave a thumbs up, and she called me a mountain goat. Hurray for fast transitions, since she beat me out of the water most decidedly.

Out onto the run course, with a goal not to let Catherine pass me. I had forgotten at this point that I didn't even want to be out there. I set my cruise control firmly on "just this side of uncomfortable" and settled in. With all the rain earlier in the day, there were some puddles, and several areas where there were little rivers of water flowing over the trail. It was possible to pussyfoot around some of them, but my feet were already wet, and I was able to pass several people just stomping directly through the water as they tried to pick their way around.

I continue my clumsiness trend from Skeese Greets as I tried to take a water handup from the aid station on my first loop, and knocked it out of the hander's hand and onto the ground. Then later evidently I kicked my own left inner ankle with my right toe. Somehow. A big bleeding painful gouge.

Otherwise the run was fairly unnoteworthy. EXCEPT. During my second loop, I saw Kelly Williamson running alongside some guy on the left side of the trail, chatting and obviously cooling down, long done with the race. As I ran by them, I asked Kelly, "So does this mean I can say I passed you in a race?" And oddly, the guy answered me, something I can't remember, sorta laughing about, "Haha, sure." And I thought, "Wasn't talking to you, dude," but then I was past them.

Went on to finish the race, felt pretty strong for the last loop. At the finish line, we were chatting, and Matt asked if I'd seen Lance Armstrong out there.

Oh. He was the one running with Kelly. THAT'S why he thought I was talking to him.

But hey, my race pace is evidently faster than Lance Armstrong's recovery pace. So.. there's that.

Very strong field out there, so even though I finally managed to break 30 minutes again, the results put me in 15th place for women. 14:19 for swim+transition (13:29 for just the swim, says my watch), then 5:14 (7:49/mile), 5:11 (7:44), 5:06 (7:37) for the run, which is faster than I normally S&D.

So evidently the secret to my S&D success is to not care and not race, just go out and.. do it. And run over other peoples' towels.

I really enjoyed this event last year, so I decided to do it again rather than The Rookie (evidently I feel I must do some sub-sprint triathlon each Spring). Jamie decided that rather than have me do another 100 mile ride the day before, he'd actually give me a little recovery and taper, to "see what you can do". Ugh. I'd almost rather have the excuse as to why things didn't go as well as I wanted. :)

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With Ironman training and traveling to Madison last week for work and puppies and.. life, I kinda fell behind on my race reporting. I back-dated my two deficient reports, so I'm not sure if anyone will see them (and my heart wasn't in them, but my completionist nature demanded I write them, so they're not very interesting). But! If anyone wants to see them, you probably won't unless you go looking.

So they're here (April Splash&Dash) and here (Red Poppy Ride).

And whew. Caught up on both race reports and workout log. For now. Until life happens again.

(I don't plan to write up anything on my Madison trip, but I've uploaded some of the pictures to flickr here, and hopefully eventually I will grab the rest off my laptop and upload them, as well.)

Okay, last deficient race/ride report, then I'm caught up.

Got a groupon-like-thing to ride Red Poppy for $15, and we'd never done this ride, so I was excited. I was planning on riding Shiner the next weekend as a close-to-century, so I didn't want to do the 100, and Jamie agreed that the 85 sounded good.

We had quite a group assembled to start: me, Karen, Betsy, David, Pam, Jeff, Summer and Nancy. As we headed out, I ended up in the lead, then when we got on calmer roads, Karen rode up beside me and we started chatting, since we hadn't ridden together in ages. At one of the turns, we heard Summer say something behind us, but didn't catch what it was, and were navigating the turn and watching for traffic, and didn't notice she was no longer behind us. We didn't see anyone at all anymore. But we were all doing different distances with different goals, so we knew we weren't all going to end up riding together, so Karen and I rode on. (Evidently Summer had a flat, but fortunately she had many people with her to help. Oops.)

The good: It was nice to ride with Karen again. We caught up on life and training. The volunteers were great. They had delicious cookies and/or cookie bars at the stops we stopped at.

The bad: The wind. It was a tailwind for the first while. Then an unrelenting head/cross wind. Karen is just at the end of her Ironman training, and a stronger rider even when she's untrained, so she was capable of going much stronger than me, and eventually pulled up and let me draft off her. For most of the rest of the time. And even drafting off of her, I kept falling back. It was a hard ride. I felt bad that I was slowing Karen down, but she just kept coming back for me. There wasn't a whole lot of talking for the end of the ride. I was just trying to survive. While Karen was dragging me along into a headwind like there was on wind at all.

We kinda did the ride wrong. We were supposed to start out on the 100 route then turn off onto the 50 at the Poppy Gate. Instead we started on the.. 60ish route? And when we realized our error, we did the 100 mile route for the rest of the way. I was afraid we'd end up back at the school at 50 or 60 miles, but it ended up perfect at 83 miles, which is what Pam said she got having done it the right way.

By the time we got to the school, it was really hot and really windy and really unpleasant. And yet Karen wanted to do 100, so she headed back out to do an out and back to make up the miles. I probably should have been a good friend and offered to join her for that. But I wouldn't have been doing her any favors, as she was probably relieved that she could finally go her own speed without dragging my dying ass along.

So I bid her adieu and changed into my running shoes, happy to have met my goal of finishing my 80 before Matt finished his 100. (Little did I know that Matt was having an incredibly crappy ride, unfortunately due to some of my decisions, and ended up riding 115. Oops again.)

The run was just miserable. Ran back out on the road we'd come in on, and cheered for the cyclists. There was no shoulder, and it wasn't a wide road, so I felt bad for taking up space. But I didn't want to get lost by trying to run elsewhere. It seemed to take forever to get 15 minutes out, and the run back in was just as miserable, but at least I knew I was heading back in toward done.

One of the best parts of the event was the cop at the light right next to the school. Rather than the usual cop standing in the road directing traffic to help protect the cyclists, this cop had the breaker box thing open for the light, and was causing the light to be green for the cyclists to go through. When I was running back in, he had the light green for some cyclists, and I was still a ways off and not moving quickly. But he kept the light green all the way until I got there and went through. Unnecessary, but very much appreciated. It was Hot at that point.

I was very happy to be done. And ate a hot dog.

So.. good event, good course, markings weren't great, volunteers were, race director was soliciting feedback at the end and I think got some good feedback for improvement next year. I'd definitely do this ride again.

Okay, so, a little belated, but my completionist nature demands I write SOMEthing up, and I'm backdating it to the actual date.

It was a decent race. Wetsuit legal, but I felt like it would take me more time to get out of my wetsuit than it would make my swim faster, so I didn't bother.

I lined up second row back, which definitely isn't how fast I swim, but since it was the first S&D of the season, a lot of people didn't want to be up at the front. Laurie lined up behind me, to draft off of me. A healthy Laurie who's been swimming is WAY faster than me (and she was wearing a wetsuit), so I wasn't sure if I was going to be fast enough for her to want to stay behind me.

When they said go, I took off, and quickly lost the fast people in front. I had no luck jumping on anyone's feet, and a girl kept pushing me further off course until I finally slowed down enough to get around her.

I just swam the whole time telling myself, "Laurie's right behind you, keep going fast," but I found out afterward that she was only on my feet until the first dock, then she slowed down. Glad I didn't know that at the time!

Felt decent about my swim, and transitioned fast, going sockless as I only ever do at things with runs that short.

Ran out and heard Matt, who had just races ROTT, so wasn't racing S&D, cheering for me.

Settled in to the run. It was warm, but it was also only in the 80s, and I knew it wasn't ever going to be this cool for a S&D again, so I tried to enjoy it.

I just kept setting my sights on people ahead of me and trying to catch them, and I did so with a number of people, men and women. Each time I'd run past the start line, Matt would cheer for me, and I'd look over to be adored by my puppies, who had also come out to spectate, and I'd see that they were ignoring me completely, and Enzo's face was in Hilda's mouth. Again. Puppies need to work on their spectation skills.

On the third loop, I tried to pick it up some, skipped the water at the water stop, and pushed hard on the straightaway.

Overall I felt decent about my effort, given that my body was still tired from racing ROTT and from having swam earlier in the day.

Alas, not my fastest S&D, and didn't make it either sub-30 or in the top 10. But close, with <a href="http://mychiptime.com/searchevent.php?id=642430:12 and 12th place</a>. Neither my swim nor my run were as fast as my faster times last year. Something to work on! And most importantly, puppies got some good socialization practice in.

Matt wanted to do the Republic of Texas half Ironman distance triathlon in Corpus Christi. I really had no desire to. It's early in my season still. Yeah, I've done all the requisite distances in all the sports already, but I just wasn't really ready to put them together. I'm signed up for a half in June. That seems sufficient.

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All pictures from the weekend can be found here.

I've done the EHCT for the past two years, but both times I just drove down on Saturday and rode that day, then drove home the same day. This year we decided to do all three days: Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I'd never ridden more than 2 days in a row before, and not only would this be 3 days, but I also rode for 75 minutes on my trainer on Wednesday and for an hour on Thursday night at our brick workout. So straight from 2 days to 5 days of riding. Yikes.

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Total: 189.48 miles of riding, 3.55 miles of running, ~13 hours of exercising over 3 days.

Now to uh.. taper for that race we have coming up next weekend!

Whee, first charity ride of 2012, and it was great fun!

Ended up doing the entire ride, and the run, with Pam, and it was delightful to catch up with her, and to actually have a riding and running partner! I've done so many of my workouts alone for so long now, it felt foreign to actually be with someone.

The day started out really foggy as we drove to Liberty Hill, but it burned off quickly and it was gorgeous for the ride. And warmed up quickly once the sun came out, but it didn't matter much on the bike.

We started out with me and Pam, Jeff, Eva, Julie, Nicki, and two other TriZones people I didn't know, Nancy and Roy. Jeff was having a rough day, so after a few times of dropping him accidentally and then waiting for him at rest stops, he finally said just to go on and he'd see us at the end. The rest of the gang we ended up leap frogging with the entire day.



Pam has been Ironman training for a bit longer than I have this season, and that combined with her new tiny cranks meant she was making me work the entire time to keep up with her. But it's exactly what I need right now, to be pushed out of my comfort zone on the bike, and ultimately, even though we were chatting and enjoying ourselves the whole time, we ended up averaging 16.3ish mph. (Roughly the same average speed I was all impressed with myself for doing last year, except then I rode 20 miles shorter.) That's super fast for me for a training ride. I was happy.



Also we saw a baby cow right at the fence on a very small and narrow road, and he looked up at us and mooooooooed. My favorite part of the ride, for sure.

Also there were a lot of wildflowers out there.

And hills.

The last few miles with the steep uphills, the headwind and the horrible gravel on the road in that somehow I hadn't noticed on the way out, were by far the longest part of the ride, but we pushed in and stowed our bikes to go run. (Meanwhile, Matt had already finished his ride AND his run.)

Headed back out for the run and discovered.. oh, my.. it was hot. And sunny. Huh, exactly like last year. And I remembered how miserable that course was last year, with no shade. But we just put our heads down and gutted it out. Pam hadn't brought water, so we stopped at the aid station, which also had no shade. And we drank. And we dumped water over our heads. And generally felt like dying. But we kept running out, until we were 20 minutes out. Paused a second to breathe in the shade, then back in. At least we had some wind on the way back in. Stopped at the water again. And then we got to the 1 mile to go sign. That mile took like 0.25 milliseconds when we did it on the bike. It took 0.25 light years when running. We discussed the phenomenon wherein you have to balance feeling tingly and light-headed and trying to just get DONE already. Yeah, sorta passy-outty. Not a great feeling.

But we did our 40 minutes! And our miles were all low 9s and high 8s, for a 9:02 average. Not too shabby at all, given the conditions and it being one of my first bricks of the season, and riding hard for the ride!

Very happy with how strong I'm feeling so early in the season. Hoping to continue that trend.

Once again this was Matt's idea, and I was just tagging along. I really had no emotional investment in this race. I was excited to do it, but I really didn't have any goals or expectations or stress at all. Which was nice! I had my big goal race for early 2012 and I'm happy with how I did, so now everything else is just a fun bonus. Y'know, until that Ironman thing in August.

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