Today was supposed to be a nice 4 hour ride - shorter than some of my past and future rides on this ironman adventure. Not a bad day me thinks. Rescue one box turtle on way so think carma is on our side.
Start out and realize I haven't had any caffeine. Putzed along until my riding partner, Tommy, finally suggested I get some 'juice' if we are ever going to finish this ride. Red Bull does trick. Start to cruise and 'BANG' - get a flat out in the boondocks. Use my handy-dandy tire changing kit but somehow waste my cartridge in the process, only partially inflating my tire. We visit a hardware store, gas station and a friendly neighborhood - none of which have any bike pumps.
Tommy goes in search of a biker to borrow another cartridge from. 45 minutes later he returns, we get tire blown up and start our ride. We have been trying to fix the tire for 90 minutes and now its about 90 degrees. The friendly chit-chat that we began is now gone - silence prevails as we start on our ride.
Realize that we have ridden farther than we needed to at some point. Neither of our odometers are working and my watch stopped. Turtle carma not paying off.
Had some good convenience stops today. Tommy lost his sunglasses at one point and after much searching, we realized they were on his head (do you think the heat was getting to us?). We also ran out of money at one point so couldn't afford more snacks:-(. At one convenience store near the end of our ride, the clerk took pity on us and let us hang out in their walk in cooler. I put all fear of being locked in a random place aside and enjoyed the chill.
Ended up being on my bike for 4 hours 40 minutes today. Will fix watch ASAP :-)
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Wild Kingdom on the Bike
Enjoyed a grizzling 100+ mile bike ride with my friends Lucky, Pat Webster, John Wilkins and Tommy King on May 22nd. All was good in the beginning - lots of banter, friendly abuse and chit-chat.
So begins our journey to the Wild Kingdom of rural North Carolina. John found a dead baby copper-head snake that he put in a bag in his bento box. I did ask why and he replied, "they are cool". OK, its the first time that I've ridden with someone with a dead snake in their bento box.
We are riding along and John drops back for a minute. "I'll catch up," he shouts. He returns and I am afraid to ask what he has been up to. We stop at a convenience store and he shows me the live baby corn snake that he rescued from the road and is now chilling in his empty water bottle. Got to love John for his passion for nature, but I will never take a sip of water from him again :-)
Next we tackled many loose dogs. Seems once you leave the city limits, folks have really big dogs that are loose and just run around chasing stuff all day. Their favorite past time is chasing bikes. We were run down by a dachsund (yeah, kind of embarrassing) and multiple labs. The 8 rottweilers, including one large 'notweiller' were kept behind fences - thank goodness.
So begins our journey to the Wild Kingdom of rural North Carolina. John found a dead baby copper-head snake that he put in a bag in his bento box. I did ask why and he replied, "they are cool". OK, its the first time that I've ridden with someone with a dead snake in their bento box.
We are riding along and John drops back for a minute. "I'll catch up," he shouts. He returns and I am afraid to ask what he has been up to. We stop at a convenience store and he shows me the live baby corn snake that he rescued from the road and is now chilling in his empty water bottle. Got to love John for his passion for nature, but I will never take a sip of water from him again :-)
Next we tackled many loose dogs. Seems once you leave the city limits, folks have really big dogs that are loose and just run around chasing stuff all day. Their favorite past time is chasing bikes. We were run down by a dachsund (yeah, kind of embarrassing) and multiple labs. The 8 rottweilers, including one large 'notweiller' were kept behind fences - thank goodness.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Trying to finish 140.6
About 10 months ago I registered for Ironman Lake Placid scheduled for July 25, 2010 in Lake Placid, NY. Its a 2.4 mile swim, followed by a very hilly/mountainous 112 mile ride and then you get to enjoy a 26.2 mile run afterwards. Keep reflecting on why I did this. Was I dropped on my head at some point during my childhood? Am I missing some critical brain chemical that causes me to do strange, painful things to my body? Did some boyfriend dump me at a formative period of my life and I want to prove something to society?
I think the answer is simple - I wanted to see if I could do it. I've run 7 marathons and done 7 half-ironmen. Wanted to see if I could finish/live through the big daddy/momma of them all - the full ironman.
So I've decided to start a blog part way in to my ironman training for several reasons...
1) If I ever decide to do this again, I can look back and remember how ridiculous the training really was and re-think the decision :-)
2) Reassure my friends that I have not dropped off the face of the earth. Rather I am living in a surreal world training, eating, working, kid caring, eating, not enough sleeping, whining and training, training, training. I've found I spend a lot of time talking to other triathletes because no one else would find this existence very interesting. (Not that my tri friends find it all that exciting but they are stuck out on a bike ride for the next 6 hours with me so pretend to listen)
3) Have a place to capture the random thoughts that float through my mind during the long hours out on the bike and running in the woods.
So far I have a love/hate relationship with the training. For example, next week I will bike 200 miles, run 30 + miles and swim about 10,000 yards over the course of 7 days. That adds up to between 17-18 hours of time, with the longest training day being about 6 hours.
My first 90 mile ride was about 3 weeks ago and I remember actually enjoying it for the first 2 hours - words uttered out of my mouth included 'what a beautiful day', 'ironman training isn't that bad', 'its nice to catch up with friends'. Then the temperature hit 90 degrees and my mood did a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde switcheroo. I found words such as 'I hate this sh*t', 'What part of this is remotely fun?' and various tirades about how much my bootie hurts.
So tomorrow I get to start riding at 5:30 am and do another 90ish mile ride with a few tri friends. Will try and capture any memorable moments and bleep any curse words.
I think the answer is simple - I wanted to see if I could do it. I've run 7 marathons and done 7 half-ironmen. Wanted to see if I could finish/live through the big daddy/momma of them all - the full ironman.
So I've decided to start a blog part way in to my ironman training for several reasons...
1) If I ever decide to do this again, I can look back and remember how ridiculous the training really was and re-think the decision :-)
2) Reassure my friends that I have not dropped off the face of the earth. Rather I am living in a surreal world training, eating, working, kid caring, eating, not enough sleeping, whining and training, training, training. I've found I spend a lot of time talking to other triathletes because no one else would find this existence very interesting. (Not that my tri friends find it all that exciting but they are stuck out on a bike ride for the next 6 hours with me so pretend to listen)
3) Have a place to capture the random thoughts that float through my mind during the long hours out on the bike and running in the woods.
So far I have a love/hate relationship with the training. For example, next week I will bike 200 miles, run 30 + miles and swim about 10,000 yards over the course of 7 days. That adds up to between 17-18 hours of time, with the longest training day being about 6 hours.
My first 90 mile ride was about 3 weeks ago and I remember actually enjoying it for the first 2 hours - words uttered out of my mouth included 'what a beautiful day', 'ironman training isn't that bad', 'its nice to catch up with friends'. Then the temperature hit 90 degrees and my mood did a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde switcheroo. I found words such as 'I hate this sh*t', 'What part of this is remotely fun?' and various tirades about how much my bootie hurts.
So tomorrow I get to start riding at 5:30 am and do another 90ish mile ride with a few tri friends. Will try and capture any memorable moments and bleep any curse words.
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