FINALLY. A good ride!

On a whim, Danna and I decided to meet in Houston this weekend and ride the race course. I cannot tell you how glad I am that we came! I did not want the weekend to be a waste of time or money so Monday night after we made the decision, I got online and just started searching for information about riding the course. I happened upon a local tri group and sent a message to their trainer, Dana Lyons. He responded immediately and let me know that there was a group ride planned on Saturday with the support of 2 sags! Awesome! We met up with them this morning and set off on the course with a great group of 50 riders, turn by turn maps and two sags. Amazing. The route was completely perfect. Finally smooth roads! I was in heaven. I was so happy about the road conditions that the 20 mph winds did not bother me at all. I had such a great training day, finished off with a nice 50 minute run. Danna had an awesome day, too, once she overcame three mishaps! Right off she knew something was up. She was working HARD and going about 9 mph. She stopped and realized her brake was rubbing on her rear wheel. No big deal, except she got dropped right off the bat. I noticed that I did not see her in our group and waited for her to catch up at a light. We rode hard and caught back up with the back of the group. Shortly after, we decided to pass the few people who were riding in the rear of the group (the course has lots of traffic and we were riding single file) so I took off to catch the rest of the group and assumed Danna was right with me. A few miles later I realized she was not there and decided to wait for her at the first rest stop which was scheduled to be at mile 24. Once she got there she told me that she took off like I did to catch the group when all of a sudden she came to a complete stop. She looked back and saw that her brake was rubbing on her wheel. She thought that was strange and did not know how it happened, but she moved it over and tried to take off again only to find that she could not pedal. Her rear wheel had come off! I have to mention here that last night when we arrived at the hotel I helped her put her bike together (she flew here, so her bike was in pieces in the bike box) by putting on her rear wheel. Yikes. So sorry! So she puts her wheel back on and heads out to try to catch up. She decides to try to call and let me know what is going on so she reaches for her phone and it goes flying out of her hands and crashes in pieces all over the road and into the grass. She stops to retrieve it and has to spend time searching for all of the parts. She never finds the back but decides to move on, feeling frustrated about the start of this very long day! When she arrives at the rest stop and tells me what happened I felt awful for not being there for her and lots of guilt over the rear wheel thing. But Danna presses on, like nothing at all has happened, and we finished the rest of the ride without incidence. It was such a great training day. We are so pumped about the race! We loaded the bikes in the van and ran just over 5 miles, came back to the hotel, cleaned up and then headed down to the mall area and enjoyed a great dinner outside at an Irish pub on a river. Pretty cool. Tomorrow morning before we head home we are going to go run a couple of loops on the run course. Looking forward to these last few weeks of training!

Spring Race Blues

Last spring when it was crazy windy I remember thinking how glad I was that I was not signed up for a spring race that would force me to be out doing long rides. Well, it is spring again. And it is crazy windy again. And this time I AM signed up for a spring race. Oh my gosh. I cannot begin to describe to you how much I hate wind now. Every Saturday I need to be out riding close to 100 miles followed by an hour run and every Saturday the wind is 25-35 mph with gusts to 40. It is making me grumpy. When I was training for Cozumel I would go do my 100 mile rides and average in the 18 - 20 mph range and then hop off and run for an hour and still be good to go for my long run the following day. These last few weeks I have been getting in about 90 miles at an average of 16mph with a painful run after because I am so fatigued from fighting the wind. Ok. Enough about the stupid wind. At least I am getting in the hours. I will just hope that this will be enough to help me have a good race next month. I hope to not be slower than my last ironman and to not feel like I am dieing during the race. I found some really great roads to ride on in Denton! I was going to do loops on 428 for 5 hours two weeks ago when Zach said he could show me a road off of 428 that he thinks would be good to ride on. I took it and it lead to lots and lots of great roads! They are so lucky out there! They have great roads to ride on and then you jump off and run on the greenbelt. Nice. So jealous! I am hoping to make a trip to Denver to ride with Danna over Easter weekend. It is going to have to warm up for me to go, though! Danna got snowed on during her run yesterday. It was 90 degrees with 80% humidity here. Even though that is hot and humid, it is good training, and I hate to be cold! If the weather looks good I will make the drive and we will do the Boulder 70.3 route a couple of times. So that's that. This is the longest week of the training with 19 hours on the schedule. I may end up with a little more if the weather holds out this weekend for the Aledo ride. I will ride from Benbrook to the ride, do the 88 mile route, ride back to Benbrook and then run. Good times. Only 4 more competitive weeks and then it is taper! Crazy.