rides past and race hopes

On the bike front, still waiting on a few pieces so there really hasn’t been much progress since Valentine’s day. Hopefully the final piece will arrive later this week and I’ll have cranks that are attached! 🙂

Tough ride for me this weekend. But it got hard before the ride ever started: with 2 FULL days at Disneyland with the nephews! So I was walking around, standing in lines, and carrying a 4 month old or a 2 1/2 year old at times. My shoulders and back were definitely sore from that, and getting on the bike I could already feel my legs were stiff. The great thing about having someone to ride with is that I just got on and rode anyways. So after a bit of a late start Mike and I did a loop I’d never done before (which is hard on him since then he has to come back at turns to make sure I know where to go — thanks Mike!). It went through Diamond Bar and Chino Hills, then through Carbon Canyon. It went to the Santa Ana bike path, up PCH, and up the San Gabriel path. From there we took Arrow Hwy back home as we were out of time. Total miles: 101. Yes, another at 101. I think just shorter than the other 101, but still pretty close to a longest training ride ever!

That’s the basics of it, but the part that sticks with me the most is WIND! Oh. My. Gawd. Headwind on the Santa Ana stole a lot of my speed, and it was at just the angle where I knew it would be there for PCH as well. And on PCH in Huntington Beach there was even rain! And right as it was raining, a lense popped loose in my sunglasses, and there was a sign that the road was closed to bikes, find a detour. Of course Mike was ahead, and all I knew was that I should stay on that road. And I figured he had — either not seeing the sign or not caring (turns out he never saw it). But I didn’t want him to have followed a detour sign and be waiting to make sure I had as well. Plus this was about 3-5 blocks from where I got hit by a bus training for IM AZ (although luckily it didn’t hurt me but just made me wipe out onto the sidewalk). So with that and how bad Californians drive in rain, I wasn’t in the mood for riding through a construction zone with no shoulder and signs saying to keep out. So I ended up on the bike path between the beach and the road, which meant with lots of people. Called Mike, and he did come back and I got back on PCH and the ride continued.

Finally I got to the San Gabriel with Mike a bit behind (as he stopped at a store to grab a snack for in a few miles and told me he’d catch me). Ahhhhh…. I felt a bit of that tail wind as I got on the path, and soon was cruising easily at a faster pace than I’d gone much of the day. Mike did catch me, and passed me, and I was back to chasing him. And then a few miles later… yup, you guessed it. The winds changed. My tailwind was now a head or side wind yet again. Mike was going to come back and let me draft if the winds picked up again, and a few times I expected to see him heading back. My knee started getting a bit sore, and I was definitely getting tired. Finally at about where we planned to meet up (but a bit earlier than I expected him to get back to me) I found out the winds had helped him much of the path… I was just behind where they were getting a bit unsettled. He’d had a tailwind for some nice easy fast sections in parts where I had a break from wind. Oh well… guess I just have to ride faster next time!

We made it to the top of the path, and back over to where I live. We passed Incycle about 10 minutes before the tri club meeting was going to start, but just kept going the 20 minutes to get home – we decided it was going to get cold enough that we’d rather be a bit late and not in damp biking clothes. And we did make it back in time for part of it.

Oh, as for my hydration on the ride… it sucked. I made it through like 2 and a half bottes in the 7ish hours we were out there (including stopping time). Oops. There were just sections I didn’t want to let go of the handlebars as I was being blown around!

As for the race hopes… last night I sucked it up and filled out the Kona Lottery application. I’ve never done it before, but I feel lucky this year. Plus since Mike has good hopes of qualifying, I’ll probably be there anyways. So I might as well race! We’ll see if anything comes of it though.