Vaya con dios

Naturally, the last day of tri camp had the nicest weather. We had to say good-bye to a few ladies, but there was a small group of us who were able to go out for one last ride before we packed up and hit the road. Sally proposed a ride up to the prison, which was a six mile climb. I’d been hoping for something a little more low-key for the final ride, but I decided to give it a go. As with yesterday, there were a few stops to regroup/make adjustments/take pictures:

But eventually, it was just all about the climbing.

This early in the season, long climbs like these are just not fun. It’s basically a low-grade sufferfest. I hung in there for a while, but eventually I’d had enough and cut the ride short. I opted to do a little out and back on my own which was far more enjoyable than climbing the final mile of the hill. Some of the other girls gave me a hard time about it and seemed disappointed that I’d quit, but I stand by my decision. All things considered, it was still great to ride out in the sunshine on a largely traffic-free road.

Then it was time to pack up, say my good-byes and hit the road. I’d left my phone charger in Burbank, which meant I got to spend a little more time with my Burbank girls before catching my flight.

Heidi lives very close to the airport, which made for the most pleasant wait for a flight ever. I mean, sitting in a sunny backyard, watching the antics of these two?

Awesome. It was so great to spend a little more time with them and ended my weekend on a nice relaxing note. My flight back was uneventful (which is my favorite kind). It was a fun trip, but also nice to be back home and see the boy. Besides, we had work to do. Lots of boxes to pack before next weekend…

Here comes the sun

There was still a dusting of snow when we woke up the next morning, but the sun was shining and there weren’t a bunch of black clouds on the horizon so we were feeling optimistic that a bike ride could happen. (I didn’t haul that damn thing all the way down here to not ride it at least once!) One of the ladies had gotten up really early and gone for a sunrise run. I love this picture she captured of Dan’s horses:

After breakfast, we went over to Dan’s side of the compound to attend a lecture he’d offered to give about bike fitting. (For those who are unaware, Dan’s a leading expert on this topic and trains fitters from all over the country, so this was awesome.) We waited in his fit studio for the magic to start:

Dan has a wall full of all sorts of saddles, handlebars, stems and numerous other bike parts. It was impressive, to say the least:

Here’s the man himself:

Dan announced that we’d be talking about road bike fit, which I was visibly excited about. (Ever since I got Slim, I have not been able to get my road bike to get back to be being comfortable once I took the aero bars off of it.) When I made a comment about being excited about this, he offered to let me be the guinea pig that he did the fit on. SCORE! I ran over to get my bike clothes and shoes. The fit process was really interesting. It was a lot like the eye doctor. He’d make an adjustment and then another and ask which one I liked better. (And like the eye doctor, there were times where it was hard to know… )

But at the end of the process, I got a sheet of numbers that I am going to take to a local bike shop and have them help me get my bike set-up. So awesome. After all of that virtual riding, it was time to hit the road for reals. As usual, it took forever to get everyone ready and situated with loaner bikes.

But soon enough, we were ready to hit the road. Gail was leaving camp (she lives on the other side of the foothills and had a race the following day) so she snapped a group shot for us:

(We look cold, don’t we?) Once we got moving, we warmed up pretty quickly. The wind made things a little chilly, but the sunshine was awesome.

And, per usual, there was much picture taking at the rendezvous points:

I was very happy I’d brought Slim. I felt good on the bike and, for once, wasn’t the last person struggling up the hills. Despite this being the second time I’d been on the bike outside. And per usual, it was fun to ride with an awesome group of ladies:

There were a number of stops to take pictures/adjust bike fit/shed layers, which made for a fun day.

Afterward, it was back to the compound for a delicious dinner and some lovely wine. Then a bunch of us brought our wine and kept Kristi and Christina company while they packed up their bikes. Some girls tried out some new saddles and there was general tomfoolery. Mannequins may have been posed with…

It was a pretty fun way to cap off the final night of tri camp…

Hint of spring

We had our first whiff of spring this weekend. Saturday got too busy with errands and what-not, so T & I vowed to get out on our bikes this morning. It was the first time I’d been outside on my bike this year. (So sad.) It was just a short ride, but felt pretty good. We also had to do the all important half-way coffee stop.

The boy was only moderately amused with my antics:

It was sooooooo nice to ride outside. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get out for more rides in the near future.

A trip to the bike expo

I know there are way too many Groupon-like sites out now, but occasionally there will be a useful one. For example, there was a deal for two tickets to the bike expo for something like 7 bucks. Since a.) I didn’t know there was a bike expo, b.) what a bike expo might be and c.) seven dollars is pretty damn reasonable to find out. Plus, I’m always up for something different to do on a rainy Seattle Saturday. So, the boy and I braved the elements and drove over, which felt a little hypocritical until we saw the parking lot shuttle. So, we may not have been able to be as smug as the folks that rode their bikes, we could at least look down on the jokers waiting for the shuttle while we walked the quarter mile in the rain and wind.

The expo itself was interesting. There were all sorts of booths advertising organized rides and bike-related products. And a big display of historical bikes, which was my favorite part:

How they shifted bikes in the 20′s

Old-school deep racing wheels.I wonder if I could get a set of these for Slim…

We also saw a booth with beautiful wooden bikes, like this gorgeous tri-bike:

And there were of course amusing things, like this man dressed as a Cliff bar. (Now, there was a Cliff booth, but his costume looked homemade, so I wonder if it’s like when people dress up like Star Wars characters. Who knows?)

I really wanted to see the person who could ride this bike and ask them where on earth they bought pants:

All in all, it was a fun afternoon outing and well worth the seven bucks.

Grand Columbian: the bike

It was chilly, so I’d grabbed my arm warmers and stuck them on my wrists. But since the race started with a 1.5 mile climb from transition to the road (and to think, I used to think that it was bad that we only had a mile before the Almira Grade… ) I didn’t need them initially. I was surprised at how good I felt on the bike. I was my usual wet and cold self, but my legs felt good and I was spinning easily up the hill. M & J were stationed on the hill, so I gave them my “rock” salute:

I love this shot that M got (even though I’m locking my elbows and somewhere my old coach would be so ashamed… Sorry Coach Cane!):

And this is me laughing in response to J telling me that I was “a third of the way there.” (That is a direct quote from the announcer to one of the iron distance guys. Apparently, his math needs work… )

Here’s T passing everyone in sight:

I’d heard T in the transition tent, so I knew he was close. But this picture, captioned by M shows exactly how close:

He passed me a little while later and we had a few moments to chat about the horrible swim chop and how he’d fared. Then he was off. I concentrated on keeping him in sight as long as I could. Then I was passed by M & J on their way home. J got these awesome pictures of me on my phone. Here I am giving someone “the look”:

And here I am in the distance (with my elbows still locked For shame!)

And also a few of the terrain of the race:

It is really a beautiful bike course. I was having a really hard time getting my head in the game. I kept finding myself being upset about my slow swim and how long it was taking me on the bike. I felt my time goals going right out the window and with them my desire for the race altogether. Finally, I had to give myself a stern talking to and basically made the commitment to do this race. There were the rollers and wind that I was expecting. I took a little wrong turn off the course and had some spectators in a car chase me down (“Are you supposed to go a different way than all of the other bikers?” Um, no… ) but thank god they were there and I got back on track pretty quickly. I used my fury at that to fuel me through some more rollers and wind.

Because of the change in start point, the bike course was less of a loop and much more of an out and back. So, I could see the folks who were ahead of me and it seemed like that was everyone in the race. I knew I was ahead of people because I’d passed them on the swim, seen them in the change tent and their bikes on the rack, but except for one person that I’d seen as I was rejoining the course, I was by myself. But I just kept pushing on. I spent most of my time in the aero bars due to the wind and thanks to Rev3, I was pretty comfortable with that.

I passed a few people and finally saw T coming back the other way. I was surprised when I reached the turnaround not that long afterward. I was either having a great bike or he was having a terrible one, not sure which. (He’d looked okay, so I chose to believe the former.) That gave me the confidence to push a little bit, plus the wind died down a little bit. Whatever the cause, I started passing more people and feeling really good. I kept eating and drinking and rolling along. I’d wanted to do the bike in 3:30 – 3:45, but ended up rolling in at nearly four hours. Since I based my target on the old course, I decided not to get too upset about the slower time.

Overheard on the bike…

SCENE: YESTERDAY’S EPIC BIKE RIDE

Me: (chugging up what I believe to be climb #4 of seven significant climbs) Okay, we’re doing good… Hang in there… Almost there…

The Boy: (waiting on the side of the road for me to catch up) Good job, honey! I think we’re almost to the climb!

Me: You better pray to whatever god you filthy hippies believe in that you’re wrong about that.

Lucky for him, he was wrong and that was the climb, but talk about deflating!

T’s drinking problem

The boy and I had another epic bike ride planned, this time leaving from historic downtown Issaquah. The original plan was a figure-8 course that involved some formidable hills on the second part of the ride. About half-way through the “easy” first loop, we decided we weren’t quite up for that second part and opted to do the first loop twice. (It was hot and the climbs on the first loop were kicking our butts.) There were tons of other cyclists out doing the Seattle Century, so we had plenty of company on the roads.

After 40 odd miles of hot hilly riding, we decided that we should cancel out all of our hard work by stopping at this place:

(Yes, you read that correctly… )

In addition a nice outdoor seating area, it featured the biggest root beer floats I’d ever seen…

So delicious! After a little downtime at home, we decided to have a little date night in the neighborhood at one of our favorite mexican spots. I went for a margarita, but T decided to try something new. Unbeknownst to him, it would be pink and served in a girly glass… Cheers!

On the way home, we stopped at his favorite coffee spot for another dainty beverage:

It’s not easy being the blog-husband…

Both sides of the coin

Now that the boy is training with me, my routine is totally different. Now, I have company for my crazy long rides in the middle of nowhere. I decided to try something new and drop Wally off at doggie daycare to play off some excess energy, while T and I rode a route that I hadn’t done since Ironman training. We parked the car at Cottage Lake and took turns watching the bikes while the other took advantage of the last indoor facilities for a while. I chose to take pics of the bikes while I waited, cuz I’m artsy like that:

I’d chosen a route that took us through Snohomish at a little before the half-way point. Snohomish also happens to have a very nice bakery (coincidence, I think not!) They were having some sort of festival that closed down the street that the bakery was on, so we walked our bikes through the throngs of locals. We saw a man walking a miniature horse wearing a little green hat. I was very sad to not have gotten a photograph of that, because it was the raddest thing I’ve ever seen.

Surprisingly, there was actually a table at the bakery where we could bring our bikes in and not be in the way. You can tell this isn’t yet a serious training ride from our snack choices. Todd went with the blueberry croissant and a very serious expression:

I went with the chocolate cinnamon roll that I would deeply regret when we reached the hot & climby portion of our program, but it was pretty delicious all the same…

We left Snohomish in great spirits but rapidly reached the tough part of our day. Two separate rednecks yelled things at us from their pick-up trucks. (I swear the second one yelled “Tramp” at me. Which cracked me up. Still does, actually… ) We also had some sections of road that were way too busy with a shoulder that was basically the white stripe next to the lane. And did I mention that it was also crazy amounts of climbing? And hot? Good times. As I was chugging my way uphill, I got to pondering the good news/bad news quality of having the boy training with me.

The good side:

• Someone to whine/complain to as opposed to grumbling to myself
• Someone to point out the gorgeous scenery when we passed it
• Rednecks probably think twice about messing with two of us
• The boy is willing to go into the sketchy Monroe gas station to get water for us rather than going to the yucky water fountain in the park that I usually go to because I don’t want to leave my bike unattended/take it into said sketchy gas station.

 

The bad side:

• The boy likes to sing terrible songs. Like “Stop in the Name of Love” when we pass a stop sign. Or “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.” (Don’t ask.) It’s super annoying.
• The boy also likes to chant “Let’s go climbing, let’s go!” when we start up the last horrible climb at the 45 mile mark. And is generally just unbelievably chipper.
• And of course, the boy is still faster than me, even though he hasn’t been training and I have.

All in all, the pros of having company for training greatly outweigh the cons and it was so great to be able to pick up a tired big dog and head for home. We’ll definitely be doing that again in the future. Smokey Joe is old enough that he’s happy to sleep in his box, but Wally definitely needs more exercise than we have the energy for post-ride.

Epic training day

We had a busy agenda for the day and no time to waste. First, we dropped the dogs off at their boarding place and tried not to be offended at the eager way they ran inside. (Ungrateful bastards!) Then it was off to the new race course for a long ride, followed by a run. My biggest concern for the new course was the fact that I haven’t spent that much continuous time in the aero position and wasn’t sure how it would go. We were doing two loops, so I set up a combination aid station and transition area in the trunk of the car:

We lucked out on the weather. It was AMAZING:

The course goes right past the airport, so we had a number of planes land and take off over our heads as we rode. But my favorite part were the fighter jets:

There’s something about riding with a fighter jet zooming above your head. It really inspires you to kick it up a notch!

Mount Hood was clearly visible in the distance.

Riding a flat course is a very different challenge than a hilly one. You really have to work on your pacing and I’m going to have to really work on eating and drinking, as I didn’t do enough of either. This made the run afterward a little rough, so I’ll definitely have to work on that. On the plus side, I went a lot faster than the hilly course that I’d been training on, so that was fun.

T rode with me during my run, which was really fun. It was nice having him to chit-chat with and I didn’t have to feel bad about leaving him in the car while I ran. (Plus it makes you feel like a real athlete to have a bike escort, I must say!) After all of that, we had dinner plans with our friend Luke so we had to hustle back to my parents house to shower and get changed.

Luke showed off his bartender skills by whipping up my favorite drink from Pok Pak: the Tamarind Whiskey Sour. You know you’re in Portland when someone mixes a drink in a Nalgene bottle:

But he made up for it on the presentation:

The drinks were super strong (especially after the day’s exertions) so I was done with drinking after one. But T & Luke followed it up with a second cocktail at a wine bar where we had delicious burgers. So, between the training, eating and drinking, it was an epic day all around.

Epic birthday

In the e-mails leading up to the trip, Bryan had been putting together an epic ride plan. He described a crazy-talk route that basically climbed up to a ski-resort (for ~23 miles.) A few of us said they’d be in (yours truly with the caveat that I would be turning around if it was too “epic” for me… ) But when I woke up to rain on the morning of the actual ride, I figured it wasn’t actually going to happen and headed down to enjoy another ridiculous breakfast. (This morning it was sponsored by our team: T’s bagels, pork sausage from our meat share and a wonderful veggie scramble.)

As we sat in the living room, working through our food comas, the discussion turned toward the day’s itinerary and whether or not the “Soul Crushing Death Ride” (as it was now known) was happening. The weather was steadily clearing up and becoming not much of an excuse. Bryan masterfully worked the group, first getting agreement from the obvious candidates – Khai & Dave and then turning his attention to T & I. T promptly threw the decision into my camp, saying he’d do whatever I wanted to do. (Bastard.) So, it was left to me to wuss out or not. I figured what the hell and decided to go for it. We set a time that still allowed a comfortable amount of getting ready/continuing to chill/even take a little nap:

The ride started with a 45 minute drive down to Oregon (WW is about 20 miles from the state line) and then parking on an ordinary looking country road. (Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures of said road or the ride that followed, though I wanted to take a ton – I just didn’t want to get off the bike to take them… ) The first few miles of the ride were a pretty decent climb – not horrifically steep, but definitely a climb. Khai, Dave and Bryan took off first and rapidly dropped T & I. I assumed that T was just being nice and staying with me, until I turned around to talk to him and he wasn’t there. I stopped and waited for him to catch up, assuming he’d dropped his chain or something. It turned out that the CrossFit workout was much tougher on him than expected and he was having a rough time. At this point, we’d been climbing for about three minutes, so I encouraged him to stick with it for at least another 15 minutes and if he still wanted to quit, we’d head back.

The ride was really beautiful, which always helps when you’re climbing. The weather was pretty much perfect, not too hot and not raining and even had patches of sunshine. You could see out over the valleys and farmland for the first five miles or so and then you got into pretty trees and forests. Jenn & Bryan told the story of the first time they’d ridden this and how they’d stuck with it for so long because they thought it was going to flatten out. I could easily see how this happened, because you’d climb up a section and there would be a little downhill or some flat and then it would go up again. After the first part, there wasn’t too much steep, just long slow uphill. This is my favorite kind of hill to climb, so I was perfectly happy with it. And T was feeling better and grateful to not have to keep up with the boys.

We just kept climbing and chit-chatting (and occasionally singing sections of the Nicki Minaj song I’d been playing on the car ride on Friday. Sorry, locals!) As we neared the 2 hour mark, we saw Bryan heading back down. We assumed that they’d stopped at a market or something and he was seeing how far we were from there, but it turned out he was turning around due to lower-back pain issues. We decided to climb until we reached the two-hour mark and then turn around, as it was getting foggier and colder (and T had forgotten his bike jacket, so I was already concerned by how cold he was going to be on the descent.)

We figured Khai & David were going to go all the way to the top, (and they were a separate car) so we headed back down the hill, hoping Bryan didn’t have to wait too long for us. As always, the descent was fun/terrifying and made you appreciate exactly how much you’d accomplished. There were a few sections of up on the way back that I hadn’t remembered the corresponding downhill or appreciated properly, but by and large, it was large awesome sections of flying down the mountain, without even having to pedal. I saw a cyclist ahead and was surprised when it turned out to be Bryan. We passed and T offered him a draft but then promptly dropped him (I told you he was a bastard!) which tells you how bad Bryan was hurting.

We flew down the last section to the car and waited the few minutes for Bryan to arrive (T had given him the car keys when we’d initially met him on our ascent/his descent.) We didn’t have to wait too long, enough time to load the bikes and stretch a little bit. We texted David that we were heading home, so he’d know what time we’d left and hit the road. Despite wanting to get home, we were also hungry and T had been promised ice cream all weekend. The only place we knew about was a fancy gelato place in downtown Walla Walla, that I wasn’t particularly enthused about but I wasn’t going to deny T ice cream a third time. Then Bryan mentioned he might know of another ice cream place much closer to where we were.

That ice cream place was the most perfect post-ride place ever:

In case you can’t read the sign, the place is called The Iceburg and their subhead is “Experience the Legend” and experience it we did!

Few things in this world taste better after a long bike ride than a fresh banana milkshake and french fries. Awesomeness. Then after we got back to the house, we hit the hot tub for some post-ride recovery (ahhh… ) Then it was all about the wine/food/birthday festivities!

First there was some pink champagne, while Erin kicked T’s butt in Scrabble:

Followed by an amazing BBQ dinner and some wonderful red wine. Then post-dinner, homemade cupcakes by Jen (complete with candles and singing.) It was a really great birthday and I appreciate having all of the elements of my life (health to ride my bike for ridiculous distances, a wonderful spouse and fantastic friends) that made it so. Despite all of my snark, I do appreciate how lucky I am.