Bicoastal Nomad's Journal

4:20pm: Awesome!
Thanks everyone for all your cheering and comments. Here's how it went:

AWESOME!!!!!

( Cut for awesome length )

8:25am: Marathon Monday
Yeah, I don't update much, so I don't know who's even paying attention anymore. But if you can see this, and you find yourself at a computer on Monday between 10:30am and about 4pm Eastern time, you can wander to http://www.bostonmarathon.com. They promise that the place to enter my name or the bib number 21770 will be obvious on race day. A bit of the boredom of they day may be alleviated for you by seeing my slow but steady progress in 5 kilometer increments from Hopkinton to Boston.

That's 21770. I expect to take about 5 and a half hours to complete, which is just about twice the time that the women's Olympic Marathon trials (taking place Sunday morning in Boston) will take.

7:51pm: Race report, brief version
On Sunday I did my most recent big endurance event, my second year back at the Timberman 70.3 (Half Iron distance) triathlon. And I had had my first complete meltdown of an event. Here's what I wrote to a friend who asked "How'd you do at the Tri (did you beat Don, is what we really want to know.) Hope you had a good race.":

"Did I beat Don? Sure I did, under the new rule where you trade times with your training partner at the end. Oh wait, I think that's still under advisement at the rules committee....

Is this the triathlon where the three events are 1. change clothes, 2. ride the bike, 3. change clothes again, so 1.2 miles of swimming is just for warmup and we run a half marathon for the heck of it? Then yeah, I beat him fair and square.

Or maybe its the one where the finish line is actually a secret place before mile 4.75 on the run and they don't tell you exactly where so you do try to sprint to it and hurt yourself. The big chute and cameras at the end are all an act? If that's the one, then I only beat him due to my 25 minute head start, which is really my only shot at even crossing the line at the same time as he does.

But seriously, I think we both had pretty hard races. I'll let Don tell his own stories. For me, I had a fine swim and transitions. The bike was really hard but the end result was acceptable, no more than 5 minutes over last years time. My run completely fell apart. Oddly, I started out not feeling too bad, but unable to go faster than a turtle slow shuffle and it never got any better. I wound up setting a personal worst for half marathon by more than 17 minutes over my time for the second half of Boston. Nearly every step was hard won.

So I'm in the process of convincing myself that the finishing is a more important result than any other dreams I had of beating my previous times. I mostly believe that but the little voice inside that is actually really competitive is still whimpering. I could really use another event to clear my palate. Oh hey, how about I knock off 100 miles on a bike?"

I'm headed to Vermont this weekend to do a nice long slow bike ride with my friends. My next post will get way over analytical about what was actually happening in my head during the event. It may not be pretty.

6:51pm: Hmph. looks like adding ads didn't actually make the updater work.

Home now. Stuck between three haystacks: Food, shower, or sleep?

Falling over.

http://www.bostonmarathon.com/2007/cf/public/ResultsSearch.cfm?mode=results
Bib number: 20879

9:11pm: ads today
I just updated to the plus kind of LJ account, which means you may see ads. I needed to do it so I could let the automated marathon status alerts to post via email. they should start soon and last through tomorrow. Then I'll go back to a basic account.

Yes, I'm running the marathon. Yes, the weather is going to suck and suck hard. Yes, I'm clever enough to attempt to dress well for temps in the 30s-40s, rain and winds gusting up to 30 mph. I still think I'll hit my only goal, which is to finish before they stop official timing (6 hours) Secondary goal being just to finish at all.

See you on the other side.

11:58am: Gadget Girl goes for a run
My Christmas present from finagler arrived in my mailbox this weekend. So of course I had to try it out. I give you:


(I don't think there's a public way to share this, aside from a screenshot.)

Which goes along with the output from my Garmin GPS/ Heart rate monitor (designed for cycling, but gadget girl can repurpose on the fly). They finally got their mac download agent working, so I can make these:

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/1867994

Gadget girl even runs on water!

10:08am: Traumatic Amnesia
So that you don't have to read to the end, I'm fine. But keep reading to hear about how that status came to be in question...

I've been on my road bike approximately a zillion times in the past 2.5 years. But I'd never been mountain biking and it seemed high time to remedy that lack. A group from my biking team drove out to the Springfield area to meet some other teammates who are avid mountain bikers for a cruise through the state park behind their house. I borrowed a bike from their neighbor, since I don't own one. The bike came with toe cages. I immediately put my left foot through the front of the first one and found it impossible to keep my right foot in the second one while riding. I have a tendency to want my feet free if I am at all uncomfortable on the bike. So we took off the toe cages.

There were several downhills where I was scared and dealt with being scared by shouting out "I'm totally freaked!!" or "I hate you all!!" But I made it down them in one piece. There was several uphills where I really wished I had clips or cage or something to pull up on. And then we went over a stream and through some mud which made my shoes wet. They were sliding on the pedals, which was really scary.

When we completed the first loop, we considered whether we should A) quit for the day, B) do the same loop again, or C) go try a different loop that would have some more difficult parts on it. I probably should have said A, since my ability to concentrate enough to handle a bike down a hill without getting too tense or freaking out was probably waning at that point. Opting for B), we started the same loop again. Allan said to me how I would find all those hills that had freaked me out at the start would now be "a piece of cake". We came to a log which we had to lift our bikes over. This time around, Ben decided to try to ride over it. I remember him succeeding. I think I remember coming to the top of an incline where we had to turn to the left to go across a wooden bridge, maybe 3 feet wide and 4 feet long over a gully that was about a two foot drop below the bridge. After the first bridge, there was a hard left turn onto another similar bridge. I think I remember looking at this, but I don't know for sure that I remember it from the first loop or the second loop.

The next thing I remember is sitting on one of those bridges, looking back and forth along the trail and thinking how odd it was that I didn't know which direction I had come from or how I had gotten to that particular location. I knew the names of all the people who were looking at me with concern, and could piece together the story from what I remembered the plan had been. But I didn't know for sure that this was still Saturday or the park we were in was the park we had planned on. My teammates could have taken the opportunity to really mess with me. Fortunately they were all too concerned to play pranks like that.

I am told that Don and Ben and Allan had gone ahead of me down the hill and up the next one and were out of sight by the time I went down. Kirsten and Karen stayed behind me and waited for me to finish the downhill before starting themselves and were also out of sight when the incident actually occurred, so no one can actually tell me how it happened. Don says they heard me making noise as usual down a hill and then a thunk and other crash sounds which told them that the yelling was actually serious so they turned around to come look for me. I was face down in the dirt next to a bridge, breathing heavily and shallowly but not otherwise moving. Don was concerned that I was breathing the dirt, but he didn't want to move me. It took at least a minute, probably less than 3, but they didn't time it, for me to start responding to their questions. The first intelligible thing I said was that I was going to throw up. I did not in fact throw up. I did eventually move under my own power to a sitting position and eventually appeared fine to all observation.

So we walked back to the house and I convinced everyone that I remembered the day of the week and events during the ride and after waking up. My pupils remained equal and responsive, I didn't feel nauseated anymore, the only things on me that hurt were the patches on my knees and elbow where there was no longer any skin covering. And so we all talked each other into the idea that I was fine. We had yummy grilled steak tips and sat around gabbing for 4-5 hours longer before Don and Ben dropped me home. I told Jenise what had happened and then she told me we had no hot water so no bath for me. So I went straight to sleep.

Woke up with the most pounding headache I have ever had. Some Advil cleared it up. I ran some errands and then Don finally got in touch with me to say that he'd been talking with his sister or sister in law who is a nurse and she had shamed him for not having taken me to see a doctor right away. So I talked to the doctor on call at my own doctor's office, who said that things sounded fine, but that I should definitely get looked at by someone in the next couple of days. I decided that waiting until Monday morning or Tuesday was tantamount to believing that there was no real reason to get looked at at all, so instead I'd get looked at ASAP down at the mount auburn ER. I have insurance, and in fact, quite a huge chunk of money in my health case FSA that needs to be spent, so I might as well get checked out. I packed up a bag of things to do and spent a few hours waiting patiently until they could do a full neurological exam (lots of physical dexterity tricks) ad get me a head CT scan (whirly metal around my head) which showed the expected no problem.

I just wish I knew exactly what happened so I could not do that again.

11:40am: So How'd It Go???
Answer 1.

The Good News is that I finished.
The Bad News is that I set scarily good personal bests, coming in a full half hour sooner than my best estimate pre race. Why is that Bad News? Well, cause next time I'll have to work really hard to make a new personal best.

I had an amazingly good time. I never hit the "Bite Me!" zone, even though I was working really hard and was really tired.
My favorite personal triumph was my sustained effort on the bike, maintaining a faster pace over the whole course than I have ever maintained on a ride before. I flew!

Oh yeah, and it rained. Only for part of the actual race though. The part with 45.5 mph downhills and no eye protection because the glasses were too foggy to see through.

Answer 2, somewhat more detailed, behind the cut.
( Read more... )

4:48pm: And another random thought
I just overheard someone complaining about how boring it is to take public transit. Too much sitting around waiting for transfers. So I'm now wondering if introverts are more like to ride, since they are more likely to have brought something to read or do while waiting...

4:28pm: Final practice....
tonight's the last team practice before the Triathlon on Sunday. It's a quick swim workout across Walden Pond and back, or some sort of run if you prefer that. I'm still arguing with my wetsuit, so I'll be swimming. (Oh yeah, did a 1 mile ocean swim in Salem this weekend. Finished 3 from last in 59:53. That's where the wetsuit and I had another disagreement until I used my superior Will upon it.)

But it's a light workout week to conserve strength for Sunday, so the practice is more an excuse to get together and have a celebratory dinner at Bertucci's. I have two teammates who one of our mentors and possibly the coach has been worried will not be fast enough at biking and running and will be pulled off the course. They weren't at practice this weekend, and neither has RSVP'd for dinner and I am worried that they may be discouraged. I think the mentor was being overly pessimistic, cause while I am faster on the bike, both are faster runners and swimmers than I am, and I am expecting to make the time cutoffs.

Anyway, I haven't put this in this forum yet, and there might be readers whose email i don't have:

URL for making donations to fight leukemia:

http://www.active.com/donate/tntma/BidgoodTri2006

If you've seen it and been meaning to donate, consider this a reminder. Don't forget that any donation of any amount makes dpolicar's donation go up. Even just 5 dollars.

If you've not seen it, here's your chance! Also, get in touch with me and give me a new email address, cause that probably means I no longer have yours.

If you can't donate this year (or this lifetime), please don't feel bad. I understand.

10:19am: Words for female people.
We did another mock-triathlon on Saturday, this time on part of the actual course we will be racing on in 2(!!) weeks. We were far from the only people to have that idea. Both the run and the bike course had numerous other athletes, most going harder and faster than our team is capable of. Plus the lake, which had no official course marked out yet, had enough other swimmers in black wetsuits that we weren't entirely sure whether any one swimmer was on our team or not.

After I got back from the bike, my running equipment was nicely laid out on my transition space. Sadly, my transition space was the floor of our minivan, and I had for some reason decided that it needed to be locked, and the key needed to be given to our mentor in charge of the practice. Which would have been fine, except that said mentor was out on the run course, making sure that the water stops were stocked and the turns had chalk marks. Apparently she didn't realized that I would be back so soon. (Don was back 10 minutes before me, and already running at this point. Boy was he upset to get to the supposed place of the first water stop and find no water, but that's another story.)

Anyway, I knew she was out there, and rather than wait at the transition area for her to return, I set off down the run course to find her. About 2 miles in, I hadn't reached her and turned back, thinking I must have missed her. I had passed a handful of runners heading out, and I passed them again on my way in. One was a woman, probably in her 50s, wearing a jersey from a previous event, carrying a waistbelt of water bottles and running without obvious pain or awkwardness. This was in marked contrast to a number of people I had seen who seemed to be limping, or holding their body in oddly tight, twisted postures. When I got to a turn in the course, I was stopped by another woman, about my age, asking if the direction I had just come from was the direction she was supposed to run to stay on the course. I confirmed, then she asked if I had seen "a girl running in a white hat." I had seen a few runners, some female, but none that I remembered wearing a white hat. So I told her, "I don't think so. I mean, I saw a girl, but no white hat."

I got back to the transition area, eventually connected with my keys, and got out on the run course. Something like a mile in, I passed both the previous women as they were on their way back in. "I found her!" called the younger, and I saw that in fact, the older woman was wearing a previously un-noted white hat. "Yay!" I responded and kept running. Then I had about 5 miles to do nothing but run and think. I wondered why it felt natural and unremarkable to refer to another woman running as a girl. At the time I didn't think she had been referring to this particular woman, who I had noted was definitely older than a girl. My mind's eye had been picturing one of the 20 or 30 somethings who I do my best not to be envious of as they stride past me, 50 pounds lighter, 3 inches shorter, confident in their running and their appearance while running, still put together in easy cool outfits, not red in the face and dripping with sweat. But still definitely old enough to be called women. "Girl" nonetheless seemed a more natural word to use.

At Wellesley they make a big deal of the fact that the students are women, not girls, and the word fit oddly our first year, accurate, but unfamiliar. And I just saw a conversation online, where a female poster was mocking a quote from a 45 year old man who had told a newspaper reporter that he had never been married, but had finally achieved financial security enough that if he did, "the girl wouldn't have to work".

I don't have any conclusions or accusations of my own anti-feminism to make here. I'm just being struck by word usage.

8:13pm: Wetsuits and Wuss Mode
When I first strated training for a century ride (read: first started any sort of exercise), I spent the first 5-10 miles of a training ride thinking, "What the heck am I doing?, "This is not any fun", or "I've got how long before the end? Why did I even start?". Then I'd go on to finish the ride in a fine mood, usually tired, but definitely glad to have done it. Endorphins or something. So I learned to call the first few miles my "wuss mode" and discount those thoughts as transient. Scores fo training rides and 4 centuries later, my wuss mode on the bike is nearly non-existent, and mostly related to how sore my rear end or my muscles are after exercise in the days before.

On Saturday we did a mini-triathlon, about half the distances we will do at the event (in 3 weeks!!!). I learned that I has separate wuss modes for each sport. For biking after swimming, mostly it's about how wet my shorts are and is still pretty short. But for swimming and running, its at least 30 minutes before I get into a rhythmic groove and start enjoying the activity. I still finish feeling good, but getting started is a killer. It's all about whether I am keeping up with the other people, which I am not, or using perfect technique, which I am not, and I feel sore or tired or whatever. Wuss mode is no fun, and its particularly bad for the swim part, because it takes about half the course or more to get into the swing of things. BY the time it's over, I'm ready to keep going.

It was extra bad on Saturday's swim because we got our team wetsuits and swam in them for the first time. Good things about wetsuits: They keep you warm and floaty and your body in a good stretched out position. Bad things about wetsuits: they keep you warmer than you are used to, and make it harder to breathe and move your arms than you are used to. We swam two laps and I was fighting the thing all the way around the first one. Coach Katherine even suggested I take it off for the second lap. I kept it on, the better to get used to it in training. The second lap was indeed much better. I wouldn't call it my friend, but we reached a sort of peace accord and I may manage to like the thing with enough practice.

Goals for this week's practicing: Work on getting out of wuss mode faster; figure out if there are thoughts, postures, whatever, that make it shorter. Get used to the silly wetsuit. Official triathlon rules allow the use in water up to 84 degrees, and it really does make you faster.

10:11pm: Triathlon training
Here's the cast of characters in the slow lane of the MIT pool most evenings. Together they (we, really) make for quite the entertaining obstacle course for someone just trying to get some laps in.

1. Extra-determined aqua-runner. With a floating contraption belted to her waist, this woman is essentially running back and forth the entire 50 meter length. From the look on her face, you'd think the world would come to an end unless she kept running.

2. Ex-mermaid aqua-cizer. This woman is wearing fins and holding floatation devices variously in her hands, in her armpits, or between her legs. Her motions are like dancing or stretching underwater and they just happen to propel her a little bit farther each time. She's very graceful and reminds me of those underwater mermaid shows.

3. "I'm only here because my boyfriend is a swimmer and he's in one of the faster lanes". Occasionally decides to swim a length very slowly. If said boyfriend comes to the side of the pool to check on her, she'll stop in the middle of the lane to talk to him.

4. "I'm in the slow lane to keep my girlfriend company". Said boyfriend sometimes hops in to swim with said girlfriend for half a length or so. They block most of the lane this way. But he doesn't stick around for long.

5. Super Powerful Guy. He's very slow, but boy can he move the water around. Swimming in the opposite direction past him, it's all I can do to keep a straight line.

6. Insecure Guy. He doesn't really swim faster than I do, but he seems to think it is important to be ahead of me. If he's behind me and I am nearing the end of the lane, he'll turn around early to make sure he's in front.

7. Girl who refuses to touch the ends of the pool and doesn't even know what stroke she's doing most of the time. Plus her goggles are all fogged up. That would be me.

4:29pm: water water everywhere
I don't cook. Which is not to say that I can't, simply that I am not inclined to.
My father does cook. He's been the primary chef for years.
My mother did cook. And she was into both container reuse and various healthy nutritional theories. Which means you can never trust the commercial labels on any container in the refrigerator unless it it still factory sealed.

So I am alone in my father's kitchen, opening cabinets and containers. I find myself in the somewhat pathetic situation of being surrounded by ingredients but unable to recognize anything as food.

11:01am: Running?
OK, so the goal was to get some data about whether the run part of a half-Ironman triathlon is so far out of my reach as to make the whole plan unfeasible. I'm still not sure how to interpret the data a gathered; it was much less conclusive than the data for the swim portion.

I went to the spiffy "Cambridge Champions Track and Field" at Danehy Park, behind the Fresh Pond Mall. It's a pretty spiffy running track surrounding an astroturf soccer field. I'm pretty sure that the Cambridge High School uses it for their track team. I know as little about serious running as I do about serious swimming, but I do know to stretch first and to drink occasionally. So did I stretch first and bring water? No. (I admit to being a moron, sometimes)

But I only ran for 56 minutes, cause the sun went down and it was cold and I could already tell I was going to hurt the next day. I wanted to limit that hurt to the good kind of hurt, so I had been jogging one lap, walking 1/2 lap and completed 16 laps that way. The online info about Danehy Park says that the track is 400 meters, and I was running in lane 4, so some online track distance calculator told me I had just run 4.177 miles in 56 minutes. If I could keep that pace, I'd complete 13.1 miles in 2.92 hours, which is under the 3 that I think I need to be able to do.

When I was swimming, each lap I did took pretty much the same time as the first lap. While I was running, each lap was taking longer and longer. There is no way I would have kept up the 56 minute pace for another 2 hours. I don't think my final time would have been super much longer than 3:30, but I don't know enough to make that prediction.

My theory is that if I can complete each event in a reasonable amount of time, then the training can be about improving my efficiency to make up for the fact that all three have to come right after each other. Swimming took 1.5 hours, biking took 3.75, and running is projected to have taken 4(?), for a total time of 9.25. The last finisher at this event last year took 9:20, including 10 minutes of transition times, so I am about 15 minutes over that right now. There are 14 training weeks in the season (allowing for the times that I will be riding another century in June), so perhaps this is a reasonable (or at least non-insane) goal? Maybe it comes down to whether I would enjoy all the running I would have to do, because that is clearly where my training needs to focus on improvement.


Oh yeah, and I am definitely walking funny this morning. I did stretch afterward, but the muscles on the top/inside of my thighs, are truly unhappy with me. Not in an injury sort of way. Just sore. Stupid new muscle groups.

2:10pm: Swimming?
I, prompted by conversations with my biking coach and teammates, was wondering if I'd be nuts to try training for a half-ironman triathlon as my first triathlon. So I decided to drop by the new pool last night to figure out what distance swimming is like. A Half Ironman is 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles of biking, and 13.1 miles of running. Ben says that as a slow runner, he does 13.1 miles in about 3 hours. I guess 4 hours for 56 miles of biking, even with hills. Don seemed to think you had to finish in 9 hours or so. So the big looming question is how long would it take me to swim that 1.2 miles? Under 2 hours?

And MIT has this new pool complex. OK, it's been there for several years now, but when was the last time I was on campus? I dropped by last night, took a tour, and bought a day pass to test out my swimming skills. The closest thing to serious swimming I've ever done was to pass the swim test for my diploma. That was proving I could swim 5 lengths of the old pool, call it a round 10 years ago. It took near constant vigilance to quell the inner monologue shouting about what a fool I looked like, but I managed to complete 86 lengths of the 25 yard pool. Almost all the lengths I did a basic breaststroke, with a couple of flailing tries at front crawl and a few lengths of inverted breaststroke just to change it up. It took under an hour and a half, so I'm probably capable of training for this triathlon.

This morning I am tired like I did more than 50 miles on the bike, and my knees are not amazingly happy with 1.2 miles worth of frog kicking. But the weak places feel like they are in different places than where biking would put them. So I should be good for the 50 mile ride around the reservoir tomorrow and the close to 50 mile ride on the Boston Marathon course on Monday.

Oh, and lunadiana, I was thinking of you in the pool. Got any years-old swimming advice?

7:28pm: Comedy of Errors on a bike.
Yet another century down. This time it was 108.7 miles in the desert of Tucson AZ. The weather was cool for the locals, but we who have been training in 40 degrees and/or rain sure appreciated it. I could feel the air pulling the water from my skin the moment I stepped off the plane, so I made my water bottle and lip balm my constant companions.

We took a 10 mile shakedown ride on Friday (the day before the big ride) to make sure our bikes had survived being shipped from Framingham. The planned route was to go straight on the main road by the hotel, then make a left on the enticingly named Speedway Ave and continue until we had gone 5 miles, turn around, return to hotel. This lasted all of three blocks from the hotel, when a crossing train with no end in sight made us veer from the plan. Fortunately, like most western towns with space and sane city planners, the roads in Tucson are a grid, so we could get to Speedway with no other incident. And we noted the location of a Denny's which would be breakfast that day and Sunday. Coming back on Speedway was a true test of urban cycling skills. Later on, our coach says he meant to tell us to use the sidewalk instead of riding under the bridge that had no space for us and in fact had ruts designed to throw us into traffic instead. But he forgot, and, having stopped to adjust a teammate's helmet, was far behind us when we approached it. Silly him. But we all survived.

Started the ride in the middle of a pack of cyclists stretching hundreds of yards in all directions. Over 7700 riders. It took us 7 minutes to cross the start line. And one we started, it took about that for me to get a flat tire. A slow leak leaking enough to slow me down, anyway. My coach had planned to ride with everyone on the team that day by starting with the stronger riders and then waiting at various rest stops for different groups to catch up. The two fastest riders on our team took off to fast for him to start with them, so he was with me and my teammate Martha. His excellent flat tire changing skills got me back on the road in a few minutes.

Apparently El Tour de Tucson is famous for making the cyclists cross two dry washes. When we heard about these, we imagined short dry riverbeds. We even claimed to have trained for them because one of our training rides wound up crossing some railroad tracks that were under construction so we had to carry our bikes across them. Boy were we wrong. These suckers were wide! The first one was only 9 miles into the course, before the pack could thin out. It looked like a scene from Exodus, with thousands of people carrying their bikes in the dusty sandy, cactus laden dirt. The rest of our team had passed us while Don changed my flat, but we caught up to them here, and then slowly pulled ahead of them after we got riding again.

But that was not to last. Maybe five miles later, my tire was soft again. Speedy tire changes were not to be this time. I only had the one spare tube, Martha's bike has smaller tires than mine, and Don's spare tube turned out not to hold air. We discovered this after I tried to pump the tube without noticing that the valve had fallen from the pump and I was pumping nothing. This time we checked for spokes or thorns poking the tube, but there was nothing. The official bike patrol showed up to help. They had no spare tubes, but they had a patch kit. We had been about to pull out my patch kit, but theirs was handier. Meanwhile, not only had our entire team passed us by, the entire team of every other chapter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society had passed us by. We know this because the Society was running its own sag wagon, following the last Team in Training rider. The last two riders passed us, and the sag wagon had to stop and wait as we were now the very last on the course. There were other non-TNT riders still behind us, but not very many.

I stopped at least once to use a full sized pump to actually get full pressure into my tire. And then by about mile 30, I was low again. I rode up to the next easy turn off, which happened to be where some sheriffs were parked to help with directions or traffic. They smiled as I pulled up and then told me not to stop, it was a good downhill after that point. I think this is where we used part of Martha's one CO2 cartridge to fill it up again. But after the good downhill I was completely flat. We decided to patch my first tube. This is where we discovered that my patch kit had dried up glue. So we opened Martha's glue, primarily to get glue all over my fingers. Fortunately a nice man from the North Texas team had a spare tube to lend me and the sharp eyes to spot the piece of glass that had eluded our eyes all this time. Without him, that might have been the end of my ride. Probably picked up the glass during the shake down ride the day before.

Flat Tire fixed! We proceeded to put as much distance between us and the TNT sag wagon as we could. It's not that she wasn't nice, it's just that we wanted to leave the honor of last place to someone else.

It was around mile 60 that we made an illegal stop at a Church's Chicken for restrooms and water. We realized that they were going to pull riders off the course at sunset (5:20pm), it was 2pm now, and we had 48 miles to go. Our average speed on the bikes so far was about 14 mph, not including the flat tire antics, so we had better hope for downhills and good legs the rest of the way. Meanwhile. it turns out, our two fastest teammates had already finished.

Then came the long stretch with no downhill to speak of, the second river crossing, which I swear was at least a quarter mile of 3 inch thick dust through which we had to carry our bikes for fear of cactus spines impaling our tires, the steepest hill I have ever climbed (fortunately very short) and finally we got to see Lisa, our LLS staff member, who informed me that I needed more sunscreen.

Eventually the course turned downhill. After the very noticeable uphills, it seemed unfair that we could hardly feel a descent. The only way we could tell was that we were not working hard and we were hitting 28 mph. That lasted for 10 miles, just what we needed. Riding the last 15 miles, we had one eye on the sun the whole way. Lisa called to check in on us and was happy to hear that we had hit mile 95. After the fast finishers had passed her, she had only seen one more of our team. We pedalled harder to see if we could catch the rest of them before the end.

Alas, it was not to be. The sun went down, we had 4 miles to go. Every intersection had a police detail directing traffic and I was certain that one of them would beckon us to the side of the road and say "No lights, no finish." But we kept pedalling. The last stretch, Don looked in his rear view mirror and announced that there was a group of three cyclists gaining on us. He thought that might give me motivation to pedal harder and get the ride done sooner. But I was pedalling as hard as I could. We swept across the finish line at 5:35pm, catching on to the tail of exactly one teammate, just seconds after she had crossed the line. Way past the finish line, at the end of the barriers marking the way, was the rest of my team cheering. After I got off my bike I could not trust my thigh muscles to hold me up. They somehow managed it. And every time I got a hug from a teammate, I cried. I was in bad shape.

But a shower, a change of clothes, and a dinner later, the DJ was playing overplayed celebratory music including the most awful medley of In The Mood, Rock Around The Clock and Wake Up Little Susie... I was of course dancing.

11:15am: Portlander's opinions areapparently more valuable than Bostonians. Or maybe I just don't go to the right malls in Boston. While shopping at the Lloyd Center mall yesterday, I was stopped by two different polling organizations and aked to select my opinions from various multiple choice lists of possible opinions about first, a commercial for a new movie coming out, and second, toothpaste boxes. Now that I htink about it, Boston was not an option on the locations list, so clearly the opinions in Portland *matter* more.

The movie coming out has something to do with George Clooney, Matt Damon and oil in the Middle East. It might involve a private oil company. It clearly involves "the government", which might just be the president and might include the CIA. The last set of questions were to gauge my political leanings as they relate to oil prices and the war(s?) in the Middle East. I had to indicate on a 5 point scale of strong agreement to strong disagreement my response to such statements as "The government has been on the wrong track for a long time" and "the CIA should be allowed to use any means necessary to gain valuable information in wartime". The statement that stuck out the most was "There are many factors outside the control of oil companies that affect the price of oil." As I walked away, I briefly entertained the notion that theentire urvey was set up to push-poll that opinion to me.

As far as toothpaste goes, I got to quickly scan a fake toothpaste aisle to find various specific "Crest Ultra-Whitening Herbal Expressions with Scope, Fresh mint Breeze flavor" types of toothpaste and then attempt to explain how much I thought Colgate was a leader in the oral care industry. Then they gave me a single box to look at and I got to answer the same questions. Whee. So when you have your next perfect toothpaste buying experience, I helped.

7:46pm: Ride report 10/22
Cold! Cold cold coldcold cold!

80 miles on Saturday in temperatures that never got above 50. And the looming rainclouds sapped all the color out of the picturesque New England Fall back roads. I'd say that layers are the key to cool weather cycling, but I never took anything off. I might as well have been in one layer. I made one wrong call reading the cue sheet, which took us onto a semi-limited access local highway (Rte 1 South in Amesbury) for a short while. Let's just call that an adventure and be glad of the teammate who lives in the area so we could get back to the mistaken turn without having to ride on the same highway.

I am now curious about mild dehydration as related to long distance cycling performance. I know the recommendation is one bottle per hour and if I seriously forget to drink I start to feel sick, that much I know. But my normal consumption is a bit more than half the recommended amount and I feel perfectly healthy while riding. But when we are doing the 70+ mile rides, I start out heading the fast group, not because I am the strongest rider, but because I have the right combination of impatience to get on the bike and ability/willingness to read a cue sheet on the fly. So I feel I'm riding at a good pace for me, slightly pushing it 'cause I am aware of the riders behind me. And then, with 15-20 miles to go, I can't keep that pace any more and fall back. Presumably someone else takes cue sheet duty at that point, since we haven't lost anyone so far.... I wind up riding alone for an hour or more, which is disappointing after spending the day with a group.

This long training season means we have two more long rides before the weekend off and then the ride (oops, I mean race) in Tucson on Nov 19th. I'm going to try drinking more consciously and see if that helps, or if it is just that I push a bit too much in the early part of the ride and so I am just out of gas by the end....

4:30pm: Why I haven't seen Serenity yet.
(the finished version anyway. I saw the first preview.)

Despite having been eagerly anticipating it for over 400 days, I have not yet managed to get to a movie theater.

9/30 Serenity opens. I'm working during the day, packing 4 bags full of stuff at night.

10/1 Up at 6am to meet for a 65 mile ride, drop the bike at home, take a quick shower, and catch a 6:20 flight to LAX.

10/2 Hanging out with my divorcing cousin and her 15 month old. Conversations about how/whether men suck and how to raise said 15-month old into a man who doesn't suck seem to take precedence over a movie (as does playing with the baby so mom can run errands and get a nap)

10/3 Working during the day, hanging with 96-year old granny plus cousin and baby in the evening.

10/4 Working during the day, driving back to LA, missing a 5:10 flight, waiting for a 7:30 flight to Portland, driving to Corvallis to arrive a bit after midnight.

10/5 Working in the morning, Sitting in dentist office to solve emergency "want to rip my face off" tooth pain in the afternoon, buying a used big purple chair and a half located in a nearby town, having dinner with sister-in-law and brother at night. Driving from Corvallis to Portland. Sleeping the first night in my new condo.

10/6 Working during the day, getting the big purple chair into the condo, driving from Portland to Seattle for best friend from middle school's bachelorette party. Drinking tea and heckling "reality" TV shows, finding hotel in evening.

10/7 Working during the day, driving back to Portland, stopping at Target and buying $400 of condo stuff, moving most of it into the condo.

10/8 Moving the rest of the stuff into the condo, measuring the walls, doing laundry and dishes, driving to a suburb to buy a used loveseat matching the big purple chair, packing the stuff that doesn't stay in the condo (only two bags home!), driving to Seattle, finding that I5 has been closed northbound and two out of three lanes on the detour are blocked by a silver SUV that rolled just before I got on the route, getting two speeding tickets in Washington state, pulling into a McDonald's to change into wedding clothes (having revamped clothing plans to take Seattle weather into account), put on makeup, style hair, drive to friend's house, arrive just in time for scheduled wedding, wait for actual wedding start, cry at appropriate moments, eat yummy dinner, cry again at toasts, eat yummy cake, drive back to hotel.

10/9 Sleep in. Drive back to wedding house for large day-after reception (wedding was~25 guests), talk to new friends of old friend for many hours. Catch up with friends from hometown, Lose bubble blowing contest, lose wedding couple trivia game, win haiku contest (cool pen, incense, tea and iTunes gift card), drive to airport, return rental car (no damage this time!), catch 10:15 flight to DC.

10/10 Catch 6:40 am flight to Boston, land 8:30am, head to work.

Been at work ever since. Could go see it tonight, will probably go home and sleep instead.

1:18am: I just need to point at last year's entry... it still applies.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/polyrhythmic/7337.html

(Though the URL is out of date. Anyone reading this who didn't get an email can let me know and I'll send you the actual letter.)

12:02pm: much biking this weekend
As I said to my roommate Monday morning, "It's a good thing I'm going to work, so I can rest up from my weekend."

Temperatures for Saturday and Sunday were predicted to be in the mid to upper 90s. So I thought it would be a great weekend to take not one, but two long bike rides. The first was a 30 mile training ride with my biking team, preparing for El Tour de Tucson in late November. Given the expected heat, Coach Don called for a 7:30 am assembly Saturday morning, and I willingly rose at 5:30 to prepare for the ride and get to Boxborough on time. We think of the shorter rides early in each season as being for the beginning cyclists who need to build up their saddle time. Something about the combination of oppressive heat, early morning start, and an event 5 months in the future meant that the only ones who came all had at least 1 century under their belts. So not so much training as socializing on wheels.

After the traditional post ride pizza fest, I stopped at home for a quick shower and re-packing, drove around in Everett and Chelsea, scrambling to find the access to the airport that doesn't require tolls, dropped off the car, rode the bike to the T and took several subway trains to North Station. Which was unfortunate, as the train I wanted was actually departing from South Station. But not *so* unfortunate, as I had left plenty of time before the train, so a few more awkward subway rides with bike and heavy bag, I wound up on the right commuter rail train to the southern part of the state. I met my Tahoe teammate Annie and spent the night at her house. She and her husband live in an adorable ex-summer home on a private lake in Wrentham that has been in her husband's family since he was a little boy. The architecture is nice, the lake is beautiful and the house is full of family history in the form of pictures and mementos.

The two of us were up at 5:30am (again!) on Sunday, to drive out to Falmouth, where we took the ferry to Martha's Vineyard and met up with our other teammate Lucy for a 40 mile ride around the island. It was again very hot, and it was a bit later in the day. But the beaches out there are really nice, and as summer has barely gotten into its swing, the crowds were bearable still. Lucy's mom, who lives there all year, except for July and August, was nice enough to babysit our bags. We stopped at the glass blowing workshop and were distracted from the very beautiful art glass pieces by the well muscled man in tank top and shorts assisting the glass blower. They were making a complicated piece, a bowl with four different colored stripes. We didn't stay to the end, being far too addicted to biking.

We also stopped in Aquinnah, also known as Gay Head for a quick PB&J fuel up and I bought a completely decadent "Smores Bar". Graham crust with tons of marshmallows and chocolate pieces melted on top. I am such a sucker for smores, and this was pure heaven. The ride from Menemsha to Gay Head was supposed to be 9 miles of hills, according to the guy who thought we were going to get on the bike ferry at Menemsha. Turned out to be about 7 miles of hills, but not really bad hills. Lucy said that the last time she rode them it felt much harder, but after Tahoe, they felt just...normal. Yay for gaining strength.

Getting on the return ferry was an adventure because Annie and I were biking there, needing to cover 6 miles in about half an hour, and Lucy was driving our bags and the yummy dessert Annie was bringing back to her family and friends. I felt a bit guilty booking down the bike path from Edgartown to Oak Bluffs, whipping past pedestrians and casual bikers, but being polite about making sure they knew I was coming up on them. When we got to the Ferry, Lucy was stuck in traffic moving slower than our bikes, so we had less than a minute to grab our stuff from her and run off to the ferry, clomping down the dock in bike shoes and hoping the awkward bike and bag carry wouldn't knock us over. But we made it in time for Annie to get to her dinner, and me to catch the next commuter rail back to South Station.

When I got home, I realized that apparently I don't know where my shoulders are. I wore a sleeveless jersey for the first time that day and apparently the sunscreen didn't make it all the way up my arms, especially the back par just where it means the shoulder. Good thing that odd tan lines make for good stories. My bike glove perma-tan is already back in full force too, no matter how much sunscreen I apply.

6:04pm: So, how'd it go?
Things I learned, in no particular order:

Long drives through mountain roads practically always entail being stuck behind traffic for a long time. Don't count on hitting a close scheduled arrival.

The Mass/NH TNT team can be counted on to be running up to 30 minutes behind schedule, even if they are not specifically waiting for you.

7000 feet is high up. It can be hard to breathe up there.

Stopping when you can't get a lungful of air is a good idea.

( Read more... )

2:20pm: 100 more miles
I'm off now for Lake Tahoe (really, Stateline, Nevada). Sunday is my second century ride ever. It will be substantially harder to complete than the first. I believe I can do it, but I am expecting several painful points where I just wanna quit. Any spare thoughts you send my way from about 6am-6pm PDT on Sunday will be appreciated.

Northern Californians: Look for me next week. I expect Monday will be a complete loss, and count myself lucky if I manage to make it from Tahoe to Mountain View without too many nap breaks. But after that, I'm around through Saturday.

3:28pm: Saw Serenity in Portland
As dr_tectonic says, "Joss Whedon is a fucking bastard." He didn't make *me* cry, though. At the moment I believe this is the time for "quiet contemplation". I wonder what I would think if I hadn't taken my mother with me last night?