So it's past midnight, and tomorrow morning in the AM I have to drive up to Paso Robles with my gents, William and the injured David Gray (bike crash going fast down a curve: we are happy the clavicle is all that was hurt... clavicles are repairable, David Grays are irreplaceable.) But I wanted to write at least a little something-something.
It's time for my first TRI of the season, oh yes children, both swimming and biking AND running!! I've become a little accustomed to just to one of the multisports I hardly recall what it's like to Body Glide up my life and strip that wetsuit off and hop all soggy onto my saddle. But like everything, race day is upon me before I even know it, and I can just hope for glory. Or at least moderate glory.
Glory was attained during Ragnar a few short weekends ago, where Van #2 of the Fortius team kicked it so hard in the race nuts it was gasping for air. Firstly, everyone was chill as eff and rockingly positive in mood, and totally down to partake in Golden Road brews after our first hot and steamy Anaheim miles, and kept up the morale even after sleeping on a lawn for an hour and then getting rudely awoken by sprinklers. (I was in the van, where I wasn't sleeping but instead thinking of having to pee and listening to an overactive digestive tract.) My three legs had been shortened and Alison's had been lengthened (significantly... her last was to be 11.1 miles), and what with her lawyer job sleep depriving her all week, and her Leona 50-mile trail run coming up, I offered to swap out come lap 2 and be a mensch. Plus I was interested to see if I could bust it up on a near half marathon after little sleep and previous ass busting. Sure enough, though we just all garnered a few hours in our van nap that morning after a Denny food fest, everyone practically PRed for the race pace-wise, giving a fabulously strong finish. I was super proud to maintain an 8:32 pace for my 11.1 (WITH traffic light stops--there were at least five, and this monster hill in the middle-- wretch!!-- and frogger dodging pedestrians on the boardwalk come mile 9.5. Almost knocked over a big dude eating an ice cream cone. Shit was so real.) In the end, our team came in fourth in our division, which is rad, especially since we had a coupla snafus and only missed rank 3 by six minutes, that, had all gone swimmingly, we woulda had on lock. But no worries, we still were glorious champions (as evidenced by my learning of "We Are the Champions" on ukulele in the van, grace a my cell phone. Oh internet!) To feel like you were there, you may watch the kickass video I threw together afterwards, featuring the Gotye theme song of van 2, which played on repeat on Alison's iPad.
I do declare, I'm getting into pretty good running shape, and am kiiiiinda interested to see what's going to happen at Wildflower. Kinda. The rest of me is like, "Oh shit, I have to DO that? UUUUUGH." To review last year's travails... regard: http://hollywoodtriathlete.blogspot.com/2011/05/wildflower-long-course-epic-saga.html
Word on the street is the winds shouldn't be over 10 mph, whereas they were 30 last year (bitchass winds!) So that already should make the bike slightly less awful. Then there's the whole pint of blood not missing from my blood stream, which might be helpful as well. And I've been training according to some plans I got based on my lactate threshold with decent amounts of fidelity (one of these days I will post that)... of course my swimming's bleh, but I did my length in 37 minutes in the pool, and I'm just trying for 38 to match last year, so we're already in a good place. So what should my goal be? I have no idea. With the lack of wind and good run training, I could viably shave off a good amount of time. But for now, I'm just going to say, under 7. Maybe 6:30. Maybe better. But let's not get too cray. We all know this course is a bitch, and this is all, knock on wood, if all goes TOTALLY IDEALLY. So whatever, in the end, lez just do it.
Ok. Time to see what I haven't packed. And sleep. And keep pounding my Gatorade so I hydrate up what my time in the brewery hath taken away from me. More to come, of course. Woot woooooooot, Wildflower, year four, triathaversary!!
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