Had a good week of workouts - long swim at the gym Tuesday, solo bike ride to Sheri's and back on Wednesday (really made myself work hard!), another good bike ride to Friant with Jason and Dave on Thursday (I kept up!), and a swim across the lake and back on Friday morning with 4 of my friends who are also doing Ironman CDA! The water was so perfect and calm on Friday too - it was like the lake thanking us for putting up with it while it's been so windy and choppy.
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| Took this picture of myself while riding back from Sheri's ... that's right - gone are the scaredy cat days of keeping the hands at 10 & 2! |
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| Ironmen to Be!! Shelley, Chris, Bob, Becki and Me! |
Saturday's schedule called for a short bike/long run brick. It was fun. I rode my bike from my house, just out to the top of Hospital Hill and back and then ran to Starbucks to meet Katie. She graciously ran nice and easy with me ... but fast enough to get away from the monster snake on the trail!
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| Look at the snake! It was spread across the whole trail before I started getting my camera out... |
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| I swear we didn't plan to be twins |
As if this wasn't enough activity for Saturday, I went to Jason's kid's b-day party at SkyWalk - a gigantic warehouse just filled with trampolines and kids. Not sure how their liability insurance allows it, but adults are allowed to jump too, so we did. That was a tough workout! Ironman training did not prepare me for it...
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| No Ironmen-to-be were hurt in the making of this photograph |
Sunday's schedule called for a 3 hour bike and 25 minute run. I was originally planning on riding with a group to Superior Dairy in Hanford for ice cream, but a lot of people couldn't come so we decided to change our plan. I was bummed, but in retrospect, that would have been 70-80 miles - a lot more than I needed.
Instead, me, Jason and Kelly rode out to the Peach Blossom Cafe where Kelly's husband met us for breakfast. We stuffed our faces and then rode the 20 miles back. My chile verde omelet turned out to be not nearly as bad of a choice as I thought. Maybe I'll stuff one of those in my special needs bag... Kelly's husband, Dave, was very clever and drove their sedan rather than their SUV so we couldn't be tempted to ask for rides home : )
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| Wait .. we have to ride home now? |
The weekend's animal apocalypse continued on the way home when we road straight through a mile of grasshoppers covering the road. As we rode through them, they jumped all over us. Kelly is deathly afraid of grasshoppers, so this was quite entertaining ... until one jumped right onto my mouth. Ewwwwwww! I guess that was karma for making fun of Kelly.
The excitement didn't end there. As we rode through the park to get home, there was a huge fire right in Woodward Park! Of course, we stuck around to see all the excitement ...
Surpisingly, the firemen were not the highlight of my weekend .. that honor would go to my Ironman send-off gift from my dear friend, Kelly. While I was hoping the gift was going to be her stowing away in my suitcase and doing this thing with me, she gave me the next best thing ... my very own Mockingjay pin to keep me safe and victorious at the
And when I finally sat down last night to read the official Ironman Athlete's Guide, I realized this might be a little bit more like the Hunger Games than I originally anticipated ... if you break the rules you have to sit in a "penalty box" ... you can hold onto a kayak during the swim to take a break but you cannot use it to help you make "forward progress" ... and the run course description claims there is one "defining" hill. What kind of description is that?! 13 days...
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