training on site

i forgot to mention, santa did finish the race at about the 16:20 time. so he was pretty happy.

also some cool shirts we saw while waiting: "Death before DNF" and some chick with "I couldn't possibly! I have to run, bike and swim in the morning."

also i was toying with getting a tatoo. not sure if i mentioned it before. but standing in line i found out what it will be. looks like about 1 in 4 people get a tatoo. on the right calf about the top of a long sock up the leg. so there you go.

while on site we decided to run and bike the course. i was feeling great all the way up to the site but the day after the race i went to bed feeling sick. it lasted about 3-4 days. nasty headache and stomach stuff. resa got it about 3 days after i did and it lasted the same amount of time. weird. certainly not the flu or a cold. ???

but whatever. i was feeling yucky but we biked about 20 miles just around for fun on tuesday. followed by running the run course from about mile 3 to 7 and back. so not much of a workout. but the run course is HILLY. but nothing too killer. just not flat like i read it was. or maybe for having hills all around its as flat as it can be. and it was very hot. must have been about 90 and sunny. killed us. we ran it at the hottest point of the day. probably about 3 hours sooner than we will this coming year. so we drank and drank and chilled in the lake.

the next day was a bike day. we planned on biking the first half of the course the first day and the second half the next. the bike course looks a bit easier than i thought it would be from what i read. it starts out flat does one hill and goes flat for 45 miles. easy. which it was. we road casually out on it at about 16mph. so plenty fast enough. then the first real hill richter pass showed up. and the hammer hit us. wow. the big climb in the tour de france is a long 8degree mountain stage Alpe Du Heuz or something. Richter is 6 degrees and 6 miles long. not worth mentioning to the tour guys. heh. but to us. bam!

down goes frazier.

and ken too. i thought all along this year i might need smaller gears on the bike to handle it. even at the bottom i told resa i was not geared for this. i was right. i grannied it up the hill, but had to stop when i totally lagged my legs. happened to both of us about 3 times. new gears will be an easy swap and that will fix that. the time on those six miles though. ouch. about an hour is going to be lost just there. and getting a good ride after that is going to be hard too. you just get blown up doing that part. i am really hoping now that gears and a new body are going to make it ok. there were a lot of chalk messages on the route too. the only one i remember other than "Go Tom" "Go Sally" "Go whoever" messages was this one: "Get Over This BITCH!!!" if that doesn't make you smile... nothing will.

down the other side we went. zoom, 4 miles down and into the rollers. only got the bikes up to about 35 mph. we had crossed the 50 mile point and decided to call it good when the RV showed up about 30 seconds after we reached the bottom of the hill.

the next day was planned as rollers and yellow lake. but we had driven home that way and other than being annoying it didnt look all that bad really. certainly not nearly as bad as richter. we did some math the next day and decided to head out after lunch. staging and overhead from biking the second half would have gotten us out about 3 in the afternoon so we went for a 7 mile run in the hills instead.

we packed up and went on home.

not as confident. at least not me. looks harder than i thought it would be, but not much. just a bit. also sadly a guy died while doing the swim portion of the race.


under a year to go now.

clock is ticking now. off to swim in the morning. running 12ish tomorrow night. thats the plan. see how i do. :-)