CRASH!

Well this post is kind of from the past but if nothing else will jog my memory one day as I look back over my blog. Last weekend I had my first major bike wreck. Now I do have to take some responsibility for it in that I went down on my bike the weekend before in an attempt to climb a large hill at tri-camp in a bigger gear the second time up....and made a gear change at a bad time and dropped my chain....therefore landing myself on the pavement...but hey lesson learned. Well, not such an easy lesson. That lesson would cost me a much bigger challenge the following week. After tri-camp I hauled my bike into the shop complaining of derailler issues. The bike was adjusted and fixed. The following day I was riding my bike on the trainer and just felt the bike was still "off"....hauled it back into the shop and complained of it still not riding right. The bike techs kind of humored me checked it over gave it a little adjustment and sent me on my way. Well, Saturday I rode the hills of San Antonio. My bike was riding awkward at first and caused a minor fall. One of my riding buddies adjusted the derailler again...and we started off. Well, my bike was jumping and skipping gears all over the place...making me a little uneasy. My thought was, "well we are almost done so just gut it out" Forty six miles into a 60 mile ride my derailler snapped off and landed in my gears....placing me smack head down onto the pavement. It was ugly!! The good news is that other than being really banged up I had no major injuries...the bad news is my bike needed a new derailler, chain, hanger etc. Needless to say the ride was over. We caught a ride back into town and decided to go ahead and run 5 miles so that the day wasn't a total waste. Well, my bike is back and I am heading out for a 60 mile ride on the flats tomorrow...hopefully my bike and I can start fresh and have a more positive relationship tomorrow. The bike shop did admit that they missed the stress fracture in my derailler the first time. I think they may take me a bit more seriously now!! I may not always have the technical words for what is up but I do ride about 150 miles a week...I know when my bike is not right! I am certainly tired of eating the pavement so hopefully I am done with that. Well, until next time...

It has been awhile!

Well, I have tons to update but currently I am just too tired to deal with photos so I will leave that to tomorrow. We have been plugging along in school, boyscout stuff, triathlon stuff pretty much the typical. I am going to try and update on a daily basis which right now seems crazy to say as it has been a month since I have posted ANYTHING....but back on the horse with new goals! I am going to post anything cool from school we do, Nicholas' oh so cute moments and training happenings as well. I just can not maintain three blogs...one for school, once for training and one for family happenings...I thought about it and then decided....CRAZY!! Anyway...because I can't deal with photos tonight I will share my training of the day. It was on the bike. I was to do a two hour training ride with some bridge repeats...need some elevation work with a couple of the half ironmans I have on the schedule. So I enlisted a fellow rider who is a super fast cyclist to join me. Now, he is much faster than me..pretty much a 50% effort ride for him, 85% or higher effort for me (and I am not really grandma slow..I can hold my own). We started bright and early at 5:30 and headed out. Weather a bit chilly but not horrible...slipped on some leg warmers which took care of the problem(of course this would come back to bite me later) Anyway, we head out to the beach and are cruising along with good cadence and decent speed and I am thinking...ok not too bad...this two hours may fly by...I noticed my pigtails were flying but really didn't think about it much. As we u-turn and head the other direction, being the majority of our ride, everything kind of changed. All of a sudden I am gripping my handle bars for dear life. There was a nice side wind. So much for 2 hours flying by:( Well I just dug in and decided I would stay with my riding pal no matter what..certainly didn't want him to have to ride any slower. Well we made it to the bridges crossed over them and then came back over them with no chat time. That is one serious difference between riding with guys versus girls....girls usually have small intervals of chat..guys..not so much. At one point I yelled through the wind...Hey I might need to get a drink...well that never happened as we never slowed down enough for another 5 miles where I wasn't afraid of the wind ripping me off my bike or just flat falling...I had the fleeting thought we may catch a tail wind on the way home...well that never happened either..just the same old stinkin cross wind ..ugh! But I will say..I was proud of myself because I held on...literally by my fingernails but I did. It was a great speed workout for me and another chink in my armor in the mental toughness category. One of my mottos for this season is "Being comfortable with being uncomfortable" I worked on that today. My riding pal even had the audacity to push sprints to finish out the ride. It was a feeling of accomplishment and overall a GREAT ride....one step closer to accomplishing my racing goals for this season!! The huge unexpected bonus for today was that my leg warmers rubbed a nice gash/burn in my inner thigh....I may have put them on the wrong legs...I am not sure....what I do know is that my leg is on fire and getting in the pool tomorrow morning at 5 AM could possibly be ugly!! Oh well!! Next time I should probably look for the L/R to see which leg is which! Learned that lesson the hard way! Until next time!