pre-race day fun

(this is the church i am going to get married in...as soon as i find the guy...and convince him i am really not that bad ;) and although this particular life event is so far off in the very distant future, its always good to know what you want. i saw this church last year during our first trip up to Vineman and immediately fell in love with it. its a little ways before the entrance to the magnificent Redwood forest that has quickly become one of my favorite places in the world - just an FYI)

because Bri and i were not racing in the half ironman on Sunday, we had the time, energy and carefree attitude to take us wherever we wanted to be whenever we wanted to be there. everyone in the cabin woke up around 7ish to me knocking on the window, asking to be let in so i could pee in the toilet and not in the bushes for the second time that morning (because this trip to support one of my bestest friends ever in her first half ironman endeavor was so last minute, i had absolutely no money set aside for this rendezvous...so i slept in Bri's XTERRA the first night because i felt bad for not being able to contribute to the cost of the sweet cabin Paul A hooked everyone up with). after all of the cabin mates were up and moving around, i begged Bri to take me to the Coffee Bazaar (remember i cannot drive a stick so i was at the mercy of everyone else's schedules this weekend, which turned out to be perfect by the way) so i could savor my newly found organic, raw, undoubtedly awesome almonds (Sandra brought them in their natural state and it was not what i was expecting them to look like). i swear, it was the greatest discovery in my little world since i found Barney Butter. Coffee Bazaar is the place i met Coach Gurujan and Allie every morning last year for our morning Joe and where i randomly started up a conversation this year with a very cute triathlete who happened to be sitting inches away from me. we ended up running into "Tim" at least 3 times throughout the weekend and i actually saw him and cheered for him at the race, which is crazy since there were at least 1300 athletes competing that day. strange. anyway i digress, we got a call saying it was time to send Denner a "good luck" video postcard for Ironman Lake Placid. that might have been the most awkward, ridiculously funny stunt we pulled all weekend, up until we decided to send him a "congratulations" video postcard the next day...and that kids was just classic. i promise to post them if i can get a hold of them - they're "special" to put it kindly.

now to the workout: i talked Bri into escorting me through the roads of Guerneville around 1030ish. it was to be a hour and a half easy ride - yep, you're thoughts are headed in the right direction...i can't make anything easy. i think we ended up doing some pretty decent climbs to gain almost 1,100 feet in elevation. it was, however, a fantastic ride through the redwood lined highway 116 and i loved every single minute of it. my only goal for the ride was to stay in the big chain ring the entire way out and hopefully be able to do the same on the way back. i was wanting to venture to my pain cave but never quite made it. when we got to a point where we thought it was safe to make the turnaround, we took it. it was a little shorter than the allotted time given by CB, but we had a really smokin' down hill for a good portion of the ride and figured it would take us about double the time to make it back. later we realized that we were just plain retarded in our judgement of power output or we just smoked it - either way, we made it back in half the time it took us to get there. i ended up dropping into my small chain ring on the way back for one climb that i thought was going to be much much tougher than it actually was but stayed in the big boy the rest of the way. all in all, we only ended up riding for an hour because of the poor misjudgment, but we flew on the way back and i led most of the way so there was no drafting on my part to make the ride faster or easier. we averaged about 15-16 mph on the way out and about 18-19 on the way back. it felt awesome! Muffasa was really rolling under me and i had a couple of moments where i could feel my wings start to expand and my angel riding along with me. like i said - awesome. (check out the stats)

then came the expo where i was able to finally try on some one piece racing suits. i have been thinking that this might be a cool thing to do my first half in - one because there is no shirt/short separation, so there isn't any room for anything to ride up or fall down and two because everyone looks so cool wearing them...that was until i actually saw a couple on myself and quickly changed my mind - not the most flattering thing on this body so i am going to stick with the tri top and short combo. i am definitely not secure enough with my body to pull that contraption off. but i did get to test run the Zoots i had been eyeing and since i have given up drinking for the time being, i was completely sober on this jaunt around the parking lot where i yelled out "SOLD!" to publicly display my approval for the awesomeness that the new Zoot racing flats are.

all in all, it was a great expo and i got to meet up with the owner of Art of Tri to get an awesome new hoodie that might be the most comfortable thing i own to date. i also got the new goggles i saw in Triathlete Magazine and the suction on these things is unrivaled in my limited experience with the devices. we also ran into Coach doing his normal Coach things and that made the experience that much better :)