Hello, All!
How is it going?! Are you having a wonderful Spring?
I have a love/hate relationship with Spring. I love that it is gorgeous and everything is so fresh and colorful…..but there is that whole mud-season thing.
Thanks, Jasper.
But, alas, it is worth it.
I have taken home school to the next level. Kit is going to be writing in no time! And my child thinks that I have lost it.
But in exciting news….
At the beginning of this month we took a quick road trip to California. Just a 14 hour drive. No biggie. Thank goodness Brooke and Jasper are so easy to travel with!
Met the parents at their cabin in Big Bear (it was amazing not having to go into LA).
We spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday playing around and checking out the local attractions. This girl. We are in so much trouble.
I have never been this cool.
On a not so exciting note….my low back went bananas. For some reason I struggle with certain mattresses and mattress toppers (and 14 hour road trips). Well, my back was not a fan of the very nice mattress and on Thursday when I went to ride I literally could not pedal my bike. I had stabbing pain in my quad (initially I thought I pulled something but when it moved to the other side as well, I knew it was coming from somewhere else). It was like a 9 out of 10 pain. Like a knife right into the thigh. I rode for a whole 3 miles or something like that. Sent Ken out to finish the ride and returned to stretch and ice. I then slept on the floor. Ha. Ken and Jasper were not mad about having the bed to themselves 😉 Plus, I slept SO good on the floor. Win win.
I was able to ride easy on Friday and enjoy the bike path! Only had pain 60% of the time!
On Saturday, we bid Brooke farewell….Somehow in the almost 6 years that Brooke has been on this Earth, this was the first night that neither Ken or I was with her?!?! She happily kicked us out to play with Mimi and Gpa. Pretty sure she didn’t even know we were gone.
Ken and I drove down the mountain and were greeted with smog. Gross.
And a side of California traffic. Also gross.
We eventually made it to the race expo. Did the check in thing, got our numbers and listened to the racer meeting.
And then we drove to our hotel. Um, yes please.
We took a minute to change and then hit the road for some openers on the bike. Thankfully the legs were about 85% and I had hope for the next day! Just about an hour and a half on the bikes and we were ready to lounge by the pool for about an hour before dinner. (We went to dinner at our hotel and it was delicious…and convenient!).
Spent the evening prepping for race day and it was an early lights out!
On Sunday, we were up at 4:30 to get ready to ride! Loaded up, grabbed some breakfast and were in the corrals by 6:45 am.
Now, I am not going to go into a lot of detail here….I could probably write you a novel…but let’s put it this way-it was 134 miles of pavement, double track and single track. That is a long way.
Ken had a good start but because of an issue with not knowing if he had to stop at a traffic light (he stopped…but then a group of like 200 people who he had gotten away from blew through it-then he had to chase the rest of the day). He finished the day in an incredible 29th place. He amazes me always.
The start was my first time in a mass start. It was a bit scary trusting that many people and I just kind of stayed to the back. Bad plan. By the time I got out of the start chute, everyone had taken off (so much for neutral roll out). It was all I could do to catch onto a group of 2 and we worked together to make it back to the group. We managed to catch a lot of people before the dirt section, but then I had a mechanical issue and mayhem because of the sheer number of people left me on the side of the trail for 5 minutes waiting to get back in the line of people! Things eventually settled down a bit and I went on to ride the rest of the day mostly solo (rough). I did get into a few groups with some crazy fit dudes and those miles flew by. I was proud of myself for riding some dirt sections that would have been scary on my mountain bike (but I was too tired to care at that point and just did it).
In the end, I made it to the finish (I carried all my own food and only took water at the Aid Stations-EXCEPT the last one when I ended up with the product mix that they were using in my bottle). It made me want to throw up. Something to that whole “don’t do anything new on race day” thing. Thankfully, it was only the last 4 miles that I used it…and never again.
I was very happy to see Ken (who had plenty of time to change, eat, drive to Colorado and back…by the time I finished). Ate, grabbed our goodie bags and headed to the car!
If you finish, you earn beer. I get it, you kind of need it at the end. 10:39 for me…yes, ten hours and thirty-nine minutes. A LONG day on the bike! I didn’t meet my goal of under 10 hours, but given that I couldn’t ride a bike 3 days prior and that I ended up solo for most of the ride, I will take it.
On the way back to Big Bear, Ken and I each ate our own pint of ice cream. Yes, that is dirt on my face. I was filthy.
While we were gone, Brooke didn’t have ANY fun!
Zoo, museum, ride on a pirate ship, fishing and 2 parks. All in less than 2 days?!
It was a fantastic trip!
The day after we got back, Brooke had a field trip to an area where there are a bunch of ammonite fossils. Of course, it snowed on the way over-but somehow we stayed dry on the hike! It was pretty neat.
Then the next day, we had a field trip the a farm where they make cheese! (We lucked out and this one was REALLY close to home!).
Just milking a cow!
There has been a lot of riding on roads that look like this lately. Be still my heart.
Brooke is not mad about seeing grass again 😉
Quality park time…Jasper, not so thrilled.
I took a few days off of the bike after the Belgian Waffle Ride…10+ hours will do that to you. But… we have since been getting back to the workouts and prepping for the next race on the schedule! That one is only 100 miles 😉
Ken is actually going to jump into a mountain bike race on Saturday as it will hopefully allow him to qualify for Nationals (which is about 2 hours from us!). Never a dull moment.
Now that BWR is over, time to get some running back into the plan. It should be a nice addition to the yard work and dirt moving that is currently taking over my life 😉
Until next time…
