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Oy

I'm racing the Sentinel Olympic-distance triathlon on Sunday, and here's a recap of my "preparations."

I raced a half-ironman two weeks ago. The following weekend, I attended cyclocross clinics both Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday, I crashed -- skidded, really -- and tore some skin off my left leg and both knees. No biggie. During Sunday's clinic I simply added to the thigh bruises I started on Saturday.

Tuesday morning I was supposed to go to a boot camp workout but didn't make it. On Wednesday, I went out for an easy trail ride with a friend. Near the end of our ride, at low speed, I rolled over something, maybe a large curved stick, that went into my front wheel. In its trajectory that object bent a spoke and broke the valve off the tube, causing the tire to flat rather immediately, and sending me flying over the handlebars. I landed on my hands and chest, lost just a bit more skin from my knees, and got a new and very colorful bruise to add to the collection on my right thigh. I was able to brush myself off pretty quickly, fix the flat (my first on the cyclocross bike!) and ride home just fine, albeit on a wobbly front wheel.

After the crash I went to the pool to swim with my usual masters group, doing 3400 yards. Later that evening I got my "real" biking workout in a 70-minute spin class, which I followed by a short but intense 10 minutes on the treadmill. It all seemed like a good idea at the time.

Thursday morning I got up and attended a makeup session for the boot camp I missed on Tuesday. (Which was awesome because it was just me and my friend, the instructor, one-on-one. Sorry about the whining, M.) We did core work, push-ups and drills and sprinted stairs as the sun rose over the misty park. I ran a total of 50 minutes, too. Fifty painful minutes on totally dead legs. By noon I couldn't lift my arms above shoulder height. It occurred to me at this point that I had probably cushioned the previous day's bike crash by catching myself on my hands. Which means I did a lot of microdamage to the muscles in my shoulders. Ow ow ow. I spent the rest of the day feeling like crap, like I had been beaten by a bunch of little kids with baseball bats. No serious damage, just a lot of all-around soreness.

Thursday night I went out to dinner with friends and drank a large quantity of German dopplebock that I later discovered has an alcohol content of 7.4%. The second 0.5L serving was totally excessive. But it was yummy! Plus oh yeah, a glass of cheap cabernet.

Today, Friday, I decided I should probably ride the triathlon bike at least once in the two weeks between Big Kahuna and Sentinel. Or at least, you know, tear the Big Kahuna race number off the frame. Maybe scrape off the fossilized energy gel. So I rode to the park, did a few fast laps of the Polo Fields, went out the beach and back, about 50 minutes total. Lucky for me, it was an uneventful ride. Except that it felt totally weird to be on that bike after so much time on the cross bike with its lower saddle, forgiving ride and relatively squishy tires.

And then I swam about 1600 yards. Just to make sure I could do it. It was reassuring that my shoulders seem to have regained their full range of motion. I got into the hot tub after my swim, and a man there who had been watching me swim (creepy?) asked how and where I learned to do flipturns. I pointed to the pool I had just hauled my weary self out of and he was blown away -- he assumed I was a high school swimmer. This cracks me up because as anyone who has ever swum with me knows, I am a hesitant and ugly flip-turner. I guess my turns are no less elegant than the typical YMCA swimmer's. At least I gave this man hope that it is possible to learn flipturns even as a set-in-your-ways adult. We talked about swimming and running marathons until the hot tub jets stopped, signaling that I had been in there for 15 minutes and was fully cooked.

And now here I am, blogging instead of packing for this weekend's race. (I may have consumed a margarita or three this evening; blame my husband for making them so tasty. And one of my elbow scabs is oozing on the sofa cushions, I bet you really want to come hang out here now.) Tomorrow I will do a short run, maybe 20 minutes, to make sure my legs still function, more or less. And then I'll head down to Santa Cruz again to hang out with friends on the beach and hopefully not do any more damage to myself before the race.

There is actually a cyclocross race on Sunday not too far from the Sentinel race site. I spent about thirty seconds considering doing both races. But when I did the math I realized I wouldn't have quite enough time to drive to the second race. It's a good thing, because doing both races in one day would probably be a really stupid stunt.

September 19, 2008 11:25 PM