Yeah, I hope not sporadically

Sorry about the sporadic blogging. So many things going on, and I haven't been feeling super well so have been opting for sleep rather than blogging most evenings. Even though it would be so easy to transfer our Party Pardee 100k registration to other people, it looks like we're going to try to tough out the ride on our own. We still have til April 3 to get ready. But last year I was doing 40+ mile rides in February on the weekends and riding on the trainer before work twice a week too. This year, well... not so much. The trainer is folded up and hidden behind an end table. I'm basically just riding on Saturdays. Last year hills weren't something I worried about because St Croix 70.3 hadn't been that long ago and any time I rode outside when we lived on St Thomas I was riding on hills. This year, well... until a week ago the last time I rode on a hill was probably at the Vineman Aquabike. Who needs hills when training for Ironman Florida?

This past Saturday Dave and I rode hills again. By hills I mean hills for someone who lives in Sacramento. We rode from the hatchery up to Beals Point and back, then did a few extra miles to get closer to 25 miles. When we first moved here from St Thomas, we rented bikes and rode up to Beals and we figured we must have misunderstood the directions since we'd heard it was a hilly ride. I can't really remember right now but I am not sure if there is more than a 7% grade on that part of the bike path. So, for someone who'd ridden the Beast a few months earlier, well, this was a flat ride. Now that we've lived in Sac for 2.5 years, that's the part of the bike path we ride when we need to do hills and don't want to have to plot out a ride in the foothills on roads with which we aren't familiar.

The ride was fine, not great, not awful. It stopped being fun for me after about 10 miles though. Worked up a sweat riding up and then cooled off really quickly and then rode downhill. I was not comfortable and not smiling. I felt like such a wimp. Last year during my tough weekend workouts, I'd tell myself "This is what I'm doing today." to remind myself I had nothing else to do and this was just part of the plan to get to Florida. It doesn't work quite as well now because I was remembering fondly the weekends we had in January when it just kept raining and raining and we just stayed inside in pajamas all day watching movies and drinking hot tea. Saturday around 11am when we were on our ride, I tried telling myself that I just needed to ride 25 and then I could sit on my butt all day. But wow that was so hard. Ended up getting up to 24.something. Put me in 2009 and I would've ridden back and forth until my bike computer hit 25.0. Not in 2010.


I'm not really looking forward to the physical challenge of Party Pardee yet. I'm not backing out because it's a pretty ride and my husband and I haven't done any organized rides together and it's a great excuse to do the route and not have to worry about cars as much. Being gluten free means I don't get to enjoy the wonderful buffets of delectables at these events, but I still get to appreciate the value of having hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other riders on the roads with me. My main hesitation in riding on the roads is safety. Automobile drivers just don't seem to see bicyclists. Some bike safety instructors teach cyclists to act like their invisible. I hate feeling that way, but the closest calls I've had with vehicles I was about as lit up and reflective as possible. So clearly I must have just been invisible. Point being, if I can't convince everyone to ditch their cars and ride a bike whenever possible, I can at least take advantage of having lots of other cyclists on the road to hopefully serve as a visible reminder to Share the Road. Critical mass baby.

So, April 3 is my big event. It's going to kick my butt and I may be miserable and wondering why I'm doing it. I just need to remember it's not a race, it's just for fun, and we can take all day because I can't eat the food at the finish either. But hopefully I won't be too slow for my husband to enjoy himself. He may need to bring the camera...

(Blog title quote is from Clueless, in case you were wondering...)