Hill Seeker

What a weekend! I'll go back and post a race report but I wanted to get a few of my thoughts down before I forgot them :)

Saturday was my 30th Birthday so to celebrate I did a local Sprint Triathlon. It was great fun and in spite of very little sleep the night before I finished strong and had a blast. One of my best friends had given me a tiara with 30 on it. I decided to put it on in T2 and run the 5k with it. WOO HOO! I got many compliments and really enjoyed the silliness it brought out.

After the race Saturday morning (again full race report to follow), my husband and I went out to lunch with my best friends, enjoyed delicious gourmet cupcakes from Saint Cupcake Bakery and then we went home and took a long nap. Later than night we went out with other friends and celebrated into the early hours of the morning. Whew! It was quite a day.

Sunday after only about 5.5 hours of sleep I relaxed around the house getting myself ready for a long day in the saddle. I was going to be a hill seeker. For those of you not in my head (ok that's pretty much everyone), I have a love - hate relationship with hills. For most of my cycling career I have avoided hills like the plague. Fast forward to winter of this year. I knew the IM course had hills (I had no idea at the time how many) so I printed the course elevation profile with the words I Love Climbing and posted it at my desk. I was going to love hills if it killed me.

So I had planned to do a 6 hour bike ride on Sunday with a 2.5 mile transition run. After riding the actual course in CDA last weekend I came home resolved to find every rolling hill I could and practice gearing, cornering and descending as much as possible. So I headed out....

Wow! Started with Murray Hill then headed up the Scholls Ferry Hill and over onto Roy Rogers which has a series of rollers, cut through some back roads which had some good rollers and then over onto a regular route I ride which is actually pretty flat for about 8 miles. It was this point in the ride that the fun started.

In order to find some new hills I decided to cut out the flat section towards Forest Grove and head for the hills. HOLY MACKERAL! I'm happily riding along reflecting on the awesomeness of just having 4 deer jump across the road in front of my bike when I come down this little roller and see the most ginormous long straight hill I've ever seen. OMG I thought, will I be able to make it up that beast without getting off and walking.

I shifted into my lowest gear and started counting pedal strokes. 1, 2, 3 etc all the way up to over 200 before making it to the top. Yes! I owned that hill :) Of course I was then greeted to ever more hills and then one of the fastest technical descents I've ever riden. WOOO HOOO!!!!

Be careful what you wish for right? From that lovely series of hills - Blooming Fern Hill Rd for any sadists reading in the PDX area, I rode out to Hagg Lake where I rode the loop once clockwise and once counter clockwise before heading for home.

Along the way I saw vineyard, fields of wildflowers, deer, cows, a lot of roadkill :( and a ton of other cyclists. It was a glorious day to be on the bike.

I think I may have been a little overhydrated given I had to stop 4 times for bathroom breaks. Yikes! At the 3.5 hour mark I did a pretend special needs stop so I got off my bike, stretched, refilled my bottles, ate my yummy 1/2 way mark treat (frozen peeps - delicious sugary goodness) and went to the bathroom. While there I decided I would reapply some BodyGlide cause I was feeling a bit of chafing. Note to self, do not apply BodyGlide from flimsy container in a portolet. The stick of BodyGlide popped out of it's holder right into the yuckiness. %*$&##. I was really needing that. Hmmm..... time to improvise. Chapstick works extremely well in emergency situations. Got all set, scraped the top layer of the chapstick off so it could be used again later and headed out.

Started really craving something salty at the 5 hour point and decided to stop off for a water refill and bathroom stop at my favorite Taco place - Taco del Mar. They have the yummiest crispiest saltiest tortilla chips. Ate a handful then put about 10 chips in my bento box and continued on.

Nutrition and Stop info below but total ride time was 6:31 which included:

Stop 1 - Water refill
Stop 2 - Water refill
Stop 3 - Bathroom
Stop 4 - Pretend SN (Water refill/bathroom/stretched/ate treat)
Stop 5 - Bathroom
Stop 6 - Water Refill/Bathroom/Tortilla Chips

Nutrition:

2 Uncrustables
4 GU
5 Peeps
2.5 Bottles w/CarboPro cocktail
20 Tortilla Chips

6 hours on the bike + 30 minutes of stops.

In the 6 hours I did 4475 ft of climbing and rode 90.8 miles with an average speed of 15.2

After my ride I hopped off the bike, did my transition and ran 2.5 miles. WOO HOO - it was a great weekend!