Swim, Bike, Camp!

We headed up to Rocky Creek Park at Lake Somerville on Saturday for a weekend of training and fun. Jeff and I got there first and picked a campsite right on the water and on the peninsula. When Ingrid and Chris got there they were very impressed with our choice. Kim was right behind them. We set up camp and played in the water for awhile then Ingrid and I decided it was time to swim. Kim stayed near us in the kayak and Jeff and Chris also followed on floaties.
Steph's kayak, thanks for letting us borrow it Steph!
I'm sure we were an interesting sight! We swam for about an hour and I'm figuring we went at least a mile, probably a little more. It was definitely good practice, the water was pretty choppy at some places. Ingrid and I both had a good swim!

When we finished swimming it was time for dinner at the Somerville Steakhouse. Jeff and I hadn't been there in a long time and no one else had ever been. I wish I had remembered the camera, but the "small" steak Ingrid and I shared was bigger than a large dinner plate!
Back at the campsite we saw a really cool harvest moon and we also saw the space station fly by!
See Ingrid waving from inside her tent?
Sunday morning we got up, watched the sunrise, and got ready to ride. Matt and David got to the campsite about 7 and we started riding at 7:30. I had a good ride, didn't get tired and felt strong on the hills. I tried a new saddle again this weekend and I like it MUCH better than the last one! We did 44 miles. Jeff had planned to mountain bike instead of riding with us, but he couldn't find any trails so he drove to 6 or 7 points along our route and met us and offered extra water, food, assistance, and encouragement to anyone who needed it. We all felt pretty cool having our own Sag wagon! He got some good pictures too!

David going FAST!
Ingrid also going FAST!
Me going not nearly as fast as David and IngridKim and Matt, they're both capable of going fast but weren't going too fast in this picture.
We did 2400 ft of climbing in 44 miles. Here's the GPS motionbased link to the ride
We had no flat tires, no mean driver incidents, and only one mean dog, but he went after both Ingrid and Chris, luckily neither of them got hurt. We got back to camp and put our bikes on the "transition line" Jeff had set up on Saturday.
We all did a short run, which was not much fun for me, I was getting hungry and dehydrated, I really need to work on that for Longhorn, but my Infinit is coming in today so hopefully that will help. Then we cooled off in the lake, David actually did a real swim, but he was the only one the rest of us just played. We watched people paragliding while we were in the water.

We had lunch at Royer's Roundtop Cafe, this crazy car is in front of the cafe. Matt apparently knows the Royers, how is it that he knows everyone?? I'm pretty sure I ate more calories than I burned biking and running! But it was definitely good!
We all had a great time and we can't wait to do it again!

More Hills

Ingrid, Chris, Kim, Cassie, Matt, Larry, Jeff and I headed up to Washington County today to ride hills with the Conoco Phillips bike team. They were doing the Camp For All bike route that we've done a couple of times before. This is the first time I carried the GPS unit on this ride. I'm glad I did. All the stats show that this is a tougher ride than the Longhorn route. So if we keep it up, we should all be in good shape for the hills at Longhorn!

Link to the motionbased GPS ride info

It was pretty foggy when we started riding, ok not quite this foggy, the camera lens was fogged up too.

I had a tough ride today, between the hills, the wind and some asthma issues I was just not doing great, but it's a really pretty place to ride and I finished, and besides, a bad training day is always more fun than sitting on the couch!

We also put a new saddle on my bike for today. I'm not sure I like it. In fact, my butt still hurts now, so I'm pretty sure I don't like it! I'm just trying to decide if I want to try it one more time or just put my old seat back on and forget about it.

We went to lunch in Brenham after the ride. Yum!

Next weekend's ride in conjunction with the Lake Somerville camping trip will probably be pretty much the same route as today's ride.

July 4th

The morning of July 4th I did a bike ride in Montgomery County called "Burn your Buns". Ingrid and her husband Chris and Steph, Marla, and Matt all did it too. It was a nice day to ride, not nearly as hot as I expected July 4th to be. I had planned to do the 62 mile route, but I took a wrong turn and ended up doing some extra miles and a couple extra steep hills (at least it's good practice) on the first loop, so I cut my second loop down to about 2/3 and ended up with 54 miles. I was pretty impressed when I saw the GPS profile for this ride, it has more steep hills and more elevation gain than the Longhorn course! http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/6167700
Although the climbs were shorter on this ride than on the Longhorn course. It didn't seem nearly as hilly as the Chappell Hill ride, so I'm interested to see what the GPS says about that ride.
I had planned to take some pictures at the ride, but the camera batteries died.

For me July 4th is all about Fireworks! I really love fireworks and Houston has the largest land based fireworks display in the country! Jeff and I headed down to Tinsley Park and found a spot right in front of one of the 3 places they set off the fireworks. This is the 3rd time we've gone to Houston's fireworks, so we've finally figured out the best place to be. We weren't quite as close as this picture looks, but we were about as close as they'd let you get.

We had a couple hours to wait for the fireworks so I got us some $5 snowcones, yep, $5 for a snowcone.
We watched the sunset
and then the Fireworks! Jeff took pictures and he did an awesome job!


We could actually Feel the fireworks shooting off and they were really beautiful!

Jeff took this video about halfway through the fireworks display, it's really cool!

This is the beginning of the finale, it was so bright that the camera just picked up white!

Hills

I'm training for the Longhorn 70.3 half ironman race in Austin in October. Everyone has been saying the course is super hilly and since Houston is flat, that presents a challenge. So I've ridden the Camp For All bike course with Jeff a couple times and ridden in Chappell Hill with some HRTC friends and that will be the plan for most weekends until October. Kim and Matt rode at Chappell Hill with me last weekend


I am painfully slow on hills at the moment. At Chappell Hill we rode 40 miles and my average speed was only 13.5 mph, so I need to work on speed and endurance for Longhorn, good thing I still have 3 months!
On Tuesday Jeff and I helped a co-worker/friend of his move to Austin (I use the term "helped" loosely, I rode in the truck and carried a couple of pillows into the new apartment). Since we were in Austin, Jeff and I used the opportunity to check out the Longhorn race site and bike course. This is a picture of Decker Lake, it looks beautiful and should be a great place to swim.We also drove the bike course which is my biggest concern for this race. There are actually only 2 places that really scare me. One is a huge downhill just before a sharp right turn (I didn't take any pictures there), I'll be riding my brakes down that hill.

This is one of the smaller hills on Monkey road, most of the course is like this, rolling scenic country side.
The second thing on the course that scares me is this huge steep hill at mile 55! It is much steeper in real life than it looks in the pictures!

The big hill we ride up goes up over the dam for Decker Lake Jeff also mapped the bike course on the GPS unit. We now have more info on the ride than I know what to do with. So now I need to take the GPS unit on all my bike rides and compare the elevation profiles and grades to the Longhorn course. Here's a link to the GPS info we got.

http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/dashboard.mb?episodePk.pkValue=6140995
You can actually use the map to look at the elevation or grade at any specific point on the course, it's pretty cool.
After moving and checking out the Longhorn course, Jim took us to the Hula Hut for dinner.

Jeff and Jim

Sunset over Towne Lake