Snot and Tears- Nic's bike race

Nic ,the head mechanic at Performance, organized an alleycat bike race and called it "Snot and Tears" because he assumed on Dec. 13 it would be cold enough to bring snot to the nose and tears to the eyes. Turned out to be around 70 degrees for the race, fine by me! Alleycat races are usually in town with checkpoints around town. Nic had 7 checkpoints, at each checkpoint, the racers found out where to go for the next checkpoint. The race started and finished at the Drungo Ice House, it's a new sports bar near campus that has a fun laid back atmosphere and great food. They also have a big patio, which was perfect since the weather was so nice.

Shawn, Jeff, Nic, Vince, Brandon, Dave, Mark, and Josh all volunteered at the race.

The blow up doll was taped to the bike used for the bike toss
Mellow Johnnies donated these wheels as prize. They match my bike. My wheels are better, but still...

There were a lot of interesting bikes that people had built up themselves, some really nice, some not so much.

Mark was the "floating checkpoint" if/when someone found him riding around town, they had to pull the sheep off his bike and bring it back to the finish and they won $50!Jeff and I were at the Home Slice Pizza checkpoint. I thought we would be there at least an hour and have time for some pizza (I ran 18.6 miles that day, I could have eaten a lot of pizza) but we ended up only being there about 30 minutes.

This beautiful tree is across the street from Home Slice

Jeff and I handed out the papers with the next checkpoint on them. I couldn't believe how fast people got to Home Slice and how bunched up some of the riders were. After half an hour all the riders had come through our checkpoint so we went back to Drungo's.

Mike, the owner of Drungo's, made some great chicken wings and vegetarian quesadillas- YUM!

The top 3 finishers. The 2 on the left (2nd and 3rd place) own a pedicab company

Nic also had some crazy games with prizes, first was the bike toss. Who ever throws the junk bike with the blow up doll the furthest wins. It was fun but a little scary when a couple of drunk guys threw the bike! The entire crowd backed up about 5 feet.

Next was the track stand competition, balance on your pedals, then with no hands, clapping, etc. Last one standing wins.

Last was bike in a circle tighter and tighter, again last one riding wins. People got a little crazy with this one, pushing riders out of the circle and trying to rub tires. It was fun to watch but I'm glad I wasn't trying to ride in the circle!

Nic's first bike race was a big success, everyone had a great time! We're hoping he'll do another one soon.

HRTC Christmas party and 30k (that's 18.6 miles!)

I had planned to go to Houston for the Houston Racing Triathlon Club Christmas party this weekend. I was talking with Ingrid trying to figure out how to work in my 14 mile run for the weekend. She suggested I do the 30k with her and Kim on Sunday morning, 18.6 miles isn't much further than the 14 I had planned. It sounded like a lot more fun than running 14 miles by myself on Monday morning.

I got into town and had lunch at Onion Creek with Ingrid, Kim, Matt, and Ross. We had a lot of fun and we talked Ross into going to the party. I wish Cassie and Steph had been able to make it to lunch, since they couldn't be at the party either, I didn't get to see them at all.

Jen Brown had a pre-party at her apartment. She has this cool triathlon wreath! She was making Candy Cane tini's with dry ice, very cool! Kim with her Candy Cane tini. Gillian, me, Ingrid, and Kim at Jen's
The party was at the Height Firehouse, it's an old firehouse that is now used for parties. The firepole is still in place. David did this crazy posting move on the fire pole. Wow! How does he do that??

Ross climbed up the pole
Gillian slid down the pole
Del! It's a fire pole not a stripper pole!

They did door prizes, I lost my ticket and I'm pretty sure they called my number, oh well. Ingrid won an itunes gift card. Dinner was good and I finally got to try the famous Zoe's chocolate cake for the first time!

Jen and Andrew

I had so much fun seeing all my Houston tri friends!

Gillian, David, Matt, Ingrid, and Ross

About 10:00 Ingrid, Kim and I decided we had to leave since we were getting up at 4:30 to run the 30k in the morning. When I was saying good bye to Kathleen she said I was crazy for doing the 30k in the morning. It's never good when Kathleen tells you you're crazy!

My plan for this 30k was just to treat it like a training run, go slow, and have fun. The weather was really nice in the 60's and 70's and partly sunny for the run. My stomach was a little upset before we even started running. I'm not surprised considering I ate a bunch of different stuff at the party. (the number one rule of racing is to never try anything new the night before or day of a race). The furthest I have ever run before is 14 miles. So this would definitely be a really long run for me. Before the start we ran into Rick who did some PoolSharks workouts with us this spring and summer. We hadn't seen him in a long time, so that was cool.

Rick, Kim, and Rick's friend Mark

The first few miles went really well. I had to make a porta-potty stop between miles 3 and 4, but other than that, I was feeling great for the first 10 miles. We did 3 loops of 4.2 miles (and a little more at the beginning and end) I saw Ingrid at least once on every loop. At the halfway point at mile 9.3 I thought "Wow, it's hard to believe I've run over 9 miles and I'm just now halfway!" Penny came out to spectate too, I think I saw her around mile 6. I thought I should see Kim at some point, but I never saw her.

I felt like I wasn't drinking enough water so at the mile 10 water stop I got 2 cups and walked while I slowly drank the water, sometimes drinking water fast while I run gives me a stomach ache. I started running again, but a few minutes later my stomach was really upset. I ended up taking 3 more restroom breaks and lots of walking breaks when I felt like I might throw up. Kim said she saw me at one point then I "just disappeared" I'm sure I "disappeared" into a porta-potty. There were times I felt fine and I just seemed to go back and forth between feeling ok and feeling sick. It's really not a big deal. It happens to everyone at some point, I'm just glad this wasn't a race where I was super excited about doing really well. I kinda deserved it anyway after eating whatever I wanted at the party the night before.

Around mile 13 I met Richard, we started talking and ended up run/walking the rest of the run together. He's doing the half at Houston (cool, one more person to cheer for!) and planning on the quarter iron at Lonestar and his first half iron at Longhorn. I was really happy to have someone to talk with, since I wasn't feeling too good.

Richard and I at the finish

I told myself all along that all I wanted from this run was my 14 mile training run, I could walk the last 4.6 miles and be perfectly happy. So I'm not at all disappointed about this run. The first 10 miles was great, and the last 8.6 was mostly fun, even though I wasn't feeling great for some of it.
Ingrid, me and Kim after the race

After the run, I had to get back to Austin fast for Nic's bike race. The wind had really picked up and I had to drive a little slower than I wanted, so I didn't have time to stop and get a snack and stretch my legs like I had planned. Ingrid gave me 2 mini bagels for the drive and I'm so glad she did! Considering that I ran further than I've ever run and then sat in the car for 3 hours, I'm amazed that my legs don't feel awful today! My quads and feet are a little sore, but not bad. It must be the magic Zoot compression socks!

It Snowed!

Per Kim's request, I'm blogging about the snow. If you know me, you probably know that I hate cold and I hate snow. I'd be happy if I never saw snow again. But in Texas snow is a rarity, so it deserves a blog.

Tuesday morning was gorgeous here, it was about 80 degrees and sunny. I rode the new-old bike around in just shorts and a t-shirt. In the afternoon, the wind picked up and the temperature started to drop. Jeff came home at about 5 and told me it was going to snow. I told him he was crazy, but the weather website said there was a chance of snow. It got so windy in the evening that I was worried about our trees in the yard.

I went to bed, but Jeff stayed up watching the band of snow on the weather website moving toward Austin. About midnight, he woke me up and said "it's snowing!! you have to come look!" It really was snowing and a little was even sticking on the ground.

The next morning there was still some snow on the cars, roofs, and even a little on the ground.

My new-old bike

I have been looking for a commuter bike since we moved to Austin. I can't leave my carbon road bike locked up outside a store, it would disappear in a heartbeat. I also can't put panniers or anything on it to carry things. So my carbon road bike is like a fast, expensive sports car, and the commuter bike will be like an SUV.Jeff and I have been talking about and looking at almost every bike in his store as a possibility for my commuter bike. But none of them seemed right for me. Someone gave this beat up old road bike to the shop the other day and Doug McAfee suggested to Jeff that it could work as my commuter bike. Jeff showed me pictures of similar bikes and I kinda liked it. I brought it home and rode it around the neighborhood a little and I think I like it.

This bike is a project bike, parts of it are a little beat up, but it has potential. It's a Raleigh Super Record made in Japan in the early 80's. It's a lady's mixte style frame, which means the top tube is actually 2 tubes that go from the stem, past the seat tube, and onto the rear fork, so it has 3 sets of rear stays, instead of two.

It's an interesting bike because there weren't many Raleighs made in Japan and apparently the Super Record was only made in Japan so there isn't a lot of information about them. I'd like to find a picture and specs of what this bike originally looked like.

Head badge with lines instead of where it was made, indicating it was made in Japan

It has these friction shifters on the stem, we'll see if I like them or if I decide to go with something else.

So this will be a fun bike to ride around town, and it will be fun to decide how I want it to look and ride and fix it up over time. Jeff is also pretty excited about this being our old classic project bike to work on.

Decker Challenge Half Marathon

Photo by Tom Marek
At some point after Longhorn, I decided I wanted to do the Decker Challenge half marathon, it's in the same area as Longhorn was, but the course is different than the half marathon course for Longhorn. The area around Decker Lake is REALLY hilly, even by Austin standards. So of course this race would be a huge challenge for me, but it sounded like fun ("in a weird painful way" as Kim says).

Apparently Ingrid felt the same way because a couple weeks after I signed up and told her about it, Ingrid decided to come out and run it too! I love when Ingrid comes to Austin! (ok, I love it when any of my Houston tri friends come to Austin, but Ingrid visits me the most, she even has her own room at my house)

Ingrid came to Austin Friday night and we started worrying about how cold it would be on Sunday for the run. Saturday morning was the coldest morning this year, it got down to 30 degrees. It was forecasted to be 38 at 6 am on Sunday. We decided that on Saturday morning, when it got up to 38, we would put on the layers we planned to wear for the race and run about 30 minutes to see if we would be warm enough. We both got warm pretty fast, we had on a ton of clothes! I think I had 4 layers, I decided to go with just 2 for the race.

Sunday morning was COLD! about 36-38 degress. Ingrid and I bundled up and went to Decker. As we were walking into the expo center someone said to me "should I give you all my money" At least I wasn't cold! We were able to stay in the expo center while we waited for the race to start.
We found Elle, then Kasey, Red, and Annette before the race.Kasey and Red during the race. Photo by Tom Marek
A few minutes before start time we dropped off all our extra clothes at the car. I was only cold for the first half mile, then I pulled the crazy hat down around my neck and took my gloves off. Ingrid and I ran the first mile in 10:37, WAY too fast for me to start a hilly 13.1 mile run, so I slowed down and hit mile 2 right at 22 minutes, perfect. Between miles 2 and 3 Tom Marek called my name, he and Carolyn were out spectating and taking pictures, they did a great job! I think between the 2 of them, I saw them 6 times on the course! Thanks so much Tom and Carolyn!!Photo by Carolyn Marek
Tom zoomed by me on his bike once or twice as he was going from point to point to cheer and take pictures. The first time I saw Carolyn was between miles 5 and 6, at the start of the really STEEP hill just after the turn onto Blue Bluff. I had been up and down quite a few hills already so I was amazed at how good I was still feeling at this point! I saw Carolyn again just before mile 8 and told her I was feeling great, and I was still right on pace. The second time I saw Carolyn near mile 8. Photo by Carolyn Marek
I love this picture of runners going down then up 130 toward the BIG hills on 973, nice job Carolyn! Photo by Carolyn Marek
I knew this was the point where it would get tougher, up a long gradual hill then turn onto 973, for a big hill a short down hill and then the killer "Quadzilla" of Longhorn fame aka "Big Tard" I started running up Quadzilla, then walked a little in the middle and ran to the top where Tom was waiting again taking pictures. Almost to the top of Quadzilla! Photo by Tom Marek
Photo by Tom Marek
Annette almost to the top of Quadzilla, you can kind of see how long and steep it is.
The mile 10 marker was on Quadzilla so I only had 3.1 miles to go, but I was pretty tired at this point. I just slowed down a little and started taking 2 minute walk breaks every 10 minutes instead of 1 minute. Annette caught up to me at this point and we talked a little. It was great to see the expo center and then to turn into the expo center grounds, but it was still a little way to the finish. Attempting to sprint in for the finish
Photo by Tom Marek
Finally I could see the finish and Ingrid, Tom, and Carolyn were all there to take pictures! I finished in 2:45:59 and Ingrid finished in 2:33:47.
Photo by Tom MarekPhoto by Tom Marek
Ingrid and I right after finishing, Photo by Tom Marek
I ran in the Zoot compression socks today and I have been doing Katie Phillips prescribed Egoscue exercises. I don't know if it was the socks the exercises or both, but my legs pretty much felt great during the race and they still feel great tonight. Normally by mile 8 or 9 my knees are getting sore and my legs are starting to hurt. I couldn't believe how great my legs felt after the race! Later, at the party, I told Coach Tracy I felt like I could run another 10 miles right now!
We hung around a little while and found Maggie. Then we decided it was Cupcake time! I swear Hey Cupcake cupcakes taste even better after running!Kim was really sad she couldn't do Decker with us (she has finals this week) so Ingrid took a cupcake home for her. Ingrid wanted to get home at a reasonable time, so she didn't come to the Trizones Christmas party.

The party was so much fun! I got to meet some of the people from the South team, and talk with everyone I run with on Wednesdays and Saturdays. I forgot the camera, so no pictures. I enjoyed all the food very much after running in the morning. We did a gift exchange and I got a nice picture frame. Julie got the bike light that I gave and she seemed really happy about it. Coach Tracy got a cowbell and did Will Ferrell's "more cowbell" SNL skit, I SO wish I had the camera! Coach Tracy gave everyone running gloves and mine are the same color as my bike!

What a Super Awesome day!!