race #1

i have been sick for a few weeks and one some antibiotcs. because of this my coach has had m taking it easy sort of. which was kind of funny since kind of easy somehow translated into 12 days in a row with no rest day and 11hr workout weeks, but who's counting! but really other than the general assness i was feeling, i felt great!
i ended the antibiotics on thursday. saturday i went over to pre-ride the race course. i was to do 1:30 with 20' warm up, 10' zn3, 4x2' zn 4 with recover between and then 20' zn 2, followed but just riding along the rest of the time. so i was not able to accomplish this since i was either in zone 4 or zone 1. i later found out that this was ok, the point was to make sure i got up to zone 4. sara met me 40 minutes in and we rode the coarse 2 more times. the coarse was fun but it was going to be hard. i was able to ride almost everything except the obvious run-up, a weird cinderblock turn thing and then a tight uphill switch back thing.
then i went home and stessed over it all.
all evening and all night long.
and all morning and early afternoon since the race didn't start until 12:45.
we packed up the car and left for the race site at 11. we got there at like 11:45 or so. i went and registered, chatted with a few people then dressed to pre-ride. it was raining and had been for a long time. about 20 seconds into the pre-ride i was having some serious doubt about the race because i was fish tailing all over the place and the mud was super deep. then 2 minutes in i totally crashed on a log i had cleared every time the day before. oooh, thats going to leave a mark, plus i was now covered with mud. i went and talked to some people, and we all comiserated about the mud. and i started to finally relax about the whole race situation.
we lined up at the start. there were 16 sport women, and like 5 open or experts. and we were off. peddle peddle peddle. i got in front of a few people before we headed into the first bit of single track and down the big hill with the drop offs then up the next pavement hill i passed a few more. i was working really hard. then i'm not exactly sure what happened. i played leap frog with a few girls here and there but eventually wound up infront of them. the mud was so thick. some of the girst were getting off and carrying their bike cyclocross sytle which seemed like a pretty good idea. i really wasn't able to ride up any of the short steep hills I had riddedn so many times the day before so I did a lot of running. going into one long gradual climb on of the girls dropped her gu and i passed and put a pretty good lead on her. until it was down the drop off again and bam, i had a flat. i stopped and waited for her to catch up, let her know i was out and then rode to find eric. he was like - well, fix it!! i was done, or so i thought. he ran and got the wheel off of his bike and through it on. i went back to where i had dropped out and got back in only to find out i got in at the wrong place. i had a big climb and the decent with the drop offs again. i managed to catch two girls and was eventually caught by the 1st place open woman. she and i chit chatted a bit and then she was off. the last lap i couldn't shift into my smal gear up front which made me sad. i realized this only after i had thought I shifted down at one hill, got off, ran to the top and then shifted back into the middle gear. i was riding along and really struggling when i found that i had gotten into my big ring! yikes, i dropped out of that quickly and rode the rest of the race in my middle ring.
i was having a lot of fun and having gotten the flat gave me extra opportunity to go hard but relax and just ride. i wound up finishing 8th/13 in my age group which i was happy with and 11/16 overall. ok, so i probably cheated with the whole wheel swap thing but i don't know if anyone is counting with the whole 8th place. if so i'll gladly give it up to a DQ or whatever. :)
but most of all i was pretty happy that i rode as well as I did and was as strong as i was. i had no idea i would be so far up before flatting. i feel i probably would have been able to hold 2nd for that last 1.5 laps. so i am pretty stoked to see what happens at the next race.
i did get today off to rest and then i start with some intervals tomorrow and through the rest of the week. i am excited to see where this season is headed!!
after i was done i changed in someone's butthutt and then changed the kids since their clothes were soaked and muddy. eric's race started and the kids and i went hiking to find a good place to watch. there wasn't really anywhere good to watch since it was non stop torrential downpour but ya know. we did walk up by the rugby field that had a sand track around it. seamus asked how far it was around and then said she wanted to run it. so she did. 3 times. she looked so tiny waaaay out there on the other side with her green puffy coat, her pink hello kitty hat and her pink puddle boots just running running running. i don't know about her sometimes.
we were DRENCHED. i decided eric's race was far enough along that we were going to get in the car and hang out. i took the kids boots, coats, sweatshirts and pants off so they were playing in the car in t-shirts and underpants. the last bit of oraganizing i did was in a complete monsoon and i jumped in the car still in my coat which brought a huge puddle to the front seat. i took my drenched coat off and sat on my vest to sop up the wet.
we could see eric every once in a while while we sat in the warm stuffy stinky car listening the mama mia sound track. sara came and hung out with us some, too which was fun. and then eric's race was finally done! he came in 3rd which was impressive since the monsoon hit while he was out there any many people bailed due to mechanicals or just because the conditions were so terrible. i was proud of him!
it was a good race!
then we stopped at BK and i had the best tasting whopper EVER.