xterra portland

wholey smokes its been busy. i can't even keep up. time has been flying and it seemed like we just did the black diamond xterra and now portland is done. we're getting ready to head to durango later this week and when we get back we will be getting ready for seamus to start kindergarten and sirus to start up pre-school. oh no!! they are getting so big! the kids are nuts though. seamus can climb to the top of the basketball hoop and then hang from the supports that hold up the backboard. she is crazy.

so on to xterra portland.

We headed out early on Friday morning to drive down. It turned into a 4+ hour drive which was a bit more than I had thot it might be. We got to the race site and talked to the race director for a long time and Jenny Tobin was there, too. she was super nice and i had remembered talking to her briefly on the beach before our practice swim at Idaho. She gave us all kinds of tips about the course. they said it took them 2:30 to do the loop but that was in a torrential down pour, stopping to fix two flats and apparently a lot of whinning. those were their words, not mine. I didn't like the idea of 2:30 but Jenny said the course was in way better shape on Friday then it had been on Thursday. So we headed out. The pre-ride was good and since the run was along part of the course we killed those two birds with that one pre-ride. we didn't do the start loop, well, we sort of did it but not the road climb and then we back tracked to the washed out bridge. there was a scary wall of mud that in the race we needed to climb but since we got to it backwards we were looking down it. we climbed down without the bikes and walked around a little. then i asked eric to bring my bike down. i was super freaked out thinking he was going to eat it, but he got down ok and i was able to practice climbing up the hill. it wasn't so bad. then he did it but somehow he managed to run up it despite it being straight up.

we finished the ride, talked more to the race director and then headed to the hotel. while checking in, i had some of their chocolate chip cookies and was bummed we didn't bring our swim suits since there was a pool and a hot tub. next year! then i realized i couldn't find my phone. we looked everywhere, couldn't find it, so we headed out to dinner. we had two things of garlic fries, probably not the best thing to have pre-race but they were so damn tasty. then i started to get worried about my phone. after countless trips to the car, walks around the parking lot and talking with the people at the front desk i thought maybe i through it out in the hotel trash when we cleaned out the car when we first arrived. low and behold - there it was. thank goodness! off to bed.

I was kind of nervous on the drive down but then after the pre-ride i felt better but was still on the nervous side. we both slept horribly and were happy when 6am came.

I had my pb&j and we hung out until it was time to head to the race site. we picked up our packets and set up transition and just hung out. it was pretty low key. they announced no wet suits for the pros but age groupers were allowed to use them. i got into the water and swam around a bit. the water was a weird green color and seemed to drag me down some but whatever. at the start i stood next to some pro dude who looked like he was freezing. he had goose bumps all over him but more interestingly, it looked like he had taken his top down around his waiste and rolled it up and tucked it into his shorts. i didn't know what to think about that.

Then the race started. i swam pretty well i thought and didn't use much breast stroke at all. i was really trying not to. about every 200 strokes (i was actually counting) i'd do a little breast stroke but only like 10 strokes then jump back into it. i was pretty happy and felt pretty good the whole time. swim time was like 22 mintues and something. i thought that was pretty good.

the run to t1 was up hill and long and i was beat. i couldn't run it. but once i got to the flat i picked it up and ran. i was the last bike on my rack which i was a little sad about but it gave me a lot of room to get my stuff done. t1 was over 3 minutes!! mostly because of that big hill up to transition.

then off onto the bike. the course started with a 1.5 mile road climb which was good because it spread people out and let me get that initial huffing and puffing out of the way. then it was into the single track and onto finishing the start loop. 2 miles in i saw eric on the side of the trail with his front wheel folded in half! i kept going but wondered what he would do, at least he wasn't too far in.
the whole bike course was about 16, maybe 17 miles. the start loop was a little over 3 miles and went by really quickly.

then off to the big loop. i got behind a few pretty slow people and had a hard time riding behind them. eventually i passed them and kept going. the trails went through some mowed fields and there were some pretty big ruts through them. it was tricky but not too hard. there were a few steep uphilll sections that i had to get off and run, but there were major backups on them anyway so if i could have ridden i wouldn't have been able to anyway.

i kept passing people and i don't remember getting passed until the very end and it was by a guy. then i got to the mandatory dismount where you climb straight up that muddy hill. thank goodness we practiced because it looked scary but it wasn't. i was feeling good and pushing hard. i did go into my granny gear quite a bit for some of the longer steeper hills.

on the last climb i heard a guy's voice yelling at me from behind telling me to pick it up. it was my swim coach who had some sort of mechanical about 5 miles in and had returned to transition and picked up his girlfriends tiny little bike with platform pedals. he rode past me and it was a site to see, but he did great. not too much longer eric came up behind me. he had gone back to the car and picked up a spare wheel and went back onto the course. so he passed me! my bike split was 1:39 and some seconds, and it was th ebig victory of the day because my bike time was faster than his. :) i took two CLIF shots on the bike andsoem of the LUNA Sport Electrolyte Splash in Pink Grapefruit. It wasn't very hot out so I didn't go through very much of it.

t2 wasn't anything special but i felt like i was going pretty slow during it.

off to the run. i was feeling pretty good going out onto the run but i was feeling really slow. i dont' know what was going on because i was working pretty hard, but not all out. not sure i could ahve gone all out. i think i should have tried harder. but i continued to go along. i passed several people and didn't get passed by anyone (other than being lapped) i walked some of the hills since they were just super steep but then i also walked a few of the not so steep hills, too. not sure what was going on there.

it was a two loop course and it went by pretty quickly. in the last 1/4 mile i was running through the mowed field and saw a group of bees flying around and thought yikes, i hope there isn't some crazy swarm hiding out somewhere, just then one stung me on my ankle. it got all caught up under my timing chip strap and did a number on me, so i whinned about that while i ran that last bit. i did pick it up at the end, and was happy to finish. it wasn't like at black diamond where i had just hoped it would be done, so i think that must mean i really didn't try as hard as i could have. my run was 50 minutes and some seconds.

overall time was 2:56 and some seconds i think. i was 4th in my age group and something like 13th overall for the amature women. i am happy with this!

it was a pretty fun race. the mission for this week is to get eric some new wheels which he actually said he will take mine and get some fancy new ones for me since i am less likley to break them the way he tends too but we'll see what happens.