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.

Xterra Black Diamond

August 2nd was the 2nd Xterra Black Diamond. I had been a little nervous leading up to this race because last year I DNF’ed. I face planted so many times, but it turned out ok since I was already in the medical tent when they were pulling my husband off the course with a branch through his lip...
We were both better prepared this time and even pre-rode the day before. Because of the dry conditions, the course seemed totally different to me this year which could have been because it was actually ride-able, or maybe because my face wasn’t in the dirt the whole time. The first loop was a little different, allowing the riders to spread out some on an uphill road climb before heading into the single track. The start of the 2nd loop was the same as last year. The run was longer this year too, but I had nothing to compare it too since I didn’t get that far last time.
The kids spent the night at grandma’s so we had a nice relaxing evening at home before the race. I wasn’t nervous about the race and barely though about it all night. Having pre-ridden, I was much more relaxed than I imagined I might be. We woke up on race morning around 6am, and I had my regular PB&J for breakfast. We were out the door by 7am.
We arrived at the race site and I set up my transition area among a bunch of the other LUNA Chix. We had girls from all 3 teams there making up 2 relay teams, 6 doing the whole race and 1 there spectating. It was great to have so many of us out there!
Then they announced no wetsuits because the water was 84 degrees. We had been having some record setting hot days in the Seattle area, so I had expected that this might happen. Thankfully, I had done a few swims in the lake without a wetsuit the previous week, otherwise I might have freaked out. I did have to address the issue of what to do with my race number. I was planning on just pinning it on, but now that it wouldn’t be under my wetsuit I didn’t know what to do. I wound up leaving it in transition and figured I’d deal with it on the run when the time came.
We got into the water (I didn't do a warm up at all) and we were off. It was a mass start and I was all up in the mix and getting tossed around. This is the first year that I have positioned myself among the masses, and I am not really a fan of this kind of start. What made it more fun was that we were swimming through the water lilies. I was doing pretty well, but then I started having a hard time breathing and started to panic a little. I kept going, but switched to breast stroke, which was slow and disappointing. In the middle of the swim, we got out and ran across Xterra Island and then jumped in on the other side. I was making my way up onto the island when I heard someone call my name. I turned and saw that it was my husband - BEHIND me! We had joked that this was a possibility since it was a no wetsuit swim, but I didn’t really think it could actually really happen. But now the race was ON! We got back in the water side by side and I stuck to him. I even pulled ahead a little and somehow got way off course and had to swim back to get going straight. Finally the swim was done and I was up out of the water and sprinting to the timing mat to ensure that my time would be faster! Our swim time was not stellar, around 25 minutes but I beat him by 4 seconds and I may have well won a gold medal at the Olympics, an Oscar, the lottery and a Nobel Prize.

We ran into transition together and he was a rack away so I could see him while I was pulling on my fancy yellow Mavic shoes and getting ready to head out. I made it out of transition before him but somehow he was on his bike and out of site before I even started pedaling. (Note: He wound up doing really well in the bike and run portions of the race, coming in 3rd overall and somehow changing that 4 second deficit into a 1 hr lead, so congrats to him!)
I started out on the bike at a comfortable pace but not all out. It was hot out, into the 90s, and I knew it was going to be a long race. The pre-ride came in very handy and I was feeling pretty good out there riding along. The course was technical with lots of turns and rocks and roots. Not a ton of climbing and really only two sort of sketchy downhill sections. I was passing a bunch of people and a few were passing me. I was riding well and I even surprised myself that I was clearing some of the things that I was. I was pretty stoked when I passed the place in the race where I had dropped out last year. At the end of the first lap there was a mandatory dismount where you ran your bike across the timing mat and they marked your number. I was a little confused for some reason, but really it wasn’t confusing at all. Then it was off into lap two.
I was still passing some people and occasionally getting passed but it was way less congested. There was a stream crossing with a forced dismount that we went through at each lap. On the 2nd lap, there was a girl standing there with a volunteer trying to get her shoe unclipped. She was stuck to her bike! She asked if I had any tools. I had one so I couldn't just leave her there all stuck, so I quickly grabbed it out of my pack and handed it to her then ran off into the water and shed a few tears about getting my fancy yellow Mavic shoes wet yet again. I did get pretty tired on that 2nd loop and started getting a little squirrely. I was pretty excited that I didn’t get lapped by any of the race leaders – a first for me!
When headed back to transition, they set up a speed trap. They had one of those speed sensors that are set up on the side of the road to tell you that you are going too fast. I was pretty happy to see that I managed to get to 23mph. All in all, I felt like I did pretty well on the bike, and finished in about 2hrs. I went through 2 bottles of LUNA Sport Electrolyte Splash in Pink Grapefruit, the most amazing stuff ever and spaced 3 CLIF shots out so that I took the last one soon before heading into T2.
In T2 I put on my sweet new trail running shoes and grabbed my race number and hat and ran out just as they were announcing that the 3rd person in, part of a relay team was finishing. This meant I accomplished another goal of mine – to get out onto the run before my husband finished his race. Granted he was the next finisher coming in only a few seconds later but I was still out of T2 before he was done. We aren’t competitive with each other or anything. The run was hot and sunny. I was dying. The first hill I pinned my number on as I walked it. At the top, I ran when I could but walked most of the uphill sections. The last part of the loop was on pavement, but it was hard. I wasn't feeling very well and was pretty sure I was going to have to walk the rest. I wanted to be done. At the very end of the loop it kind of went downhill as we headed out for loop 2. I grabbed my 2nd Lap wrist band and headed out, feeling exponentially better. The course was a figure 8 and we passed the water station 4 times. I walked it 3 times and took water and Gatorade each time. I was starting to cramp and I was worried about the big logs we had to go over. It all worked out and I was able to pick up the pace for the last 1/2 mile or so. It took me about an hour.

Total finish time was 3:30 and some seconds.
I came in 3rd in my age group - another total surprise!! and 11th overall. Technically I was 4th in my age group since one of the girls was in the top 3 overall, but she didn’t count for age group awards. All 3 of the girls who finished before me in my age group finished in the top 5! They are SUPER fast, so I was pretty excited with my results and my fancy new beer glass.
Other great finishes from the LUNA Chix included:
Amy from the Tri team and Sara from the Cycling team as a relay
Susan and Amy from the Mountain Bike team as a relay
Charity, Yonina and Amanda from the Cycling team all completed the entire race
April and Virginia from the Mountain Bike team both completed the entire race. April is leading her age group for the Regional standings and has already secured her invitation to Nationals in Ogden!
Great job ladies!