2010 Bike MS

Total Miles: 172

Total Climbing: Almost 10,000 feet (I’m trying to find someone whose odometer showed a couple hundred more feet than mine did so I can claim 10,000 ft!)

Completed my 3rd Bike MS! It was another fantastic ride. The Colorado Chapter of the MS Society has this event so well organized and supported that the pain of the ride is easily forgotten. I have to go on a diet after the ride because there is so much food and I way over estimate the number of calories I’m burning. A 3rd brownie? Why not? A 3rd lunch? Why, I think I will! There were around 3000 riders again this year and it’s an amazing experience to see all the staff, riders, and volunteers out for the weekend to support this cause.

We had a team again this year and had 15 riders. Several participated for the first time and it was great to see them take in the experience for the first time.

I like to give myself a challenge every year and this year, I wanted to do the Century ride on the 2nd day, so my day one ride was paced so I’d have energy for day 2. Steve used day one as a training ride, so he was off after rest stop one, and Jamey and I rode together and had a great time solving all the problems of the world and enjoying the beautiful scenery. I made sure to stop at all the rest stops and eat everything I could put in my mouth (I need the calories for tomorrow, I rationalized) and snagged as many free mini cliff bars and shot blocks as I could stuff in my jersey. Lunch today was a full buffet with sandwiches, salads, chips, brownies, cookies and drinks (only the hydrating kind at this point in the event). The best rest stop is the last one at around mile 60. By then, it’s getting hot, I’m tired and I’m wondering if it will storm tomorrow so I have an excuse not to do the century. But then, I pedal into the rest stop and they have Snowcones! With the water bottles refilled, a short rest, a snowcone and various other food items, off we go to Horsetooth Reservoir, the big climb at the end of the ride. As I started climbing, I see Steve coming from the other direction. He had finished and rode back to ride with me. The first thing out of his mouth was “we’re going to have to ride 3 more miles when we finish”. I’m huffing and puffing up the climb by this point and was sure I was hearing things because surely my husband isn’t telling me I have to ride more AFTER I finish? He had calculated that he would be at 97 miles when he finished, and you can’t just quit at 97 miles, so we have to do 3 more to get him a century on day one and I’m his support crew, so I have to do it too. I decided to pretend I couldn’t talk through my huffing and puffing otherwise I might have said something I might have regretted. We finished the climb and then got to my favorite part of day one: riding down Horsetooth Reservoir into Fort Collins. It’s all downhill to the finish and it’s a blast.

Day Two

Steve and the Fort Collins riders on our team did a Century last year, only they did a slightly different route than the official route and Steve thought I would “enjoy” this route too. Steve, Mark and I started at 6:30 am and headed up Rist Canyon. It was beautiful going up the Canyon – we had a fox trotting in front of us for a while, a stream running along the road, and Aspen stands. Then… we got to the really steep part and I forgot to look around. I had to get off my bike twice and walk a bit. If the ride stopped at the top of the Canyon I would have gritted my teeth and powered up but all I could think was “after I get to the top of this canyon, I have 75 miles to go”! As we were climbing, Jay rode by us like we were standing still. He was kind enough to wait for us at the top though and we took a break and took a few photos.

Steve set his land speed record on the Rist Canyon descent last year so he was quite eager to top that. The guys took off and flew downhill; I look for ways to avoid pain so I didn’t chase them. I eventually got to the bottom to hear the boys comparing speed records “I think I hit 55; at least that is the last number I saw!” “I think it hit 57!” “I only touched my brakes once!” Yea, I only touched my brakes once too – I started braking at the top of the hill and didn’t let them go until I was at the bottom. It was a beautiful ride, but really? Rist Canyon at the beginning of my first century ride? After yesterday’s ride of 72 miles? Why do I listen to Steve?

I was feeling much better having gotten that out of the way and comforted myself knowing I had rest stops and lunch coming up. I started panicking though, when we hooked into the “official” route and I didn’t see any riders. We got to the next rest stop and they were tearing down. I went into serious depression. WHAT IF THERE IS NO FOOD FOR ME THE REST OF THE RIDE? This rest stop still had some water and bananas and kindly let us dig in. We didn’t stay long, driven by my need to ensure we got to the next food stop before they were gone. We got going and started catching other riders. Before long we were at the lunch stop and I rush of relief came over me when I say the buffet still set up.

We reached the last rest stop and Steve though someone said the finish was 11 miles to go. Given that calculation, we would have arrived at the finish at 98 miles. Seriously?? As it turns out, hit the finish at 100.71 miles; it would have been a bummer if Steve had to ride my bike around the parking lot 2 more miles.

This is the part where I express my gratitude and pride for Steve. All kidding aside, he knows when to push me to challenge myself and when to encourage me. He let me draft off him almost the whole ride the 2nd day and I don’t know if I could have done it without that. He tells me I can do it when I’m tired and mentally questioning whether I can. This is the 3rd year he’s ridden with me on the 2nd day to cross the finish line together and when we are riding together towards the finish line and the people are screaming as if they came out just to watch us, and I look at Steve and realize he’s the one with MS that I’m riding for, I choke up and get emotional. He is my hero. He has MS and there is never a day that he complains about his pain, he never uses his MS as an excuse to not do something, and he inspires so many with his will and commitment. When I think about quitting the ride early, or think about how much I hurt, I remind myself of Steve, and so many others with MS, who live with pain every day and know that I can live with it for a few hours.

Boulder 5430 Sprint Triathlon

My first Triathlon of the season was today – the Boulder 5430 Sprint Triathlon. If your attention span is only a minute long, here is the short version:

• I had a great time.
• Race went well:
• My swim went really well; I was fast and I beat the pants of many of the men in my wave and was 9th out of 68 women in my age group.
• My bike was pathetic. Don’t look at the race results online. This was the first time on my new Tri bike and I rode pretty conservatively as I’m still in the formative stages of our relationship. For having a really cool fancy Tri bike I should be riding a lot faster!
• My T3 transition was awesome. 53 seconds. For those who don’t know what that is, you’ll have to read the long version.
• My run was good (for me). Don’t look at these results online either because if you are a runner, you wouldn’t use the word “good” and run in the same sentence after you saw my pace.

...End of ADHD version...


...Begin longer version for those with longer attention spans or not enough to do...


Steve signed me up for the Boulder Triathlon series (Sprint, Olympic and ½ Ironman distances) in January when it sounded like a really good idea and I had plenty of time to train and get ready. Here it is June 20th and the first triathlon is already here. I don’t know if everyone feels this way, but no matter how much I train I always uncover those things that I haven’t done enough of and think I’m not ready. I didn’t run enough! I didn’t do enough bricks! Oh no – I haven’t done hill training in weeks! Nevertheless, time marches on and they didn’t ask me if they should move the race date out because I wasn’t trained enough.

Steve had the weekend off, and wasn’t racing, so he was support crew. Thank you Steve, for getting all my gear ready, telling me what time to get up, making my Gatorade and taking care of all the details and getting to the race 3.5 hours before it started (everyone should know I was complaining about how early we got to the race). We had a great day Saturday taking our time leaving home and getting to Boulder for packet pickup. We stood in line for a million hours to get my packet and once we had that acquired headed to our hotel. I had big plans for a nap and Steve had big plans for a long bike ride. I settled in for a long winter’s nap and Steve took off. Who didn’t let the other guests know I was napping? Must they YELL in the hallways? I drift off and am awakened by Steve knocking on the door I had security latched. He was a mile into his ride when he got a flat. He picked up his wallet to buy more tubes and headed back out and I jammed my ipod headphone in my ears in the hopes of drifting off into a blissful sleep. I had forgotten that blissful sleep and hotel don’t go together. I did have some relaxing and restful quiet time though. Once Steve got back we headed to Pearl Street Mall in Boulder to meet friends from the Pike’s Peak Tri Club for dinner. What a great place! Street vendors, street performers and an eclectic combination of people. We met up with the gang and headed to the Cheesecake Factory to fuel up.

4:45am: Steve’s alarm goes off and it’s up and running. Bikes in the car, sunscreen on, fruit smoothie for breakfast and off to Boulder Reservoir. Steve’s #1 triathlon rule is you MUST arrive at the transition area first to “get a good spot”. When you are competing for a spot to the World Championships, I can understand that. Me? 15 minutes more sleep would be good! Thanks to Steve though, we are never rushing around before a race and today, we parked in the FIRST row! I got my body marking (for those not familiar with triathlon, this isn’t some kind of tattoo ritual, but rather they way they identify the athletes. They write your race number and age on your arms and legs. Should you be unlucky enough to drown in the swim portion of the triathlon, they have a way to identify your body. It also comes in handy when you are cycling and running; you can look at the person who just passed you, identify their age on their left calf and determine if they are in your age group. If so, you better pick it up! If they are 20 years younger than you, you can feel better about yourself when you are passed.)

After body marking, I have practically the whole day to rest in the car because Steve got me there so early. I don’t start my race until 8:20. Triathlon lesson #2: they start the athletes in “waves” by age group so all the athletes don’t start the swim at the same time. This race had 1600 athletes; can you imagine 1600 athletes all starting the swim at the same time? The lifeguards would earn their pay if that happened!

I ate another breakfast in the car while waiting patiently for my wave to start – yogurt and my homemade granola. Tasted good at the time, and again several times during the race. Yogurt may be a good idea, but the granola didn’t seem to work. Plug in the ipod and damage my eardrums listening to my music to get the energy flowing. Soon enough, it’s time to head to the swim start. The wetsuit donning process takes a long time; I think it would be easier to just paint it on. “It’s supposed to be tight” Steve keeps repeating. After stuffing myself into wetsuit, I waddle to my fellow Wave 11 athletes and make the typical pre-race small talk. We move along the beach and pretty soon we’re in the water waiting for the horn signaling our race start.

If you haven’t done a triathlon, I’ll try to paint a picture of what it’s like to do the swim in the reservoir with hundreds of your closest friends. At the announcer’s signal, the athletes walk down the beach and get in the water and approach the start line. The fast swimmers get in front and you all tread water until the horn goes off. I got up towards the front in this race and found myself among the men in my wave; the horn signals and the next 100 – 200 yards are spent trying to get a swimming rhythm. I put my head in the water and can only see a few feet in front of me – the water is murky and there are no black lane lines at the bottom to guide me. I immediately run into the swimmers in front of me, and have to pick my head up while swimming to see how I can get around them. There are about 5 across so I opt to squeeze in between a couple of them; why lose a couple valuable seconds? Feet and arms are everywhere as I swam through them. I get going again and get into a rhythm of swimming a few strokes, picking my head up to spot the buoy (does anyone remember doing Tarzan swimming in swim practice? It comes in handy in a Triathlon). It’s a 750 m swim and the course is marked with buoys. I pick my head up to spot where my next buoy is and look directly into the sun rising over the reservoir. Seeing spots from looking directly into the sun, but not finding the buoy, I look for other swimmers ahead of me and swim towards them. Without lane markers on the bottom of the pool and the churning water, I don’t swim in a straight line but swim to the right, so I have to pick my head up every 4-6 strokes to see if I’m headed towards the buoy or towards the kayaker stationed on the course to keep us from drifting off course. Once in a while, I swim along another swimmer and let them to do the spotting. Before long, I’m at the turnaround buoy and so are about 20 others and someone swims over me and I cut someone else off. Heading back to shore isn’t as bad because when you look up to spot, you’re not glaring into the sun. Swim Time: 14:36

Here is what the swim start looks like:

As I get out of the water I look for Steve and can’t find him among all the other fans cheering for me (or are they cheering for the athletes next to me?) I take off my cap and goggles and fiddle with my wetsuit zipper trying to get it undone. As I stumble towards the 1st Transition (called T1) and get the top half of my wetsuit down and run to my bike. The transition area is where you transition from one event to the next. T1 is transition from swim to bike. All the bikes are in rows and my gear is carefully arranged by my bike for a quick transition. I remembered where my bike was (thanks to Steve for getting us there 10 hours before race start, my bike is on the end of a row) and strip off my wetsuit the rest of the way, barely avoiding falling over as I get my legs out of the wetsuit. I put on my sunglasses, helmet and try to drink my Bing energy drink and end up spilling it all over the front of me. On go the socks, bike shoes and gloves. Grab the bike and run out of T1. T1 Time: 2:27.

The bike was good. This is only the 3rd time I’ve ridden my new Cervelo and we are still in the very early stages of our relationship, so I will use that as my excuse for my slow cycling. My fancy Tri bike far exceeds my ability but I love the bike! I promise to train so my ability matches my bike’s capability. The course is beautiful and it’s great to be out there with all the other triathletes. I passed a few people (fortunately some athletes ride mountain bikes in this race affording me the opportunity to pass someone) and got passed. 17 miles later I’m back at the transition area (aptly called T2). I spot Steve among all my other fans as he takes photos of me coming in. I dismount, run to my row again, throw off my helmet, gloves and trade biking shoes for running shoes and take off again. T2: 53 seconds.

Running after riding a bike never feels good! That first mile is like running with lead in my legs and it takes a while to get in the groove. I fiddle with my Garmin watch for a few minutes and can’t get it to switch over to the “run” mode. I fall into a good pace and repeat over and over “Pain is temporary, pride is permanent”. For me a 5k run hurts as much as a 13 mile run! I keep up the pace I wanted and reach the finish line and get my medal, wet towel and find Steve.

Run Time: 29:24

Carie Nolan (CO Chapter President), Dr. Weiner and Michele

Dr Weiner, Michele and Steve

I hosted a research reception through the MS Society tonight. Dr. Howard Weiner was our guest. Dr. Weiner is a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and has studied MS for over 3 decades. It was fascinating to hear him talk about his work, the new breakthroughs in treatment and the new medications that are in FDA process. I am thankful for people like Dr. Weiner as it is people like him that will find a cure for MS so my boys will never hear the words “you have MS”.

Lemonade: Just when we needed it!

Steve had today off so we got to do our long bike ride together. This is one of my favorite rides around – start in Sedalia and ride to Palmer Lake and back for a 48 mile ride. I was feeling energetic, so we added 10 miles on in Palmer Lake. The ride from Sedalia to Palmer Lake is rolling hills with elevation gain of 3000 ft, so the ride back is a blast. The road we ride on is a 2 lane highway at the foot of the Rockies. The flowers are just coming out and the grasses are green. On the way back, 4 boys had a lemonade stand set up so we stopped for a quick lemonade and to support the young entrepreneurs! Rides like this are what keep me pedaling.

Kansas

We are in Kansas for the Kansas 70.3 triathlon. Steve is doing this one and I’m glad I was wise enough to not to sign up for it! It’s too early in the season for me to have gotten the proper training in and it’s blood hot here! While Steve rested today, I went to a bike ride. I started off thinking I’d ride an hour because I didn’t know the area and didn’t want to get lost. Once I got going though, I felt great, stayed on one road and didn’t make any turns so as not to get myself lost. After about 20 miles it was time to turn around because my water and Gatorade supply were running low. It was really beautiful with all the lush green vegetation, cute farm houses, and miles of hills covered in the crops of the season. I rode back to the campground and decided 38 miles wasn’t going to get me through the MS150 or the ½ Ironman in August, so I filled up with water and headed back out. The next 8 miles were ok, and the last 8 miles just plain sucked. The heat settled into my body, my legs were fatigued and my brain was cooked. They say when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, I generally curse, whine, question my sanity, slow down, bribe myself with rewards (which generally involve chocolate), and wonder how I’m going to cycle 150 miles. But something keeps me going. Is it my commitment to accomplishment something? Is it thinking about so many people who would love to ride a bike 56 miles but can’t? Is it a sheer unwillingness to give up? Is it that I have my goals and if I don’t train I don’t meet the goals? Yes, it is all those. But mostly, it’s the fact that if I don’t ride my butt back to the starting point, the only other option is walking the rest of the way in those silly bike shoes… click, click, click…