I have very mixed emotions about what happened Saturday. It was fear, exhilaration, pain... I have not met the end of my rope. The camel's back is still intact. But I'd have to say that I got very close to it.
The day started well and all. I pack everything the night before and fill my bottles to save time. Saturday morning I woke, popped in my contacts, toasted my bagel and mixed my Accelerade (carb drink). My carpool buddy Lis picked me up and off we went. This time to Zuma beach. We got out of the car and were engulfed in a cold blast of wind. On a family trip to Hawaii we visited a cliff where a king used to throw his enemies off of. It was windy up there. You could literally lean against it. That's how windy it was on Zuma beach that day. It was a full transition day to prep us for races. There's something about wetsuits that always makes me more nervous. Oh ya, probably cause it's tight and harder to move around, I swear mine is too small for me. We started on the beach, wetsuit, caps and goggles on our little heads. Then with the blow of a whistle we were off!
Bike shoes, gloves, sunglasses, arm warmers, helmet, sun screen, Hoo-ha, bike. These were the things I had to remember during my transition. It's a lot to remember. I stuttered and stopped to count everything off in my head and make sure I remembered it all. A little jog then I mounted my bike and took off. There's only been another time this season where we experienced some major headwinds. Learning from that experience I told myself to not look at my mph because I knew it would only be mentally frustrating. When the wind is pushing you back you could be going as hard as you can and still not go as fast as you could minus the wind and it was headwinds till the turnaround at 18mi. 18mi. I did about 12mi in ONE HOUR. On a flat without wind my average is around 17mph. I am patting myself on the back for telling myself not to look at my mph because I would have been mentally unstable at that turnaround if I had. I also want to thank my coaches and bike fitter Nate for my aero bars. I think this was one of the few times I've been grateful for being smaller. Hunched over in the aero position the wind didn't feel like it was hitting me as hard. I was the sparrow cutting through the wind. Chirp. Another technique I used to stay sane was to have a breathing pattern. A nice calm inhale then a whistling exhale between my teeth. Like I was creating a beat to my own music. It was meditative staring at the asphalt listening to my whistling. The one torturous point during this section was Big Rock. Up PCH before you reach Los Posas is this giant rock detached from the rest of the mountains. I felt like I was in one of those car commercials where they put a car in a wind tunnel except instead of that car it was me. It felt like forever and the sound! The wind in my ears was deafening. At the turnaround I stopped to be accounted for by SAG and a teammate patted me on the back and said he was proud of me and had been trying to catch up with me the whole time but couldn't. Hooray! Encouragement is nice.
After the turnaround was a whole other story. With the wind at my back I was flying at 24 mph. It was fantastic! I was thoroughly enjoying myself and it made up for the long arduous work it took to get up to that point but all good things must end. Once back to where I started I again had to turnaround and face the wind. Then there was...
Encinal
Like Mandeville, Encinal is the name of a street which is also a hill. A 5mi long hill. On a graph it looks like this:
The only reason I survived Encinal intact and without stopping was I realized when my heart rate shoots up and I get out of breath I panic which leads to a fearful mind saying "stop and take a break!" This time I took it nice and easy, not focusing on how long it would take me to get up the hill but instead focusing on keeping my breathing slow and controlled. It worked! No moments of panic, no huffing and puffing, just breathing. The views were beautiful, no matter how horrific the wind, it was a gorgeous day. Finally a teammate was on their way down and yelled "You're almost to the top! Just a half mile more!" At this time I was getting pretty weary. I had spent some time praying and trying to stay positive, counting my blessings. Thank you God for such a pretty day. Thank you God that I have the ability to do this. I've seen athletes with missing limbs. I see people in wheelchairs or walkers and it reminds me that I'm grateful that I am physically capable of doing this. And I thought of Chrissie Wellington's article (see previous blog) and thought of a positive image with people who support me and inspire me. In that last half mile I imagined my ex-girlfriend jogging alongside me with her hand on my back saying all the supportive things she's said in the past about my racing. "I'm so proud of you!" "You're super duper!" "You can do this!" It carried me to the end.
Then there was the run. Honestly, the bike was hard but for me the hardest part was the run. I didn't think the route was that hilly. There was one hill that I looked at and laughed at the ridiculousness of it so I walked it. That wasn't hard, that wasn't the problem. The hardest part was I could no longer take deep breaths. Anything deeper than the shallowest of breaths made me cough. Like exhaling was irritating to my insides and I had to get it out. It was disheartening. I felt good. I felt strong. But you can't really do anything if you can't breathe. I got a couple good jogs in but other than that I tried not to panic and just worked on calming myself down and walked. For 10mi. Then the last 2mi, remember those headwinds? I walked for 2mi face first into those headwinds. Squinting to keep the sand out of my eyes, freezing, I gritted my teeth, swung my arms and did my best to power walk straight to where my transition area was waiting. I immediately put on some clothes, grabbed my recovery drink, hid in the car, and called my ex to cry and tell her how hard it was.
I was not broken but I damn came close to it.
There's a moral to this story though. We kick our asses and push ourselves to the end during practice so when the race comes we've already gone through something harder. I'm scared of Wildflower but I'm beginning to think that it won't be as bad as I think. All of my teammates had a hard time that day. I heard there were lots of tears. People were saying it was one of the hardest practices they've had in all the seasons of the IronTeam they had been in. I'm hoping I'll be on the course at Wildflower and look back and think "practice was harder than this".
18 days.
