krisalis

I’m imploding.

I just thought you might like to know.

When you were a kid, did you believe that the green M&Ms made people horny?

Where did that come from?

And why don’t M&M’s come exclusively in green? Cheaper than viagra, surely.

• Showed my friend Audrey around Austin. She was visiting from Singapore.
• Shopped at Vylette’s closing down sale. Sniff My favourite Austin boutique is closing! Oh well. At least I found some nice stuff in the sale.
• Had breakfast tacos at Maudie’s.
• Bought a lovely bikini – it’s green and it makes me wish summer were properly here so I can wear it!
• Had a long and very enjoyable dinner at Uchi, followed by a great night out on the town. We started in Pete’s Piano bar, and then stopped off at Maggie Mae’s before finishing the night at Fado’s. I don’t go out often enough.
• Got up stupidly early to go workout with my tri training group. Ran about 5 miles. Not necessarily a good plan the morning after so much gin & tonic has been consumed. I should not do this again.
• Visited a Farmer’s Market in downtown Austin. Tried Kolaches for the first time. Mmmmmmmmm!
• Toured the Capitol.
• Wandered the length of The Drag, where we ate delicious noodles at Madam Mam’s and I bought a groovy pair of sunglasses that make me look like a strung out rockstar.
• Enjoyed the delights of Amy’s ice-cream.
• Met up with my MS150 training group so we could jabber endlessly about the bike ride to each other, which is good, because I’m fairly sure all our friends and family have heard enough about it by now.
• Had dinner at a friend’s house and watched “Raiders of The Lost Ark” on DVD. That is a great movie!
• Went to collect husbandmand from the airport.
• Got up very early and took Audrey to the airport.
• Went back to bed for an hour or so.
• Church.
• Maudie’s for migas and coffee, whilst wearing the strung out rockstar sunglasses, and looking very much like a strung out rockstar from lack of quality sleep.
• Went with husbandman to the mall so he could get fitted for his groomsman tux for Billie and Corey’s wedding.
• Went back to bed for a couple of hours.
• Baked banana bread and made chicken curry.
• Back to bed…

I had a great weekend, but I definitely need more sleep.

Photos from the MS150 – there are pictures from my camera phone, some from my trusty old Sony digital camera and a few taken by friends along the route.

And now I’m done talking about the MS150. At least until next year.

Watch out though – triathlon training has begun!

First event of the season for me will be The Capital of Texas sprint distance tri on Memorial Day.

4.15am is darn early.

I literally had to drag myself out of bed, rolling my tired bod off the air mattress and onto the floor as I scrambled to shut off my alarm before my gracious hosts could be disturbed.

Brush teeth. Climb back into bike gear. Slap on the sunscreen. Not hungry after the big meal the previous evening, shove down a banana anyway. Sip on some tea, down a bottle of water. Grab bags and head for town square, where the bus is due to pick us up at 5am. Get on bus, headed for the start line.

And then the nerves started.

It was totally silent on the bus, as everyone else dozed in the darkness.

We reached the start area at around 5.45am, and it was immediately apparent that we were ‘late’. Riderless bikes were littered all down the starting line up area, carefully placed there bright and early by their owners who were presumably getting breakfast and packing up bags while the stragglers like me struggled to ditch luggage and make a final bathroom stop before getting to the starting line up.

By 6.15am, I was lined up and ready to go. And then we waited. And waited. And ducked out the line to go to the portapot. And waited. And ducked out the line to swipe coffee from the BP tent. And waited some more. At 7am, the first riders started rolling out, but we still didn’t move. Eventually, we started inching forward bit by bit. Finally, at 7.50am, we got to the front and started riding. It felt good to finally be on the move.

It took a while to get warmed up after standing around in the early morning chill for so long on legs that had already covered 100miles the previous day, but gradually my body eased back into the swing of things and before long, I was flying along once more, full of energy and happy to be out riding.

Having heard so much about the parks and their much touted steep hills, we had discussed the options of doing the ‘Bechtel Challenge Route’ vs the ‘Fedex Lunch Express’ in much detail. I was apprehensive about taking on the park route, but after a decent Day 1, I decided to go for it. I’m so glad I did. The parks were the highlight of my Day 2. Yes, it was hilly – steep ups and downs – but it was so much fun, and so exhilarating! I loved it.

My odometer crapped out sometime early on during Day 2, but I only realised it when I went to check my total mileage a couple of hours in and discovered that according to my meter, I had only covered 12.6miles, my average speed was 3.7mph, and somehow my max speed was showing at 61.1mph! Clearly something was wrong. I fiddled with the sensors at the next rest stop, but to no avail. Fortunately, my cadence monitor continued to function. It was frustrating not to be able to check my progress along the route – I was never sure how far I had gone, or how much further there was to go, and I didn’t know how fast I was going, or what speed I was averaging. It bugged my initially, but then I decided to just go with the flow and stop worrying about that stuff.

I lost all my riding partners during the parks, but managed to find them again at the lunch stop. We stopped for quite a long time for lunch – over 30min. Then just when were were ready to get going, the organizers closed the toute to allow EMS vehicles to get to an injured rider. Unfortunately, with so many riders on the roads of such wildly differing abilities, fitness levels and mental acuity, there were several accidents over the course of the weekend. And as is too often the case, when one rider goes down, they tend to take down others around them.

I consider myself very fortunate to have come through the weekend unscathed, because although I trained and practised and know how to operate a bike safely in traffic and crowds, there’s still nothing that can be done eliminate the idiocy of others, my own clumsiness or general servings of bad luck. I narrowly escaped tumbles on a couple of occasions when people suddenly swerved or stopped without warning, or when a cop absent mindedly started waving a truck on into an intersection, despite the impending arrival of a paceline, traveling at speed.

My excitement grew as we got closer to Austin. I started recognizing where we were, and it felt really good to be riding into my home town, with people cheering us on from their front yards.

Coming in to the finish line was amazing. The crowds were cheering and there was music playing. As I got closer, a bag piper began playing ‘The Eyes Of Texas’ and I raised my right hand to give the ‘Hook ‘em’ salute to the piper. The crowd whooped it up in response and I whooped right back, shouting my delight to the sky, hands raised in victory.

I felt like a rock star. I felt like I was Queen of the Universe. I felt totally invincible.

I felt like I might cry.

And then it was done. I did it. 182 miles in two days. It was over.

As I stood with my bike beyond the crowds at the finish line, chugging down icy cold water, scanning the faces of arriving riders all flush with a sense of victory, I already knew I’d have to do it again.

After crossing the half-way finish line, I wheeled my bike to my team tent. There were people and bikes everywhere, all milling about looking for friends, family and a place to sit down.

We found our tent, put down our bikes and went in search of food and water. I chugged down some cold water and popped some peanut M&Ms, but I felt lousy. A cold towel on the back of my neck sorted me out nicely. Next up – 30min massage. Oooh, yeah. Then lunch – BBQ chicken sandwich, beans, coleslaw and several pickle spears, washed down with a couple of Bud Lites. I love me some pickle spears after a bike ride, and man those beers hit the spot!

Next up – Operation Get Clean. We took a bus to the local school in search of a shower. The lines were insanely long, but fortunately they were all for the men’s facilities – us ladies walzed right in to the locker room, much to the disapproval of the waiting throng of sweaty guys. At last some karmic payback from all those times us ladies had to wait in line for the loo in the pub and at sporting event!

After the shower, all felt right with the world once more. Back on the bus to the team tent to check in on fellow riders and snarf some more M&Ms.

We stayed with friends in Fayetteville that evening; such a lovely little town. They drove us out to RoundTop for dinner at a great restaurant; tons of character and fabulous food, particularly the strawberry and rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream. Yum!

In bed by 10.30pm. Alarm set for 4.15am. I’ve never slept so soundly on an air mattress.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

The problem with beginning at the beginning is identifying where that beginning began. Was it at 6.40am when our little peleton rolled out from ConocoPhilips in Houston on Saturday morning to whoops and shouts, with me singing ‘Allez, allez, allez, allez, allez!’, so nervous and excited I thought I might explode? Was it at 4.45am when the alarm went off, waking me from a vivid cycling-dream-filled sleep?

Was it 11.30am on Friday morning, when Kem and I left the bike shop and began our drive to Houston? Or was it at 10.30am on Friday, when I went to load my bike onto the car and discovered that my back tire had somehow split overnight, requiring not just a new tube, but a new tire! Or perhaps it started as early as Thursday evening, when I poured over endless checklists, hunting down chamois butter and flashlights, packing up my bags and carefully selecting my bike gear, and preparing little ziplock bags of snacks and drink powders?

Or maybe it all began when I signed up to ride MS150, with little or no clue as to what I was getting myself into.

Whatever starting point is selected, the fact remains that the actual ride began for me at 6.40am on Saturday morning, before the sun even peeked above the horizon. I was comfortably snuggled in the midst of the ConocoPhilps pack, in the 16mph group when we got the go signal.

The first 40 or so miles were totally flat. I’ve never ridden on such flatness before! It took a little while for us to warm up and get comfortable in the saddle. Once I settled into my pace, and stopped being so scared, things started to get fun. Kem and I hopped into a double paceline. It felt like we were flying! The paceline was so smooth and fast, and we worked our way forward until it was our turn to pull. We did our time and peeled off after our stint, returning to the back of the line. It. Was. Awesome.

We skipped the first two rest stops and stopped briefly at rest stop #3 to refill water bottles, use the portapots, and um, moblog my progress. I was feeling pretty good at this point in time. We passed the so-called lunch rest stop at 9.15am, and kept on going. We joined other pacelines as we biked through small towns and pretty scenery.

We stopped again at rest stop #6 for some PBJ, banana, orange segments and more fluids. After a quick snack, bathroom break and some stretching, it was time to get back on the bike and press on.

I seem to remember that scenery got really pretty after rest stop #6 – lots of wildflowers and cows and old houses by the road. I also seem to remember that this is when the crowds thinned out significantly, and when the rolling hills started. I use the term ‘hills’ lightly here – they were only hills because it had stopped being as flat as a pancake, not because I needed to use granny gear!

Sometime around the 70 mile mark, I realised this was the furthest I had ever cycled in one go, and I started laughing out loud, not necessarily because it was funny, but because I only had 30miles to go for the day and suddenly I knew I could do it.

Passing through Fayetteville was a huge highlight on Day 1. It felt like the whole town was out on the street, cheering us on with noisemakers and horns. ‘Johnny B Goode’ was blaring from a stereo system into the street. I was grinning from ear to ear as I cycled through the town waving and singing.

Things took a bit of a dip somewhere around the 85mile mark for me. Suddenly, I started feeling not so strong. Not weak, really, just not right somehow. So I ate some trail mix and more PBJ, and washed it down with a few swallows of e-load. Within 5 minutes, my stomach started hurting. I was getting tired, and I think my legs didn’t like having to compete with my stomach for blood. I tried to ease my stomach cramp by sitting up in the saddle, riding with my hands by my sides on portions of the road where it was flat and no one was near me. That worked pretty well. I thought about stopping at a rest stop, but frankly, it wasn’t that bad, I knew I was close and I just wanted to get to the end. It may not have been smart, but that’s what I did.

With 9 miles to go, I was not a happy biker. Fortunately, as we got closer to La Grange, there were more and more people cheering us on. That felt good. Every little slope was making my tummy hurt more, so I started chanting ‘I think I can, I think I can’ to myself as I climbed. Somehow, that made it better. Maybe just because it took my mind off the cramp.

Apparently, there was an accident by the side of the road on the way into La Grange, where a dump truck had overturned whilst swerving to avoid a SAG vehicle that was riding beside a biker, and not watching oncoming traffic with full attention. I was so focused on getting to the finish line, I didn’t even notice the upturned truck.

I crossed the line at around 12.35pm to cheers and shouts, with Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ blaring on the sound system. I was so darn happy to cross the line!

Total ride time for Day 1 was 5hr 53min. Actual ride time ~5hr 25min. Average speed 18.1mph. Total distance was 99.13miles on my odometer. Total official distance for the day was 100miles.