Bike: 281 minutes (74 miles)
Run: 21 minutes (2.4 miles)
Swim: 30 minutes
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so let me start with a photo from today's workout.
I guess I'll just start at the beginning and work my way up to the story behind this photo.
Brad texted first thing to say that he wasn't feeling well today so he wasn't going to join us. Probably a really good decision, based on the day we had. I wouldn't have wanted his first Dam Loop experience to have been today. Here's the Dam Loop plus the Leander add-on that we did today.
Kristi, Wayne, and Bonnie arrived around nine and we set up our bikes with food, air in the tires, and drinks. Bonnie realized she forgot her running shoes for the run after the ride. Luckily she and I have the same size shoe so she could still run.
We headed out for what promised to be a beautiful ride. The forecast was for sunny skies and highs in the 60s. It was a little chilly when we started. Wayne borrowed some arm warmers and had the best description for them. "It's like a wetsuit, lined with fleece." (Except he said it in Australian.)
The hills on this ride start around mile 4 and continue straight through until mile 35. On the very first hill Bonnie's chain fell off. We stopped and she was able to put it back on. The same thing happened about a quarter mile later. This time she was having trouble shifting the gears. Clearly something was wrong with her derailer. So she called Todd (who didn't ride today because of an injury) and asked if he could meet us with her other bike. He said he could just as soon as the cable guy left. Bonnie said that she could make it a few more miles so we plowed ahead.
We stopped around mile nine at a rest stop so she could call him again to see if Todd was on his way. Nope, cable guy still there. We decided to take a break to see if he was able to leave sometime soon, instead of trying to do the next set of hills without Bonnie's bike shifting correctly. After about 20-30 minutes, we decided to keep moving. So we saddled up and started to leave the parking lot. "Oh wait," Bonnie said. "I have a flat!" So we turned around and parked our bikes again.
Now we just had to wait. We found a nice patch of sun to wait in. After about ten minutes I asked if I could practice my bike maintenance skills by changing her tire. I hadn't realized that neither Kristi, Wayne, nor Bonnie knew how to change a flat. So I opened up Mechanic Mary's Roadside Bike Service Shop right there at the gas station. Using a combination of training techniques from The Office and from "Friends", I was able to show them how to change a tire. I had no idea what the correct names of any of the parts or tools were, and I used a lot of sounds to describe what I was doing. There were also a lot of "That's what she saids" going on as I described where to put certain parts of the tube and tire. It was quite a scene.
We managed to get the tire fixed, pumped up and back on the bike. Todd still hadn't left yet, so we decided to head out again. We made it to about mile 18 and Bonnie's personal roadside sag wagon assistant arrived. Just like in the Tour de France, Bonnie switched out her bike. Except the switch took a little longer than it does in the Tour. So finally we were back out on our way. Just in time for the big hills.
So ordinarily, this would have been quite an adventure. It took us about two and a half hours to do the first 20 miles of our 74 miler. And ordinarily, I'd be wrapping up here saying that the rest of the ride was great, we had an uneventful run, a good swim, and then ice baths.
But oh no. This was only the mere beginning of one of the craziest and most memorable rides to date. In the interest of time, I've decided just to make a list of the rest of the adventures as we encountered them.
1. Shortly after switching bikes, Bonnie's front brake started rubbing on the wheel. So we stopped and fixed that.
2. Kristi told me today I'm getting funnier-looking.
3. There's something strangely invigorating about traffic zipping by you at 60 mph, about three feet from you. I guess it hyperactivates your survival skills. It helps to keep me awake, that's for sure.
4. It did turn out to be a beautiful day-lots of sun.
5. I drank so much water thanks to the chia seeds that we had to stop a few times to refill my water bottles. Apparently Cedar Park has Walgreens every two blocks, but convenience stores only every six miles. Nothing convenient about that if you ask me.
6. Mile 45. Kristi can't shift her gears from the big ring to the small ring. That means she's riding in the hardest gears, non-stop. We decide to stop and see if we can fix it.
7. Kristi calls Mellow Johnny's Bike Shop to see if they can tell us how to fix it. She had just had her bike serviced there yesterday. She had her chain replaced, along with a bunch of other maintenance items.
8. I kept asking Kristi to let me talk to them. She didn't give me the phone. I think she knew that I was going to give them a piece of my mind.
9. Kristi said to the MJ person, on speaker phone, "Ok, well thanks anyway". Someone who was standing near the phone may have added, "For nothing".
10. A police officer stops to ask if we are ok. We ask if he has pliers. He doesn't.
11. The police officer puts out a call on the radio to see if any other officer has a pair of pliers. We tell him, "No, no, it's really ok." Apparently it was a slow day for crime in Leander.
12. While waiting for the plier cop to arrive, two bike cops pull up. We think they are the plier cops.
13. The bike cops look in their bike bags and tell us they don't have pliers. What is going on here?
14. The bike cops say that they heard the call for pliers over the cop radio and thought they'd swing by to see what was going on. Must have been an extremely slow day for crime in Leander.
15. The cops had a nice sense of humor, or they were just that bored, but the let us set up the "arrest" photo that was at the top of today's blog.
16. The actual cop who was bringing the pliers arrives.
17. The bike cops take a look at Kristi's bike and have no idea how to fix it. They say that when their bikes break down, the cop with the good bike rides back to the station to pick up a car to get the cop with the broken bike. Not too helpful of an idea considering we're 35 miles from home.
18. So now we have four cops all standing around watching as Wayne and I pretend we know what were doing. Meanwhile Bonnie is just in the midst of everything busting a gut trying not to laugh out loud. It was a pretty funny scene.
The cops were saying that they bet no one would run the intersection where we were with two cop cars and two cop bikes. I said I'd like to see them all in action if someone did run it!
19. After about 30 minutes of trying to fix it without any luck, wouldn't you know it, a truck stops at the intersection and asks if we're having bike trouble. One of the cops mumbled under his breath, "No, we're playing checkers."
20. Turns out the dude in the truck used to be a bike mechanic! So he pulls over and parks. Now we have three cars, six bikes, and nine people all in the intersection trying to fix Kristi's bike. Must have been a really boring day in Leander.
21. I was waiting for the news vans to arrive. I bet we could have made the nine o'clock news with as much attention as we were getting.
22. The bike mechanic dude tried his best to fix it, but didn't have the correct tools. He said that the front derailer is one of the most difficult things to fix on a bike.
23. The bike mechanic dude had an m-dot 70.3 tatoo on his calf. He said he's completed a few half-ironman races. See photo.
I didn't feel like zooming in on it, but it's there.
25. On our way again. Out to Parmer Lane. Right into the wind. But it wasn't too bad.
26. One last rest stop at McNeil.
27. Kristi gets a bloody nose.
28. Kristi breaks a nail.
29. Finally arrived at home seven and a half hours after leaving, to find Chris ready for a run!
30. Seven of us went on a fun run around Central Market. Four bikers, plus Chris, plus two furry friends.
31. A quick bowl of cereal and off to the pool.
32. Will this day never end? It's already 6pm!
33. A nice slow relaxing swim with lots of stretching breaks.
34. My new lap counter ring arrived so I tried it today. It's really comfy and easy to use. It's perfect! Here's what it looks like.
And here's how it fits on my finger. It looks bulky, but I was pleasantly surprised at the fit.
I think the screen is special for the water, so it wouldn't show up when I took a picture of it.
So that's the day in a nutshell. You can see why I decided to list all the events of the day. I could type about it all night if I wanted too. But instead I have to go to sleep so we can do it all over again tomorrow.
After the swim I went to Jason's Deli for supper. By this point in the day, I was starting to feel a little woozy and tired. I just needed food. Luckily there was no line. Just a very chipper, overly eager order-taker. I ordered the half sandwich and fruit cup special. The counter guy said, "Well, you get fruit with the full sandwich and its cheaper, do you want to do that?" I started to tell him I didn't want the full sandwich, when he cuts me off and says, "Or you could get the managers special that would save you money if you ordered this instead, or you could..." I cut him off this time and I said, just as kindly as my grumpy tired self could say, "How about we do this, I tell you what I want, and you just figure out how to ring it up." He said, "Ok, that works." Thank god. Man I was starving.
And now I'm tired.
G'night!
M :)
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