Marian, May 14th, 2007

When i woke up today, I was still feeling pretty sore after a big training weekend. So far, this is the most I've done in one weekend, but that will keep changing in the weeks to come. Saturday, we biked around Canadaigua Lake. Everyone says that riding around that lake is worse than riding the Lake Placid course. So, I felt a little nervous that morning packing all my nutrition. i know when I'm really nervous because it's the only time when I don't want to eat in the morning. That's very rare this days. I forced down a bagle and packed the Carbo pro in gateorade and the gels and the marathon and clif bars. I will try to eat solids today. We drove out and started the ride before traffic (around 7 am). Than we finally hit Miller Hill. It seemed to go on forever. Itried to keep talking to not think about it, but it seemed all i could say was "Are we there yet?" When we made it to the top I felt like I could ride forever. Nothing would be harder than this. Spoke too soon. My wonderful husband who knows all too well that I am terrified of downhills decided to change our route a little bit to accomodate a, what he calls, "crazy monkey descent". It was crazy. I stayed behind as the rest of the group went on ahead. It veered left, then right. I was long and two trucks we trying to pass us. A cyclist was coming up the hill, he waved hello, I think I smiled, I don't know if I answered. I did in my head but don't know if it was out loud. Then, the worst thing of all, the downhill ends in STOP sign. My hands were clamy and my feet were numb. I heard clapping at the bottom when I made it in one piece. Smooth sailing after that. We finished the ride with the Olympic distance course of Finger Lakes Tri. The ride was 4 hours and 41 minutes long. Soon, we will be going up Miller hill twice in one ride, and the scary part is that what goes up, must come down.