epic ride

my training buddy michelle and i decided to crash the t3 workout this morning. t3 is one of the local triathlon groups and they have a long brick workout basically every saturday. the goal was to do a 70 mile ride and follow it up with a 3 mile run. as this is a rather typical saturday morning activity for all of us, it didn't seem too daunting.

michelle and i met up with michelle l. and after debating about how many layers of clothing to wear (it was cold and overcast, but it would get warm, right?) we hit the road. about an hour or so into the ride it started to get colder and windier and then it started raining. awesome. over the next hour or so we begin to lose feeling in our hands and we're soaked to the bone...but we're long distance triathletes, so we don't complain (see my post from a year ago about dating a triathlete and what the deal is with being a wimp in "weather").

then i get a flat. the michelle's stand there shivering as i try to change my tire with hands that i can't exactly close anymore. i get the tube replaced and start filling it up. the first c02 fills the tire up, but it goes flat almost immediately. thinking that maybe i did something wrong, i try another co2. the tire goes flat again almost immediately. great. now here was where it got amusing. i was only carrying one spare tube, and i had apparently damaged it while changing out the old one. and the michelle's are both riding bikes with 650 wheels (mine has 700)...so between the three of us we have no more 700 tubes. and i can't patch because its so wet, its not going to stick anyways. there's a nursing home about 200m up the road, so the michelle's start heading back to the cars (which are about 20 miles away) and i head to the nursing home to stay warm.

i spent 2.5 hours this morning in that nursing home talking to the residents. i quite enjoyed myself. for the first hour or so that i was there, aubrey filled me in on the local gossip and for the second hour or so i mostly talked to phyllis who filled me on her life in houston and working for her father. as the end of the second hour was nearing, one of the nurses came by and asked if my friends had forgotten about me. she then said, wait, don't you cyclists carry pumps on your bike? my stomach flipped over. i have my frame pump on the bike i was riding. i could have just come inside, patched my tube, pumped up the tire with the frame pump and been on my way.

i'm glad i didn't think of that sooner though. michelle arrived to pick me up and we started driving back to my car. it turned out that about 2 miles from the nursing home, the bridge we were supposed to have crossed was out...so the michelle's had had to go a different way. i'm not familiar with the area, so i would most likely have gotten rather lost if i'd tried to find my way around.

michelle also told me that when she and the other michelle had gotten back to the parking lot, our three cars were the only ones left...apparently everyone else (~40 other people) had cut the ride short because of the weather and only ended up doing 43 miles (and no run). one of the guys who had ridden with us for a mile or two at the beginning had fallen, dislocated his shoulder and had to go to the hospital and some other girl had also taken a fall. so it apparently it had been a pretty epic day.

when i got back to my house (in austin), my roommates informed me it hadn't even rained here. ugh. i guess that's what we get for wanting to ride fast and flat terrain east of austin. regardless, the day was not all lost. my friend leya made me fresh mochi (!!) and tonight is the german haus party. look out world!