Gutter Water Crash

30 mile ride today, crashed turning in the gutter water right before home. A little road rash, bruises, broken shifter and cracked helmet. It could have been worse! Great excuse not to do my swim. My bike is in the shop til Wednesday, I got a new helmet with a little pink on it. There was a very cool gray, black and red one but we all know what would happen if I bought that one!

Tempe Town Lake--OH NO!!!!

Oh no, Oh no, the dam at Tempe Town Lake burst, there is no more lake as of this moment. Big promises to have it repaired in time for IMAZ. I have a love/hate relationship with swimming, and I am scared like crazy to do this swim, to get kicked, poked, jabbed, swam over and spit out. Or maybe I'm just more scared about not making the cut-off time. I would gladly skip the swim......or so I thought. But an Ironman is an Ironman, and an Ironman is not an Ironman without a swim, call it a du or whatever, I don't want to be an Irondu, I want to earn the title Ironman. Please Tempe, fix your lake.

What Training Partners Do.....

And

I told Craig I would never do another Ironman (after this) unless.......unless I don't finish. If I don't finish this I will be in line on Monday morning to register for attempt #2, and I will be in that line with him by my side to register as my sherpa. That didn't go over very well since he has already done his one and only Ironman (see race report) he won't even consider doing an "easy" Ironman like Arizona. Nor, (sadly) will he consider being my sherpa. But what he will do is just about anything he can to help me now. I'm down to my last 16 weeks of training and have already checked out on cooking dinner and pretty much laundry too, he's picking up the slack without complaint. Every night he asks me what time to set the alarm for and sets his alarm (so I can't roll over and turn it off) and gets up to do whatever it is that is on my training plan with me. This morning it was three miles of swimming--no I didn't do three miles, my training plan thinks I can do that in 1hr 15 minutes, but I did swim the whole time. When we got to LA Fitness the lanes were full (left to my own devices I would have just gone home), so instead we drove over to Highland--nice club BTW and swam. Craig left a little early went and bought diet coke and peanut butter since we were out of my training staples and came back to get me. That's what training partners (who don't want to be sherpas) do.

Good ride this morning!

Now I am just waiting for water aerobics to be over so I can go swim, have I ever ranted on here about water aerobics. I hate water aerobics, note: not the cute ladies who do water aerobics, or the workout, it's dang hard, I hate water aerobics cause they take the whole pool, couldn't they just save one lane for lap swimmers?

Swim done--good day, if I swim as well as I did today I will make the cut-off!

Terrible, Horrible, No Good Ride

Ok, maybe I should save that title for another day, there are sure to be worse rides. I am reserving the right to reuse it!
This morning I had a chance to ride with Craig, he didn't have to go to work till a little later, I slept well and was really looking forward to my ride. I didn't know what the problem was specifically, but everything was a problem this morning. Maybe it was the Desoto shorts I was wearing, maybe the bike tweaking last week wasn't so great after all, maybe it was the run I did yesterday. I squirmed and squiggled in the saddle trying to get comfortable, I tried to pick up my pace but even on the parts where I always go fast and it's easy to go fast I couldn't. I told Craig, it must be the shorts, (note, I have always loved my Desoto shorts) "from now on I'm wearing my team kit shorts". His response, "that's a good idea, at least your tan lines will be right" a little sarcasm yeah right, of course it's the shorts! I plugged on, and he finally commented, "you're really not into this ride this morning are you?" NO! I bailed on the Loma Linda part of the ride and we headed up Serpentine, come on, come on, I never have to use my small ring the first time up (maybe if I'm riding loops). Then, the aha moment I hit a pot hole or crack in the pavement and felt my tire hit the rim, I was flat. Craig checked the tires this morning, but I think I must have picked up something right away that started a slow leak. At least this is what I'm hoping is my reason! Now I am going to mop, dust and vacuum, put in another load of laundry, fix my flat and see if I can at least get in a decent Sunset loop.