St George Marathon

St. George Marathon, #19 for Craig, #8 for me, #3 Ker, #9 Kevin, #2 Brian #? Brent, #2 Kyle, #1 Brad, #1 Kylie.   Yay! The whole family ran this year, you think that was a major accomplishment--not--this was the accomplishment, a new family picture, I could only contain them for one shot, shadows and all this is it.  I love them all so much, I'm very lucky!

650 or 700

La Jolla with the girls.  A fun few days with Mom, Kathy, Darcy, Jill, Ashleigh and Kerri, thank you all it was wonderful.  Still plugging away at the training, I'm loving my new bike, some decisions to make...ride my trusty Felt or throw some aerobars on the new Cervelo road bike.  650 vs 700?  I've read it all, there's no difference but my Garmin says otherwise, I'm loving my big girl wheels, in all the years I've ridden this is the first time I've had 700 wheels and for me it's making a difference.

Alta beat me up!

Weekend training on the 13th started out pretty well, Kev suggested we run from Alta to his house, sounded like a nice downhill run.  YIKES! that run hurt more than the SGM.

I think altitude was the biggest problem with my HR zones.  But whatever, it was done.  After our run we took these three cutie pies school shopping.

Look what Maddie found!  When she was about two I took her shopping for some cute dress shoes, I found some adorable Mary Janes, but she was not having it.  She found pink cowboy boots and that was that.  I think she wore them everywhere no matter what she had on.  I am sure Sarah was slightly relieved when she outgrew them. Well... look what she found..............

There they were! "Look grandma, they even have butterflies on them!" Kyran got his soccer stuff.

And what...no pictures of Katie's new shoes?  They all got new clothes they picked all by themselves, then we tried to exhaust them at Chick Fil A, but of course you know who was really exhausted!  We stayed at the cabin on our way home.

Last weekend was car shopping.  Success!  This weekend we are going to Arizona, trying out both bikes on the Beeline.

Tour de Big Bear--50 Miles

Yum! That's ribs in our hands, that's right, hot off the barbecue ribs.  This was the best sag stop ever!

If you need another excuse to do this ride, the previous stop was bacon and chocolate.  Every sag was totally amazing.  

Two years ago I registered for the olympic distance Big Bear Tri, when I saw the course I panicked and decided no way, I'll just do the sprint.  This year, I didn't even consider the oly, sprint for me.  This ride proved my chance to face my fears and check out the course.  The tri course goes down to Snow Valley, back up and around the lake.  The 50 mile Tour de Big Bear goes the same way but extends out around Baldwin Lake and back.  I had heard from several people that it is actually harder to ride down to Snow Valley than it is to ride back up--and my little inner voice says, "yeah right"!  But I have to say that is really true.  There are three climbs going down and the climb out of the dam was by far the hardest climb of all.  After that it was just riding and climbing.  I did this on my new road bike and given a choice in an oly tri I would definitely go with the road bike over the tri bike.  My road bike climbs so much better than my tri bike.  So I did it, I conquered my fears, I know I can handle the hills, on the 50 that is, the 70 includes Onyx Summit and that wasn't for me, not knowing if I could handle Snow Summit, but with a little more confidence, maybe next year.

The ride is well organized, plenty of volunteers and great food and a nice little expo.  This is definitely a ride for next year.

I had a flat, on the last hardest climb.  There is a climb near the Zoo at the very end and it's not fun, I would rank it up there with the dam climb although that might be exaggerating, it was just hard because it was at the end.  Right at the top I got a flat, I had been riding with Craig and Kerri most of the time but they were ahead of me.  I was happy to sit down at the top and change my tire, people teased me as they rode by that I was faking it, I just needed a rest.  True about the rest, but no faking the flat.  I managed to get my tire changed but was struggling with my inflator when a guy stopped and just chatted with me as I changed my tire.  I kept saying, thanks, but really you don't have to wait for me.  He ended up helping me with the inflator (next time I'll make sure I have a trigger), it was only then I noticed his vest and that he was a marshall.  Thank you race marshall, you were very appreciated.  He told me they had a lot of flats and he had handed out a lot of tubes, CO2 and even tires.

Brad at the start of the 70.

Craig, Kerri and me at the start of the 50.

Cycling Sonoma County

This was our lunch stop.  Dry Creek General Store has the best sandwiches I have ever eaten!

Or maybe I was just that hungry.  We got about 4 1/2 hours in, leaving from our cute hotel in Geyserville and making the Dry Creek Loop into Healdsburg and back out.  Wow, it was so amazing, if only training could always be this fun.  I really can't wait to go back and do it again.  I thought we were crossing something off our bucket list, but when I checked the bucket list it says Napa County cycling so there you go another training ground to check out.

After our ride we headed back to Fort Bragg for our do-over trip, celebrating my birthday.  Check out this cute cottage.  This was our place, just a short walk through the dunes to our deserted beach. We had some great runs from Glass Beach to MacKerricher's and a fun beach ride.

Riding counts as training, right!?

Lunch at Sea Pal and who did we run into--Uncle Mike and Aunt Tina.

We headed home through Arbuckle, picked up Mom and had lunch with Kyle in Davis, a perfect finish to a great trip.

Fort Bragg

We had a great week in Fort Bragg, it's hard to come home!  Training went well, I did manage to get lost on one of my trail runs, who can complain being lost in the redwoods.

Esprit de She

Sherpa man taking good care of me!

Mother's Day gift #1:  No swim.  Yes the lake is full again, but the swim was still off!

Mother's Day gift #2:  Messed up the Garmin as usual....no stats to report until the official come in

This is the second time I've done this race and seriously I need to put it on the calendar for every year. 

The swag is amazing, cycling jersey, running skirt, t shirts, breakfast.  They take good care of their athletes.  If you care to wait in line there are massages, makeup and polish too.

The race went well, I've been experimenting with keto so no carbo preload.  I seriously felt amazing the whole race.  I did use aminos and X2 for the first time and felt good.  They had Ucan on the run and it went down well.

I was excited and happy to finish and felt great but did have a little senior moment.  I left without my bike, yes, I can't believe I did that, but we were half way back to the hotel and Craig looks back and said, "uh oh, we don't have your bike".  Whew, glad he remembered.

In My Crazy Place

Esprit de She

Runners Series Done

Shamrock 10K and Southern Utah Half Marathon----done.

Marquee is off

I got the email today, Marquee is totally off, for sure.  They offered some great alternatives, including two Esprit de She events, one in Tempe and one in San Diego.  Unfortunately the dates don't work for me, so on to plan B.
I haven't done any of my runners series events yet, there is a pool sprint tri the same weekend as Marquee, yay, I've already bought my training plan, so just a little shift in location.  It's a St George weekend now.  I'm kinda excited to do a pool swim rather than open water.

Closed Again

Maybe Marquee will be a du?  Honestly I wouldn't mind, we'll see.