Amazing or no, I headed up to my state capital early Saturday morning to get in a 36 mile ride with K (in "the hills" of Texas) and a swim in Barton Springs, a spring/pool that happened to stay around 68 degrees year round and happened to be free in winter. Woo! I love free!
K was late arriving (she was driving from San Antonio so I cut her some slack) and I was early, so I hit a loop on the veloway to get some extra mileage in before she showed up. The veloway is a 3.1 mile track for cyclists and roller bladers, and quite fun to ride. It kicked the crap out of the 1.2 mile picnic loop we have down here in Houston, though our loop has fewer tight turns. Anyway, I decided after one loop it was warm enough for shorts but cool enough to sport my arm warmers. K showed up, got ready, and we were off to ride.
--On the highways of Austin. Wtf? K had gotten our route from someone on the RunTex forums. Apparently this guy was not interested in sharing Austin with anyone else because we were on, like, highways. With cars whizzing by at 70 mph. This in and of itself would be fine because people were much more cautious around us than H-town drivers would've been-- but I don't care how nice a motorist is when a crosswind knocks you into traffic. Hard to avoid smashing into a wayward bike with peace love and happiness, eh?
But the actual route aside, the ride was great. We had a headwind about 55% of the time, a tailwind 20% of the time (though it was a most excellent one), and that sweet crosswind that lured us into cars the rest of the way. I didn't mind the headwind because, well, I'd rather eek out a hill going 5 mph than die on the bumper of a hybrid sedan. But that's just me. Besides, wind is good mental AZ training because it blows...no pun intended. The only bad thing about the ride (besides, as I've said 6 times, the actual route) was that I was so scared of being blown over or losing control of my bike that I never got into aero. My backneck? It doesn't like that. I also forgot to do laundry last week and had to wear my Pearl Izumi gloves, which suck like all things Pearl Izumi (a little brand unloyalty for you). Last season I thought my tri bike was making me lose motor functioning in my left hand, because my trouble started when I bought my new ride, but that's also when I bought new riding gloves. Since I didn't have any trouble last weekend in my trusty Specialized gloves and I was hitting aero pretty regularly I'm pretty sure it's the gloves. Remind me to burn them.
Anyway, after our return we snagged this picture (yes, gratuitous arm warmer shot-- that triangle of shoulder ended up sunburnt by the way)
and hit Barton Springs
where I saw this car and had to laugh:
You can't see very well because I didn't want to get caught taking the picture, but this guy has a 140.6 sticker, a "Ford Ironman Finisher" sticker, a USAT sticker, and a USACF sticker on his car. Where's your FINA sticker Mr. Overzealous Sticker Man?
Anyway, at Barton Springs there were about 3 old guys swimming sans wetsuits, and they made K and I feel like wusses. But K had just gotten her wetsuit the day before and it takes me a few swims to get used to putting mine on so it doesn't hurt my shoulders-- those were our excuses, and we thought they were good ones. We swam/floated for 40 minutes before going to the Austin marathon expo to pick up our packets.
Pre-Race Austin thoughts
We waited in our separate lines for over 30 minutes to pick up our half marathon packets. Why so long? Apparently Austin race directors aren't the most efficient, and this was no exception. Despite the fact that the half marathon sold out and the full didn't, there were equal numbers of packet pickup booths for each race. The marathon side didn't have a single line-- folks just walked right up, got their packet, and skipped away in a hippie-induced haze. Not so for the half. Each packet pickup booth was for 1200 bib numbers (0-1200, 1201-2400, etc), and two borderline incompetent volunteers were at each station. They ran out of small t-shirts, pens, and safety pins (hello? Is this a surprise item? Shouldn't it be one of the easiest things in the world to estimate the number of safety pins that racers will need to put their numbers on their shirts? Geeeez). And to complicate matters just a little more, they ran duplicate race numbers for the half and the full marathon; for example, there were two 4823s on the course. The only difference was the half marathoners had an H in front of their numbers. This caused a small amount of confusion from folks picking up their packets as they often went to the wrong set of booths.
After the wait, I headed to the Polar booth with a friend who needed a new transmitter ("Tough nuggets" they told him. He ended up having to buy a whole new HRM). I was ready to ask what idiot thought my watch was well designed. I spoke to a very ripped but not so intelligent looking rep about my complaints. His very first remark? "Well you can replace that strap with another one, maybe a velcro type strap." Did they sell those? "Oh no, but you can buy them other places." So let's get this straight: there's a problem with your product and your advice is to fix it with someone else's watch strap? Ridiculous. "Well WHY is the strap so large? I'm the biggest triathlete I know" I started in again. He told me it was so that the watch could mount onto a bike. Oh neat. I bought a running model-- not the biking model, which has its very own model number and accessories-- that doesn't fit on my wrist but does fit on my bike. I call b.s. There's a way to make this strap comfy for me while still fitting to the bike mount I'll never have. If not, they could at least have narrowed the band enough so that the plastic thingy could actually hold the excess strap. I gave up with a sigh and resolved to buy a tacky velcro strap.
The expo as a whole I didn't hit, but I did score a free loaf of Oroweat bread. Man, I love their bread-- it's the only kind I buy. And I got a new kind for free! It made my weekend!
Post-expo my friends and I got some Trudy's (good, but over hyped) and I treated myself to a Mexican Martini (also good and even more over hyped). I turned in around 9 PM while the other 4 roomies hit the hot tub. 5 people in a hotel room? With one wench complete with wetsuit and bike? Oh yes. SpringHill Suites-- I've got your number. And I like it.
1 comment:
I'll be in Austin next month - want to come back for another swim? We're not bringing our wetsuits, though - we'll have to suck it up :)
Just kidding. I AM looking forward to some warmer weather for a few days while we're there, though.
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