St. Patty's Day Ride

Continuing from my last post...once we finished our swim in the morning we had some lunch and then got ready to ride. We decided to do the same ride we did last time we were in La Jolla. It was challenging and we knew where we were headed. It was St. Patty's Day so we decided to assume that every car we see has a drunk person driving and that we would be very defensive. Just a few days earlier a girl was killed on her bike in Solana beach, right where we were going to ride through. This was a reminder of how careful we need to be. We saw her memorial when we were riding. It was a wide street with a bike lane, so no reason for the car to hit her- very sad but a good reminder to us of how vulnerable we are on our bikes out there. So we practiced defensive biking.

We headed out at about 3pm on our bikes both feeling a little full from our Turkey Sandwiches that hadn't quite digested yet. The ride has a lot of climbing, infact it is one hill after the other without much flat riding. We hit a lot of red lights which is always frustrating to get stopped so much especially when your heading up but other than that we never stopped the whole 56 miles. Except when she saw some green balloons that she decided to tie one on to her bike seat, in spirit of St. Patty's day, which shortly after "POPPED!!" and scared both of us.

Last time we did this ride my training partner and I were together the whole ride and then at the end I couldn't stay with her on the last hill that she flew up. She dropped me in the dust on this last hill. So, this time I was determined to stay on her. I was not going to let her go. We got to this last hill and I was right on her rear tire. She turned around and knew what I was doing and that I was not going to let her go(I had warned her earlier). I used everything I had left and pushed forward a little harder to start to pass her. And I ended up passing by and beating her up the hill. I felt good about it since she dropped me last time. I wonder if that little motivation is what got me up so much faster or if I just had a better training day or did she just not have a very good day...who knows? It is good to have someone to train with who you can push eachother and some days I have good days and other days she does.

Speaking of her good days- yesterday when we headed out for a ride was a whole other story. Before we headed out I thought I was feeling pretty good but once I started riding my legs were pretty tired still from the weekend and I could not keep up with her. My training partner left me in the dust yesterday. It was a cold, rainy, windy ride and I was not having very much fun but she had a great ride and averaged about 23 mph- fast!

We should both have really excellent days at the race in a week and a half after we taper- we should both be able to do it in under 3 hours. No problem!

The ride in La Jolla took us about 3:25 with all of the stop lights, etc. Under 3 hours shouldn't be too tough at all at the race.