I don’t have time for a full race report about Vineman Full Aquabike, but I do want to leave you with some snippets of what a great weekend it was.

I used AirBnB to book my lodging for Friday night since the wine country is out of control expensive, and I ended up in this beautiful eclectic home that was wonderful.  I wanted to stay there and grow vegetables and sit on the porch swing with my coffee every morning.

By the time I checked into this adorable place, it was time for dinner in Santa Rosa with Shelley and Sharon.  I always look forward to spending time with those two.  After dinner I raced back to my AirBnB to get my gear and my bike ready for race day.  I woke up at 4:30 am  jumped in the car while eating my peanut butter and honey bagel and drinking my Starbucks Via (seriously what did I do without those?).

 In the transition area I was running into so many friends, it was awesome!!  I had just enough time to get my body marking done, sunscreen my body marking off, run back to the car for my cycling gloves, take one last pee break in a gas station (nice – avoid those port-o’s at all costs), run back to transition and squeeze into my wetsuit (did it get smaller?).

The swim was great – it is so nice starting in waves and having clear water for most of the swim. The river was pretty gross and I KNOW I was drinking a lot of it. All I could think about was how long it takes for the Giardia to kick in.  Then I started thinking about taking preventative Giardia pills before lake/extremely shallow-murky-river swims.  The stringy moss was tickling my arms and it was really grossing me out.  The swim was smooth, fast, and fun – before I knew it I was out on my bike.

It felt good leaving lots of bikes in transition, but I was instantly sad when all the slow-swimming men started passing me on the bike. Generally I let them go saying in my head as they go by — “have fun — see you on the run when you’re walking like a little baby” (That sounds way meaner in writing than it does in my head……it’s all in good fun).  This was a rude awakening to Aquabike,  I wasn’t going to get to run them down.  It was straight-up just sad, I was getting passed, period.

On a lighter note, I got really good at blowing snot rockets (must have been all the Giardia in my nose)  and learned that you CANNOT, I repeat CANNOT plug your right nostril with your left hand and blow over the left shoulder that was a gross lesson.  Just stick with right finger right nostril, left finger left nostril and we’re good, no snotty shoulders.

The bike had some interesting moments which I’ll got into in more detail later, but the thing that stood out the most was the guy in the cargo shorts and t-shirt (you heard that right, CARGO shorts and a T-shirt!) that passed me around mile 70.  Now, most of you by now know that I spend a great deal of time making up entertaining songs while I ride. This one went a little bit like this:  (to the tune of Mr. Big Stuff) –

Mr. Cargo Pants

Who do you think you are

Wearin’ Cargo Pants

Riding your bike this far

Iiiin Cargo Pants

That’s gonna Leave a scar 

You’ve got so much pants

All-up-in Thaar -aar

Cargo Pants….

There was sooooooo much more, and it was soooo funny I was literally laughing out loud while riding.  I definitely used the words taint and chafe together, but can’t remember for the life of me how it went.  I HOPE for his sake he had some cycling shorts on under there, and a whole lotta lube action going on with all that cotton and fabric up-in-thaar. Ouch.  Because I am sure you are curious, I did end up passing him. I couldn’t let Mr. Cargo Pant’s beat me.

After the half way point of the bike course, I decided to have little party’s every 10 miles to break it up. Mile 60 came quickly enough, and I automatically did a little Amy Poehler “Oooot Oooooh!” – with the hand gestures and everything, and then that turned into my thing every 10 miles. Mile 70 – ooooot ooooh!  This also made me laugh a lot, because I did it loud and proud even if someone was close-by.  See, you can have fun riding 112 miles.

For those of you lame enough to not know what I’m talking about:

 

Happy Training! Ooooot oooh!

 

Oh yeah – and I got sunburned.  Ouchy.

Tags: Aquabike, Vineman

This entry was posted on Monday, July 29th, 2013 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Ironman Lake Tahoe, Ironman Triathlon Training, race stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.