The Surf City Half Marathon was a blast!  It was a very busy weekend too.  Just because you are in Southern California for the weekend doesn’t mean Ironman Training stops.  Brett and I drove down to San Pedro Friday night after I got of work.  We arrived at the harbor (we were staying on his boat) around 1 am in the middle of a crazy storm that felt like a hurricane.  I was imagining that my ride the next morning may not go very smoothly, as the forecast said rain for the morning as well.  Just before I fell asleep, I joked with Brett about our escape route, and if I should save my bike if the boat capsized in the storm.  When I woke up for my ride, this is what I saw. The person’s boat straight across from us SUNK!  I must have some crazy intuition about these things.  I headed up to the car to get my bike ready for the ride and my rear tire was flat again, great!  Oh, and notice the BLACK sky in the background of the picture.  I wasn’t feeling very pumped about this ride. I was supposed to ride for 2 hours, I wasn’t sure where I was going, the roads were soaked, and it looked like the skies were about to open up and POUR on me.  While I was changing my tire, the FOUR fire trucks filled with firemen that arrived “on the scene” of the sinking boat sat there and watched me change my tire….saying things like, “so you’re gonna brave this weather huh?” and “you’ve seen that sky right”.  Like I wasn’t nervous enough about the ride….then I was feeling really awkward finishing changing my flat with four truck-loads of men watching me. ugh!  They finally left, just as I was heading out. My legs felt tired and the wind was almost blowing the palm trees over, I didn’t have a good feeling about this ride.  Then I rode a few miles came around the corner and saw this.  I thought things were looking up, these were beautiful views, maybe this could be a nice ride?  Maybe the sun would even come out?  I started to get into my rhythm.  I saw a cute little park area, thought about stopping to pee, decided not too (I mean things were going so well), and then realized my back tire was flat.  I had been on my bike for 5 miles. Maybe today was NOT looking up.  I thought about calling Brett to come get me. I hate changing my back tire.  Then I thought about how at least it was a good spot to get a flat, I did have to pee after all.  I’ll change the flat , if I flat AGAIN I’ll call Brett.  I think it took something like 30 seconds to change this flat, I’m basically a professional now. I headed back out on the wet debris-ridden road anticipating more disasters.  I took a couple wrong turns, saw some beautiful houses, more beautiful views, and the wind was CRAZY.  I decided to just go with the flow.  A few more turns and this is what I see in the distance,  a mudslide covering the road. I saw cars going through it, but it looked pretty deep.  I decided to walk my bike up on the sidewalk, but that was also covered in mud and I ended up with sticky muddy shoes. Great. I tried to clean them a bit in the grass, it didn’t work well. I could barely clip back in and it was REALLY hard to clip out (I hope I didn’t do any serious pedal/clip damage).  A few more miles and a few minor mudslides later I came across this sign. At this point I’m just laughing at all that is going wrong, or that could go wrong.  What else can you do?  Things could be worse, I could be wet and cold.  At least it was just a weird obstacle-course ride.  What does “constant land movement” even mean?  I was picturing a fun-house when they have the wobbly floor as you walk through.  Basically, what it means is the roads are ridiculously uneven.  Like some little kid tried to stack pieces of road together.  It was treacherous.  Luckily the cars were actually driving cautiously and sharing their lane with me. It was very nice.  The ride home was relatively uneventful.  The sun was kinda shining, I knew where all the obstacles were.  I just had to ride an hour home, it was going to be a good ride after all.  I did this same ride on Monday in the SUN, it was beautiful and nice.  I can’t wait to ride there again next time I’m in San Pedro.

Tags: cycling, triathlon training

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