Joy Ride with a Twist

Every now and then, I have a cycling workout in my schedule titled "Joy Ride" with the instructions to grab a friend and go on a ride and enjoy.


Old Spartanburg Hwy



Normally, I would join local group ride, but sometimes, I enjoy just being out there by myself alone with my thoughts. Besides, my usual Monday night group ride was doing over 40 miles and that wouldn't get me back home until 9.30pm and I didn't feel that!



First half under clouds, but then I headed towards the blue skies.

In order to make my solo outing a little more exciting, I mapped out a joy ride with a twist.



Here comes the sun!



Over the weekend, I discovered STRAVA.



Where are the cows today??


Strava is basically a training log (currently for running and cycling) with a little bit of a social network component (you can follow people, people can follow you). The huge difference to any other training log is: it takes your gps data from your Garmin or the Strava app and compares your times in predefined segments. For example a sprint zone from a local ride or a famous climb in your area. The segments are defined by Strava users and you can add segments from your own rides. You are then being ranked against anybody on Strava that uploaded a route that included that segment.


Down that road is another segment that I plan on tackling soon to improve my posted time!



While I rode in an area that I ride after work all the time, I spiced things up a little bit, by picking five segments and combine them in a 30 mile ride.  Not only did I discover a new road, but it also made me combine the roads that I know in a way that I haven't done before...

Bye bye cloudy skies!

 So the twist of my joy ride was to really push in on the segments and otherwise take it fairly easy.



Waddel Rd

I am happy to report, that I made QOM (Queen of the Mountain) on Chicken Foot Creek Road... by default, because no other woman has posted a time there yet.... this is just calling for trouble now... I am sure there will be a time posted soon!

Also, I improved my standings in all of the segments. Given that I only had two weeks worth of rides on my Garmin that I could upload, the basic data has been pretty slim.

Love this stretch of road, especially in the sunshine!

Can't wait to get back out there and ride some new segments or improve my times!!

Sometimes I wonder, if I am more competitive than I care to admitt! ;-)

Paris Mtn Sprinternational Bike Course Preview

Sometimes, the best laid plans fail. Good thing, that there is always option B... and option C is maybe a good idea as well.

So the original plan was to hit the Paris Mountain trails for a little off road action. After my complaints from last week, that I don't have a trail running buddy, Lindsay offered to join me. Unfortunately, we were not aware that the state park would not open until 8am and we stood in front of the locked gate at 6.30am. Option B was to head over to the Swampy and knock 4 miles out there... Run and done. Can't even remember the last time I ran with somebody, so that was definitely fun!

The original plan also consisted of the idea, to head out and do the Paris Mtn Sprinternal bike course, right after completing the run. But since the trail run didn't happen, I headed back home and got changed there and rode to the course from the house.

I intended to ride the course twice, but Coach Katie mentioned that the route can get pretty busy, so I wanted to keep the option of doing a complete second loop open.

As I mentioned above, I rode from the house and it's about two miles to the bottom of Altamont on the Furman side, where I would pick up the course. In the race, you don't hit this climb until mile 11, about half way through. Since I just started riding and was planning on doing the climb twice anyways, I took the first ascent fairly easy... If you can ever call a climb up Paris easy.


Paris Mtn Sprinternational Bike Course

 Within the first mile of the climb, I could see three riders a little up the road and while I wanted to take it "easy", if you see a rabbit, you might as well chase it. It took me a while to finally catch up with them and pass, only to drop my water bottle one minute later, having to stop and being passed by them and then the chase started all over. I caught two of them, but the third guy made it up Paris before me...Dang! First ascent in the books with 19m 44s.... I am happy with anything under 20 minutes on this climb.

I didn't take a break at the top, just kept on rolling... Boy, do I suck at descending. I think for me it's probably going to be more important to practice that descend, because you can lose a ton of time and it's basically for free, especially when you about killed yourself getting up the mountain. During this first descent, I also decided that I am going to use the road bike for that race. The roadie (I used the road bike on Saturday's ride) just corners better and the whole course is either up or down, so really not a lot of opportunities to utilize the aero bars.

So the next section I rode today would actually be the first 11 miles of the bike leg and it's no fun... And yes, the traffic was rough and made me rethink my decision to ride this thing twice. On top of an already difficult course, I made my life even harder by turning on "Little Texas" early and catch the climbs on that road as well. Good job, Kat. Quite honestly, I was pretty over the ride, by the time, I approached the Paris climb for the second time.

I was already tired and it had gotten really hot in the meantime... There were no rabbits anywhere, but funny enough, the climb didn't feel harder to me than the first time around. I hit the lap button at 19m 24s on the second ascent... goody goody.... Unfortunately, I descended even slower the second time around... Practice, practice and more practice.

Instead of completing the whole loop a second time, I opted to find an alternative route back to the house, to avoid some of the traffice and quite honestly, more of those hills. But I still wanted to hit my total of 40 miles for the day, so I hit up the Swampy for the second time, but this time on the bike. At this point, it must have been close to 11am and the trail was packed!!! No way to go fast with so many people around, but I was toast anyways, so I pedaled up to Travelers Rest on the trail and the looped back home on the road.

Bottom line: I am glad that I took the time to ride the course in advance, but it's not going to become a regular thing. Traffic on Mtn Creek Rd and State Park Rd is just way too heavy. I am certainly planning on putting Paris on the calendar more often and not only work on the climb, but really try to improve my descending skills as well.

Spectathlon

Another weekend bites the dust. So sad.

But there is many a thing to report from the weekend. Unfortunately, I ruined all the pictures that I took Saturday, so all I have here are the pictures from Sunday's long run.

Despite, the picture disaster, let's start with Saturday. 

Steaming Furman Lake

We had a super early wake-up call Saturday morning, because it was RACE DAY! Not for me though... It was race day for Terry and I was signed up to volunteer. This race was actually my very first triathlon (and his') and I have done it every year since then. Since I am already signed up for so many other races, I decided to skip this one. 

Bell Tower on Furman Lake

 It was actually nice to be at a race and not race. A whole bunch of the Malone Coaching Team was there to volunteer and we were in charge of the transition area. Pre race, that consisted mostly of trying to find spots for people on bike racks. Then we made sure that people don't mount their bikes in transition and that helmets were buckled before they headed out. I then changed position to the bike in and run out spot. After close to three hours of standing around and cheering, I felt wiped.

2.5 miles into a 9 mile run

 But we were not done yet. As soon as we were able to leave, we headed out for 57 miles on the bike. We did a modified version of the Tour de Paws metric century. Originally, it was supposed to be a girl's ride, just Audrey and I, but Terry doesn't like to ride by himself, so he ended up joining us, despite the fact that he just raced! We ended up having a great ride with awesome conditions (blue skies, but not hot hot!). The only gripe was 20 miles of headwind on the way back in.

View of Paris Mountain from the Bunny Trail

 The rest of the Saturday was spent eating junk food and relaxation... Of course there was also a doggy walk!

Empty Bunny Trail

 The next morning, the wake-up call was a little later, but still pretty early. It's nice, how empty the bunny trail is, if you get out there around 7am.

Ghost Bike on Bunny Trail

On tap was a nine miler with six miles with specific pace goals. The run went well and it was still fairly cool when I started out. I did a simple out and back on the Swampy while listening to podcasts.

Blooming Trees

This week is race week once again... Olympic distance triathlon on Sunday. would be nice, if we'd get lucky with the cooler temps as well. We'll see.

Double Bakery



Quick wipe down, because somebody hasn't
cleaned his bike since the last downpour.



Having Monday off work presented us with another opportunity to head out for a bike ride. Since Terry had to use his aluminum bike (due to a broken spoke on his regular roadie) when we climbed Ceasars Head a week ago, he felt like he needed to redeem the climb. We first thought about doing Caesars Head again, but then decided against it, in order to avoid all the holiday traffic that was to be expected on that road. We needed an alternative. Enter Double Bakery Ride!

Good thing, that we have plenty of climbing to chose from right around the corner. 3,600 ft over total climbing over 46 miles is coming right up!

The name "Double Bakery" refers to the bakery in Flat Rock and the bakery in Saluda that you could stop at for some on the go carb loading. But we meant business and didn't stop for any baked goods! ;-)

The weather for this little adventure was about perfect. When we started out, it was fairly overcast and on top of that, this route has pretty good tree coverage anyways to help you stay cool(er). We were climbing at a pretty good clip and it's always priceless, when Terry is surprised that I am "already there" when he just got to the top himself! ;-)

By the time we got back to Greenville, the USA Cycling Pro Road Championships (I volunteered for this event last year) were already on the way. This was the last year that we have the event in town and the course is a stone throw away from our house, so we decided to take the dog out for a quick walk and watch the pros go by on their 3rd loop.

When we got there, we had no idea how long we'll have to wait, so we sat down in the shade... Karma was in heaven with having her humans sitting around on her eye level.

We brought extra water for her, since she tends to overheat. She didn't waste time slobbering it up.

The peleton is approaching.

The peleton is almost gone.

We just waited for 20 minutes or so, before the breakway came through, followed by the peleton with maybe a one minute gap at that point.

It was stinking hot, so we left right after the sweeper came through and watch the rest of the race over live feed.

The Brick Implosion

Wow... Isn't it nice to have another day added to the weekend? I am sorry, if you are reading this at work... Really sorry, but I am really happy for a long weekend and a shorter work week.

On Friday on my way home from work, I talked to Terry on the phone and he asked me, what I wanted for dinner and there was just one thing on my mind:

I wanted a burger for days now and always decided to stay good and stick to the plan... But my willpower didn't have a chance on Friday.. I pigged out big time and don't feel guilty about it... Not even a little.

Besides eating on Friday night, I also saw an e-mail about a GustoCycle about a 40 mile group ride the next morning and we made the decision to join that group. For the first time in over a year.

 We were close to 20 and it looked like a pretty strong group. The first couple of miles, it went through the neighborhoods and that made the pace very relaxed. As soon as we hit the first open roads, the boys picked up the pace and all I did for the rest of the ride was trying to not get dropped. I tried to draft, but I mostly just chased.

After the ride, we had a four mile brick run on tap. By the time we were done riding, it was already pretty darn hot. The neighborhoods around the shop are pretty hilly, so we ended up with a hot and hilly run. One of those four miles were supposed to be at race pace and that felt like crap, but I held a sub 9 minute pace, so I won't complain all that much.

The problem was, that while I finished up the run, I completely overheated. I assume, I already didn't hydrate enough on the ride. When I was finally back at the shop, I started to get dizzy and felt lightheaded... I ended up having to sit down, cool off and get some cold fluids into my system. Dang, this heat really did me in and this was just the start of summer!!

Elev. 3208 Feet

 
I am a big believer in the training plan that coach is giving me. But that also means, that I am somewhat "restricted" when is comes to spontaneous stuff, like riding Caesars Head for fun.

Last year, Caesars Head was part of the training plan due to AOMM training, but with my half ironman focus earlier this year, I mostly had flat or rolling courses on the training plan. Especially, since the Charleston race course was so flat.

Some co-workers and I have been talking about tackling Caesars Head for a year already and last Saturday, we finally made it happen. We also had a Malone Coaching team mate joining us along with some team mates (The Hobnobbers) from the MS Ride later this year. A great jolly group.

Four of us started the ride in Furman for a total of 60 miles and the other three started the in Slater-Marietta for a total of 40 miles. We met up at mile 4/14 to do the climb together. We had two in the group that did this climb for the very first time.

Everyone did an excellent job and the whole group arrived at the top of the mountain within a 20 minutes time frame. We refilled our water bottles and then took a proof picture. Terry is missing still one, because he was busy playing car mechanic for a couple of folks with car trouble.
  

 And here is the complete group.... Ready for the descent...

Whoop whoop... Ready to buckle down again and follow the plan... Three more weeks before the next race. The first Olympic distance of my the season. That's typically my favorite distance and since my running has been going well recently, I am excited to see what I can do! ;-)

Dummy 2.0

Last night, I rode my bike after work. Not even half an hour into the ride, I noticed the need for a pottie break. Good thing that I am riding in the country, by myself on low traffic roads. After a little while, I found a decent spot and took care of that... What I failed to take into account was the wet red dirt in my spot of choice, which ended up in my cleats. This is not the first time, I did that... Last year during the Mitchell dress rehearsal, I did the same thing and thought that's one of those things, that you just have to learn the hard way.... Turns out, I have to learn it the hard way at least twice.

So you might think, I forgot to take my cleat covers with me. Oh no, the cleat covers were securely tucked in my back pocket. I guess I thought I'll save some time... Yeah... That worked. Because for the next 10 minutes, I tried to somehow get the goo out of my cleats to be able to clip in. Once I finally clipped in, I tried, if I can clip out again and that proved to be a major fail.

I then proceeded to change my planned route, so I will mostly have right hand turns in order to decreased the times I will have to stop, because stopping would basically mean to have to take my foot out of my shoe. This was certainly not safe and is not to be recommended!!!

With all that being said, I still had a pretty good ride for a Thursday! ;-)

I guess, I have a date tonight with my cycling shoes, a screw driver and some WD40... Awesome!

It's a Race - Always!

Have you ever experienced a training day, when you were racing instead of training?

I hardly train in groups. Most of the time, it's just easier that way. I am pretty much self motivated or motivated by my next race, so I really don't seek training buddies for accountability purposes. Without training partners, you can switch around your schedule five times a day, don't have to worry about matching speeds and paces and where to meet up... As I said, training alone is just easier most of the time. With that being said, I am sometimes just sick and tired to ride by myself (I am fine with running and swimming by myself) and therefore end up in group rides fairly often.

If the group consists of my team mates, chances are, that things are pretty civil and people just put down the hammer every now and then, to just shake out the legs... It's training, we all follow a plan, so we train and don't race.

And then there are group rides put on by bicycle shops, the Donaldson Center rides, some other group rides individuals set up.

Even with a projected pace and several different pace groups, you normally still end up with a pretty diverse group of people, that you don't know and they don't know you. There is always the dude with the fancy bike sporting the race wheels on, there is always somebody with a mirror mounted to their helmet (I get it's for safety, but boy it looks dorky), always somebody with a jersey of a really difficult ride (could be me, that's what I got my AOMM jersey for!) on and there is always the person on the tri bike and that's typically me or another lost triathlete soul.

As I mentioned... This was supposed to be a group ride and while we stand around waiting for it to get rolling, we size each other up. Who is the beginner, who knows their stuff, who looks fast/ slow/ like they can't hold a line... The usual... And then the race is on! What you didn't know that? It's always a race if more than one person is out on a bike... There is no such thing than a leisurely group ride!!

I kid, I kid. Partially.

I don't want to scare anybody away from group rides, but some rides are definitely more beginner friendly then other, no matter what speed was advertised.

The only reason, why I am writing about this, is a recent group ride I did. A ride which I really enjoy doing, despite the occasional knucklehead. I won't get into details, because I am already fired up enough about that one.

We had a pretty civil ride for the first 20-25 miles and then the guy at the front of the pace line put the pedal to the metal. I was second and line and you can be sure, that I won't be the one getting dropped as the only girl in the group. Around 3 miles from home, the guy rotated to the back and I was in the front and my ego wouldn't allow me to slow the group down, so I pushed it as hard as I could possible push it. The route then went down a hill and three of the guys (we dropped the rest of the group - HA!) that stayed in the pace line were able to pass me when the road turned back up. Darn you gravitiy, for me not having enough momentum going up the hill faster at the beginning. I caught one guy back on the hill, but the others I couldn't anymore....

Yes, it sure was racing instead of training, but I guess that kind of racing is good training after all.

;-)

Venturing Out

After three weekends on the road (Charleston Half, Appalachian Trail and then Lake Murray), we finally had a weekend at home.

For Saturday, we had a longish bike ride on the plan. We were supposed to ride something between 40 and 50 miles and my thinking was... Let's make it 50+ miles and put "some" climbing in it too! Something close to 3K feet of climbing.... But who's counting! ;-) We are planning on riding Caesar's Head next weekend and we haven't done any substantial climbing lately, so it was time to just grind out a couple of hills.

The weather forecast for Saturday was 0% chance of rain and that's why it started drizzling not even 5 minutes into our ride. My stomach was very iffy for the first 10 miles and actually most of the climbing happened in the first 15 miles when we are basically still around the Paris Mountain foothills.

This was a also a brand new course for us starting directly from our door step to Campobello and back. I mapped it earlier this week and was just hoping that the roads I picked out were okay to ride on. It was quite awesome, if I say so myself. Nice back country roads, low traffic and great views of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Minor upset on our way back, when I dropped my chain and subsequently jammed the chain between the chain ring and the frame. This happened to me before, but this time, I took it to a different level because I also bend a metal plate that is mounted onto the frame. It was an ugly sound. Fortunately, Terry was able to bend it back and we could finish the ride. The tri bike is now at the shop for a tune up and repair... This way, the roadie get's to play.

With our bike ride being done, we were not done venturing out for the day. We actually went out... Like to a party!! ;-)

Our Salsa buddies were putting on their annual cookout (in case you wonder... it was 80s themed) and we made it there for a little bit of dancing, a bunch of good food and being able to just catch up with friends that we don't get to see that often anymore, since the triathlon lifestyle has sucked us up.

On Sunday, the weather forecast was calling for rain all day and it basically rained all day. During a phase of light rain, I got in an 8 mile run on the bunny trail. The first 5 miles at an easy pace and then cranked it up some for the last 3 miles. Overall a pretty good run, my legs just feel super tight these days. Terry is giving me leg rubs every night these days and it helps some, but those rubs are super painful. Especially, since I am one of those people that doesn't care for massages... I should start yoga again...

After the run, we moved on to some extreme couching and waiting for a rain break to take the dog out... Yeah... That didn't quite happen and I was nice and soaked, but Karma was finally settling down after driving us bonkers most of the afternoon with her penned up energy.

Ready or not... Here comes another week!

Greetings from Lake Robinson

Happy belated Easter everyone!

I hope you enjoyed your weekend and got to spend some time with family and friends.

Beyond spending time with the family (long talk with mom & dad over Skype), I chose to spend my Easter Sunday with a bunch of strangers on a relaxed ride. It wasn't in the training plan, I was actually supposed to be off or do yoga yesterday. But when I saw the ride posted, I just couldn't resist. It was a loop in the Lake Robinson area (remember our kayaking adventures a couple of years ago?), so I knew it's going to be a pretty ride, no matter what. It was also posted as a slow and beginner friendly ride and while I don't think that I am slow or a beginner anymore, I just wanted to ride for the sake of riding. Lately, all rides have been about something, be it mileage or cadence or intervals or speed... It was about time to just go on a ride. And in order to not look to intimidating when unloading the bike, I chose to dust off my poor roadie (that hasn't been ridden since October) and really found myself enjoying being on the roadie for a change as well.

We ended up with a little over 28 miles... Just enough to shake out the legs... Funny, how your preception of distance changes when you are getting used to log higher mileage.

Speaking of high mileage and volume... Looki here:

This is my weekly minute volume for the last five weeks.... With the Charleston Half just two weeks away, the training is in the bank. FYI: the "sports" minutes in the graph are mostly doggy walks.

We topped off the training with a 65 mile bike run, followed by a 5ish mile brick run on Saturday. My nutitional medley of Fig Newtowns, Sunrise bars and Honey Stinger gels is still working, so I guess that's going to my plan for race day. Other than that, I had one more revelation on the ride: Don't rely on the Garmin course, because Garmins sometimes screw up (What do you mean, I am 5,782 miles away from the course???). I should have written out a cue sheet, but so far, I always got lucky and the Garmin worked... until last Saturday. Because of that, we fell back on the 55 mile Happy Cow loop, that we can do in our sleep at this point and of course tagged on a couple of miles here and there to make it to 65 miles in total. The run afterwards was alright, I was getting really hot at the end of it and had to battle some side stitches. It can't be rainbows and unicorns all the time.

Because I was off for Good Friday, I switched my rest day to Thursday and did my Thursday workout on Friday. The run and swim was nothing earth shattering, but got it done and out of the way between running errands and getting some house work done. Seriously, the house probably suffers most with all this training! ;-)

Almost on the home stretch now for the race. This week is still pretty packed with two double workout days, but we are going to significantly cut mileage Saturday and Sunday... I can smell taper just being around the corner.

Clicking

Last week, was a big training week. When you are four weeks out from your A race of the season, that's kind to be expected. I haven't trained for a half ironman distance yet and there are different approaches to the whole thing, but coach prescripted big mileage on all three fronts from the past week. But the biggest bulk of it all would be on the weekend.

Between Saturday and Sunday I swimbikerun'ed around 8 hours! EIGHT HOURS! In I loved (almost) every second of this! I think what I love most about training for this race is, that Terry is training for the same race and that we do our workouts on the weekends together.

For Saturday, we had 70 miles on the bike and a 4 mile brick run on tap. Actually, the brick portion of the workout was optional, but I decided to do it anyways, because 1) I wanted to redeem myself for last week's sluggish brick, 2) try out a different fuel option and 3) didn't want to sit in the truck waiting for Terry to get done with his brick.

In order to work on points 1) and 2), I actually carb loaded Friday night. Last week, I had a longer talk with a co-worker that also runs and bikes about my experience from last week and how crappy I felt and she urged me to carb load. When I got home from work Friday night (super late), I had two muffins and called it a night... Probably not the best choice of carbs, but it worked. For breakfast Saturday morning, I had wheat blueberry pancakes (Thanks, Terry!) and almond butter. For the ride, I took eight pieces of Fig Newtons, four Sunrise bars and four Honey Stinger Gels. I demolished the Fig Newtons and the Sunrise bars, but didn't need the Honey Stingers. I felt great during the whole ride and I felt great during the run.... No tummy troubles whatsoever and my energy levels were good the whole time! I was one happy camper! Even though, we rode 10 more miles on the bike than we did the week before, I was still feeling good after we were done.... AND I ran my 4 miles brick in a (barely) sub 9 minute/ mile pace... SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!! I guess, I am one of those people who need a long warm up (Thanks Melinda for that one! ;-).

For the ride itself, we tried out a new route that went out and back from SCTAC to Hwy 88 and back. We found a modified version of this online and really didn't know what to expect from it, but we both agreed, that it was quite possibly one of our best routes yet. Very pretty roads, not a ton of traffic, very scenic in parts... And when we had to get on busy roads, than it was only for very short stretches. If you are in the area and interested in this ride, here is the link to our version of the route. I even recognized some of the roads we were on from the Greyhound Rescue Ride, that I did in 2009 (no blog back then) and 2010. This route sort of connected the Happy Cow loop that we did a couple of weeks ago with the GRR loop.

The only mishap on the ride... I was wearing a white jersey and white armers after it had rained all night. You probably can't see on the picture, but I assure you that I looked like a hot mess once we were done. Terry was pulling on the ride for the most part (coaches orders since he wasn't able to run as much lately) and his bike tire threw all kinds of crap in my fact and on my jersey! But since that is my only complaint for Saturday's workouts, I obviously don't have much to complain about!

Sunday, we were up and running before 8am again. 14 miles were on tap that day and I would have 4x 1 mile harder pace thrown into the middle. We picked an out and back route on the bunny trail and not even half a mile into my run, I saw this:

Looks like we are getting a CrossFit box on our side of town! Wahooooo!

The run was going really well. I could feel, that my legs are a tad tired, but I really do think that wearing my recovery socks religously really helps in my recovery.

Overall, I ended those 14 miles with a (barely) sub 10 minute/ mile pace and while this is nothing great for a lot of runners, for me, this is EXCELLENT and I couldn't be happier.

In general, I have to say that things are just clicking right now. I have been seeing consistantly better speeds on the bike and better paces on the run... So whatever Katie is putting in my training plan, seems to work! Another mantra of mine: Trust the plan! Trust the plan! ;-)

Now that all the "real" workouts were out of the way, I could look forward to out first open water swim of the season:

Yes, there were a couple of brave souls present, that did the swim without a wetsuit. Seriously, you couldn't have paid me enought to swim in that lake without one, but I am really bad with cold in general...

I did around 1.5 in the lake (which is one big lollipop shaped loop) at a comfortable pace... really just swimming along and enjoying the possibility to do all this. We had amazing people paddling for us to keep us safe on a lake that had a good amount of boating traffic going on that day. A special shout out goes to Cynthia for defending "our" territory in her jon boat.

Even after all of this, I feel great. There was a little bit of soreness going on Monday, but nothing a quick 25 miles with good friends and a hail storm couldn't fix! I also did a track workout this morning and felt great. We are getting now so close to the race, that I can start tasting it and I was expecting to be kind of over training at this point, but quite honestly, I still enjoy myself... Enjoy that I get to share this with my husband and that I spend a whole lot of time with a bunch of great people.

Preview TRY Charleston Half Bike Course

Not even a week ago, we decided on a whim, that it might be a good idea to head over to Charleston SC after our Parris Island Triathlon in order to preview the bike course of our upcoming half iron distance triathlon... That race is just 4 weeks away (yikes!) and since we were sort of in the area already, it all made sense.

After that decision, I sat down with the course description on the race website and mapped the course on http://www.ridewithgps.com/ in order to upload the course to my Garmin* for easy breezy navigation on preview day.

*In case you want to know, how to upload courses on your Garmin Forerunner 305, here is a little tutorial, that I wrote a while back.

I say one thing right away: We didn't ride the course 100%, but hopefully we covered between 90% and 95% of it. The race site is going to be the KOA Campgrounds, but outside of the race, there is no where to park, if you are not camping there. So we ended up parking in a strip mall maybe 1 mile up the road. Right at the beginning, the course said to turn off Highway 17, but when we tried that, we ended up in front of a gated community. So we cut out this whole piece through the community by staying on Hwy 17. Also, I am not sure, if we turned around on Hwy 17 even close the correct spot. We still ended up with 56 miles, but I think that was mostly due to parking away from the course start and getting back to the parking lot, since it's a point to point course on race day.

Here is a quick shot with my ride, right before we headed out. Those are cool sleeves (not arm warmers... it was toasty) that I like to bust out in order to avoid sun burns. I tend to get those quickly, especially in the first couple of sunny days, because I have to get used to that whole sunscreen thing all over again. Actually, my face felt hot for the rest of the day, even though I slathered on the 30 SPF. One more thing about the outfit: I really like how my AOMM jersey goes so perfectly with my bike. ;-)

We hit the road at 8.30AM under a sunny and cloudless sky. The weather forecast showed a 30% chance of thunderstorms in the morning, but for the first 10 miles it was sunny and just as it started to warm up the clouds rolled in and kept everything at a comfortable temperature. Only the last 7 or 8 miles felt hot again, because the sun was out once more.


Gloom and doom in Awendaw, around mile 13 into the course.

Let's get into the nitty gritty of the course:

1. First stretch on Hwy 17 (Mile 1-6): There was some bumpiness going on, but I am assuming, that the gated community (see above) at around mile 4 will be part of the course and will cut out the bumpy stretches.

2. Back country roads on the way out (Mile 6-19): Smooth sailing asphalt and pancake flat. Not a ton of traffic expected... No spectators expected either. Lots of tree lined roads should provide some shade.

3. Out and back on Hwy 17 (Mile 20-32): Good asphalt and of course pancake flat. It's a two lane highway, so traffic shouldn't be too bad. Even with just the two of us on Sunday, that stretch was okay. No trees close to the road on the way out, so probably no shade.

4. Steed Creed Road (Mile 33-37): Smooth asphalt and some "hills". I think this is the only section where you have a noticeable elevation change.

5. Hallway Creek Road (Mile 38-48): The first 7.5 miles of this road sucks! The asphalt is rough and the vibration was driving me nuts. Those 7.5 miles felt like an eternity. At least it's flat and once again, it's tree lined, so depending on time of day, there will be some shade. After you crossed United Drive, the asphalt is like glass and feels sooooo good.

6. Hwy 41 (Mile 49-52): This section scared the skittles out of me. It's a one lane highway and it was busy and half of the cars that we encountered in this short section acted like complete idiots. I was hoping that this won't be an issue on race day, but by now heard back from people, that the stretch is scary on race day too.

7. Dunes Community (Mile 53-56): Nice neighborhood and smooth roads. Home stretch of the bike course.

This course has the potential of being really fast, depending on the wind. It's not scenic, but the back country roads are nice and quiet and the road conditions are mostly good!

Despite having raced the day before, we clocked an average of 17.9 mph for this ride. Granted that we did draft off each other (not going to happen on race day) and Terry did a lot of the pulling.



This is what 70% of course looks like.

On a site note: Some of the route is also covered during the Palmetto 200 (or at least was in 2010, when we did that relay) and it was fun to ride by e.g. a church and recognize it as exchange zone from two years ago. I actually can remember from the Palmetto, that we saw some cyclist from the TRY Charleston Half on the course on Hwy 17... Who would have thought, that we'll be back just two years later to be part of that. At the time,  we both just had one sprint triathlon under our belts!

Terry during a food stop.

We kept our stops short and sweet and I actually just had three "Sunrise" bars during this ride. I felt fine throughout, because I had quite a big breakfast, but once we were done, all I could think of was FOOD! Good thing, that there was a Mellow Mushroom just across from where we parked.



Gotta love the paintings in the Mellow Mushrooms.


After we inhaled our lunch, we immediately hit the road back to G-Vegas.



Bye bye Charleston... See you next month!!!