Training Fail

One of the biggest perks of doing an event with Team in Training is, well, the training. In exchange for my fundraising efforts, I get coaching in all three sports, and have the opportunity to workout with the team three days a week. We have access to one of Seattle's public pools on Monday evenings, after the pool is closed to the general public, and also to a high school track for the run workouts.

Although I do like to exercise by myself, I will also admit that I workout harder when I'm in a group, and it's always easier to get myself up and out the door if I know there's a group of people assembling to exercise. It's a little tricky, though, to get to the team practices regularly, as they are all evenings/weekends, when I'm busy with the kids. Wiley is very generous about giving me time to go, but for this training season I'm trying to keep the group workouts I attend to the swims, and do most of the other workouts on my own.

When I can get away for a Saturday practice, though, I try to take advantage of it. So last Saturday, when Wiley's brother Mike was visiting, I decided to attend the bike practice. I have bike issues when it comes to triathlons (see previous post(s) below for details). So it's good for me to go to bike practice when I can. Mike drove me to the starting point, the LLS offices, just as the sun was coming up. It was a cloudy morning, but not raining yet and not too cold. I'd recently had a broken spoke on my wheel repaired. My tires were full of air and I had even managed to locate my bike bag in our disorganized basement and load it with bike tools. I was ready. I was even a little excited. I've been to some spinning classes, but this would be my first road ride in a few months.

We assembled in the parking lot, went over the route, did the team cheer. And we were off. I coasted down the hill, rounded the corner, and started peddling. And then I stopped going forward. I stopped and checked that the chain had not come off. Nope. I tried peddling some more and shifting, but I just kept falling over. Some people from my team stopped and offered to help. One of our teammates, Alfonso, was planning to give a bike repair clinic after the ride, so I walked my bike back to the LLS offices and asked him to look at it. He lifted the back end of my bike off the ground and cranked the pedals.

"Wow," he said. "I've read about this online, but I've never seen it before." Then he turned to look at me, and, like a doctor delivering news of a bad diagnosis, said "I'm sorry to tell you this, Janet, but your bike is 100% broken." The freewheel inside the cassette seems to have gotten damaged. (Now that i've attended Alfonso's bike clinic, I understand what that sentence means). When you turn the pedals of my bike, the rear wheel doesn't move. So, no bike practice for me.

Luckily, I was pretty much dressed for running, so I could still get a workout in while everyone was on their ride. So I went for a run on the Burke-Gilman trail, which was fine until the end, when a creepy guy followed me and yelled something threatening. So I ran away from him. When I got back to the office and told folks there what happened, Alfonso seemed ready to go down to the trail and find the guy. Don't mess with Team in Training people, buddy.

Matt, Mike, and the kids went to a play that afternoon, so to undo the rattling experience of the morning, I went for a swim and then did a little window shopping for a new bike (which I've been planning to get for awhile.) Got some good advice on bikes from Michael at Montlake Bicycle Shop, who was very nice and not the least bit creepy. And then the adults in the house wrapped up the day by watching the Ironman World Championships on TV. For Lavaman, we race on part of the Ironman bike course, so it was cool to see what a race there looks like. One of the racers was a Gulf War vet with two prosthetic legs, another was a woman in her sixties with Stage Four colon cancer, who did her training while she was getting radiation and chemo. Good to keep those people in my head any time I feel like complaining about doing a quarter of the distance with my healthy body.

This blog post is already too long, but I want to add the thing that's been the biggest boost this week: I sent my fundraising email out on Thursday at 10:00pm. Less than 12 hours later, I'd raised $500. Now, (five days post-email) I have over $1,000 raised. Thank you all so much. It really does give me lots of emotional energy every time I get a donation. You all rock.