Crazy Wore Out

Wowie! It's October and it seems like the year zipped by, but then at the same time the start of the year seemed to just creep by slowly...let's see what might have made this year go by quickly...

January - 1st Run (Portland)
February - Worst Day Ride (Portland)
April - Monster Cookie Metric Century (Salem)
May - RACC (Clark County)
June - Pioneer Century (Canby), Blue Lake Duathlon (Portland), Tour de Blast (Toutle)
July - 4th of July 5k (Ridgefield), Cycle Oregon Weekend (Monmouth)
August - All Women's Event (Blue Lake), Vine Ride (Newberg), Mid Valley Covered Bridge Bicycle Tour (Albany),
September - Vancouver Bicycle Club Time Trial, Peach of a Century (Salem)
October - Harvest Century (Hillsboro)

On top of that, we did a lot of bike commuting, riding with friends and I did a fair amount of training runs and rides for the duathlons. At the beginning of this year I was fortunate enough to make an adjustment in my work schedule to allow for training runs and rides during my lunch break. Those were limited, but it gave me a jump on what I needed to do before Spring arrived so I could switch my runs to the road. I think it would be safe to say that this year has been a little tiring. 

I'm glad that we did all the events that we did and I am also glad that we cut out the events that we consider "junk" events. Events that were once fun, but now just are plain annoying because sometimes riding around people that don't ride often on open city streets can be downright frustrating. I'm sure that it would be different if we were to ride with a group of friends, but more often than not, the urban rides have turned out to be just Tom and I. Which is kind of sad because we had so much fun with our buddies on those rides.

There is a toss up on which event was the most challenging - my first Duathlon or the Century. I trained for six months to do the Du, but I rode all season to get ready for the 100 miles. The Du took just over 2 hours and the Century was over 8 hours...I wasn't nearly as emotionally spent at the end of the Duathlon, rather I was more exhilerated, so I'm going to say that the century was most challenging. I still haven't decided whether or not I had fun on that ride or not....and we are more than two weeks past it now. I'm pretty sure that we'll do another century, but probably not the Peach. That's just too far to travel to ride all day long and STILL have to drive home a distance more than 20 miles. We would definitely go back and do the metric century. It's not that the whole ride was challenging, just the last 45 miles - hills, hills, hills and wind, wind and MORE WIND. I guess I haven't gotten over this ride yet. Ask me again in another week or so...

My favorite event, hands down, the All Women's event where Robin and I teamed up and "won" our division. I think it helped that we were the only ones signed up for that particular division! It was all good though...I got to run and then cheer on my best teammate ever.

I am forever hooked on multi-sport events now. After saying over and over again that I don't swim - I have started swimming and have been entertaining the thought of doing a sprint tri in 2011. Hmmm...still making friends with the idea of swimming in open water. We'll see how well things go in a POOL enclosed in a nice climate controlled building with a jacuzzi nearby before I make the move to open icky, murky water...I'm a little concerned.

This year has been a fun year and it's not quite over yet, but as far as events go, it is. It's time to start looking to 2010 and put together a list of events that I plan to participate in and need to train for. The cycling events are easy, we start with 30-40 mile organized rides and work our way up throughout the summer. So another century might in the plan for late summer. I'm looking to add another Duathlon to bring the total to 3 for next year and then of course all the cycling events and at least a 5k fun run here and there. Now that I have discovered Time Trials, I think we'll be doing those more often, just to see how things progress thru the cycling season.

First, I'm taking a little time off for some much needed rest and then gradually starting up again next week. I haven't run in a couple of weeks, so I'll start up my new running plan next week and add stuff as the weeks come and go.

This year was filled with so many fun events and I'm looking forward to next year and making it just as crazy fun and tiring again!