120 mile weekend

Last week was kind of crappy, with lots of rain.  Here are the highlights:

Saturday: I decided some time ago to ride from San Diego to Huntington Beach (80 miles) to visit friends, stay the night and then ride back.  Unfortunately, we had a giant storm Friday night and the wind was still howling Saturday morning.  20-30 mph winds with gusts over 45 mph.  The tri club cancelled the bike and swim portions of the tri and there were wind warnings on the news.  Well, I decided to go for it anyway.  Yup, crazy!  It was bad.  About 2 miles from my house, I was descending down a steep hill and a cross wind caught me and blew all over the road.  Not fun.  At that point, I decided to get to Solana Beach and then I could take the train part of the way.  Only 12 miles away.  Terrifying.  I was going 9 mph on the flats into the head wind and it was not fun at all.  Made it to Solana Beach, where it rained on me.  :(   Rode the train to San Juan Capistrano and then rode from there to Huntington Beach.  Lots and lots of hills.  The scenery was great, but it was still crazy windy and I had to white knuckle it up the coast.  Finally made it.  Forty miles took me 3:13 and felt like 140.  Recovered with margaritas, tacos and gelato.

Sunday: Time to ride back home.  Much nicer day.  Beautiful, not too windy, sunny.  I rode from HB to San Juan Capistrano solo.  Luke rode the train to SJC and I met him there so we could ride back home together.  Unfortunately, Luke missed the train he was supposed to take so we had to wait 1.5 hours til the next one. I spent the wait here:

Finally he showed up and we started on our journey.  By the time we hit Oceanside I was hungry in a pretty serious way.  We stopped and I ate a twix, hot dog, french fries, bites of Luke's fried fish, a Starbucks large coffee drink, and a scoop of rocky road in a waffle cone in rapid succession.  Bad idea!  I thought I was going to barf for the rest of the ride, which was thankfully short.  In Carlsbad, we ran into Tammy, Todd and Don (Team Badass people), who were also out riding.  Fun little surprise.  Finally we made it home and collapsed on the couch.  120 miles in 2 days and I was beat!

Still feeling pretty fatigued today but trying to rehydrate for my swim tonight.

My big birthday boy

Last Thursday, my best running partner and favorite guy (3 way tie for first place with Luke and Rudy.  Okay, maybe Luke is in first, but Hank and Rudy aren't far behind) turned 5.  That's right, my baby is 5 years old!  Can't believe it.  This entire post will be pics of Hank.

When I decided to give Rudy a brother, I decided to get a puppy.  From now on, I'll do rescue exclusively, but RuDog had some issues that weren't immediately apparent and I was worried about adding a dog with an unknown background to the mix.  Anyway, I went to look at a female JRT puppy.  When the pups were released, Hank ran over to me right away and sat down in my lap.  It was love at first sight, for both of us.

Such a cute little guy!

Tiny baby Hank on his first night at home

Look at that naughty little boy

Hank's puppy years were filled with fun and destruction (good bye couch, chairs, pillows, books, remotes, a huge jug of olive oil), a heroin OD (not my fault.  Stupid druggies throwing their drugs on the streets in SF!), a broken leg and lots of adventures.

Little Man loves his ice cream

I know there's a snack in here somewhere!

Sitting in his toy box

Elvis.  I make him wear this every Halloween.

He is way too funny and acts like a little person.

Naps with Mom

Snuggling in his towel after a bath

He loves the beach

Dog Beach, Coronado

and hiking

Lake Berryessa

Auburn

Mission Trails

and, he even rides a bike.

Every time I get on the trainer, he tries to ride on my lap

He's even a super famous supermodel (check out Oh! My dog photography)

I'm totally a crazy dog person, and I'm completely okay with that!  Best training partner in the world.  He's always excited to run, doesn't care about the weather or waking up early or where we go.  He just wants to run.  We could all learn something from the joie de vivre!

Look out for Rudy's special post this October when he turns 8!

Pig ninja power!

More summer time

Okay, here are some more highlights:

Black Mountain more than 15K:
Remember that super crazy hard almost 10 mile run I did about a month ago with Ian from Team Badass and thereisnotri.org?  Well, Team Badass has decided to make that a weekly event.  Hanky Panky and I met up with several of the speedsters and set out on the awesome/horrible/hard/fun run last Friday morning.  Everyone was way faster than me so I was hoofing it just to keep them within sight.  I definitely pushed myself and finished quite a bit faster than last time.  And, I wasn't too sore afterward, unlike last time.  Just some tired quads.  Just a few more days until this week's Black Mountain fun time.

April 7 long ride and Team Badass BBQ:
Last weekend we hosted a Bike and BBQ for some friends.  Everyone met at the Pig Ninja house and we rode up the coast.  Everyone rode between 50 and 70 miles.  I only rode 50 so I could get home and help Luke set up for the BBQ.  Fortunately, I had already prepped a ton of burgers and I made what may be some of the cutest cupcakes of all time.  Did you already know that I'm a total domestic goddess?!

Chick cupcakes

A special chick with bling cupcake I made for my friends Missi and Ian to celebrate their engagement

We ate, drank, engaged in conversations about "chicken bombs" and maggots, watched some rather inappropriate videos once the kids left and had a blast.  In fact, we had so much fun that we made karaoke plans for that evening.  However, about 5 minutes after making the plans and the last guests left, we realized that we were too zombie like to go out and cancelled.  Everyone was relieved :)

Easter Beach Time:
Yay Easter!  We're not religious, so we spent the day at the beach.  We rode cruisers all around Oceanside, ate yummy food and played a ton of frisbee.  Who knew frisbee was so much fun?!  I can't wait to play more!  Sunday was one of those days, and I've been having them frequently, where I'm so excited that I live in San Diego and can't believe (in a good way) that it's my home.  I can run by the ocean, bike by the ocean, swim in the ocean, play frisbee in the sand at the ocean and it's all within a few (okay, 6) miles of my house.  LOVE IT!  Never going to leave.

La Jolla Shores Evening Swim
Last night was my Tri Club's La Jolla Shores Evening swim season opener.  As we all know, I need more swim practice, especially open water!  I met up with the love birds Missi and Ian after work to join the tri club for the swim.  The group split into 2 groups: a beginner group that would parallel the beach and swim not so far and an advanced group that would cover a lot more distance.  Since I haven't been OWS since possibly CdA, I decided to join the beginners' group.  Thank goodness!  It was cold (but not THAT bad) and choppy (to me) and ugh, it was not so easy.  My swimming sucked.  I kept swimming and swimming and it seemed like I wasn't going anywhere.  Of course, the fact that I stopped every 3 strokes or so to doggie paddle and look around probably didn't help.  Hahaha.  Looks like I need to go every week!  I know it will get easier and if I master ocean swimming, fresh water will be that much easier.

The only thing that got me through this was knowing that I got Ethiopian food afterward.  Soooo good.  Fun dinner with Team Badass  friends.  Of course, the dinner conversation was not for polite society.  I learned things I'd never known before (and maybe wish I still didn't know).

On tap for this week:
running, biking, swimming :)

Summer time in San Diego

We have been having the most amazing, sunny, gorgeous weather recently!  Sure, we had some rain a few weeks ago, but other than that, it has been absolutely wonderful...so I've been taking full advantage!  I'll just give you the highlights, divided into 2 posts to make it easier for your ADD problem (Okay, to make it easier for my ADHD to process):

Oceanside 70.3 spectating:
March 31 was the Oceanside 70.3 just north of San Diego.  I wasn't racing, but my friends and teammates Lauren, Ian and Matt were.  Tammy, Patrick, Aren, Hanky Panky and I rode up to Oceanside pretty early Saturday morning.  Actually, we all slept in until after 6, so it was pretty late for a Saturday!  Ironman training makes you crazy!  We parked and then all went running while the athletes were biking.  Tammy, Patrick and I ran just over 8 miles and Aren did something crazy, like 15 or 16.  As we finished up, the pros were out on their first loop of the run.  We walked the rest of the way and cheered.  So, so much fun!  I "accidentally" said a few creepster things, like "Heather Jackson, I love you!  You are my girl crush!"  I also told saw this guy whose blog I read, "Hey!  I read your blog!" when I ran into him at a coffee stand.  It was kind of weird, so I made it worse by saying, "Sorry, that was creepy."  Hahahahahaha

Team Badass represented at the race.  Ian threw down a 5:06 in his first Half-Iron (and maybe first tri?) even with an impressive, flesh removing crash on the bike.  Lauren and Matt were right around 6 hours.  My friends are so fast!  Really awesome and a very fun day.  Hank was really mad until I let picked him up so he could watch the finish shoot.  Then he had fun.

Long ride 4/1 (aka the Universe's April Fools joke):
I went out for a long ride with Missi and Inh on April Fools Day.  We planned a 60 or so miler (because I insisted I wanted more mileage).  It rained pretty hard that night and the road was still wet the next morning.  After thinking pretty seriously about staying in bed, I got up and met up with the other two. We started riding and it immediately started raining on us. At first it was pretty light, but then there was some legitimate rain dumpage.  I kept thinking about how I could get away with turning around.  We had planned a route with a big hill and some massive descents, but bailed on those for safety reasons. That's right!  No crazy descending on wet roads!

Finally, the weather started to clear and we were on a neat little path out by Lake Hodges.  The road is pretty rough, so I asked my buddy, Inh, if he'd ever had any issues out there.  Literally one minute after declaring, "Nah!  Never had any flats out here!" Pssssssssssst....his rear tire was flat.  Ahahahahahaha!  He changed it quickly and then almost immediately flatted again.  WTF?
"Did you check the tire?"
"Uh, no.  Look!  There's a piece of metal in the tire," Inh says and then tries to remove it with his teeth, as in his mouth was on the outside of the tire, as in he was pretty much licking the road surface.  "That tastes like shit!"  Missi and I were dying of laughter by this point.

Inh changes the tube again.  This tube won't hold any air.  Turns out to be a defective tube.  Totally blown out.  By this point, Inh is out of tubes and starts in on mine.

Inh with his tube carnage

By this point, we're all worrying about running out of CO2, so Inh tries to fill the tube using Missi's hand pump.  Of course, we start egging him on and encouraging him to pump faster. He pumped so vigorously that he snapped the stem right off.  Goodbye tube #4!  We thought this was hilarious!  Maybe we were delusional...or we're just evil.

The 5th tube held and we continued on the ride.  Decided to cut the day short and not tempt fate any more.  Still got almost 40 miles in.  Pretty awesome that we consider 40 miles to be an easy preschool ride!

To be continued...