Natural Bridge Caverns Off Road Duathlon

Jay holding my award because I had to get home to Sofia.

I registered for the NBC Duathlon so that I could force myself to practice running. So one week before the race I started training. Not much time to train but as long as I could get my legs into the run groove, then I would be fine for a slow 4 mile jog.

A bunch of my friends got together to race the various route choices they offered. Of course I opted for the off-road run and mountain bike. It was a 2 mile run, 12 mile mountain bike and 2 mile run.

The race started deep at the bottom of the caverns. It was a steep hike up to the top before I started running. This was definitely the steepest hike I've done since I left California one year ago. (I'm not proud of that.)

Anyhow, Jay and I stayed together through the run and then we started biking. I wouldn't call the path that we rode a "trail." I would call it a cleared path with a bunch of large stickes, roots and rocks. It was the kind of super extreme technical riding that I don't really like. But I did it and I ended up passing quite a few people who had to walk their bikes. I must have made up a bunch of distance on folks because towards the end of the ride the race volunteers were telling me I was the second female going through. Not bad for someone who hardly trained for the run.

I had originally planned to coast the second run but since I was in contention, I decided I needed to give it my all. I ran as fast as I could and ended up finishing first in my age group and second female overall.

I was stoked with the workout and stoked to get a decent result. Guess I should work on my running again.

Mellow Johnny's 6 Hour Mountain Bike Race

Lance Armstrong opened up his Juan Pelota Ranch for a 6 hour mountain bike race.

I hadn't really trained much but I decided that the race itself would be some good training so I packed up the bike and headed to Dripping Springs to ride a few laps.

To my surprise, it was 40 degrees when I got there. I had only been paying attention to the chance for rain and hadn't paid any attention to the temperatures. Luckily I had packed my leg/arm warmers, a buff and my full fingered gloves just in case.

The racers started in waves so I was able to watch the pro men take off and Lance was right there. I snapped a cool pic with my brand new Android phone.



It had been a year since I had ridden those trails and they had changed a little so I didn't know how long each lap would take. Turned out it took me a little more than an hour to ride each lap so then I was able to set myself a goal of 6 laps. I had that number in my head and I wanted to reach it.

However, after the third lap I was already feeling tired. I could have easily talked myself into doing 4 or 5 laps since my training had been minimal to say the least. But I toughed it out and kept going. I told myself that as long as I had time, I would keep riding no matter how slowly.

At one point I knew that Lance was going to lap me for the second time so I was watching out for him. I had just hiked my bike up some large rocks and was going to hop back on the bike when I saw him coming. I said, "Hey, thanks for having the race here." He said, "Yup, sure thing." So that was cool. I was glad I got to thank him for opening his ranch to us.

Another cool thing was that I beat Lance! Yup, that's right. How many ladies can say they beat Lance Armstrong in a bike race? So what if he did 4 laps in the time it took me to do 2. He stopped at 4 and I kept going. I completed my goal of 6 laps, I was super happy with my workout and I was super happy with the climbing and technicality of those trails.