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.

Rocky Hill 24 Hour Mountain Bike Race

Rocky Hill 24 Hour Mountain Bike Race, Smithville, Texas Oct 23-24

Since I hadn't had much time to train, I decided to ride a few laps and also support my friend Ross Willis. I rode laps 1, 3 & 5 with him. Then I supported him through the night. When his wife and sister-in-law returned in the morning, I hopped on the bike and rode laps 14, 15 & 16 with him to finish out the 24 hours.

It was a good workout for me and I was able to give Ross the experienced support he needed to be successful. He rode an excellent race and finished in 3rd place at his very first 24 Solo!

Next up for me is a 6 hour solo mountain bike race and then an off-road duathlon.

Out of the loop...

I've been out of the loop when it comes to writing my blog. I'm currently doing relatively short races and lots of short training sessions.

I got busy working on building a golf driving range in the San Marcos, Texas area so I've taken all my time to do that.

I plan to get back to more frequent updates sooner rather than later.

Bernice

San Gabriel 12 Hour Adventure Race

Shayne was laid up with a broken thumb and Sebas was busy with work so Ross and I did the San Gabriel 12 hour race together. We started with a paddle on really flat water but about an hour into the race the winds picked up and we felt like we were paddling on an ocean. It was a tough few hours on the boat but we did well together. We had a couple of little nav issues, but only lost a few minutes.
After the paddle, we mountain biked on the gnarliest, rockiest trail I've ever ridden. It was so rocky and technical that we could never relax on the bike. After a couple of hours and a couple of falls, we made it to the Georgetown park. We went on a 6 mile trek around town taking photos of a list of things on our race rules. Unfortunately we didn't bring our trekking shoes so it was tough on my feet to run around in my bike shoes.
We got back on the bikes and had to ride all the way back that gnarly trail. That was tough.
We then went on the final trek and did well until the second to the last checkpoint. It had gotten dark and we failed to find the CP even though we were literally right on top of it. It was hidden under some overhanging rocks below the trail.
All in all we got in a really great workout and had fun racing with each other.

Fiest Wildflower 40 mile Road Ride

Ross, his buddy Dave and I decided to ride the Fiesta Wildflower 40 mile road ride. I'm still learning the area so I thought it would be a good idea to join some organized rides. I originally wanted to register for the 100 mile ride but Ross had registered for the 40 mile so I did too. To make it a little more challenging, we rode our mountain bikes. I'm pretty sure we were the only ones there on MTB's but I didn't care. In fact, I was pretty stoked when I passed some roadies on their sleek, light, fast bikes. :)

Ross immediately took off and rode really well. I spent the entire ride trying to catch him. It was a nice day and really nice back country roads with little traffic.

Over all I had a great ride and a great workout.

Eco Lone Star 12 Hour Adventure Race

We started the race with a 20 minute run that turned into an all out sprint. Of course I'm not quite a sprinter so it sucked for me, but at least was jumped right onto the bikes after that.



Unfortunately within the first 10 minutes, Ross got a flat. Sebas and Shane took to it quickly and got it fixed. We tought that we had gotten our bad luck out of the way...

...But all races don't go smoothly; especially adventure races. Adventure racing is full of the unknown. This time a simple numeral, a digit, a freakin' miscalled/misread/miswritten number is what held us up.

We weren't really supposed to cross this river but we did. We don't know if Sebastian called out the UTM wrong or if Ross wrote it down wrong but either way, it was wrong. So we spent at least an extra hour in the place we had plotted our point only to find that the point was plotted wrong.

The funny thing is that there was another team crossing the river right in front of us which made us feel that we were going the right way. Turned out they had misplotted their point as well. Anyhow, that tiny mistake took lots of time and we ended up racing just to finish instead of racing to place. That really shows how much the navigation means to a race.