Wake Up and I'm Winning

I woke-up with a bit of a migraine on Sunday. Now that I'm taking over 500 mg of magnesium a day, very few of my migraines are unbearable anymore, but they can still be bad every once in a while. Sunday's migraine was workable. I did some biofeedback, took some Advil and worked on my pressure points and the worst of it was over before the race started. Hooray!

This was my first gravel time trial - another of those races where you race for a time, instead of racing with a pack and a place. In the past, I have been pretty nervous riding on gravel, I would brake going downhill and around corners and I would unclip on one pedal, when I would feel my bike sliding underneath me on the heavier gravel. Of course, being clipped-in on only one side takes away a bit of power...

While waiting for my time to go off, I was right by the start line, trying to turn around and going too slowly and I forgot to clip-out and crashed my bike in front of everyone. Awesome. Super pro. My friend Burne had a 30 second countdown before his start, but he was still reaching around his jersey pockets, trying to fish out his phone to get a picture of my, um..."triumph". He's a good friend.

My Italian racing CX bike, doesn't have any way to put a bottle cage on it. Since it was in the 90's that day, I was going to wear a Camelback, because I was still dehydrated from the day before, and the race would take me well over an hour with very little shade on the course, but the Camelback covered up my race number, so I put a bottle in my jersey pocket and stupidly, didn't practice taking my bottle out and putting it back in my jersey pocket on bumpy gravel before the race, Derrrrr.

 So, my race went like this: I headed out and did a great job (for me) of not braking on the downhills or when I turned and I never clipped-out (except at the turn around) and rode with my feet clipped-in for the first time during an entire gravel race. The downside, was that I was too scared to use my water bottle, because I wasn't sure how difficult it would be to get it back into my jersey pocket, and so I was starting to get REALLY dehydrated and dizzy by the end of the race. At one point, I felt like stopping, I was so out of it, but then how the hell else would I get back to civilization? So, I just kept pedaling my bike and went as slowly as I had to not to pass-out. Not the best race strategy, but you do what you have to...

Because I am an old lady, I was the only one in my category, and while my time wasn't great, I actually finished the race, and therefore, I was a winner. I won the cool t-shirt above with that Ben Franklin quote. Amen.

 After the race, our friend Burne asked us over to meet his new kitten. Ain't she a beaut?!

The rest of the day was spent napping, and then making a big dinner and hanging out on the porch. Even with the heat it was a perfect day...And we still had one more day before we had to go back to work. So many ways to win!