The 2012 Tour de Mom "Accidental Century" Report

The start of the ride - I'm in the red jersey and my friend is in the green

I was so excited for Sunday’s 77-mile Tour de Cure ride. The weather looked perfect . I was ready to see my favorite cycling people. I raised my $500 goal for the American Diabetes Association. And my weight and blood glucose were the lowest they’d been in . . . well, years.

And then it happened.

As I was checking my tire pressure and taking my bike off the car, I realized that my chain had come off.

On the morning of my last charity ride, Ride4Ronald 2011, I dropped my chain. And I proceeded to complete the ride – with no injuries, despite a pretty bad crash and a tangle with the saddle sores from hell.

So, this ominous chain-dropping could only mean that badassery was about to commence.

 Or something like that.

There were so many groups I could have ridden with, but from the very beginning I got thrown to the front of the group with the crazy fast people. You know, the same guys I follow on the Murdolator rides and try not to get thrown off their back wheels (but always fail). They were doing their 28-mile pace. At the start of a 102-mile ride.

WTF are these guys on?!!?

How in the HELL am I going to ride 77 miles at this pace?!!?

5 miles, 10 miles, 20 miles passed. I kept thinking I would eventually get dropped back with my other friends.

But – and this is something you know if you’ve done a lot of group rides – I couldn’t get off the train. It was like being sucked into a whirling vortex of whoosh. “You might as well face it,” yelled my cycling mentor from the front of the vortex. “You’re in with the group that’s doing 100, so you’re doing 100.”

She had to be wrong.

My legs yelled at me. I recovered. My heart rate complained. I recovered. We passed the first SAG stop. I looked down at my computer and it cackled at me: Hehehehe, 22 mph! You can’t do that for 100 miles, you silly bitch. You can’t even do it for 77!

Side note: when did that damn thing get so mean?

Where is the turn for the 77-mile ride? And where are my less-crazy friends who don’t want to whoosh for 102 miles?

How in the HELL am I going to ride 77 miles at this pace?!!?

Wait a second. There are some other cyclists going straight when we went left. Did they just make a wrong turn?

Nope. I was the one making the wrong turn. I was on the 102-mile route, which did not re-join the 77, the 62, or the 50, until the very end of the ride.

Holy crap.

Judi was right.

I had been sucked into the whirling vortex of whoosh and there was no getting out.

Gulp.

I had suspected I'd get roped into riding the entire 100 by two of the guys I ride with (which I could have fought), not by accident.

How in the HELL am I going to ride 102 miles at this pace?!!?

And, from out of nowhere, a little voice in my head whispered these seven words: you’re so much stronger than you know.

But I wasn’t ready to believe it.

Sometimes when I ride hard, my left knee gets kind of tweaked. And I was not riding easy, so by mile 30 the knee was SCREAMING. It felt like it needed to be stretched really good, so I spent miles 38 through 50 trying to relax it. Around mile 55 I was able to take some ibuprofen, stretch and get some solid food and I was back to normal.

Then it dawned on me. I only have 45 miles left.

That’s like, my regular Sunday ride.

I got this.

I’m tired, but I got this.

It started getting windy. And I lost track of how many more times I thought to myself, oh my God, I am going to bonk and get left out here to fight this wind alone.

But I didn’t. Every time I’d feel like I was going to lose the group, I would push a little, stay on, and recover. The voice in my head kept saying you’re so much stronger than you know. By this time it had totally replaced the one asking how in the HELL am I going to ride 102 miles at this pace?!!?

You’re so much stronger than you know.

You’re so much stronger than you know.

You’re so much stronger than you know.

The bonk I expected? It came. But my riding partners were so steady and measured in their cadence and pace that it didn’t come until mile 100-101, and by then all that was left was to bring it home.

I was feeling a little queasy, but I’d just ridden 102 miles.

At almost 20 mph.

I'd beaten my first century by an HOUR - I was 3.6 miles per HOUR faster.

You couldn’t STOP my swagger.

Back to reality and the workweek, and three things became evident: one is that I had inadvertently used my own personal no-fail strategy of undertraining. My body responds very well to it. I usually work out a good bit less than my peers training for similar events, and it always spells success for me on the day of the event. I have fewer injuries and I feel mentally fresher.

The other is that, if I can go that hard for 102 miles, maybe I am not pushing myself hard enough for short rides. So I need to start addressing that.

And the final lesson I took away from my Accidental Century was this: in life, as in training, there will always be rough spots. The more we experience them, the more we learn the difference between when to push through them and when to give up. My goal now is to look at every challenge thrown my way when I’m NOT on the bike, and remind myself:

1. The only way through it is through it

2. You’re so much stronger than you know

Instead of song lyrics this week, I’m leaving you with some words from Muhammad Ali. May your will always be stronger than your skill.

"Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them A desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill." – Muhammad Ali

What the what?!?

I rode 61 miles on Sunday.  In the rain.  On Thrill Hill.  I rode this same course about 5 months ago when I was training for my first century and The IronMAJ.  (Which, need I remind you, I won.)  Anyway, on Sunday, I rode this sucker a mile per hour faster than I did 5 months ago.

A mile. PER HOUR.

What the what?!!?

Then I joined a cycling team.  These guys are pretty casual, but they have no other female teammates.  They're, well, fast.  A good mile per hour faster than me. 

A mile.  PER HOUR.

What the WHAT?!?!

These *!&(#ers are gonna kill me.

Then Coach Julia told me, if I really want to make this month a swim focus, then I have to add a 4th swim a week or an extra 1000 to 1 or 2 of my swims. Except the swims on my plan are already, like, 2-3k.  Which is already a heavy swim plan for a sprint.  So I'm doing 3-4k swims now.  And I'm doing my 100 pyramids at the END of my workouts, when I'm already tired, at my TOP END swim pace of all time.

What the WHAT>!>!>!>!>???

This *&^! is gonna kill me.

Then the B told me, if I win my sprint in May, he will buy me my first matching race kit so I match the dudes.

What the WHAT!!>!??????

This !$$h5@^! is gonna kill me.

Or maybe they won't kill me.

And you know what they say about what doesn't kill you . . . .

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SONG LYRICS OF THE WEEK.  Which 3 different artists have a different take on.

What the WHAT>!>!?!??!


Stronger - Britney Spears
I'm
Stronger
Than I ever thought that I could be
I used to go with the flow
Didn't really care 'bout me . . .
And now I'm stronger than yesterday
Now it's nothin' but my way

Stronger - Kanye West
Now tha-that-that that don't kill me
Can only make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now
Cause I can't wait much longer
I know I got to be right now
'Cause I can't get much wronger

Stronger - Kelly Clarkson
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger
Stand a little taller.......
What doesn't kill you makes a fighter
Footsteps even lighter

Limits Off!

I am a numbers geek.  I love to crunch them because I love to see the story they tell.    So I was looking over my total miles and hours trained for the summer . . . nothing overwhelming here, but definitely easy to see how the cycling and swimming took over as I trained for the century and the 2.5-mile swim., and then running started to ramp back up as I prepped for the marathon.



JUNE
Cycling: 127.20 Mi - 7h 55m 55s
Running: 29.27 Mi - 5h 50m 24s
Swimming: 13200.00 Yd - 5h 37m 47s
18.366 hours

JULY
Cycling: 271.64 Mi - 16h 12m 26s
Running: 20.46 Mi - 4h 13m 27s
Swimming: 11737.23 Yd - 5h 21m 58s
25.46 hours

AUGUST
Cycling: 395.00 Mi - 23h 21m 08s
Running: 23.74 Mi - 5h 11m 24s
Swimming: 22948.43 Yd - 10h 37m 39s
39.09 hours

SEPTEMBER
Cycling: 195.34 Mi -11h 55m 44s
Running: 50.63 Mi - 11h 08m 44s
Swimming: 10550.00 Yd - 4h 41m 53s
27.44 hours

I also did my first lactate threshold test in over a year.  I know, I know, you're supposed to do them every 4-5 weeks.  (Well, I know now.)   My lactate threshold went up 6 beats per minute this year and the time it took me to run 3 miles went from 45 minutes to 29.

We don't have this in Florida, but my parents'
house looks like this in fall.

As much progress as I made over the summer, I am SO glad fall is here.  Fall signals the end of tri season for me; the beginning of marathoning.  No more 2-workout-days for a while.  More freedom to just get up and go because running alone requires less equipment.
In Florida, fall doesn't really start until October or even November.  But it finally is making an appearance.  This morning, while I was doing my 5ish-mile run (at the beginning of a 14-hour day, ugh!) it was so gorgeous out.  Humidity was high but temps were lower than they have been. 

Fall is MY FAVORITE SEASON!

As I was doing some light hill repeats, my heart rate monitor beeped at me and across the screen a message flashed.  I've seen this message before, and I'm not really sure what it means (do we ever really understand everything that our electronical gadgets do?) 

Limits off!

When this message popped up, something Mike from D3 Multisport told me about my LT test instantly popped into my head.  I was explaining what I did last year, what I weighed, etc.  And he said "What you were at before, is done and gone."

I got on the scale this morning and saw a new low weight - again, a weight I haven't seen in 2-3 years.  And I thought to myself, what you were at before is done and gone.

I love to have "key phrases" to get me through tough races, and I think I have found my two mantras for marathon training and possibly racing this season.


Who knows what this limits off message means for my Polar. I'll have to look it up today. But I got to thinking about that message, and about Mike's advice, and I started thinking, why not turn my limits off? Why not make a concerted effort to stop letting everything that has bothered me or hindered me in the past stop? Right here, right now? I already took "cancer" out of my blog and I rarely talk about my health anymore, and look how much better I feel about it. I already took the scary first steps to break into the field I'd like to study for my PhD.  I already learned to accept that just because I have a certain set of constraints doesn't mean I cannot work every day to erase them.


What would life be like it I really did live it with my limits off?

Could I be pushing harder?

Last night I had a true breakthrough on the bike: 19.1 mph average for 32 miles, followed by a 2.69-mile run.  At one point I clocked almost 30mph - the fastest I've ever gone on a bicycle without flying down a hill.

I am, unquestionably, getting stronger.

So then why am I wondering if I could be pushing even harder?

The skiers came out on the lake this morning, so we altered our swim route to avoid them and added a few hundred incidentally.  I was in a group of 3, but we were so spread out that it was difficult to tell who was near me.  I paused several times to look behind me for another swimmer, and realized simultaneously that she had passed me and that I was feeling a little tired.

Or was I?  Was I just taking it easy to take it easy?

This is actually Lake Cane,
where I used to swim
before I became part of my current
swim team

As I climbed out of the lake, the faster group had already turned around for another lap.  Since my swim next weekend is 2.5, my normal route is 1.2-1.5 miles in the open water and more in the pool when I get time.  I really needed to get in a second lap for the OW experience, since my schedule has thus far not allowed me to join them, but I shook my head and decided that it wasn't worth pushing my 2:28 pace to a <2 to try to swim another mile and change.

Or was it? Was I just being lazy?

HTFU . . . . or know your breaking point?  Which one?


I looked at the pattern of my workouts over the last few weeks (BT.com lets you create all these great graphs from past workouts - the benefit of consistently logging), and I noticed that the weeks I don't feel good or my schedule gets crazy and I have to cut my workouts down, I am still jumping up towards the planned volume the following week.  But then the weeks just after that, I am forced to rest more, ostensibly because the increase in volume is so sharp that it tires me.  So I decided, with the last few weeks being easy, that I will not push too hard this week.

Let me tell you something.  I don't know the difference between not pushing too hard and letting myself off the hook.  There *is* a distinct difference.  I have said a million times that, at one point during my surgery recovery, when I was hypothyroid, I said to myself I'm going to feel like crap anyway, so I may as well work out.  So, since I have a different point of reference, and feeling bad is usually resolved by a workout, sometimes it's just hard for me to tell where the line is.

In the past 5 years, I have always erred on the side of caution, to the point of undertraining.  We all know our bodies best, and I know mine requires far more rest than the average tri/athlete.  But I can't help wondering sometimes - could I be pushing harder?