round and round we go

My first year back in Houston after college, I was all about cycling. That summer, I am pretty sure I cycled every day, along with doing several charity rides. Last year, I switched to running. From August to December, every day I wasn't working, I was running. I jumped from my first 5K to my first (and I swear my last) half marathon. This year, I seem to have found the mix of the two. I did a mud run last month (a post to come on this eventually), and this month I did my first charity cycling race in two years.
I didn't train as officially as perhaps I should have. Sure, I've been going on a bike ride every week for about 5 months, with a month break in March, but that's hardly 'training.' The week of the ride, I rode the furthest I had in years: 40 miles, then 30 miles, then the 63 mile charity ride. That's a total of 133 miles last week, to add to approximately the 320 miles I had logged for the year so far. In other words, my butt hurts.
But as my mom said during the ride, if you know your butt is going to hurt, make sure you like the environment it's hurting in. And really, this ride, called the Rolling Hills Challenge in Columbus, Texas, is gorgeous.

I hope I look intimidating here. Actually, I was laughing because in order to get this picture, I had to ride straight at my parents, who are my cycling companions. I veered off at the last second, I swear.                      This was after the first rest stop, which were spaced every 10 miles. I felt fine here. The second 10 was a different story. I couldn't breathe very well, and I just get irritable when I can't breathe...

 So after several uses of my handy-dandy rescue inhaler, I was able to look pretty cheerful at the 40-50 mile mark (below)

 

Did I mention this ride was gorgeous? There were lots of wildflowers, plenty of different types of trees (which is a nice variety from the heavy pine environment of Houston), AND a dead armadillo. Okay, that last part isn't a perk, but it is true. At least it was the only roadkill we saw.

As I said, there were rest stops. Cyclists can be motivated by a carrot on a stick. Between each rest stop, I would fantasize about the next time I could eat.  Each one had awesome lemon oatmeal cookies, pickles, bananas, oranges, water, Gatorade, annnnnd port-a-potties. The sign on one of them cracked me up. So, what kind of accidents are we talking about?

 This, my friends, is a tandem. Firstly, I'm proud that I got this shot, because this is an in-motion capture, so I had to remember to click the camera button before I actually saw my parents on the screen. Secondly, tandems are awesome. As the single rider in our 3-person team, I got to do some drafting behind the tandem, which displaces a lot of that air that normally would have been horrible resistance for me. I also got to ride on back of the tandem for about 6 miles (while waiting for my inhaler to kick in), and I love being able to close my eyes and take my hands off the handlebars, stretch, maybe take a nap...okay not the last one. But I do think it's easier.

At the end of the ride the sponsors provided hamburgers, and I discovered that the allergens provided me some nice itchy hives. So after some benadryl, I pretty much napped the rest of the afternoon. Oh, wait, I also went on this benadryl-induced shopping spree where I ended up with hot pink skinny jeans.