Ride to SD!!!

I am terrible at updating my blog. I do have a pretty good excuse considering I work 60 hours a week and I am training for an Ironman but I PROMISE I will try write a little more often. A couple of weeks ago I did my longest ride ever and took Kimberly all the way from Irvine to San Diego. 80 miles on a bicycle is not the most comfortable way to spend five hours but I would not trade that time for anything. With Brian right behind me (drafting off of me the whole time!) we made our way along the coast to San Diego. We had a few funny incidents, including a young girl in a black BMW (her daddy probably bought for her) yelling at us to get off the road. When Brian decided to be a smart ass and slow down in front of her, she screamed, “AT LEAST I HAVE A F***ING RIDE!” It was classic.

We got to ride through Camp Pendleton where I managed to drop my recovery powder (which can easily be mistaken for cocaine) in front of the military guards at the gate. They did not seem to notice a thing as they stood fully dressed from head to toe in the unbearable heat. All they wanted was a picture id and a smile and they let us right into the base. We took a break at the park and took some pictures on a huge tank and ate our peanut butter and jelly uncrustables. It was a nice feeling riding through Camp Pendleton and reliving my very first triathlon I did on those very roads less than a year before. It is such an exciting feeling realizing how far I have come. It is hard to feel the progress I have made on a day to day basis but looking back at my little sprint triathlon made me proud of how much I have accomplished over the past year.

After Camp Pendelton, we were lucky enough to run into a few people from the Team in Training Ironteam. We joined a few of them as we made our way up what looked like the biggest hill I have ever seen in my life. It was more like a mountain you had to climb in order to get into San Diego. Okay fine, maybe it was not that big but after being on a bike for 70 miles, anything looks impossible. We slowly trudged our way up the hill only to find that the directions we had were useless since there was construction blocking all of the roads. Since Brian had lived in SD for 3 years, we figured it would be safe to trust him to find our way to our destination. Boy, was that a mistake. As he started taking us down a very big hill I made him promise we would not have to come back up it. A few minutes later he had his google maps out and broke the news that we were about to go right back up that big hill we flew down. Luckily Brian sucked up his pride and decided to ask someone for help. A wonderful, amazing, incredible lady running gave us a short cut (that did not include the big awful hill) to Pacific Beach. In the end Brian was right (yes, I just said you were right baby) and we ended up getting back an even shorter way than the original directions showed us.

I made it! It was such an amazing ride. It was a day I will cherish forever. I cannot imagine something more wonderful than being able to accomplish something so challenging for myself while being able to experience it with my boyfriend and the ocean by my side.