PLEASE PASS THE SALT!

and the body glide, the motrin, some bandaids, and some ice while your at it!  I think most turtles find refuge from the heat in their own shell, but this turtle struggles in heat.  I am what the sports books refer to as a SALTY SWEATER!  And I seem to pay the price for my body's overactive filter system about 50% of the time.  One thing I find myself doing is trying to stay out of the heat as much as possible.  That seems like a sure way to win this battle.  And why did I sign up for the AZ Ironman you are saying?  Why do I even live in AZ?  Well as a kid growing up in Pennsylvania, I always thought to myself while I was standing out at the bus stop and could not feel my hands or my nose that I would rather sweat to death than freeze to death and thus I ended up in Arizona after I graduated from college, in the dry heat where you don't sweat.  Well, it is a different kind of heat and a different kind of sweat.  But, my bike has reminded me that Arizona is a very diverse state and we have beautiful mountains and deserts to explore by wheel.  When there is an opportunity to get out of the heat with my bike, I am there.

This weekend was BIKE THE BLUFF ride in Show Low, AZ.  We started with a small group going up to escape the heat and ended up with just my husband and myself and 2 other racelab teammates (one who has a beautiful Show Low home with bear warning signs right in front).  It was supposed to be a metric century ride and turned out to be a little less.  There is a lot of "ISH" in cycling....close enough to a metric century and by the end, I was just fine with that.  The good news was that the temperatures were supposed to be 65 to 75 during the ride and then would reach high 80s later in the afternoon.  A good 20 degrees below Phoenix temps.  We arrived late on Friday night, checked into our hotel, laid out our gear and hit the hay.  Morning arrived soon enough and the rituals began.  When we arrived, cars were parked in series along both sides of a narrow country road with bikes on cars tops, tails, inside, outside and upside down.  We walked to packet pick up amongst most of the other cyclists om their fancy team jerseys who in the pro categories.  We stepped up to the table and the guy took one look at us and said "CITIZEN's RIDE", and I joked, how could you tell.  And he said, because I was wearing a sleeveless jersey (My racelab jersey ofcourse) and that was not permitted in US Cycling events.  As we headed back to the car to get our bikes ready, there were riders on trainers and rollers next to their cars.  No aero bars, but lots of fancy carbon road bikes.  My SCOTT FOIL, fit in very nicely at this event, but as my friend Bev said, "You're not in Kansas anymore".  It was a different world than triathlon.  The pro divisions started first and the small Citizen's Ride followed with a small group of 25 riders who mostly also wanted to get out of the heat.  The course was awesome, full of what they call rollers through the pines.   It went through downtown Showlow and turned on route 260 West through the pines.  Then we turned off on some more rolling roads in the middle of nowhere with lots of brush,  some livestock, and several cattle gaurd crossings.  We turned on route 277 back to route 60.  I had brought just enough fluids and was anticipating 2 aide stations like the Race Bible stated. The one that was supposed to be at mile 28 was not there and I was down to one bottle of water and needed more electrolyte.  My ride was going well and it flattened out around mile 40 when I checked my stats and I was averaging 17.5 mph.  I even passed a number of riders and held them off until the aide station finally appeared and I refueled, but I was starting to have some severe back pain on my right side, then nausea, and then during the 10 mile climb near the end, my adductors/inner thighs were cramping.  I had to keep slowing down and I even stopped a few times.  My husband actually had come back out to find me on the last mile and told me that he came in second place while I was in the middle of a severe cramp.  I rolled into the finish and they had run out of water (which was irritating especially when you are dehydrated and salty).  Awards and raffle were starting and I told my husband to go back to the car and get our tickets.  Lucky that he did because we ended up winning the grand raffle prize of a pump, bike trainer and a GIANT handle bar and best of all my husband actually came in first place in the Citizen's division.  He suprised himself and he got a cool medal and gift card to the local bike shop.

After we recovered partially, we went with my teammates to Fool's Hollow Lake and went for a 50 minute swim in a portion of the lake that was narrow and like a gently flowing river surrounded by canyon.  Was cool enough to get some wetsuit practice in and felt sooooooo good. 

The next morning I did my 11 mile long run in my heart rate zone enjoying the smell of pines while my husband did another metricish century ride on his bike.  Ironman training complete for weekend.  Headed home and dozed on and off while my driver brought me back to the heat.

Nerves are setting in as Ironman gets closer and I am struggling with heat with nausea and cramping and experiencing problems on my bike with back pain as I am getting into longer time in the saddle and doing more climbing.  I am going back to my bike fitter tomorrow to determine if I can sustain the aero position without losing power.  I did not want to have to go through a saddle search and hoped the saddle that came with the bike was going to work for me.  Things feel a bit like they are falling apart and training is starting to take a little bit of a toll.  But on the bright side....I can bike 4 hours, run 12 miles and swim over 2000 yards.  We are half way there!

I am hoping that adding a little spice to my life will resolve some of the problems and make the long training rides and runs more pleasant.  SO PLEASE PASS THE SALT.  Doctor's orders this time!