Will Tri For Food: You big dummy!

This past weekend, Justin and I took a ride to his office to see what he would be looking at if he wanted to bike one day a week. Most of the ride is on trails, so away from cars, which was nice. It was hot outside (in the high 90’s) so we prepared by taking as many liquids as possible ( three water bottles for me). I’m not sure what went wrong but when we got to his office, I was starting to get cranky… WARNING! A sign of bonking. I had gone through all my water bottles and the grocery store across the street didn’t have any cold Gatorades, just waters. So I rehydrated by downing a large bottle of warm Gatorade and refilled the rest of my bottles with half Gatorade and half cold water. I snacked on a Powerbar and apologized to Justin ahead of time that I was probably going to be slow on the way back.

Slowly but surely we were kicking away at each mile when about halfway through, dark clouds starting rolling in. I know far too well that this meant bad things ahead. Trying to out ride the clouds, we started cranking away. That plus a gusty tailwind from the oncoming storm meant we were flying in the 35+mph range. It was very cool and fun. However, not fun was when the clouds inevitably caught up and we took shelter under a bridge as the downpours, lightening and thunder did their thing. About 30 minutes later, the sun started coming back out so we hopped back on the bikes to finish the ride. Reminding you that just before we stopped at the bridge, we were flying on the bikes, which means I was in the hardest of gears, which means when I got back on the bike and tried pedaling up the short hill coming out of the bridge underpass, I couldn’t get enough power and ended up falling flat on my side. Awesome. After a minute to regroup myself, I walked the bike up the hill and got on at the flat. Not even 10 minutes later, Justin, slows down after a split in the path and yells “go left!” but I’m already past bonking and had delayed reactions and ended up slamming on my brakes and sliding out from the wet path, once again falling over and skidding on the cement. This is why you ALWAYS wear a helmet, because you never know what is going to happen even on the easiest of rides. I hit my head (thank you helmet), but out of instinct I threw my hand out and ended up with a nice cut on the side of my pinky finger and shoulder, let’s not mention the bruise on my leg. Instantly I started crying because I was hurting and thought I might have broken my wrist. Jus rinsed the cuts down with some water and told me not to look at my hands (at the time, they were quite bloody). When I had calmed down, we walked about a quarter mile while pushing the bikes. Getting the guts to get back on, we attempted one last time to finish the ride biking. This time I was truly going SLOW as I didn’t have much use of my hands. We made it home, and I immediately tended to the wounds.

My wounded hand (it's much grosser and painful than it appears here)

Now that it’s been a couple days, the only thing that still hurts is the cut on my hand. It’s still trying to scab over, and I hope it does before the weekend because we’re racing and I don’t want to have to worry about it. Ugh to unsuccessful rides!

Some pics (PS: I have no idea why there are borders around every picture... stupid blogger):