Weekend Adventures in Boston

It was a busy weekend for me, but it worked out well as I consolidated what could've been many trips into one, long weekend. It all began on Friday afternoon when I drove down in the rain/snow (yes, still snow in April - but at least I had the day off from workouts) to Fast Splits to give a threshold test to a new QT2 athlete and pick up a few items for the upcoming race.

Once the test was taken care of, I figured as long as I was in the area I might as well drive on downtown and check out the Boston Marathon expo. If you have only been to rinky-dink little tri expos and have not had the opportunity to attend a 20,000+ entrant marathon expo, I'd highly recommend it. I spent probably an hour there and thought I'd seen everything before I discovered there was an entire room I had missed. I had also picked up a number for a friend of mine so I was walking the floor with the official participant bag and being mistaken as a runner. If anyone asked I'd have to tell the truth... but, yeah, I was still going to be running a marathon in two short weeks... after all of that other crap. It was a painful smack of reality to say that out loud.

After all of that and paying $27 for parking for less than two hours, I was off to West Roxbury to hang out at the Kropelnicki house as they were nice enough to put me up for the weekend. Saturday morning came too early as we headed over to Fast Splits for the QT2 aqua bike competition, consisting of a 10K indoor bike time trial on the Central Park course followed by an 800 yard swim time trial at the MIT pool. It was a perfect day for entirely indoor workouts, as it was about 40 degrees and raining once again.

It took us a while to get set up for the time trial, and Cait, Michelle and I would be the only female competitors, so we were set up to go off in the first heat, along with Jay, who was lucky enough to ride against us. I did one of these in February and it went pretty well, so I wasn't dreading it probably as much as I should've been. When we set off, I was feeling pretty good. And ok, maybe I overestimated what kind of effort I could hold up for the entire time.

For the first five minutes or so, I was feeling strong and averaging over 300 watts. I knew in my head maybe that was a little too much, but I felt fine at that point, so decided to just keep at it. Strangely, the first issue I noticed was that I couldn't feel my forearms. I was sitting up and resting on them, and I started having a hard time holding myself up. Then it was sort of this tingly feeling that just permeated my entire body and I knew I was in trouble. Yep, maybe something south of 300 watts would've been a better start.

In short, it was a pretty rapid decline. Once or twice I stopped pedaling completely to see if maybe that would make me feel any better... and it didn't, so I knew I just had to keep on going and get it over with. I had to get into my aero bars because that was the only way I could hold myself up anymore. I finally at least stood to power over the last little "climb" but once it was over, there were several minutes of hanging over the handlebars drooling and thinking that I might actually throw up. Fortunately for everyone around me, I didn't.

At least I got to get it over with in the first heat and spent the rest of the time watching the rest of the guys suffer through their time trial. Then we packed up and headed over to MIT where an angry parking attendant chased us down and made us go find a parking spot on the street instead of the garage and forcing us into what seemed like the longest walk I've ever been on. At least I had Jay and Michelle to entertain me on the way.

Of course I wasn't entirely looking forward to the 800 time trial, either. We reluctantly got in the pool to warm up, and fortunately once again I'd be in the first timed group so we could just get it over with. It was me, Michelle, Keith and Mark. Michelle and I were sharing a lane, and over the past couple of months we've been going back and forth with one-upping each other on our 800 time trials in our own swim workouts. We never swim together, so we just had to e-mail each other for motivation. So we were expected to be close.

It was time to go. I like to start these things by holding bilateral breathing as long as I can in order to prevent me from sprinting out too fast. I was shocked when I saw I came in the first 100 under 1:20. I never swim 100's under 1:20, even when swimming them all-out. I was a bit worried that I might be in trouble at that point, but just tried to hold on. I pulled away by myself for the rest of the time, which felt good. I never felt like I was dying or slowing down too much like in the time trial, which was a nice change. In the end, I swam over 20 seconds faster than I've ever swum an 800, so I was really happy with that. I can't explain where it came from, I guess we can blame the faster pool, being so much deeper than my pool, nice, wide lanes and gutters which I'm told help.

Anyway, the hard stuff was out of the way and it was nice to be able to relax a bit. Hard efforts, but also short efforts. After some resting during the afternoon we headed out to dinner before going into Boston for a little drop-in at a drinks and desserts party - both of which are definitely off the diet for a while. Fortunately, there were fruit kabobs right next to the peanut butter balls and chocolate chip cookies. We somehow made it through part of Saturday Night Live and finally went to bed.

Sunday was long brick day, which I was not looking forward to. Which is why it was good I was still amongst teammates who had to do the same thing. The weather was once again in the 40's and dreary, and although I'm sure we could've suffered through it outdoors, we decided we were just plain done with that kind of thing and instead rode the trainers in the living room, where Jesse, Cait and Tim got to witness firsthand the lake I leave behind when I sweat on the trainer.

After three hours of that, it was time to run. It was one of those days where it actually looked kind of nice out since the sun had started to peek through the clouds, but it was still pretty chilly out there. I slogged through my run in typical fashion and was glad when it was finally over. The rest of the day was spent watching various people come and go taking care of all sorts of QT2 business.

On Monday morning I got up and went down to swim in the 20-yard, 90-degree pool at the West Roxbury YMCA, but at least I got my swim in. Not long after that I caught the commuter rail into town to catch some of the Boston Marathon. I met my friend Hannah at her place, very close to the finish line and we watched it on TV for a bit while she ran on her treadmill, then walked downtown and stumbled out of the Prudential Center onto mile 26 about 90 seconds before the first female runner came through and probably 5 minutes before the first man came through. Talk about timing! It was fun to watch, but not once did I wish I was one of them.

We watched up until about the 3-hour mark and then it was time for me to head back. Phew, long and exhausting weekend, but it was a lot of fun.