My ears! My ears!

It's motorcycle weekend here in the lakes region. Well, more accurately, it is the culmination of motorcycle week. It used to be just one weekend of rumbling engines at all hours of the day and night, but for some reason they decided to make it 9 days long, so that we get to experience it on two separate weekends. For those of you who are unaware, it is a time in which literally thousands and thousands of motorcycle enthusiasts converge on Laconia to.... um, wear leather, skip the helmet since we're in New Hampshire and you don't have to so they can show off that awesome 'do-rag, show off their shoulder tattoos in their tube tops (this is usually limited to just the women, but hey...) eat, drink, wave at other motorcycles, sleep on people's lawns in tents, take up all of the hotel rooms, and drive around revving those ridiculously loud engines in my ear when I'm just trying to get in a bike ride. Will someone please explain to me why these machines that are a third the size of a car require engines that must be so loud?

Ok, usually the motorcyclists at least don't seem to mind people like me, their two-wheeled but non-motorized counterpart. In fact, I've had a few occasions where one might pull up and decide to tell me how fast I'm riding, obviously unaware that I have a little computer on my bike that is already telling me that. Although I am positive that on several occasions one will ride by and decide to purposely pop the engine right when it is closest to my ear. Even if they don't, it gets a little old riding down the road being passed by pack after pack of the things rumbling along. I don't mind them every once in a while, but during this particular weekend it becomes constant. It also makes it hard to sleep at night, because they never, ever stop and I happen to be about 15 miles from the center of it all.

So, that is one of the major reasons why today my long ride began at such a ridiculous hour. If you saw my last post, you know that I have gained last-minute entry into Lake Placid. I have known about this for a few weeks now - or at least was pretty sure, as I hadn't been sent any info on how to register, just told yeah, you can race - so I didn't want to say anything until they took my money and made it official. The details of my entry aren't really important, but I would like to note that it had absolutely nothing to do with my being a previous "winner". I actually tried that angle, and it turns out they don't care. So to be clear, in 2006, I did not "win" the race. I was the first female age-grouper. I did not get recognized at the awards, I do not have a plaque or anything that says I won, and it was really just a case of good timing. There, I feel better.

Anyway, somehow I am already in the peak weeks of training, even though I feel like since St. George I've been training for about 3 weeks. I had a nice, long ride on tap for today and decided to start insanely early for a few reasons. First, just because I can. It's light enough to ride before 5am for only a brief time during the year, so I might as well take advantage of it to make up for those times I used to have to run before work in a reflective vest even though it was already 7am, and having to finish outdoor workouts by 4:15 in December or be caught in the dark. Second, because I knew it was going to be hot today. We all know that riding when it is in the 70's tends to be a bit more pleasant than riding when it is in the 90's. At least for a long ride. Third, the motorcycles. I figured if I started early enough I could get a good deal of miles in before they started buzzing by me and causing permanent damage to my eardrums.

So my alarm went off at 4:20 this morning. Let me tell you, getting up that early for a long ride seems like a really bad idea until about noon, when you are totally done. Then it seems like it was a fantastic idea. I thought maybe it would be pretty hot out even early, but it wasn't at all. In fact, I probably didn't feel hot at all until about 45 minutes to go, which was nice. It's these kinds of rides in which I usually run into moose or bears, but today at that hour all that was out there were some baby turkeys. I rode about 17 miles before seeing a car, started riding at about 4:40. My plan seemed to work out quite well, as it was hours before enough motorcycles were out riding to really bother me. The early morning motorcycles don't tend to be the ones to travel in packs of 10 to, um, infinity, it seems.

It does tend to make for some interesting sights, though. First, there is the obvious fact that most of the hotels have dozens of motorcycles parked outside. But there are also many yards strewn with tents and motorcycles. One house in particular is only a few miles from my parents' place, and there are dozens of tents on the lawn as well as a sign by the driveway written in big, bubbly, polka-dotted letters with the name of their "gang". I'm a little scared to tell you what they're called for fear that I will get hunted down for telling you that if it weren't for all of those motorcycles that obviously require a license to drive, you'd think there was a bunch of 12-year old boys camping on their mom's lawn and that was the name of their little club.

Anyway, I was a good 4 hours or so in before I started getting annoyed with the motorcycles, which was good. And it really wasn't until the final hour before they started really driving me nuts. It's just the noise, really that bothers me. And the traffic that is usually so absent from these nice roads. One pleasant surprise today was that a long stretch of one of my favorite routes has been repaved. The horrible condition of the pavement there was the only thing I did not like about that route, so it was great to have it nice and smooth.

I rode by myself, as usual. It's funny, some people wonder how anyone can do long rides alone, but I don't mind it at all. Maybe because it's how I've almost always done it, I don't know. Someone once asked me what I think about for that long. I honestly don't know. Looking back I'm sure that I cannot come up with six hours worth of thoughts that went through my head to fill the time, but I don't think I was completely zoned out the whole time. Of course today there were thoughts of motorcycles, thoughts wondering when it was going to start to get hot out, thinking about racing, how I was actually having a good ride today, thinking about when I'm going to see Toy Story 3... See? It could be anything. Sometimes I'll even zone out to the point of not remembering riding the last few miles.

Anyway, after a loud end to the ride, it was time to run. It was definitely hot by then. It was funny though, I ran into my friend, John, who was out on his Placid training ride not long into my run and at least got a sip of Gatorade to help me out. Thanks, John. He doesn't live that close to hear, so it was very unusual to run into him, or really anybody I know. The run went great... for about half of it. Then I think I became very aware that if given the opportunity, I could down about 5 gallons of water in short order. So the rest of the run wasn't quite so pleasant, but like I said, finishing an incredibly long workout before noon isn't such a bad thing. And neither is downing some Endurox and then immediately jumping into the lake in my already-soaked workout clothes. If you've never finished a long workout that way, you really have to try it sometime.

So that's about it for now. Tomorrow is way too much running and I'm absolutely dreading it, but by Monday it will be all over, right?