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Wildflower

This weekend I drove down to Lake San Antonio with a big group of triathlete friends for our annual Wildflower training weekend. Wildflower is a triathlon festival that takes place in early May among the vineyards and oak trees of Central California. I did the half-ironman-distance triathlon there three years ago. Since then, just doing the training weekend has been enough for me. The race is brutally difficult, with endless hills and temperatures that are typically furnace-like, but the worst part is that 20,000 triathletes and their friends and family shoehorn themselves into a campground intended to accommodate about 2,000 people. It's called "The Woodstock of Triathlon," but that implies that it is actually fun. It's kind of a drag, if you ask me.

My triathlon club usually goes down a month or so before the race. We rent lakeside "cabins" (mobile homes), ride and run the course, hang out in the lake and drink lots of beer. This year we've gotten record rains so the area was particularly lovely and green and lush.

I rode the long-course bike route on Saturday (56 miles and many hills, including a notorious climb lovingly called Nasty Grade), ran a bit on the trails, and rode the short course on Sunday. We BBQed and drank beer and margaritas and generally acted like college kids. Good times.

And you know what? I'm a big ol' whiner. I still haven't regained most of the fitness I lost while I was sick, and I wasn't feeling so good early in the 56-mile ride. I was totally dropped by my group at the first big climb (which comes at mile two), and after riding alone for an hour, I decided I'd turn around when I got to the convenience store at mile 19. But when I got there, I found that some of my friends had waited for me, and they convinced me to keep going for a little bit. And a little bit more turned into doing the whole loop. At mile 45, midway up Nasty Grade, I actually started to feel good. The final 10 miles of the course, whose short rollers and headwinds I have always despised, were sort of ... fun. Go figure. I even stopped to take a few pictures along the way.

A miserable ride turned into a great ride. And even after someone else in the long-course group had asked me, incredulously and with a bit of condescension, "Did you get a FLAT?" -- implying that nothing less than a tire change could have caused anyone to go so slowly -- my bubble wasn't burst. I had a great day on my bike out in the sun. Life is good.

April 3, 2006 8:55 PM