Tri-ing to stay young!

Do any of you out there find it hard to re-start something after relying on excuses not to do it for so long? This is actually my 6th or 7th attempt at writing this blog entry and I think that I may have finally done it this time! As for me, I find it amazingly easy to use that old “excuse” habit. They say it takes a person 21 days to form a habit but I’m sure that I manage to form mine (the bad ones anyway) in 5 days or less. As for the good ones, I often find that they are often impossible to develop!
Back to my Mack Truck story – Last Saturday I rode the Penticton Ironman Bike Course and finally understood why they call it “Iron”man. This was going to be my 3rd +/- 100-mile ride so I figured that I knew all that there was to know! After receiving several wrong directions, getting lost and initially heading out of Penticton on the wrong side of the lake, I finally started the ride. The ride to Osoyoos was remarkably easy and fairly quick. I was told to save my energy for Richters so I started the climb full of confidence and energy. 11Km later I was a lot shorter of both! I managed to get up to 79 kph while dodging traffic going down the other side, thinking that the worst was over with only Yellow Lake and a few rollers between me and the long down hill back into Penticton. (Not known for asking direction or reading maps, I missed the turn for the out and back at Keremeos.) I quickly found the little rollers people had told me about weren’t so little! Riding into a brisk wind, I discovered the down hills often required as much peddling as the ups!
As for nutrition and hydration – no problem, I’ll just take a few Gatorade and a couple of Pano’s TrainHarder bars. This had always worked for me in Victoria.
Well I ran head on into that Mack Truck at about 100Km. By the time I was on the second or third “roller”, I was going slower than Richters; by the time I reached Keremeos, the cramping had started. From Km100 to Km140, it was stop and go with 5 to 10 minutes of riding and 2 to 3 minutes of massaging the leg cramps. If any of you were at the stop turning into Penticton, I was the guy with two legs so cramped that I couldn’t get out of the clips. You guessed it - I fell over!!
The last 20Km or so were fabulous! Downhill and relaxing.
They say there is a silver lining in every cloud. I know that I would never have been able to complete Ironman had I not had this disastrous ride. Coach Grant has set me up with a proper Nutrition / Hydration program which I’ll be testing next week on my last long ride. It starts with eggs and toast, ham sandwiches along with the Trainharder bars for the ride and 3 water for each Gatorade mixed with NUUN tablets for hydration.
Sunday is my last race before Penticton; the Self Transcendence Olympic Distance Tri at Elk Lake. I promise to report on it next week.
Talk to you soon;
Bill