Wildflower Here We Come

After a five year hiatus from tri due to hyperthyroidism, I am back and ready to race. Tonight was bike maintenance.

The Wildflower triathlon is a mountain bike sprint so I have dragged out the fifteen year old mountain bike that I bought for Tony before we got married.

I love that in our house it is perfectly acceptable to do bike maintenance in the kitchen. In fact our eat in kitchen nook has become the permanent home of Tony's new Franco bike.

The tops to the PowerGel's I used to keep my blood sugars stable on my last Wildflower Triathlon. I didn't know it at the time, but I was already sick then. I am going to keep them on there as a reminder of how far I have come in getting healthy again.

I think I used about the whole can of lube to get this bike back in shape.

And of course, after a day battling highs, the second I start this project I go low and have to stop to correct. Can you see this morning where I took the steroids to help my asthma? Steroids and insulin don't play nicely together.

Marks left over from the tape I used to secure my glucose meter, lancet, and test strips to my handle bars so I could test on the bike. Now I throw my Dexcom in my back pocket and ride. Got to love technological advances, they are definitely cutting down on my transition times. (No more waiting 45 seconds to get a meter result.)

Correcting with some apple juice while I continue to work.

The finished product. Forgive the colors, I had to get some spare parts from the bike shop that has taken up residence in our garage. It is not color coordinated, yet.

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Wildflower Warning

I'm winding down in my preparation for my race this weekend. Starting to do a little more packing and planning and a little less training, not that I did all that much training for this one.

I set aside twelve weeks to go hard to prepare for this race. I had kept pretty strong in the off season and my training was starting to really take off. I was getting faster than I ever had and more mentally prepared as well.

That is until I got sick four weeks in. And I mean really sick. It started off as the flu, but was quickly followed up with my lungs getting swollen and inflamed leaving me unable to get out more than a sentence without getting lightheaded and tingly. After walking about ten yards, I would have to stop to catch my breath.

And it lasted about four weeks. It took another week or two to be able to get through a workout without that same feeling or being stopped by tears of frustration. With about three weeks left till race day I finally felt strong again but no where near where I had been.

I did Wildflower twelve years ago. It was my second tri. This year, I was hoping to beat my old time. I was hoping to finally place in the top half of my division. Not too lofty of goals, usually somewhat out of reach for me.

Now I have to sit back and hope that all the mental training I did will carry me through the lack of real training. Hoping I can just will myself to go faster and harder. Thinking I will be singing a lot of cadence in my head and channelling Pre. I guess I will find out if it all works out Saturday morning by 11:37 a.m., my planned for (hoped for?) finish time.