July 3rd was a rough night. I had a speed workout earlier that day and let me tell you - a track in 95-degree heat is no joke. I was supposed to do 1200m repeats. Did one, then laid on my back to recover. Started #2, got 650m in and walked. HR not coming down. That was horrifying. My friend Zoe, who was doing 800s talked me into running her last two with her. Let me tell you - if it wasn't for that girl a LOT would not have been accomplished this week.
I came home and drank water, didn't feel like eating food so went with a smoothie and gatorade. Still not too great. Sleep was rough and the dehydration was rougher. Though I had planned a Wisconsin ride on the 4th, I was worried about my recovery for the coming day.
But Zoe arrived around 10:30 and we headed out around 11 on our epic 73-mile journey.
The beginning felt great, though hot. We made our first water/ice stop only 10 miles in - mostly in anticipation of not having another option for a while. Perhaps stupidly, that was our only stop for the next 26.84 miles until we got to the sign.
The last 7 miles to the sign were the most difficult. We were hot, tired and thirsty, but determined not to stop until we got there. Various signs teased us along the way, but eventually we made it!
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| I made it. Second time!! |
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| Zoe is excited! :D |
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| It was so hot that the ice melted almost instantaneously upon hitting the sidewalk. |
Zoe was impressed by my ability to house ice pops and I was impressed by her will power to sit on the boiling hot ground. We filled up with ice and water and hit the road again. We started on a nice "pedal-pedal-coast" technique, really feeling the miles, even though we had both ridden over 45 miles before, something about the way there had killed us. We were ok with stopping for a picture of the lake just outside of North Chicago.
Soon enough, the water in my aerobottle was at about the temperature at which I would happily eat soup, and the icy water in my insulated Camelback bottle was almost gone. Desperately we walked around a Metra station, hoping for a water fountain. With no luck, I poured the remainder of my aerobottle into my ice, hoping it would at least come down to about 70 degrees. We made a pact to keep an eye out for a water fountain and stop as SOON as we found it.
By some miracle, a mile down the road in a baseball park, I spied a water fountain and IMMEDIATELY signaled for a left turn. Zoe couldn't believe I found a fountain... clearly I meant business. We lucked out and also got a bathroom break out of it, then back on the road with full bottles and slightly fresher legs.
I felt good as we were nearing home. We hit the 56 mile point and I yelled "HALF IRONMAN DISTANCE DONE!" Knowing we had less than 20 miles left invigorated me on our way back down Sheridan Road. We chatted and zipped a little faster now up and down little hills and around windy roads. Both of us were struggling to find comfortable positions on the bike. I began to appreciate cycling gloves as the heels of my hands started to feel raw. Finally we hit Fort Sheridan for stop #7324 (or 4, or 6... depending on how you look at it). We bought another bag of ice - me: more gatorade, Zoe: apple juice.
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| My gatorade was the same color as the windshield wiper fluid - see it on my elbow pad? |
This time I only filled my aerobottle with ice in order to avoid the soup-water predicament. Not to mention the heat was sort of melting my straw so it tasted pretty plasticky (is that a word? It is now). Luckily, this worked out, and I sloshed with ice cubes in both bottles the whole way home.
We took it hard from the Fort down to Kennilworth, but with a few miles left the fatigue got the best of us and we eased off to a nice leisurely ride home. Though the heat was against us and though my back "looks like a cookie" (as coined by Brad), it was truly a feat.
Now to get my legs to stop aching so I can actually swim and run and nonsense like that.
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