It was a good weekend – good for training, good for racing, good for having fun and I was productive, too. In fact I’m feeling so good I’m going to expose myself to you on the internet. Consider it a free treat!

Thursday night I went for a ride with a couple other FMRC people. This is the same ride I wrote the Goofus and Gallent post about only it was just the host and the woman who paced me in my 5K last year. The ride was the same route as last time so I thought it would be a good benchmark of my progress. I thought wrong.

I got dropped instantly – I mean instantly. I could not keep up for a second and I was really struggling and SO frustrated. This was not unlike the last 2 rides I took with the Good Doctor where he rode curlicue – dropping me and then circling back to try to get me to hook on. I couldn’t do it. These guys made no pretense Thursday – they just rode on. And then I got lost. And then I figured out where I was and carried on, up Dog Hill.

I finally see them coming back and they yell “are you going to the top?” and I yell “Yes – just keep going” and on I go – for a minute. Then, just as I’m really working a lot harder than I should need to my rear wheel locks up and down I go – BAM! I get up and see that my knee has a little cut that is bleeding. I really don’t care about that but I’m puzzled by my bike. The rear wheel is crooked in the frame and stuck. I discover that the skewer is loose. Nice. I’ve been riding on a bike with a loose rear skewer for over a week. I monkey around and get the wheel seated better and try to get on the bike only to find that the handlebars are twisted. Yikes. I’ve got no bars on the cell phone and no company. Minor panic sets in but then I think “you have a mini-tool, you have a brain, it’s just a bike – deal”. So I get out the tools, inspect the screws and figure out what to loosen. I get the thing re-aligned and carry on.

My friends rode back up as I was coming down and we all rode to the start together. I had little trouble keeping up on the way home. Hmmm.. interesting.

Friday as I am warming up for the 5K I realize that my butt is sore and figure I must have hurt it falling off the bike. On later inspection I find this:

Ow. Not “Ow” enough to stop me but ow. Today I looked at it again and it looks like this now:

Still hurts. I won’t tell you exactly where that spot is but if I had any decency I would not post these pics on my blog. I’m sorry – I’m just a lost soul.

Saturday I rode with the friends I started my cycling days with and it was about time – I miss them. On the way out as I was pushing the bike along my porch the rear wheel locked up. I got it centered with the aid of my face as something to push against while I tightened the skewer wondering all the while, “do bike mechanics use their faces when they repair your bike?” I didn’t have a good feeling about that. Several hundred yards into the ride it locked up again – clearly the face technique was a failure. I almost gave up the ride but not willing to be balked by my bike I finally took the wheel out of the frame and got it in correctly without having to use my face – success! My ride was like being on a new bike. Very pleasant. Especially the part where we stopped and had a latte and a pastry. Best part of the ride, for sure.

That afternoon, in addition to a pain in my a$$, my abs were itching. On inspection I found this:

Which in close up looks like this:

It itches like hell!!

Please feel free to hate me for those abs. Did I mention that I’m 53 and had 3 big babies (7 lbs 14 oz, 9 lbs, 2 oz., 8 lbs 10 oz). Yeah – did I also mention how much I LURVE training? Really. It’s the new me but I’m not done yet. By March I intend to have a visible six-pack. Please hold me to that.

Anywho… Saturday night I had dinner at a friend’s house and that was oh so fun and Sunday I did a trail run up Mt. Diablo. We managed 1200 feet of climb. The run down that last part was wee bit dicey – that really isn’t a GPS artifact. It was very steep which made it that much more fun. Okay it might be a little bit of an artifact but still – it was steep. When I stood at the bottom of the ridge and looked up and saw how high we had climbed I felt like Superwoman – it was great.

After the run we all met back at a very nice house and sat around the pool with our feet in the water eating fruit and treats and chatting. Have I also mentioned how much I love my race club? Love them.

Sunday afternoon I started cleaning up my yard in preparation for IronMomJenny’s visit. She has landscape envy but there is nothing enviable about my yard – it looks horrible. I’m working on it, though, but not today. Monday is my day off. No swimming, no riding, no running and now it’s too hot to garden. Oh shucks. What it isn’t too hot to do is be very, very thankful that my rear wheel did not decided to jam itself up against the frame when I was screaming downhill at 30 MPH. A thought like that could be a real buzz kill.