Getting ready for 719!

It’s officially my first event of 2020! The 719 Ride in Colorado Springs!

I’ve never done this one before, so I have no idea what to expect. It’s 71.9 miles with 9000-ish feet of climbing. It’s done in laps (the full ride is 5 laps) and it’s self-supported. I imagine it’s hard to find the mental strength to complete all 5. I’ll probably discover that struggle on lap 2. We’ll see!

I booked a hotel room for the night, and I get to get up early, get the morning jitters as I try to eat some breakfast, and take off to get there early so we get a good parking spot.

Remember what that excitement feels like?

Yeah, the no sleep the night before thing. Oh, isn’t it grand.

I remember that before the Triple (Double) Bypass last year. I dropped off my boyfriend and then drove to Georgetown to start my ride. I was so freaked out. I don’t do well in stressful situations that include me being alone. It probably sounds dumb, but just doing that was a huge accomplishment for me. The ride, pffft! Easy!

Training went pretty good this week. I got my first flat on Friday night after a fierce battle with some wind. There was some glass in my tire. I didn’t have any spare tubes. Thankfully we were able to patch it.

I do have spare tubes now, but that was a nightmare. I didn’t realize my 650B x 28mm tires were so freakin’ weird that I’d have to call Schwalbe so they could sell me “unboxed” tubes … at least they were super nice, and now I know where to get them. But I did literally just get a cardboard box with a mangled mess of inner tubes! You gotta do what you gotta do!

I do have spare Continental Tires … but I think next time I purchase tires, I’m going to downsize to 25mm. It is so much easier to find tubes in that size. The 28’s may be more “comfortable” on the road, but … bleh! I guess if we ever get back to normal, it won’t be as big of a deal.

Saturday was a fun Sprint and then another 30 miles afterward. Sunday I wanted to do an easy ride, but 20 miles straight into a headwind on my way to Federal, WY, was miserable. The 27 mph average back home wasn’t so bad … but the ache in my quads was worrisome.

I felt it Tuesday, too. So I took some extra rest, and did an easy ride tonight just to get some blood moving without taxing my muscles too much. I know I am gonna need all the help I can get on Sunday.

After this ride, I’m going to take a nice, long week to rest and heal up the muscles, before I get back out there and do a few more weeks of longer rides leading up to the big week. My goal here is to maintain fitness, continue to build strength in the riding position, and really just trying to get my body used to sitting on a bike for longer periods of time.

As it stands, after this weekend, we are 5 weeks away! Isn’t it insane how fast time flies? Every day feels like a week, until it’s gone, and then it feels like it was only an hour long.

I struggled with my attitude this week. Every little thing was (and I guess still is) frustrating me. I’m more and more upset about the virus, because I was so looking forward to things returning to normal. That isn’t going to happen now, though. We are back up to “very bad” … and now it’s starting to hit closer to home, because I’m more worried about my family than I ever was before. Texas is lookin’ bad, y’all.

I’m trying to focus on the positives, but with all the mess that this has become, the only positive right now is that everything is fine in this moment. And it really is a moment to moment thing. I think that’s how life works. Things change in the blink of an eye quite often. I’m struggling trying to understand the lack of leadership, the lack of respect for someone else’s life, the lack of knowledge about basic scientific principles, just the complete lack of anything. Everything seems so chaotic and awful.

I can’t deal with that.

I’ve always thought I was a fly by the seat of my pants kind of person, but I’m coming to realize that I’m really not, and I actually never was. I’m a homebody. I like to stay grounded and close to things I know. I like to do things in order and have a clear direction of what is expected of me and my team. All this uncertainty is really not something I thrive on.

Today’s ride really helped me relieve some of that stress. I am hopeful that this weekend will be fun, challenging and also just something to help me keep my mind off of all the things I can’t control right now.

I hope you all are finding ways to work through this, too. I know we will get through this, but it’s going to take a very long time now, I think. We still gotta help each other, protect each other, love each other.

Who’s with me?