Wildflower recap.

Time has been flying! So much to catch you up on in the life of this triathlete.

I'll start with Wildflower, April 30th.

An eventful four day road trip with awesome friends to Lake San Antonio (Bradley, CA) for the long course Wildflower Triathlon (half-iron distance). Little did we know our race wouldn't be the only event of the weekend. A 20+ hour drive because we stop every 2 hours or so for gas/bathroom/stretch break, oh and because we're evidently not the best with directions. Within the first two hours from Spokane we almost lose two bikes off the back and top of the car. Can we say adrenaline rush?! Yes, four very expensive bikes strapped onto the car. Now picture one of the flying off the back because the straps came loose. Well it didn't fly off, but the straps did come off and it was holding on by what seemed like a thread. And picture another hooked to the roof by it's front fork and back wheel and the fork comes loose and it flops over, dangling from the side of the car by it's back wheel. Yes, that one did actually happen. Super scary moments. Needless to say this resulted in numerous additional stops until we were sure all bikes weren't wiggling even a smidgen. Fortunately we made it safely and all bikes were OK.

After staying the night in San Jose, we make it to the race venue about noon, Friday. We check in, go for a short bike ride, and soak up some California sunshine! Phone calls back to our peeps in Spokane inform us it's snowing again... the warm sun was awesome. Our location is inland, beautiful rolling hills, everything is green, blue lakes and a bright sun... such a nice change in scenery from overcast cold nothing yet in bloom Spokane. Actually this trip was my first escape from Spokane since Christmas; I was really looking forward to just getting out of town. We then head to our hotel, and later to dinner.

Dinner was our next adventure. We thought a Thai restaurant would be a good place... with one allergic to gluten, and another allergic to nuts however, our thought didn't exactly pan out well. After the waiter assured us the sauce was prepared without peanuts and did not contain soy sauce, we ended up in the ER. Anaphylaxis like I've never witnessed before. From the medical perspective, it was awesome. For Adrianne's sake, it was horrible. We got back to the hotel about 10:30pm. That's when I got to eat dinner, and it wasn't even good food. A quick shower, a little race preparation, and to bed by 11? I can't really remember what time it was.

Up early the next morning and a short drive to the race venue. Thanks to our special "Elite" parking passes, we were able to drive right up to transition and park. It's nice to travel with professional triathletes. It had been a crazy last day and a half, but I was ready to make the most out of this triathlon. This race would be my "test".... reflecting just how strong I am and identifying the areas to tweak and strengthen in the next 8 weeks leading up to Ironman CdA.

The race didn't exactly go as planned. Evidently there's something called nutrition that I failed to really think through. Well I thought I had it all planned out. But in retrospect... green stuff on my right shoulder, arm, my bike, and terrible stomach cramps indicate otherwise. The combination of a late dinner  consisting primarily of carbs, waking up "starving" and eating more than planned from breakfast, grabbing a solid power bar at the first aid station on the bike, and refilling my water bottle with Gatorade resulted in disaster. From mile 28 on the bike through the remainder of the race, I suffered terrible stomach cramps, and vomiting. Digestion would be the element of nutrition I failed to take into consideration... You see, food needs time to move along the digestion tract, and physical activity doesn't make that process faster. My stomach was so full of food, it had to come up.

The race had lots of lessons learned, but proper nutrition was by far the most significant and important.

I finished the race. And that's about all I have to say for that. We made it home safely in one day, the following day. We learned that maps aren't as easy to read as one may think (regardless of whether one passenger inherited a map reading gene from her grandfather who was a map reader during WWII) as we made our way to San Francisco inadvertently. It was an awesome trip despite our unfortunate adventures.