Bubble wrap!

Click here to play with bubble wrap!

There were less than 2 days to go before I had to get all my worldly posessions onto a plane to fly back to the US. I couldn't put it off anymore, so I went to Mailboxes, Etc. (yes there are some here in Spain, and they old name has managed to survive the UPS takeover) and got 8 meters of bubble wrap (about 26.2 feet, I didn't do that on purpose).

When Shane was here he'd happened upon a huge box in the street and carried it the 6+ blocks to my house. Upon inspection he said, "Once you take the wheels, pedals, handlebars and downfork off it'll fit perfectly!" Shane builds his own bikes from parts that he buys on ebay and knows how these things work. I am not as mechanically gifted, I have problems with pencil sharpeners. I'd taken off my seatpost before, adjusted my handlebars, gotten my wheels off all by myself, and even seen someone changing a pedal; but that fork thing I wasn't so sure about. I thought, It doesn't add that much more length, I can just leave it on. In typical me fashion I didn't ASK how to take the fork off. I think that's called hubris.

The wheels came off with relatively little effort. The quick release levers put up a little fight and I realized that the open/close lever on my front brakes had been open for God knows how long (probably why my brakes weren't working), but I was off to a good start.

Next the seat post. Came right off with a little help from my handy, dandy bike tool. I'm an ace.

Now for the handlebars. I opened the little screws on the front of the bike and pulled off the handlebars. But the brake and gear cables were still attached to the bike, so they just kind of hung there looking kind of grotesque. Hm, I hadn't thought of that. I decided to just tuck them back against the frame. I knew better than to fuck with cables.

Next, the pedals. I examined the pedals and the crank arm until I found the little screw on the inside of the crank arm that releases the pedals. It took me awhile to find the size allen wrench that fit in perfectly. I stuck the wrench in the little eyelet and pushed. Nothing happened. I pushed even harder and the pedal swung away from me. I braced the pedal with my leg and pushed as hard as I could. The whole frame skidded across the floor. I kept trying to push, occasionally having the allen wrench slip out of its spot and occasionally pausing to look for a different screw to get this damn thing off. I tried the other pedal, same deal. I went and found some WD40 and sprayed the screw like I had a grudge, but to no avail.

Finally I called Silvia. She told me where the tools were kept (9 months living here, and I'd never so much as needed a screw driver!) and I found a standard allen wrench of the right size. "You don't know any boys, do you?"
"What?"
"You know, guys? With big strong hands?"
"No."
"Me neither." This gave me pause, perhaps I am missing something with my preferred lifestyle.

I went back to the bike and spent several more minutes fighting the pedals with my whole body, legs holding bike in place, shin bracing crank arm, and anything above that pressing every ounce of my strength onto that damn allen wrench. I paused to gather my composure. Okay, Claire, I says to myself I says, Okay Claire, you are going to put every ounce of your strength into that allen wrench and it is going to turn. I visualized it turning, then I checked my body position to make sure nothing was going to slip mid-attack, and pushed like my life depended on it. Finally the screw ceded! I rejoyced, filled with self confidence. I believed I could get off that second pedal. I set to work pushing with all my might on the second screw. I was a little scared of the sharp teeth of my chain ring menacing to slice my fingers open if I slipped, but I was lucky. After several minutes and trying several different bike and body positions I heaved a giant grunt and something moved! I thought I'd gotten it past that first big umph and now I just had to twirl it out. I tried to line up the allen wrench in its place again, but it kept falling out. Upon closer inspection of the tip of the tool I saw that my sheer superhuman strength had seared the little corners off the metal. The pedal had BROKEN the allen wrench. ("Allen" seems to be a bad luck word for me this week).

Fuck it, I thought and went to see if the bike would fit in the box with one pedal on. It left a friction dent in the card board, but I could make it fit. I tucked the handlebars (as you will remember were hanging by a thread) under my top tube and pushed it all the way down into the box. Just like Shane said, the damn fork was peeking several inches out of the top of the box. Dammit, how do you take the fork off?

I took a couple of screws out of the handlebar stem and pulled. Nothing happened. I tried pushing. Nothing. I looked for more screws all along the stem. Nope. I turned over the bike. There was a screw that went all the way through holding my brake release in place. That's it! I said, and took out the screw, washer, casing, and all kinds of other things I don't know the name of. The brakes hung down limp like the handlebars. Push, nothing. Pull, nothing. What the FUCK?! I wanted to call Shane but it was only 2:00 am in California, too early, so I went on the internet. I read God-knows-what about using a rubber mallet, which didn't sound too wise to me. Then I read something that said that that little disk at the top of my steering column would come off.
(Mine looks a bit different from the picture, it as a little nipple-like circle in the middle and is slightly raised from the ring-thingys with the screws). Eureka!

So I went back to try to get that thing off. It wouldn't be easy, so I took a screw driver. I tried twisting it, nope. I tried prying it up with a screw driver. I tried shoving the screw driver in the little ring-y thing and pushing it up from underneath. I was so frustrated. I don't know what made me focus my attention on the nipple. I thought it was just there for decoration, but just out of curiosity I poked it with the screwdriver, then I prodded and pried underneath and the most amazing thing happened, it came off and there was a SCREW underneath!!! I felt like I'd discovered burried treasure. I unscrewed the screw and the fork finally came off with a whoe bunch of little pieces (including a steering thing with ball bearings that I was afraid to touch). It seemed like it was covered with more vasaline than a triathlete trying to fit into a too-small wetsuit, but it was OUT! I put back all the little pieces of the steering column and took a break for lunch.

The next step was, as Benson had suggested, getting some bubble wrap and packing tape and going to town. I wrapped up each individual piece in about 2 layers of bubble wrap and closed it up tight with the tape. The frame was hard, especialy bubblewraping the gears and that one damn pedal sticking out, but in the end I got it bubbled up.


For some extra protection I planned to mummify my frame and cover every inch with packing tape. This also seemed like a good idea since the bubble wrap was adding width and I wanted to compress every millimeter that I could. I would be a really bad candidate for an engineering degree, I know. When I finished my bike looked like a giant sting ray.
Please fit, please fit, please fit! It did! I was so excited! I was celebrating my victory and throwing saddles and forks and all sorts of things in the empty slots when I turned around and saw... SHIT! THE WHEELS! I had no bubble wrap left, but I stuck them in just to see if they would fit. Not a snowball's chance in hell. I took off the tires and tubes, but they were still sticking 6 inches out of the top of the box. I wanted to cry. I wanted a beer. I needed more bubble wrap.

After buying the bubble wrap I stopped in at a bike shop to see if they could sell me a bigger box. "Do you have a box that's bigger than 96x74x25?" I asked. The guy showed me the boxes that he had. They were long, sleek, and WAY narrower than my box. "I need something wider," I explained, I couldn't get one of the pedals off and now it's wrapped in about 6 meters of bubble wrap and packing tape."
"You know the left pedal screws off backwards right?" he said. "So that it doesn't come loose while you're pedaling." There are no words for how I felt after that. Stupid? Frustrated? Angry? All of those and then some. Why didn't I just pay someone to do this for me?
"Well anway, the handlebars are thick too," I defended. I explained that they drop bars were sticking off a bit in one direction while the brake hoods stuck out almost as far as the pedal in the other direction.
'What did you do?" He seemed confused. "Well you just need to turn the handlebars all the way to the right and then lower the angle so they fit around your top tube."
"Well I took off the downfork, so it should be even more compact..." I tried to explain.
"You did what?!" It was like I'd told him I'd sawed the thing in half. "Here, let me show you how we pack our bikes." He whipped out a box cutter and opened up a brand new bike. There it was, with the fork still on, handlebars still on (arranged like a U, not in a C like mine), back wheel still on, and the front wheel, seat, and pedals stuglled comfortably along side. It was like watching my own death, looking my own stupidity in the face like that. My heart sank and I promised myself I would never, ever try to figure something out on my own again for as long as I live. I didn't know whether to buy a separate box for my wheels or what. I decided not to think about it any more today.

The next day I wrapped up the wheels and stared at the box sullenly. Then I set to trying all possible wheel-frame combinations. Just when i thought I'd tried everything, I finally found a way to get both wheels in on the bottom and then shove the frame in. I may have killed a couple of spokes, but it fit! Well, sort of... the box was bowing pretty heavily, but it was in there and I could close it! There was even room for my pump!


I stuffed crumpled up newspaper into all the little nooks and crannies to keep stuff from moving around too much. The only thing left to do was to close up the box. The industrial staples were giving in several places and the top wasn't squarely closed, so I thought the safest bet would be to mummify the whole thing like I had the frame. The end result (finished only 3 hours before I had to wake up for my flight) was this:

(Coke can added for size comparison)

It took some six hours or more when all was said and done, but I packed up my bike ALL by myself. I might even rebuild it myself, but I think I'll let a mechanic take a good hard look at it before I try to ride anywhere!

"Up, up, up to the top of Mt. Crumpet"

This weekend I did the "3 Nacions" (3 guesses on what that means) bike race in the Pyrenees. The race gets its name because you start in Spain (Puigcerda), go through Andorra, and finally come through France before crossing back into Spain for the finish. But there's one catch, the frigging Pyrenees! Actually, the race is pretty easy except one climb in the middle: to the summit of Port d'Envalira, the highest mountain in the Pyrenees, about 1,700m (5,577 ft) of altitude gain over 30k (18.6 mi).


Most of the course is downhill, meaning that the first 70ks went by like a breeze, and the final 40k's you were able to hang on... just barely. They did a good job on the web site of warning you of what you're getting yourself into, but really, little blue spikes on my screen don't mean that much to me...


Left: full course profile

Bottom: profile of the main climb (green = <4%, blue =" 4-8%," yellow =" 9+%)" style="text-align: center;">

Let's just remember that I've been really quite inconsistent with my training this spring, so even though this was marked as a B+ priority race in my book I was really unprepared. This is not to make excuses, merely to explain background information. This past week was exam week for all my kids, so I've been working double on top of that. Let's just say I was "well rested". So I came into this looking only to survive, which is fine because I still have a lot of that adolescent "I can do anything, who says I can't?" arrogance about me. But then 2 weeks ago I heard one from the club talking about it. A goofy guy named Josep Maria (a different Josep Maria from the one you'll hear about later) who's a strong cyclist and always has a smile on his face said, "Dude, you're climbing that thing forever, and I thought it was never going to end. So when I got to the top there and the people are yelling Allez, allez cuz you're almost in France at that point, you know? I have to admit, man, I started to cry. It was just so emotional to have gone through that and it was finally over..." And I'm thinking, oh shit! I decided to approach the thing remembering that it was an important race and that I'd finish at all costs, exhausted, ripping it if I could, so I'd have nothing left at the finish. Oh, if I only knew...

The first 70 km, in fact, the first half (distance-wise) was a breeze, we were averaging something like 40kmph and rolling down through the mountains
like it ain't no thang and my biggest concern was that somehow we'd wound up in a group of about 30 people. Bikes were flying all over the place, into my personal space and within inches in front of me. That makes me really nervous, especially when I don't know the guys. I really enjoy taking off on the downhills, I don't know why others don't do the same. Zoom! Zoom! I went down the downhills. At one point David (my Jimminy Cricket) cought me and said, "Why is it that when you're with the club you hang back, but when there are others around you take off?" It was kind of accusatory and I wanted to be defensive, but I watched myself for awhile. I think I'm just really scared of groups, and if I can get away, I will!

Coming in about half an hour from the border with Andorra it started to rain, then it started to pour. When we passed through customs at the border David said jokingly, "Do you have anything to declare?" "Yeah," I said, "I'd like to declare that my chemie is soaked!" Squelch, squelch went my crotch, squelch, squelch responded my shoes.

We stopped at an aid station where they had nothing but melon, chicken, and ham sandwiches. I was already getting cold, and decided to go on without the boys. At least it had stopped raining. And the road went Up, Up, Up. And up. Fuck. I thought this was just going to be slow and steady, but I was on my double small chainring and I had to stop at a gas station to catch my breath. Miguel Angel stopped with me. "Listen," I said, "it'll be better to leave me alone cuz I'm gunna be pretty bitchy from here on up." Why wouldn't anyone listen to some sound advice like that? "I like to see you bitchy, women are more attractive when they're bitchy," he said. I think Miguel Angel gets a kick out of seeing me react to some things. But if there's one thing I hate almost as much as being in a big group, it's climbing with someone in front of me talking to me and cheering me on. I don't want to know how well I'm doing, I don't want you telling me what gear to be in, I don't want you telling me to slow down, and I DEFINITELY don't want you there getting in my way either to the side or in front. It's irritating and it distracts me from my inner monologue. I feel much stronger sitting there repeating "You'll-get-there-even-tu-a-lly" with every petal stroke than someone going, "only 3k to go!", especially when there's only 1 or more than 5k to go. Leave me the fuck alone and I'll get there eventually! If you're so bent on waiting for me, just go to the top and take my picture when I get there! No, no, but David and Miguel Angel had to leap frog babysitting me. At one point David was there and said, "You see that white building? That's where we're going." "I don't want to fucking know! I don't want to know anything. Go away!" I said. Later, I stopped at the side of the road to rest. Miguel Angel stopped with me. "I can give you a little push now and then," he said. "I don't want to see you, I don't want to hear you and I don't want you touching me or my bike! Leave me alone! I want to do this alone." I think David got a little butt-hurt because he did eventually go on, but Miguel Angel stayed pretty close (but not within striking distance) and I didn't even so much as look at him in the last 5k. Here you can see a picture of me climbing alone, what you can't see is that in my head my mantra has changed to "go-to-hell-go-to-hell!" I mean, look at the incline in some of these pictures, then imagine 2 and a half hours of that!



I was cold. It was 8 degrees C (46 degrees F) at the top, and at some points I couldn't feel anything below the knees. I hadn't felt my feet since Spain. Being at the highest point for millions of billions of miles around, the wind was BRUTAL, it must have been 100 miles per hour because a couple of gusts came along and I felt like I was almost swept off my feet! Also, the wind carried tiny little particles of sand that stung my face, arms and legs. Moments before this picture was taken I was standing with my back to everyone to keep my face from being pummelled by a sand blaster. Look in the lower right-hand corner and you can see the camera's wrist strap flapping away in the wind. Can you see how miserable I am? I'm crouched over like that because I'm shivering. I stuck some newspapers under my shirt to cut the wind on the descent, but I was scared because of the wind and those crazy descents like you see in the Tour filled with dramatic hairpin turns. I couldn't feel my hands and I was shivering, and didn't feel so confident about my bike handling skills at that moment. Miguel Angel and I stepped into a gas station to warm up and David stayed outside to wait for the others. "Hey, we're still in Andorra!" said Miguel Angel. What does everyone buy in Andorra? Cigarettes! Andorra's one of those tiny little places whose economy is based on people from other areas coming in to buy items like cars, cigarettes, and booze that are cheaper in Andorra where they're not heavily taxed (same as Oregon or New Hampshire). The guy in the gas station looked at him like he was crazy as he stuffed the carton into the front of his jersey and tucked it into his pants.

Then we started down the hill. It was windier than all get-out. Wind is stronger in France than it is in Spain, I guess. I was hanging on to my brakes like my life depended on it, and the wind was blowing at me like it was time to go back to Spain and God was giving me a push. There was one point when I let go of my brakes and coasted past a sign that said 8% grade, I looked down at my speedometer and I was going 25 kilometers per hour (15.5 mph). But that’s not to say the wind was saving my life the whole way down. For every turn that the wind was to my face, I would go around a bend and it was pushing me along, sometimes straight into a curve. The most frightening part of all of it was that they didn’t have guard rails, just these stubby little stone nuggets about 8 inches tall next to giant thousand-foot drops to the green, lush valley below. The wind was grabbing me and carrying me off to certain death. Now I don’t like to be dramatic, but you know how it is when you’re totally terrified and you know that, although remote, the possibility that you might actually die is real? Panic is not good for descents.

My bakes were making funny noises, like maybe there wasn’t too much rubber left and just when I thought they weren’t slowing me down any more and that I’d never stop if need be, suddenly I came around a bend and there was a whole line of cars, all stopped. ‘What a strange place for a traffic jam,’ I thought as I squeezed my brakes like there was no tomorrow. We wove through all the cars until I saw the toll booth of a border crossing. For a minute we had to stop because there was a car pulling aside for inspection blocking our path. The cyclist that came across the traffic jam at the same time as us went through the border as soon as an space to pass through opened up. Miguel Angel (with his cigarettes hidden away in his jersey) and I (as an illegal immigrant) stopped with our guilty consciences. The French customs official smiled at us and waved us a friendly “come on through”. “Adios,” he yelled. Safely out of hearing distance Miguel Angel yelled, “Adios suckah! I had a pack of cigarettes in my shorts, chump!”

Suddenly, once we were in France it was finally warm again. The terrain flattened out and I could concentrate on what was important, like how tired I was. Maybe I hadn’t eaten enough, maybe I was out of shape, maybe a 30k climb is a really long frigging way, maybe I just wanted to go home, maybe it’s that my feet were still sopping wet. But for whatever the reason, the heat or the shoes, I sat there in France with the woe-is-me blues. Okay, that was lame, but I’m a big Dr. Seuss fan and one of my climbing mantras is “up, up, up to the top of Mt. Crumpet, the Grinch went to the tip-top to dump it” (or something like that). Anyway, I guess I’d left it all at the top of the mountain, and although nearly everything was downhill from here on out I was getting worried. I didn’t want to leave anything out there, but the last little bit of “leaving nothing out there” was a bit too much to bear at the moment. I clicked over to 120km on my odometer and I still hadn’t seen any sign that said Espagne and I was beginning to wonder if they’d done that thing that they do so many times that I’m suffering: mis-measure the 140k course. We got to 125 and I still hadn’t seen any sign of Spain, or even the name of the town where we were staying. Spain is really good about marking how far away France is, but the only thing that I could find were signs to Barcelone - really fucking far away. 130… 132… Why does it still say gare and not estacio? Why are they selling crepes and not bocatas? 138… And finally we crossed a little bridge, and after all the hoopla of crossing in and out of Andorra there was only a tiny little bridge over an even tinier little stream on a country road and the word España with a circle of stars around it. And here we come into Puigcerdà, but the fun wasn’t over yet. We still had this tiny, itty-bitty little minuscule climb to come up to the finish. It was a climb that I’d done in my small, but not mini chainring this morning when I wasn't warmed up. But still, it took my teeny-weeny chainring and my biggest gear to get to the top of the darned thing. Another guy was riding with Miguel Angel just ahead who asked, “What’s that in your jersey”. “Cigarettes” said Miguel Angel. “We boutght ‘em in Andorra, and that chick behind us got a liter of vodka and put it in her camelback.” “Really?” asked the guy and looked back. There I was weaving around trying to get up the hill. But I got there, and Miguel Angel and I had a fake sprint across the line. Really, he let me go, but we crossed in that order, Claire and Miguel Angel, boom boom! “What are your numbers?!” a race official yelled. “206 and 208”, how sweet that we remembered each other’s numbers and yelled it more or less at the same time!

Long ago Silvia had started calling, a sure sign that I was taking a long time (it wouldn’t be the first time she called the police to find out if I’d been hospitalized when I didn’t show up right at the time I said). I was fiddling with my phone a bit trying to call her, then I made my way to the food table. There was no food left (we’d taken that long) but Miguel Angel managed to score me a lemon Fanta and Lluis (who had finished an hour before) gave me a granola bar.

They were handing out finishing certificates fresh off the presses and Miguel Angel, who didn’t have a jealous girlfriend left alone in a hotel for 8 hours, had already gone to pick up his. “Hey, they’re giving you another trophy,” he said. “Yeah right.” But then there was this guy sticking a microphone in my face with a trophy in his hand, “And here’s Claire xxxxx, number 206, let’s all give her a round of applause!” Then he stuck the microphone in my face and handed me a trophy and gave me a kiss on each cheek. And what did I say in my moment of glory? “Estás en serio?! Are you serious?! What’s this for?” “You’re the youngest girl to finish. You’re almost the last one to get your trophy, except the guy, a 17-year-old kid”. Yeah, that makes me feel special, the last person to claim my booby prize that I won just for signing up.

Coming back down the hill towards the hotel I saw my arch Nemisis, Wonder Woman. I call her that because she's always wearing minimal clothing and she's got the same hair style as the comic book heroine. She's a triathlete and I see her at every event that I do (and usually beat her). What annoys me about her is that she's always surrounded by guys and strikes me as the kind of chick who does sports to get laid. She's got a big butt. I felt better knowing that I'd beat the tri slut by at least half an hour. Hmph!

So meanwhile, more phone calls were made. Josep Maria, David, and Xavi were still out there somewhere. We got back to the hotel where Silvia had been asleep the whole time (until I was well into France) and made some calls. Xavi, who had had a crash the week before, had had his two biggest cogs fail on him part way up the mountain. He’d gotten in the sweep car which followed the slowest guys around the course. We called up David, who was probably still waiting like a real sucker in the cold and the wind to tell him Xavi wasn't coming and to get a move on. No answer. I called Josep Maria, who no one had seen since the starting line (he's a weaker cyclist who doesn't usually come out with the club) it rang several times and then I got a recording Bonjour, blah blah blah blah (blah pronounced with a French accent). I hung up. "He's in France. He'll be here soon," I said.

Josep Maria, who had prepared himself to be out there for 8 hours and come across the finish line while they were tearing it down had an ambulance behind him for most of the climb and was sure he was in last place (they could have been trailing him because he has turrets and a guy twitching away on his bike is a bit disconcerting if you're not used to it). At one point he stopped to rest and the guys in the ambulance yelled, "You still got 45 minutes on the last guys, keep going!" That gave him the strength of ten men to finish. Meanwhile, Xavi had some tales from the sweep car. Apparently there was a fat old guy and not-so-fat, not-so-old guy back there throwing shit at each other like they were sparring for the podium. "Your ass is grass, my friend." "Eat my dust, fatso!" The guys in the sweep car were egging them on, "Attack! Attack!" And whaddaya know, the old fat guy attacked and managed to get away!

I was totally toasted. All I wanted to do was eat about 15 sandwiches and a 3 course meal after that and then take a nap. By the time everyone finally got their shit together, showered, walked to the center of town for some sandwiches (finding food at 5:00 was an ordeal in and of itself), worked out the money for everyone, paid for the room, and piled into cars it was 6:30. I'm not one to sleep in cars, but I slept almost the whole way home. Whether it was the cold, the effort, or the altitude I couldn't keep my eyes open and I've never had a more refreshing sleep in a car in my life.

Oh my aching back

Yesterday was one of those epic workouts. Maybe you all are smarter than me about this, but every once in awhile I get it into my head to do an enormous workout that I'm way not prepared for. Usually I do this because it's out there and someone's doing it and it sounds like fun and I'm not going to let the fact that I'm not prepared in the least keep me from doing something I want. I'm a taurus, I'm like that. My longest bike workout this season has been 100k. I came home that day totally shelled but there was an enormous sense of accomplishment after those 100k's where I thought I could do anything. So this weekend when the Saturday 150k ride was more convenient than the shorter Sunday ride I thought, '150k, it's as long as the longest ride I've ever done in my entire life and it's one-and-a-half times longer than the longest ride I've done this season, I'll do it!' I mean, what better way to make up for the fact that my training's been erratic lately at best? And by "erratic" I mean "nonexistant" more often than not.

At least this time I remembered sunblock.

We went up the coastal rout towards Girona that we usually go up when we go north. It's flat and fast and windy so the group stays close together. There are a few hills, well, "rollers" really and I was sticking in close to the group until we got to the first one where I feel off the back. They dropped me like I was standing still and when we got to the top I was some 50 yards behind. For the next 15 minutes or so I was pedaling all out, fighting the wind all by myself trying to keep up with their pace. I was grunting and groaning and whining and saying out loud, "wait up, just wait the fuck up, please!" because it made me feel better. I find it really satisfying sometimes to throw a temper tantrum if I know that I'm not going to get cought. I finally got to within 3 bike lengths of the last guy... just at the bottom of another hill. There wasn't no temper tantrum indulgent enough to justify the effort of catching up with them again so when I fell off again and cracked like Humpty Dumpty I let them go. Spinning alone along the coast at about 33kmph (just under 20mph) I wondered if they were the fast group and I was going to get stuck doing the 200k round trip that the advanced group was doing. I wondered if they would even know they had lost me and come back looking for me. I wondered if I should just turn around and go back to Barcelona right now. But then there was a lone biker waiting at the side of the road for the pokey people like me. I always worry too much. I think I'm turning into my mother. Turns out I wasn't even the slowest one out there and we came into the restaurant at a much more comfortable pace (especially since the guy in front of me was about 6'8 and thicker than a refrigerator, I grabbed his wheel and hardly had to pedal it was so calm back there).

On the way back once more I fell off the back faster than you can say "loser", but at least there was another guy named Manolo going a comfortable speed. We dove into the headwind alone together the whole 80k back through the mountains. I'll never understand how you can have a headwind both ways on an out and back rout. My legs felt better, but my low back was killing me and my hips felt like they were being ripped out of their sockets. I didn't think that I was one of those people whose backs hurt on the bike, but there I was and the feeling was familiar. Weird. There was something else that was also killing me from so much time in the seat, but that's a personal thing. As I was chasing Manolo through rotaries and along regional highways I was thinking about how weak I was. I was schooling myself in a lesson about being humble and knowing my limits and wondering if maybe I shouldn't do the century ride through the mountains next week. And I couldn't keep my eyes of the numbers on my odometer as they ticked up to 150 painfully slowly. Finally we hit a traffic light and I said, "Sorry for not pulling in this wind, it's just that I'm barely hanging on." "I was going as fast as I could because I didn't want to disappoint you!" Manolo said. After that we both let up and I sat up into the wind. Sure, it wasn't what tough-as-nails Claire would do, but it made sissy Claire's back feel a lot better. Let me tell you, when I got home I was one hurt unit, but my legs were okay!

After a shower I was cooking lunch in my underwear (my favorite thing to do after a long workout) and another effect of such a long ride showed up: my cyclist's farmer's tan is well on its way! The right side of my body was a blazing red, while the left side a cool pinky-brown. North in the morning, south in the afternoon and the sun stays on your left the whole time. For 5 hours the sun was toasting only one side of my body. I have a line from my sleeves, a line from my shorts, and a line from my gloves. Is anyone else just as proud of their funky triahtlon tans as their sleek and defined triathlon muscles?

God knows how I haven't killed myself yet...

The first time that I did (no, TRIED to do) a full bike ride of the whole 56 miles I did it on an out and back up California Highway 1 towards San Francisco. It was the bike for the Big Kahuna itself. When I arrived at the lighthouse at Pigeon Point I turned around and in the first mile back towards Santa Cruz I hit a crater of a pothole and slashed a 2 inch slit in my tube, which started bleeding green ooze inside my tire. I didn't have a spare tube. I didn't have a cell phone. I only had one dollar in my pocket. I clip-clopped about half a mile to a gas station and begged to use the phone. No one I knew with a big car could come get me. Finally I had to beg Lorraine, who I hardly even knew, to come get me. Only she couldn't come until she finished her shift in 2 hours. I was waiting in that gas station for 3 hours talking to a homeless Hawaiian about land prices in Nevada.

After that Lorraine said she would give me a clinic on how to change a tire. We changed it, and when I was loading my bike on the car rack the stem of the inner tube ripped clear off. "Now you'll get more practice", said Lorraine.

One time I climbed a mountain. Miles and miles, up and up and up. The hill was clearly out of my fitness range and I had to turn around when I got off my bike to catch my breath and couldn't get moving up the hill again. I turned down hill, and started FLYING. I didn't know how to corner, had relatively little experience descending, and my breaks hadn't been replaced since the 1970's (really). Additionally I'd just read somewhere that if you brake too much on a hill your rims can heat up and your inner tube can pop, so I didn't want to break at all. I really thought I was going to die as I flew down the yellow line in the middle of the road. Instinctively I stood up and made myself as big as possible to turn my body into a sail. I never clibed that hill again. Ever.

There was the 23k through the Santa Cruz mountains that I really just wasn't in the mood to push through, so I barrelled down all the hills as fast as gravity would carry me. I can be so cocky sometimes. The result was shin splints that kept me from running nearly the entire summer leading up to the Big Kahuna. Also, when I finished that race and went to bike home my bike had a FLAT tire and I had to walk all the way home, which luckily was only about 3 miles.

When I first got to Barcelona I knew I needed a bike club to get to know the routs around the city. The problem was, I couldn't find one that met on Sundays: my only free morning. I figured that if they were out there, they had to leave from one of the two ends of the city which led to freeways, so one Sunday I woke up at 5:30 so I could be out the door at 6:45. Then, I went to one of the major roads out of the city and just started biking up and down, up and down, looking for other bikers. After half an hour I spotted some and approached them. I asked them where a street was that I knew one of the bike clubs had their "headquarters" on, and they said they didn't know where it was. "Well," I said, "is it okay if I go with you guys then?" They agreed. "So, where are we going?" I asked. It turns out that I'd found the dirtiest old men in ass-tight shorts, but at least I had a bike club and they were delighted to have me because having a chick meant more bonuses for the team.

I lied, I have won one race. I won a bike race, where the winners were the first to the top of the last climb. There were probably about a dozen other women in the whole thing. Everyone stopped half way through to have a free lunch where they gave unlimited wine and whiskey to the cyclists (I abstained) and giant, fatty "butifarra" sausages filled with organ meat (I abstained). I went up that hill trying to keep by myself, but my teammates kept getting in front of me trying to help me draft. They were drunk, as they always are after we stop for a snack in the middle of a ride. They kept cutting me off and I wound up having to brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate. I yelled, "Just let me go at my own rhythm!" They paid me no mind. Finally we got to the top of the hill and I thought they would leave me alone. Since my hair is short, my teammates had to scream to the volunteers, "SHE'S A GIRL!" as I came over the top. Miguel Angel said, "Next time, when you're getting to the top, be sure to stick out your tits". The president of the club also won a trophy for being the oldest person to finish. He said, "My trophy's bigger than yours". I said, "Yeah, but you got yours just for signing up."

Once upon a time I did 5 consecutive hours of spinning for cystic fibrosis. It was indoors and I'm a sweater. The news cameras were there, and the cameraman was next to me the whole time. Of all the moments to be on public access TV, that was not the moment that I wanted them to choose.

There was the Carrer de la Dona (the "Women's Race") which was the day after a joint birthday party of not one, but three of my best friends. Silvia got too drunk to drive me home at midnight, so I kept drinking to stay awake until she sobered up. The next morning I was a few hundred meters from breaking 24 minutes in a 5k for the first time in my life when I started to sprint. Only the arch that I thought was the finish wasn't the finish. So I continued to sprint. 50 meters from the finish line I had to take a detour and spent the next 3 minutes puking my guts out in front of the hundreds of spectators at the finishing chute.

Once Joolie and I decided last minute to run a 10k as bandits. We knew roughly where the start was, but not exactly. We both woke up late. We arrived at the start 8 minutes late and just started running. There's nothing better than the feeling of passing people for a whole, entire race.

One time, running a race that went down the Rambla we cought a couple of whores trying to cross the course to go home after a long night of work. They saw us, smiled and started yelling and clapping. Then they got into the pack and started running with us and making their way to the other side of the street. Then all the runners cheered for the whores!

I make 50-year-olds think they're having a heart attack. Hey, you remember how my heart rate is always really high? Like my max HR is something above 220? So when I wear a heartrate monitor a lot of times I'm training between 175 and 185 bpm. I swear, I have not died once yet. So anyway, I was on the bike trainer this one time somewhere around 180 bpm and the floor monitor comes up to me and he's like, "Are you wearing a heartrate monitor?" Me: "Uh, yeah". Dude: "And about where are you"? I told him, and he gives this "See, I told you so" look to the guy on a recumbant bike behind me. Turns out that the guy had called him over because his bike was picking up my signal and he thought that he was suffering some kind of heart palpatations. Then I got on the treadmill where I got above 190 and the two old people on either side of me started getting worried in kind of the same way and then looking at me funny. So now I'm the girl that makes your treadmill tell you to stop moving NOW, who sweats all over the place, and on rare occasions pukes all over the floor.

First is the worst...

My first triathlon ever was an epic of learning the hard way.

So there was my first race: the San Diego International Triathlon. My first triathlon. I drove the 8 hours from Santa Cruz down to San Diego all by my lonesome. I checked my bike in the day before, got my bib, cap, bike number and goodie bag and went back to the hotel. Then I wandered out through Chula Vista to find something carb-rich for dinner. No more than 2 miles from the hotel, my car felt like it was getting a kick in the ass every few seconds. It was quite clear that the damn thing was breaking down (I would find out later that it was my transmission, and that was a sad story in and of itself). I got back to the hotel room and started calling people to ask for advice, and the arrow buttons on my cell phone stopped working, making all menus, and thus my cell phone, useless. So now, alone and stranded in a Holiday Inn in a strange city I would have to get to the starting line before 6:00 am without a car and without a cell phone. I hardly slept the whole night and my thoughts were anything but positive as I not only stressed about my car and the race, but also whether my evil ex girlfriend (the only person I knew who lived in Chula Vista) would call me back and give me the name of a good mechanic (she never did). When the cab came at 5:00 I'd barely had time to eat a yogurt and buy a McDonalds coffee. I found my bike in the transition area and tried not to make it so obvious that I was copying other people's transition area setups. I didn't have a lot of the stuff that they had, so there were only so many ways that I could set out my sneakers (that could hardly be called "running shoes"), socks, pants, helmit, and bib. There was absolutely no way to hide that my enormous hybrid bike wouldn't fit on the racks and I had to put down, yes, the kick stand. *Shame* Then I put on my rented wetsuit (the first and only I've ever worn: $75 for one day rental), trying to remember which way was right-side-out. And I waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. I didn't warm up in the water because my open water swimming experience was limited to the most terrifying 300m I've ever swum in my life. I am desperately afraid of open water. Finally there was no way to get around getting in the water and bobbing in the start with all the other girls under the age of 25. As a rule, I try to avoid large groups of girls under 25 anyway. I don't know why I bothered to rent the wetsuit because the water in Mission Bay was as warm as the June air. And when it came time to swim, even though I'd put myself in the back and off to one side, there were still people all around me, punching me, slapping me. And they wouldn't go away. And I couldn't get away. I had practiced a little bit of spotting, so I tried to keep real close to the buoys so as not to go off course... so close that suddenly in my field of vision there was a CHAIN, going down into the murky ABYSS!!! I swear, I almost shit my wetsuit. Then, a few meters away I was spotting again, put my face in the water and there was A SEAWEED COLUMN!!!!!! I had a new scariest thing I'd ever seen in my entire life. It was the kind of seaweed column that The Monster lives at the bottom of. I couldn't wait to get out of the water. And when I finally did, the strangest thing happened... I couldn't run. I never would have thought of that. I never had a problem walking after a swim workout, but after 3 steps I was already winded. I waddled into the transition area and found my bike as girls ran around me. But it took what seemed like forever to get the damn wetsuit off. It was like a giant, Claire-shaped suction cup. Finally free, I put on my pants and pinned my number onto my swim suit and patted myself on the back for saving time by not having to change clothes and put on a shirt. I had thought that I was pretty good at biking since I rode up the hill to class every day, but everyone was passing me, and not just passing me, but blowing past me like I wasn't moving at all. I'd thought that all that high tech stuff like automatic pedals, bike jerseys with pockets, carbon frames, bike computers, and aero bars were for suckers and pussies but I saw (and heard) things whizzing past me that I never thought existed: aero bars with the gear shifts on the aero bars themselves, "ksssht, ksssht, ksssht" as disk wheels passed me, aero helmits, and all manor of other gadges and mean-looking gizmos. If I was having fun up until this point, i was not anymore. A fat lady passed me on an uphill and yelled, "you go, girl!", which I could only read to mean: "wow, I didn't know anyone could possibly finish such a thing with such a Fred Flinstone bike!" Finally I came back into the transition area past bored-looking volunteers who'd already seen all the exciting racing go by. I hopped off my bike and pulled off my helmit, thinking that I was better off than all those suckers with the gear who had to change their shoes. Then I started to run. My legs were made of lead. I'd never felt a pain so horrible in my life! What the hell was going on?! Oh yes, that's right, I had never, EVER run off the bike, thinking that doing both in one day was good enough. I ran and I ran and I ran, and I suffered and I suffered and I suffered. I saved tons of time blowing through aid stations thinking that I didn't need their gimmicky "sports drinks" which were just as good as my plain water that I had in my bike water bottle and was carrying in my hand. I was HUNGRY. How come no one was giving me food? And no matter how much I concentrated and pushed, I COULDN'T make myself run. I had no idea that 10k could be so long, but even on fresh legs, running through the rental car lot at the San Diego Airport makes the miles feel longer. I'd never run in my swimsuit before, so it had never occurred to me that the seams weren't made to minimize running friction. Before long I had raw, open wounds nearly a foot long through my armpits with salty ocean water brought back to life by sweat being rubbed into them with every stride. Then, finally, I was running along the Embarcadero and had to run around the tourists who thought it was more important not to give up their spot in line for the sightseeing tour than to get out of my way. At the finish there were people holding their kids, women kissing their husbands, boyfriends hugging their girlfriends and smiles and happiness all around. I was grumpy and just wanted to get to the Clif samples, which were chocolate. I hate chocolate. Then I had to wait in the long, long line for the shuttle back to the transition area. All I thought about in that long line was how much I fucked up. I'd come into this thing arrogant, and my first triathlon had shown me exactly who was boss. But I still had to figure out how to get back to the hotel before I could shut myself in my room and drink by myself until I forgot what it felt like to be a failure. The volunteers guarding the transition areas were Marines, who were very effective in preventing bike thefts, but they didn't know their way around the San Diego area too well. I knew that my hotel was only a few blocks from the water, so if I followed the coast I couldn't be far. This story could have been much more disasterous if a girl named Christine hadn't overheard me asking for directions and offered me a ride home. Normally I'm too proud and stubborn to accept help from anyone, but this trip had been so disasterous that I gave in. When Christine was loading my enormous bike onto her roof rack she grunted and said, "we gotta get you a new bike, girl!" Yeah, I know. I'm pathetic, I'd done everything wrong before I even started to race. But on the way back, as I gave all my excuses for why I'd sucked so much, Christine had such a better perspective on my experience. "Look, you just FINISHED your first triathlon!" she said. "And on that heavy bike, too. I bet you were working harder than anyone else out there." It turns out that she'd done the sprint distance, and couldn't even conceive of herself doing the olympic distance until next season and was impressed by a distance which I had considered pretty pathetic, since there was so much farther you COULD go. I was ashamed to point out my crummy hotel tucked away behind a huge McDonalds with the bulletproof glass in front of the reception desk, but before I got out of the car Christine said, "That's so cool that you came all by yourself to a new city to do your first triathlon! I hope that you have a better experience next time." So really, Christine was my first introduction to what triathlon means to me today: sharing the glory of the culmination of all your training and hard work and sacrifice with those around you who are basking in their own private glory. No one will be as impressed by your accomplishment as those who were there with you when you did it; not those who have done it and know what it's like, and not those who think that they could never do it themselves. So enjoy eachother and enjoy the race, because you did all the work, and this is your moment. No matter what, don't let anything keep you from enjoying it.

When I got home I got a six pack and pulled out my journal and analyzed what I could learn from my experience. That same night, not to be done in by my own stupidity, I commited myself to do the Big Kahuna, a half ironman distance race right in my own back yard. Coincidentally, I made another horrible blunder that trip which resulted in me insulting and losing a friend while drunk. Holding up the two bad experiences next to eachother on the same trip gave me the kick in the pants I needed to quit drinking and smoking cold turkey until I achieved the Big Kahuna goal that I'd set for myself.

I think any newbie to the sport could benefit from a list of what I reflected on after the race:

~Practice swimming in open water. When you do so, practice running out of the water: not just the first few feet, but all the way up the beach to where your stuff is stashed.
~Should you choose to use a wetsuit, practice not only swimming in it, but also getting in and out of it.
~Have the right gear. If you're training for triathlon, you need a tri bike or a road bike. It doesn't need all the bells and whistles, but at least the basic shape and idea behind it. Don't buy a bike thinking that it'll be good for not only training, but commuting. You don't want to be commuting in your race.
~Nutrition and gear aren't for pussies. A lot of it's hype, but nutrition is a must, and clipless pedals help a lot too.
~Practice running off the bike. Often.
~Bodyglide. Swimming makes skin soggy. Sweating makes skin soggy. Soggy skin chafes more easily.
~Practice every aspect of the race you possibly can. Swim in open water, swim in cold water if necessary, practice your nutrition, practice your transitions and practice training in what you plan to be your racing clothes. Believe me, you will thank yourself later.
~If you're travelling to a race, bring everything you can from home because who knows where you're going to find it where you're going. Bring your favorite nutrition products, favorite snacks for pre and post race, spare bike stuff, good luck charms... And most of all, bring a buddy.