Weekend Shenanigans and Athens Twilight Criterium

Hello Everyone!

I hope that everyone was able to enjoy a weekend of training as well as any other fun things you might have been able to accomplish over those two glorious days (wait, there is something other than training to do on the weekends???). 

The weekend started Friday evening with Patsy and I heading to a dual birthday party hosted by our friend.  We got there after everyone arrived from dinner.  This portion of the evening was to be the pre-party event before everyone headed to the highlands in Atlanta.  I told myself that I had to be at Mike's condo by 8am to pick him up and take us to lake Allatoona for our first OWS of the year.  Ha - side note - first tri of the year is in 12 days and I am trying to do my first OWS two weeks before the event.  Oh well who needs sighting anyways :) ?  Back to the story... We somehow got out of there by 12-12:30am when they finally caught their cabs.  People think I am lame and just don't understand why someone like me would want to wake up at 7am on a Saturday morning to go swim ;) 

Fast forward to the morning and it is storming... I was kinda pissed.  I will swim in the rain until the cows come home.  But lightning?  Heck no!  So Mike and I changed our plans and we hit up LA Fitness for an hour under his guidance (he is the better swimmer, swam in high school).  He wore me out, and then dropped me off, telling me he would be back to pick me up around 1pm so we could go to Athens.

Ahhh.... Athens.  Home of my Alma Mater.  We got there arond 2:30pm and checked into the hotel.  We had missed all the morning qualifying runs, but the main events began around 5:45pm, with the men's race beginning around 8:45-9:00p, so we were not too worried.  This just means an excuse to walk around downtown Athens and drink/eat bad food.  Also one of my fraternity brothers, Jay Lowe, and his band, Argus, were playing at Tasty World so we stopped by there for about half an hour to watch the band play before leaving and meeting up for dinner.  Dinner was at Doc Chey's.  Man that Siracha sauce is damn hot, but I love it!  The women't pro event was in its final laps as we finished dinner, so we then hit up one of the beer gardens outside to watch the finish of the race, and then get some primo standing room for the men's event. 

The men's pro event started a few minutes late, and the rain was beginning to pick up (for those of you who heard about tornadoes and such passing through Mississippi and Alabama on Friday night/Saturday morning, that hit Athens on Saturday night.  Definately rain, and some lightning, but the race must go on!  This is a 1km course in downtown Athens, and the field must complete 80 laps.  I don't know how many laps into the race the referee quit cutting people who were lapped, but by about 25 laps in, half the men's field had been cut out of the race!  It kept raining on and off (pretty heavily I might add) and so it was back and forth between the tent and the fence separating us from people riding 25mph+ on their bikes.  As the race got closer to the finish, we moved across the course and down to about 30-40 feet from the finish line.  The funny thing is that from my perception, the lead riders (6 in the lead group, had about 40 seconds on the pack by the end of the race) went faster on the bell lap than they did on the final lap.  Or maybe that was because 4 out of the 6 riders whizzed by my face (literally, 8-12 inches away).  All in all, good times.  Sunday was a rest day.

Rev3 is not an "A" race for me, so while I will tone down the training volume next week, there will really be no taper for this coming race, more of modifying my training so that there is a rest day or two before the event.  The week after will be a light week and then right back into training.  Patsy and I may do the VA Highlands 5K on June 5th, and then I have the Peachtree Road Race on the 4th of July (10K).  Still have not signed up for the Chattahooche Waterfront Tri yet, but that is on my radar for July as well.  I really want to see how I do in Rev3, because I would like to qualify for Age Group Nationals at Myrtle Beach if I can.  After that it is Good Old Peachtree City Triathlon in August (an annual mandatory event since that was the first triathlon I have ever done), and then we shall see how the rest of the year pans out.... I am trying to get something together that will hopefully make the rest of this year and years to come pretty exciting!!!!  Will know soon (within the next month).

Anyways, this post spans two days (I was too lazy to finish yesterday), so I am going to close saying have a good rest of the week and I will find something else tri-related to blog about soon enough :)

Murtha...