Friends don't let friends drink and make race plans.

Saturday I trekked up to Deep Creek Maryland to participate in a relay for the OLY distance Savageman.


Savageman is a race where you can't fake the training. It's intense. But I was going to try anyways.


So this all started with a Happy Hour in Georgetown. Over pizza Supersnail and I talked about doing a relay with me swimming , tri friend N biking, and SS running.

N ended up having to bail. Later I got an email from J asking if I would want to relay with them as the biker. Ummmm, no? Somehow it came out as yes, and brainstorming of obnoxious team names ensued.


Options we didn't go with:
Three Slick Chicks
Cold, Hard Bitches
Chicks with Attitudes
Back Off, We're Triathletes
Hard, Harder, Hardest
Bitches on a Mission
Black and white and sore all over
Legs, boobs, and booty
Something for everyone
Ridden hard and put away wet
We'll tri anything once


What we went with was: 3 legs and 6 boobs

(It's a grenade joke)


Since the OTP crowd has some truly awesome people in it, I got to just go along for the ride as everyone else planned the stay and the food. Sandy was Queen Bee and Master Organizer, and Ryan was the Iron Chef. Seriously dude, marry me.


A little about the course:
Savageman is The. Hardest. Course. Period.

The swim:

I have never been so happy not to have to swim in my life. The lake was covered in fog, it was freezing, and the first few finishers were actually DQ'ed because of a mix-up with the buoy colors (allegedly yellow for the OLY, orange for the HIM), and because they couldn't see anything.

The bike:

Sigh. We drove the bike course the day before. Someone said not to worry because it always seems harder in the car. Challenge. The pre-race briefing included telling us that aerobars were verboten because the descent were technical and they didn't want you screaming to your death. And several warnings about where to shift down, and where to be prepared to hold on for dear life.

On one hand I was glad we saw the course, so I knew where I was later. On the other, it really made me so much more nervous.

I was trying to rationalize that it was only five miles longer than the bike at IronGirl and I wasn't swimming or running, so I could handle it, right?

Let's just say I ended up wheels up 3 times. Stupid chain.


The run:
Crazy, crazy hilly. The HIM took racers past the finish line 3 times. That is just cruel. And more than a few people turned down the finish chute by accident.

SS did a great job despite the heat and hills, and J and I got to run in with her.

They actually refused to announce our team name since it's a family show ...


Post race:
S gave me a ride back to the house and made popcorn, and I got a shower in before the boys came home.
No vacation time meant a long drive home late with a slight detour. I still need to take my wheels to get trued.

Pearls of Wisdom

Guess what happens when you are prone to kidney stones, you race a hot horrible race and get dehydrated, and you drink the race course beverage which has in one bottle 300% of your RDA of vitamin C?

If you answered you get a kidney stone, give yourself one point.
If you answered you get a kidney stone while trapped in DC at a mandatory meeting, give yourself two points.
If you answered you get a kidney stone while trapped in DC at a mandatory meeting while giving a presentation and feeling like you will either pass out or throw up in front of a co-worker and two rival companies, give yourself three points.

Seriously, they should come with an alarm bell.

Luckily I've been through this before, so armed with a bridge prescription and painkillers I spent the afternoon in my pajamas wishing for death, and hoping to goodness that the rain would not mean evacuation again.

Now comes the question:
My beloved doctor who is also a runner, wants me to take Levaquin to protect the kidney from an infection. However, Levaquin has been linked to tendon rupture. And my bicep tendon is inflamed like 40% of the time now, and I have some pretty serious events coming up.

Do I shut my pie hole and take the Levaquin, or do I take the B team drug and wait and see if I get sick?

We. Are. Dead. And. This. Is. HELL!

Soooo, yeah. Rock N Roll was a bad day.

88 degrees. 85% humidity.

Everyone looked beaten. The spectators, the volunteers, the runners. All melting like a cheap bike bottle on the bottom rack of the dishwasher.

You know you've had a bad race when:

1. You finish a full hour after your goal time.

2. Your shoes look like Brian Sells'. http://dailyviews.runnersworld.com/2008/08/brian-sells-adv.html

3. You aren't sure you can even walk to the finish.

4. You cannot identify a single location in your body that doesn't hurt.

5. You're glad you lost your timing "chip" since it's means this travesty is only further on it's way to being forgotten.


The only thing that kept me from bailing was that there were a ton of cancer survivors there, and if they can finish, I had no reason not to.

They finished ahead of me, by the way.

Perhaps attempting a half marathon the week after Iron Girl was not a good plan ...

Nor was continuing to race even after repeatedly getting sick.

It's a steep learning curve.