Girl Travels World

The weather is finally starting to cooperate! I went on a fantastic ride yesterday after work that included four ‘ouch’ climbs. I had planned on one hill, but I met up with fellow Ironheads Rob and Erica, and Rob decided to prepare us for climbing in this weekend’s race, the Willamette Valley Classic.

The WVC will be my first ever stage race. For those that don’t know, a stage race is basically a race that takes place over the course of a few days. Think the Tour de France…on a much, much smaller scale. If I like doing stage races and could find some cheap Sydney airfare, I’d consider going Down Under next winter, during Oregon’s crappy wet season, and getting in some good training by racing a stage race in Australia.

Since Erica and I are female newbies, we’ll be taking on the shortest distances: 20 miles, 22 miles and 45 miles, Friday-Sunday respectively. Charlie, who is also on the same cycling team as Rob as well as being an Ironhead, is at the top level, so he’ll be racing 70 miles, 17 miles (this is an extra race for non-beginner categories, called a time trial, which is a solo effort instead of group racing) 44 miles and 70 miles, over the course of three days. Being one category below Charlie, Rob will take slightly less mileage.

The WVC is a new race, and many of the categories are full (with 100 riders per field!) I’m hoping that I’ll be able to hang with my group of 25, enjoy myself and possibly even get to explore Eugene a little more after Saturday’s race!

The fact my summer trips this year revolve more around triathlons than Peru air tickets, I figured I should probably write a little bit about my first race of the season.

This weekend I headed down to Corvallis for the annual Beaver Freezer Sprint Triathlon. A fundraiser for the Oregon State tri club, it incorporates a 500-yard pool swim, a 12-mile bike (15 km) and a 3.1 mile run.

Last year, the Beaver Freezer was my first race ever. I finished in 1:16 and was 36 out of 110 or so females.

This year, I felt a lot less prepared – I wasn’t that excited, I wasn’t happy, I was just doing it. I think it has a lot to do with my extended time off training when I was in Africa, followed by a prolonged attack of the winter colds/flu.

We were a little slow going in the morning and I didn’t get my act together until the last minute, which meant no test ride with the aero bars that were on my bike for the first time since June, no warm up run, and just a few lazy laps in the diving pool.

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