WIldflower Long Course 2010

 A little background: over the winter, I switched chiropractors to one that is much closer to my workplace. Dr. Caplan in Mountain View is the first doctor (dating back 30 years to when I first had trouble running as a child) to suggest that my leg length discrepancy might be structural, rather than functional. In hindsight, I had all the tell tale signs, A bunyan on my short right leg foot (from pronating- yet another clue), a tendency to pull my left heel out while on the bike (some sort of vain attempt at making it shorter), scoliosis, & pirformis syndrome. Long story shorter (no pun intended!), Dr. Caplan sent me to get a leg length discrepancy x-ray. First, I was x-rayed flat-footed. My pelvis was tilted noticably down on the left & up on the right side (I remember looking at the x-ray and thinking, "that is just wrong"). A little geometry revealed that the bones in my left leg are 1.2cm shorter than the ones on the right. Next, I got x-rayed with a 9mm lift under my right heel and lo and behold, my x-ray came out with a level pelvis. Something I've apparently never had before. I started wearing a lift in my right running shoe - this completely stops me from pronating. After hitting my midfoot, I used to roll inside on my right foot and kind of scrape off of my heel. I had noticed the wear on my shoe there, but when I had previously tried to fix my form, I couldn't. With the lift in, I no longer roll off of my heel, it's touch and lift just like my left foot. Shimming my bike cleat was a little trickier and I ended up stacking plates on my speedplay cleat, and rummaging for longer screws at the local hardware store. This HAD worked great all the way up to the race (about 2 months).

This was the first experience Mike & I have had camping at lake level - thank you Darrell!! It was so nice not having to negotiate the hill which leads to the commoners camping sites. As such, I probably dawdled a bit too much in the morning before the race and didn't leave myself a lot of time to set up in transition. I also missed out on some pre-race entertainment, as another racer we were camping with split his wetsuit 4 ways right over his arse, 5 minutes before his start! One witness declared that he looked like he was running in chaps as he raced back to transition to get his running shorts. He was bare-bummed, as he had planned on doing the "swimmer's change" before the bike leg. He ended up doing the swim in 62F water in his running shorts. Funniest part was that later that night, after some gratituous drinking (and much to the chagrin of his wife), we convinced him to try the wesuit back on so that we could all see the damage. I haven't laughed that hard in ages. Needless to say, he was puking shortly after we obtained photographic evidence. No, I'm not going to post the pictures.

I gingerly put my own wetsuit on - I had just had it repaired. Barbara, at Express Wetsuit Repair http://www.expresswetsuit.com/ did an amazing job for only $25. I had ripped the entire forearm panel off of one side, and the other side was on its way to the same fate. Unlike my friend above, I had no wetsuit issues this day (if you don't count my inability to remove it in a timely manner - I am so spoiled with the wetsuit strippers at Ironman events). By the time I walked over to the start, I only had 5 minutes to spare. This year, some actual swimmers showed up to race in my age group. For the past 3 years or so I've been 1st or 2nd out of the water despite my lack of impressive speed. Not so this year, after the gun went off, I saw a small group of 3 or 4 women jump out way ahead and disappear past the first buoy. I did get lucky this year in that I had a perfect draft for the entire swim. It's so great to get behind someone who can actually sight well & then let them carve a path through the slower swimmers (from the waves in front of us). The swim was relatively peaceful until the last 100 meters or so when we merged with the 30 and under men finishing the mountain bike swim. As we exited the water, I watched the woman I had been drafting off of run away from me. I proceeded to take forever in getting off my wetsuit. It seems like the older my wetsuit gets, the more difficult it becomes to remove it. It's not that it's shrinking ;), more like it is too stretchy & won't unstick itself (regardless of a healthy coating of body glide) from my skin.

I hopped on my bike & got to negotiating around all those mountain bike sprint men. They are particularly clueless about staying to the right. It's near impossible to pass them anyways. They're all jacked up with testosterone & caffeine and if they see a "girl" passing them they immediately pass back on the right or wherever they can weave to in a doltish attempt to prove their manhood. It's almost a relief to take a right up Beach Hill. Ah, Beach Hill where the first of my mechanical troubles hit. I made the mistake of changing my chain right before the race & not riding around on my bike to see if I could still shift in all the gears. Pre-race I was completely aware that this was a mistake, but I figured snapping a chain (because it hadn't been changed since last October) would be worse than dropping a chain & I just plain didn't have time to test ride the bike post chain change. So, it wasn't a huge surprise that my chain dropped trying to shift into my lowest gear (the Wildflower bike course is relentless & wickedly hilly, so it is foolish to climb the first mile long hill in anything but your lowest gear). No biggie, I was back on within a minute and decided not to try and use that last gear again. Then, as I was hitting the first downhill, my aero drink decided to unvelcro & started bouncing around, I was able to catch it just as it was catapulting out of my aero bars. I squeezed it with my forearms & wondered if I could get away with doing that for the rest of the race. No. It almost bounced out again, so I spent the next 3 miles diligently trying to re-thread the velcro strap through the needle-like hole while riding. This was unsuccessful. After getting passed by everyone and their grandma (literally) I decided that I needed to pull over and fix it before the next big downhill. I ended up threading it in backwards and had to take it out and calmly re-thread it in the proper direction. It was great Ironman practice - and I told myself it was worth the time so that I didn't have to worry about it for the rest of the race. All told, I lost a good 5 minutes between the slowdown & stopping at the side of the road. The bottle didn't move on the next downhill & I started to relax and hit a rhythm. Then (you know bad things happen in threes, right?) at about mile 10, I noticed that the cleat on my right leg (the short leg with the shim) was loose. Crap. I had checked the outer screws and they had all been tight, but I hadn't checked the inner screws that hold the cleat to my shoe. Every time I stood up, I could feel that it wasn't quite right. Somewhere on a very bumpy Jolon Rd I heard a "TING!" - it is never good to hear the sound of metal hitting the road while you're on your bike. One screw gone, 2 left to go. I decided that there would be no more standing. I had to keep constant pressure on my cleat so that the other screws wouldn't come out. I was only half way through the bike & didn't want to think about how the heck I was going to get back to transition if my cleat separated from my shoe. I contemplated stopping at an aid station and asking for a screwdriver. But I'd need a phillips for the outer screws and a flat head for the inner ones, and now I was missing hardware. It would take way too long & I might not be able to fix it anyways. Every mile marker that I passed from then on was a small mental victory - only 25 miles left, 20, 15, sh*t. At the bottom of Nasty Grade what I had feared happening, happened. My shoe was now bare on the bottom & I had two long, ugly screws sticking up from my pedal (those four outer screws were hanging on tight). I fruitlessly tried matching the screws sticking up from my pedal to the holes in my shoes. I was weaving all over the road & I was just lucky that no cars were headed down the hill. After a minute, I gave up on this and did the only thing I could do. I took off my shoe, stuffed it into my rear drink cage and rode the rest of the bike course barefoot with my short leg. I couldn't help but notice that I was making my short leg even shorter by keeping my other shoe on. I had to pedal with SOME power, so I quietly prayed that I wasn't doing too much functional damage to myself. I mean really, what were my choices here? I could quit and walk back 14 miles to transition, or I could carry on. So, on I went. My foot barely reached the pedal and I found the only stable way to ride was to wrap my toes around the backside of the pedal (the side without large screws to impale my foot upon). Eventually, I caught up to the people that I had been riding near at the foot of Nasty Grade. One of them was complaining to me that it was way too windy. I think I replied, "It's windy? I didn't notice, I've got my own problems". I made it safely back to transition. Amazingly, my bike time was a minute faster than last year's uneventful ride.

The run was much less exciting. However, I was pleased that the Zyme that I switched to for my fluids on the bike had solved my stomach problems of the past. Nutrition was not an issue today. I could tell, however, that my left hip was in need of ART, but running was totally doable, just not as fast as I would've liked. Thankfully, the Rock Tape held me together long enough to finish the race. I had gone into the race wanting to break two hours on the run (yeah, I know 9 minute miles aren't fast, but this race has one evil, hilly run course). I didn't quite make that goal, but that was OK. I had Mike to distract me for the last couple of miles. Part of me was hoping that I wouldn't see him because then I would know that he had had a good race. In years past, I would see him ahead, walking. This year he was at mile 10.5 jogging & I was at mile 9.5 jogging. I wasn't so sure that I would be able to catch him this time. I slowly got closer and closer & got within shouting distance at the top of Lynch Hill (1 downhill mile to go). Mike usually crushes me on downhills at home, so I thought yelling might be the only way to let him know that I was right there. I yelled, "Hey Mucha, I'm coming to get you!" I actually passed him a quarter mile later, but that was short-lived. Passing him, apparently, set a fire under his feet, he took off like a rocket and was out of my reach until I was past the finish line. My time wasn't a PR, but my overall and female finishing place was. 7th in my age group is also the highest age group finishing place I'd ever had at Wildflower. This was quite satisfying, especially given all the problems that I had on the bike. The best though, was being able to walk back to the campsite without having to wait in the shuttle line or walk back up the hill. Sweet.