Dirty Du

The last thing a flooded Mud Island and my motivation to work out needed this weekend was lots of rain. But that's what we got, and both of us survived.

Friday my friend Melissa from New York came to visit. We started off in the pool for a nice wet workout (this became the theme for the weekend) before heading to the weight room where she showed me the latest and greatest moves to torture my abdominals. We then did some carb-loading to get ready for my ride scheduled for Saturday.

The plan on Saturday was for me to meet up with the group who was riding about 80 miles to Drummonds, except I would be meeting them outside my front door, thereby excluding myself from the first and last 4 miles. The rain jacket I wore proved to be entirely too warm and I had a nice sweat going in the first 40 miles. Just as we pulled into the store in Drummonds at 40 miles, the clouds burst open. We relaxed and had a nice snack waiting for it to slack off, which it did about 15 minutes later. However, that was just enough time for my Raynaud's phenomenon to catch up to my fingertips. By the time we started riding again, I had no feeling in any fingers, which proved to be a real hazard when you need those fingers to brake! The blood flow came back pretty quickly, but in the process I felt as though hammers were hitting my fingers one by one. Really pleasant. We got wet and dirty (and I swear there were guts on my shoe covers!), but it didn't start raining hard again until about 10 miles from my house. I was amazed that my sports bra was still dry and I was completely comfortable when I got home.

Next I went with Melissa to do a light spin at the gym followed by some torture of my shoulders. She's really good at making me do things that I normally wouldn't. If only she still lived here and could work out with me every day-- I'd be in such good shape. Tortured, but tough.

Sunday morning's radar looked like a red target right over northeastern Arkansas. I hoped that it would hold off until after the Wolfman Duathlon, which was to start at 9. I was using a borrowed mountain bike and had ridden exactly once since, let's see, the Memphis in May Mountain Bike triathlon last May. On Wednesday the Tour de Wolf trail was completely dry and very hard-packed. Not the case on Sunday. The race was delayed an hour while we waited to see if we'd be struck by lightening. We weren't, so we started. This off road du is a 3 mile run, a 6.5 mile bike, and a 1 mile run.

I learned that I am not as scared of holes and roots on the trails when I can't see them because they are covered in 6 inches (or more) of water. I was proud of my skills until 2 tough women on my team, Susan and Lucia, came flying by me. I tried to follow Lucia's line through the trails, but found that the large chunks of mud flying into my open mouth (yeah, she was going fast; I was breathing hard) inhibited the flow of air down my trachea. So I backed off, spit out some dirt, and lost her. Shortly after, I was by myself, turning an easy corner, when my bike decided it was going right while my body was going left. I hit directly on my hip, but shook it off and got back on. No more than 5 minutes later, same thing happened and I landed on some large roots. This time the casualties included my hip, knee and elbow. I was thrilled to be off the bike and running for that one last mile. The large puddles that I splashed through helped clean off my shoes, but I was still left with a large mud beard at the finish line, just like everyone else in the race. We were quite a site coming in, but most of us smiled with our mud-caked teeth, since what could be more fun than a dirty mudfest of a race to complete a wet weekend?