We're back now, but Kevin and I have had another flurry of traveling--this time, to North Carolina to see his parents, aunt, uncle, and cousins. Naturally, we'd scheduled 2 races in the 2 days before we left, so step 1 in going to NC was to go to Rhode Island.
My race was on Saturday, a regatta at the Narragansett Boat Club in Providence. The women raced an 8 in the morning, and a 4 in the afternoon (the 4 who weren't in the 4 were in another 8). I essentially forgot how to row during the first race (maybe it wasn't that bad, but it felt like it), and I suspect that the rest of the 4 weren't looking forward to rowing with me a second time--especially since the wind picked up dramatically and the water got very choppy. (Even under the best circumstances, the water would have seemed weird to me, since we row on a regular river, but the Seekonk River is tidal.) I definitely didn't want to row with myself, and the trip up to the start was not reassuring, but amazingly, it went fine. I relaxed, and remembered how to row, and didn't panic (much). And we even won--really won, and then won by a little more because we had a few seconds handicap. After the race, the cox informed us that there has been times she couldn't see because she'd just been swamped by a wave (it was a bow-loader). So glad I didn't know that at the time!
No pictures of the 4 because Kevin spend the afternoon dashing around the state, getting all his stuff dropped off for his race--unlike most races, the bike was point-to-point, so he swam at a state park about 50 miles from Providence, got on his bike, rode into Providence, then ran around downtown, ending up in front of the capital (inconveniently located at the top of a hill).
Trust me, it was much steeper in person. Especially after nearly 6 hours of exercise.
Kevin's been biking a lot more this year than usual--he's doing this Tour de France bike-along, so he's biked every race day of the race... although it should be noted that last Monday, a rest day, he biked a little, and I think we're also planning to bike tonight... a nice, easy 1-2 hour ride, just like the real riders do on rest days. Of course, on non-rest days we also do rides they would consider nice and easy, so it's not quite the same thing.
Anyway, this means 2 things: first, that Kevin's bike time was much better than in his previous 1/2 IMs, which meant his total time was much better (it also helped that the run course was not the hilliest course ever, like it was last time!), and second, that I'm biking more than usual. Especially while we were in NC, because we only brought the tandem--so for him to bike, I had to bike.
This was generally a good thing, as the theme of the trip was frozen dessert (on Tuesday, my mother-in-law and I had ice cream as a pre-lunch appetizer, then Kevin and I had a root beer float as a post-workout snack... on Thursday, she and I had Italian ice--also before lunch, actually--then Kevin and I stopped on our ride for more... ), but by the end of our ride yesterday, it was clear that I'd doubled the mileage of my previous longest week ever without any kind of build-up. (And after essentially taking the previous week off from biking, because the tandem was at the bike shop.)
Fortunately, we were short on rowers this morning at practice, which meant the lineup was a little strange, which meant that we did a technical workout instead of whatever terrible/good for us piece of torture/fun they'd originally planned. Sadly, this will not be the case on Wednesday... when it appears that I'm going to stroke. Clearly, we're still short on rowers.
