Austin update 2

When we left home on Thursday Christine was feeling a little dizzy, and when the dizziness didn't go away by Friday morning it was time to visit a doctor. The doctor told her that she has acute labyrinthitis, which I think means she's watched the movie "Labyrinth" too many times. The doctor gave her a prescription to help take care of any nausea and told her to take some motion sickness medicine (like Dramamine). Oh, and she also said not to ride her bike because the sodium in sports drinks would make her dizziness worse. No big deal, it's not like we had any plans to ride any time soon. Ha! We went to the "Livestrong Village" in the afternoon to pick up our ride packets and check out the festivities. It was nice to be there on Friday, because later in the weekend the crowd sizes greatly increased. We were able to casually walk around and check things out without dodging the masses of people.

Saturday we went back to the Livestrong Village to purchase Chris Carmichael's new Cookbook, and have it signed. We looked at it on Friday, and Christine found several recipes that sounded fun and tasty. Instead of buying it on the spot, we decided to wait until following day when we could have it signed. After we left the village, we were headed downtown for some lunch and to watch a criterium bike race when we found the Whole Foods headquarters. Someone had told us a couple days ago that it was the "Disneyland of Whole Foods." I don't know, maybe we're spoiled in Colorado to have nice Whole Foods stores, because this wasn't all that impressive. It was huge, but it didn't really wasn't anything too special, except for the fact the they had a parking garage under the store and a slanted escalator that you could take carts on. Their specially designed carts had a brake system that activated when they were on the escalator so it wouldn't roll down. The downtown crit was a pretty boring course (only 4 corners) and the number of riders was astoundingly low by Colorado standards. I was looking at the posted results, and most categories didn't have more than 20 people. The Pro/1/2/3 race supposedly had 100 entries though. Apparently Robin Williams was watching the race, but we didn't see him. Later we went back the village because George Hincapie was there signing autographs. George is the only person to be on all 7 of Lance's winning Tour de France teams, and is one of the Discovery Team's one-day specialists. It was awesome to meet such a cycling celebrity.


With all the LAF festivities for the day behind us, we got on with evening plans - The Mr. Sinus Show. Mr. Sinus is essentially a live version of Mystery Science Theater, and if you're ever in Austin when they're doing a show it's well worth the price of admission. The movie this weekend was Lost Boys, which I had never seen before. Hilarious! The early 7PM showing even allowed us to get back to the hotel and get to bed at a reasonable time.

Sunday we got up early to beat some of the traffic to the event. We had been warned that the short trip could easily take an hour, so we left at 5:30AM for the scheduled 7:30AM start. I'm glad we left early, because we could see the traffic already starting to back up. When you register for the ride, you also let them know how far you're planning on riding (7, 25, 40, 70, or 100 miles), and how long you think it will take you to finish. With this information they line you up in different groups and release you at different times so there aren't suddenly 7000 riders on the road at the same time. Even though Christine and I were supposed to be in different groups, we wanted to ride together for a while so she started in my group. We rode the first 10 miles together before she split off at the first aid station. She decided to do the 40 mile route, which in her condition was pretty difficult.

After we split, I rode really fast to get around some of the slower starters. My plan was to ride the first 30 miles without stopping at the aid stations so I could get ahead of any crowds. I found a couple good wheels to ride with, and made it to the 30 mile aid station in no time. It looked pretty crowded, however, so I passed it up and ate some of the gel that I had carried with me. By the time I got to the 55 mile aid station I was ready for a break. I stopped long enough to refill my bottles, get some food, and stretch. I mostly rode on my own from that point, but I did ride along with the Tour of Hope team for a short while. (The Tour of Hope is a team of people put together by Lance Armstrong to ride across the US to raise awareness for cancer and the need for clinical trials.)

The miles seemed to tick by very slowly after that, plus the wind picked up considerably which made the rolling hills feel more like mountains. There were a couple stretches, however, where we had a strong tailwind. Sooooo nice. I finally made it to the finish line with a total ride time of about 5:15. I kind of wish I could have pushed a little harder to make it under 5 hours. Maybe next time.