Early Timberman thoughts, and a flat.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I didn't run for 4 whole days. It doesn't sound like that much. It should be noted that until I looked at the calendar to fact check my first sentence, I swore it was a full week. It was a really long, miserable 4 days. I don't know if this can be attributed to the lack of running, but I'm sure that didn't help. The major event that happened was that I got my first flat tire on my road bike. While it takes most seasoned riders a few minutes to fix this on the side of the road, it took me 48 hours to fix it, and another 48 hours to recover from the harrowing experience. If you haven't figured it out yet, I am a drama queen, and I'm skilled in the art of catastrophizing. I want to preserve the insanity of this weekend, because I'm hoping that someday I'll look back on this post and remember how much of a bike noob I was when I started.

But before I tell that story, I need to tell the story of the first bike ride I did on part of the Timberman course. The Timberman is the half ironman triathlon I'm planning to do in August. My aunt and my cousin live just a few miles from the 56-mile bike course. Earlier this summer when I got my first bike, a hybrid, I went for a 12-mile ride with them, part of which happened to be on the Timberman bike course. This was long before Timberman was even a seedling of a thought in my brain. In fact, this 12-mile bike ride was a training ride for my first & only triathlon I've done, a sprint triathlon in September which was 1/3 mile swim, 10-mile bike, and a 5K run, which at the time seemed epic. So here we are on this 12-mile bike ride, and we come to a hill. Whoosh! go my cousin and my aunt up & over the hill. I was slowly cranking along, getting slower & slower by the second, until I had visions of my bike coming to a halt, then quickly gaining momentum as I rolled downhill, backwards, into oncoming traffic. So then I got off my bike and walked it up the hill. If that wasn't embarrassing enough in and of itself, I got passed by a lycra storm of male cyclists, each one asking if I was ok. My responses got more and more curt with each passing rider until I was rudely shouting "I'M. FINE!" through gritted teeth. Nice of them to be helpful though! Sorry I was bitch!

I finally made it to the top of the hill, with a bruised ego, and bruised chins from where I kept walking into my bike pedals. When I later learned that this course was part of the Timberman bike course, I decided to compare the map of my own bike ride to the elevation map of the race course. So naturally I signed up for Timberman, because I am the Beath, and that's how the Beath rolls (not downhill & backwards into traffic).

Fast forward to 4 days ago, the Friday after Thanksgiving. My cousin Emily, my Aunt Martha, and I decide to ride 30 miles of the Timberman course. It was to be a nice leisurely ride, and the longest that either Emily or I had ever ridden at one time. It was a weird morning. Emily's bike tires were both flat. My Aunt's car wouldn't start. The fog was so thick we could barely see the houses across the street. We had ice on our bike seats after a 5 minute drive up to our starting point. None of that stopped us. What did stop us, though, was a nail in my tire at the 2.5 mile mark. I had a spare tube and tools in my bike seat bag, but seeing as none of us had ever fixed a flat, we decided to end the ride early. Later, after hearing comments from anyone who knows anything about biking, this was basically the equivalent of a new runner discovering their shoe is untied, so they just quit. I should have changed the tube and kept on riding. But to do that, you need to know how to change a tube. Once I was home, in the comfort of my own living room, I decided I would learn how to change a tube. I laid out my tire levers, my spare tube, my bike pump. I pulled up about 20 different you tube videos on how to remove a rear wheel, how to use tire levers, how to remove the old tube, and finally how to put the new tube in. Every small action took me much longer than it should have. It didn't make me feel any better that apparently I was shaving bits of rubber off my tire. That didn't happen in the video. Was I destroying my tire, or is that normal? I still have no idea. By the time I started, had a crying fit, watched the video a couple more times, screamed at my cat for getting in the way, tried again, had another crying fit, texted a suicide threat to my friend, and finally got the fucking tube in, it took me about 4 hours. At the very end of this process though, when I was making sure that the tube wasn't stuck under the bead of the tire, is when I noticed that the nail had gone through the rim and there was a pretty good sized gash on the inside of my tire rim. Then I did the only rational thing that made sense to me at that time: I slammed a shot of NyQuil and went to bed.

The next day, I took my wheel, tire, and tube to a bike shop in Boston and asked them what to do about the gash in the rim. They hadn't seen this too many times so they kind of guessed in their response, which was basically just to wait and see. "If it feels really wobbly when you're riding it, you might need to replace it." Put that in the category of things to never say to a new rider who is already scared to death. So they put a piece of rim tape over the hole, offered to help me put the tire back together, to which I stubbornly responded, "No, I need to learn how to do this on my own", and then walked out of the shop with my tire and some false confidence. When I got home, I couldn't get the tube back in, even though I had already done it the night before. The difference between struggling and hard work is that when you work hard, you are actually making progress. At this point, I knew that I was not making progress anymore. I felt like I was rolling downhill backwards into traffic. I took my wheel to a tiny, local bike shop where I bought my first bike. I said I needed help putting the tube in. He literally put the tube in and snapped the tire back on in about 8 seconds, then pumped it up and handed it back to me, no charge. It was so simple and non-dramatic. My mind was blown.

I managed to get the wheel back on the bike, not without a plethora of swear words, and took the bike for a mini-spin around the neighborhood. The wheel didn't fall off, and the tire didn't go flat. I think I'll limit my bike to indoor trainer rides until the spring.

BUT WAIT! HERE'S THE BEST PART!!!!
After our failed bike ride on Friday, my cousin Emily registered for the Timberman sprint triathlon which takes place the day before the half ironman. Same events, just shorter in distance. Then I suggested to my aunt that since she's planning to train with me anyway for the bike portion of the race, she should participate in the relay for Timberman and race the 56-mile bike leg. She liked that idea, so then we immediately texted her other daughter, my cousin Jane, and asked her if she wanted to be the swimmer in the relay. She agreed, and then we asked Jane's wife Michelle if she wanted to run the half marathon to round out the relay team. Michelle was in with an enthusiastic, "Fuck it! Might as well!" And just like that, a relay team was formed. So I take back what I said in my previous post about my cousins not joining me as much as I'd like. This makes up for it a hundred times over. Timberman, here we come! (But please, for the love of God, no flats!)