bikes, beer, bulldogs, and boots

This has been a great weekend! One of the reasons it was so great is that I took Friday off. Also I it was the last few days of my rest week before getting back into tri training (13 weeks till the half!).

Of course, I can't take a day off to just relax, so Friday was still a busy day. I spent most of the day either volunteering at the road races (starting at 7 AM!), watching the road races, or volunteering at the Matthews House. The wind was crazy! I am ashamed to admit this but I ended up walking my bike up stadium hill to watch some of the action because the wind was blowing me side to side more than my legs were pushing me forward. Then my bike almost blew away - maybe the only 'con' for owning a carbon bike! I am impressed with all the racers, it was a brutal day.

Finally I went home for a couple of hours, and Chris and I cleaned up and started cooking dinner for the UGA cycling team. This is how excited we are to have bulldogs around - we cooked dinner for 7 hungry cyclists who we had never met before. But it was a lot of fun and I'm glad we could help them out with some free food. They gave us some Georgia jerseys in return so we will be sporting the red and black this summer! The busyness of the day finally ended around 9:30 and I was exhausted!

Sat. was much more relaxing - we watched the criteriums in old town with our friend Matt, and also Jeramy and Christine stopped by for a bit. CSU did really well - all of the women finished the race strong and the men had 2 guys in the top 10. Way to go Rams!! :) They finished the weekend in 3rd place, I'm really happy for them!

After watching all of those really fit people ride in circles we decided we wanted some beer. Luckily for us it was a beautiful day and we got a table on the patio of one of our favorite bars. Rachel joined us and we managed to kill about three hours just hanging out and chit chatting over a couple of pitchers. It was super nice.

Next Chris and I rode our bikes to REI to see what we could spend our money on during their Anniversary Sale. We bought a bunch of stuff for our Alaska trip, including a bear vault and bear spray. The funny part was when we remembered we were on our bikes. Chris managed to tie the bear vault to his bike using his rain jacket - it looked absolutely ridiculous. We probably looked like the most paranoid cyclists in the Fort.

Today has been nice too. I bought a pair of boots for Alaska (plus hopefully the next 10 years of my life). They were $250 but Jax gave me 20% off because I brought in a coupon from REI that they matched. Goretex Asolos 520 full-grain leather - man, they are nice! I probably spent about 5-6 hours trying on boots over the past week and I am pretty happy with these.

Chris and I also rode up Rist Canyon with the UGA cycling team. They borrowed my car to get to the TTT but decided it was too cold and wet to race, :) so they had some energy left over for some climbing (I don't know how). They took it to us, I'd say they've adjusted to the altitude. But it was a nice ride, minus the finger-numbing descent and those awful switchbacks at the top!

Now I am sad the weekend is over. I will be getting busier the next few weeks as I prepare for my prelims next month and ramp up the training again. good night!