Crystal hillclimb

Today was the big 6 mile painful hill climb up Crystal Mountain. I have one word to describe my ride: suck!

I had planned to leave at 8am to get there around 9:30 but some jackass in a gigantic SUV decided that leaving his car blocking our condo garage would be a great start to everyone's morning. 45 minutes later I got to smile as the big ass thing got hauled away on a tow truck. I didn't get to Crystal until slightly after 10:30 and had to scramble to get registered and warmed up for an 11:55 start.

For the second year I was the first Cat 4 woman off and I really wish I could start further back for once and have a carrot! Despite the mediocre warmup I felt pretty good for the first 2 miles, then everything went to hell. My knees are horribly sore from running and shortly after I passed the 2 mile mark my IT band started catching in my right knee. That was totally unexpected and I had to back off the pace a bit to keep it in check. I just tried to pedal harder with my left leg. Then at the 3 mile mark my back suddenly started spasming with nearly every pedal stroke. I tweaked it pretty bad last Friday trying to move heavy furniture I shouldn't have been moving.

The rest of the way up sucked and I very nearly bailed at mile 5 but since only 9 gals showed for the Cat 4s I knew I just needed to finish. By this point I had been passed by nearly everyone but summoned enough energy to sprint to the line. I didn't stick around to see the official times but I was somewhere around 37:50, which was nearly 2 minutes slower than last year, so I know something was amiss.

I'm pretty disappointed since I was really hoping for a much better ride. I was shooting for a 35-minute time. Ah well. I packed it up and headed back to Seattle so I could make my 4pm tattoo appointment. That was much more fun (sad, isn't it?) and I'll do a post on that with some pics shortly.

Now I'm trying to rest up the back and the knees for Seward tomorrow. I was really hoping to do well there but now I'm not so sure.