As usual, the weekend passed

As usual, the weekend passed too quickly and I find myself staring at this boring desk again. I have crammed a lot of knick knacks in my little bit of office space. Most of the time, they amuse me; today, they annoy me.
The triathlon workouts, while going well, are starting to wear me down, I think. I went for a late bike ride last night (late enough that I had to do the last 4 miles outside my apartment because it was getting too dark to be on the road) and did 20 miles in 1:16:03. That’s an average of 16 mph. I was averaging 16.6 through about 15 miles, but my poor worn out legs died at the end.
Of course, a big reason for my fatigue was probably lingering effects of the Houston Urban Adventure Race that I did on Saturday with Debbie. Last year it started at 6:00 and I remember it being pretty darn hot; this year it started at 3:00 and it was downright hellish. We began with a run — from Minute Maid Park to Teala’s on West Dallas. From there we hit a nearby cemetary on Allen Parkway, then had to go all the way back downtown to the transition area. The run portion, as I determined after-the-fact (since they don’t tell you the distances) was ~6.4 miles. With all our walking, it took us about 1.5 hours to finish it. It was mega-hot, and we walked a lot more than we ran.
I got much happier once we were on the bikes, and we travelled from Market Square to the intersection of South Heights Blvd and 20th Street, where we found checkpoints 3 and 4 before heading back downtown. The bike was about 10 miles total, which took us a little less than an hour.
Checkpoints 5-7 involved another ~0.75 miles of running around to the Courts building, a cathedral, and bobbing for burritos at Chipotle. Debbie and I crossed the finish line in 2:39 — which surprisingly made us the 10th place female team! They gave prizes for 1st – 10th, so we each got a medal! My first legitimate race hardware. 🙂
Overall, it was a fun race, but not my favorite. The race itself is great; some of the logistics are not. We start on the field at Minute Maid Park right before an Astros game, so the start time is dictated by the game time. Still — starting a race at 3:00 in Houston in July? Crazy.
The other problem is the downtime. The race started at 3:00, but we were required to check in no later than 12:30. Pre-race meeting at 1:00, then walk to Minute Maid, sit around for a while, enter the stadium, go onto the field, yadda yadda. Again, much of this down time is dictated by the baseball game, and their requirements for preparing ahead of time. I understand, but I don’t like it. Basically, having to show up at 12:30, get set up, and sit around outside for 2.5 hours means that I’m overheated before the race even starts. Which sucks.
In the end, a race that took less than 3 hours to complete took up 9 hours of my Saturday. I think that’s the part that bugs me. It seems horribly inefficient. Nevertheless, we had fun and I’ll probably do it again next year.
I watched the World Cup final yesterday and was rooting for Italy, not out of any loyalty to Italy over France, but France just won it 8 years ago. Italy hadn’t won since 1982. Yeah, it went to penalty kicks, which I know is a sore point for many people about the nature of the game, but it was still a good game. It sucked to see Zidane end his career with a head butt, red card, and ejection, but oh well. It was his choice to do it. He’s a professional, he knows that’s a red card.