A little mid season motivation - Kona 2009 Ironman World Championships

America's Birthday/ Mt Lemmon

Fresh back from out little Tucson trip over the 4th of July weekend.
Mary and I decided that the best way for us to celebrate was with a little smashfest of our own.
So we headed 90 miles south on Saturday July 3rd for a little getaway training day. We arrived at our hotel about 6pm, checked in and headed to a little Pizza place I had found online. Just so happens that it was actually right across the street less than 100 yards away from our room.
What a find, an all Organic Pizza joint, with Fat Tire on tap. The weekend was already a victory at this point. (Ecletic Pizza). We shared a kick ass salad because we where to starved to wait for the pizza. 15 minutes later we had a beautiful pie and ice cold Fat Tire on our table. Then 5 minutes later it was all gone. Told you we where starving. back to the room, filled our water bottles and retired to bed for our 4:30am wake up.
4:30 alarm buzzes and we are up and at it, sunscreen, breakfast, and load up the car for the 4 mile drive to our starting point for our little epic 4th of July workout!! (Mt Lemmon).
We pump the tires, and have the wheels down at 5:54a.m, a few minutes later than planned, but no big deal.
Off we start on our bikes to the base of the climb. My gps said we started at 75 feet above sea level. We where to climb to the top of Mt Lemmon (9300+ feet) in 26 or so miles. Depending on where you stop. This was Mary's first time tackling the entire climb, and was a bit nervous, but she needed to face down her demons and just get to the top and back down, no matter what it took. She HATES descending, especially on switch backs at 40 mph, for 26 miles!!!
My plan was to get to the top and head back down to see where she was so I could go back down a bit and then climb back up to meet her at the Cookie Cabin in SummerHaven (mile 25).
I felt strong, if not fast pretty much the entire way up, my back issue was flaring up, but not much I could do but get to the top. So off I went, once I hit the little town of Summerhaven I turned right and headed on up another couple miles to the Ski Lodge. Stopped for a Clif Bar, and started back down. At the mile 20post here comes my beautiful bride pushing up the mountain, we stopped and figured out the logistics from there. The plan was she would continue to the Cookie (approx. 45 more minutes), and I would descend to the half way mark and then climb back up and meet her there. The second time up seemed so much easier, and I was happy to arrive in SummerHaven for half of a HUGE cookie. 15 minutes later, water bottles filled up and we where ready to go down. We started up and stayed together for the first 4ish miles which ironically is mostly climbing. Then as the real down started I just couldn't hold back and off i went, tucked in my aero bars and flying at over 40mph around the switch backs passing all the cars and motorcycles that could handle the turns at my speed!! Loved it. At mile 14 I decided to stop and make sure Mary was still doing ok, and after about 5 minutes her she comes with a big smile on her face, and couldn't even smell her brake pads burning. I encouraged her and told her she was doing great and then I continued on to the bottom. After adding on a few extra miles on Catalina Hwy, here she comes flying and happy to be to the bottom. At this point reality hits us, it is no longer 70 degrees and pleasant like on top of the mountain, it is now 100+ degrees and we still have a 50minute run ahead of us after 5:18 minutes on the bike, and a shit load of it climbing straight up!! The only thing we could do was "get it done", we changed shoes, packed our bikes into Jane, and headed back down the hwy towards the mountain again. 25 minutes in and we both turned around, for me that was 3.5 miles in, now it was just push the pace and eat up the 3.5miles back to the car and lunch. I placed a target on Mary's back as I started closing the gap between us and just focused on catching her by the time we got back to the car, and sure enough just as we entered the parking lot I caught up. Done, done & done!!!
After a nice lunch at Le Buzz we where in the car and headed the 90 miles home. what a great way to celebrate our independence!!!