4th of July Weekend Activities

Pat and I went to the Tri Cities, WA (Richland, Kennewick, Pasco) over the 4th of July weekend to scout out the IM Washington 70.3 course. The race is 9/22 and I wanted to get a feel for the bike course.

We stopped in Spokane for the night on 7/4 to watch the fireworks on the river.  They put on a great show and we were able to sit right under the fireworks as they were fired over the river. It was an impressive display and we were so glad we stopped the night there to watch them.

The high  temps in the Tri Cities over the weekend were in the low 100s.  It was hot!  But, I got to ride the bike course on Saturday.  56 miles of hills (not quite but it felt like it).  I am so glad I did this.  The course was much hillier than I expected - I told Pat I felt like I was going up for most of the 4 hour ride with very little downhill/flat to balance it out.  It was good to know this now - I would have been very surprised on race weekend to find so many hills to climb.  So it resets my training a bit - we will put more focus on hills during my rides for the next couple months! YAY!  I actually don't mind hills - but I do need to prepare for them properly so I am excited for this challenge! 😀

I'm the worst selfie taker :)

Long uphill grade - hot road for miles and miles

I also checked out the run course.  It is a paved path that runs parallel to the river.  Out and back course.  It will be a nice course to run - hopefully it's not too hot on race weekend.

And - the swim.... I wasn't going to write about this because I am actually embarrassed for myself but here goes...

I chickened out of doing a practice swim in the river.  Why? Here's what I told myself at the time:

1. I don't know where to swim (boats and jet skis in the river)
2. I don't know the river, is it safe to swim in it (I didn't see other swimmers - just people playing in the water near the shore).
3. I'm scared

Ok - so there are my reasons.  Yeah -they are dumb and that's why I am embarrassed for myself. 

1. So what if there are boats and jet skis in the water.  I'm not swimming in the middle of the river - I'm swimming parallel and close to shore.
2. So what if I don't know the river - of course it's safe to swim in - I could have easily found a place to at least jump in and do a few strokes.
3. So what if I'm scared! It's ok to do scary things.

So there you have it - I can't go back and change the weekend swim / lack of swim but I can move forward.  I will do plenty of OWS (open water swims) over the next couple months and my confidence for OWS will come back.  I know come race weekend I will be fine and I won't even be worried about the swim.  It will be fine!
 

Lastly, we also got to have dinner with Pat's sister Coleen. She lives just 50 miles from the Tri Cities and she met us for dinner Saturday night. It was nice catching up with her and all her family activities.

 

 

Around 50 miles