Another Tahoe Recap

Posted by Katie

Rachel wrote a great summary about our Tahoe training weekend but I am going to give you another one, quite simply because Tahoe is one of my favorite places on earth!!

In the winter months (December through April) Matt and I come up to Tahoe as many weekends as we can to ski. I won’t say too much about how awesome the skiing is here because I am sure I will have a few (or many) blog posts about that in the winter J We have also come up to Tahoe a bunch in the summer/fall to bike, hike or camp.

This trip definitely solidified my (crazy) decision to register for the Ironman 70.3 Lake Tahoe. For me the most important requirement was to feel excited about the race. My rational was if you are going to sign yourself up for 70.3 miles and 6-7+ hours of grueling effort, you better be really excited about it! Tahoe does that for me. Driving up late Friday night I couldn’t help but feel giddy and excited. The incredible mountains, dense pine trees, exposed granite faces, and crystal clear lakes… ahhh… yep this is my kind of heaven. What better place for my first 70.3? I also like the idea of REALLY earning it on one of the hardest 70.3 courses there is (no WAY would I ever do the Ironman 140.6 Lake Tahoe… now THAT is just crazy). The two biggest challenges of this course are the elevation that it all takes place (~6,200’) and the giant hill on the bike course so this weekend we got a taste of both.

Matt and I have done a lot of biking up in Tahoe and always really enjoy it. We have done the full loop around the lake (72 miles) twice. The first year we started in North Lake and did the loop in two days with an overnight in South Lake to break it up. The next year we did it all in one day, only stopping in South Lake for lunch. So I am pretty familiar with how tough the cycling can be around here (read: hilly) and was bracing myself for the 70.3 course to be similarly hard. I am really glad that a group of us did the loop portion of the ride (36.7 miles) and that the house we were staying at was right on the course, making logistics easy (thanks Sandi!). The unexpected super nice part of the course is the slight downhill from the lake all the way to Truckee. We flew in this section, averaging 19mph for 10+ miles (this might be a personal record). I attribute 50% of this great average speed to my expert drafting skills. Matt and I were practically riding a tandem bike I was drafting so much on the flats. Of course this strategy will not help at all in any triathalon where drafting is illegal… but it sure felt nice on Saturday to save energy for the big hill (thanks Matt!).

Notice those lovely miles between 5 and 25! That giant hill is hard to ignore though.

The mountain on the course was hard as expected, and long… really long. At one point we got to a green sign which I thought was the sign I had seen the night before on the drive marking the top of the pass... unfortunately it was a green passing zone ahead sign… rough. Getting to the top felt great. I was proud of myself for biking the whole time and spending an occasional minute in my second to lowest gear. Given this course preview I think my strategy will be to take it easy on the very first section (and small hill) and then put in a solid (but not crazy) effort on the flat/downhill section, survive the hill, and then get back to Squaw in one piece.

In the afternoon on Saturday we did some Stand Up Paddleboarding (SUP for short) which is really fun. Slower than I thought, certainly less efficient than kayaking, but definitely fun to cruise (slowly) around the lake. We also did a little random swimming and the water was not actually that cold (in a wetsuit).

The next morning a few of us decided to swim again. This time the lake was FREEZING. I mean knock your breath away freezing. I think the difference in temperature had three contributing factors 1) it was earlier in the day 2) we were more on an east facing section of beach instead of south, and 3) the water was deeper. Definitely good practice, and it was also a little choppy (though not nearly as choppy as it was for Matt and Rachel’s swim home the day before). Overall the best part of swimming in Lake Tahoe is how clear and clean the water is. 

After we left the house Sunday, Matt and I decided to hit up one of our favorite trail running spots in Tahoe Donner. Kona, our dog, LOVES trail running so we took him along too. The trails in the secret place that we go (I am not even going to say where it is because if a bunch of people showed up it would ruin it) are mostly unmarked dirt roads or single track trails with not too much elevation change. Originally I had planned to do 5-6 miles but after running a bit that plan quickly turned into 4. I could definitely feel the effects of a hard training weekend, but running (or more accurately run/walking) on those trails is just so pretty it is hard to feel bad. In all 4 miles we saw 4 other people, two mountain bikers, and a couple walking with their dog, also named Kona… what are the odds?

Trail run in Tahoe!

After the run we stopped at Wild Cherry’s my favorite Truckee coffee shop and café (notice I have a lot of favorite places up here). I got my usual, large cold brewed iced coffee and the cranberry breakfast sandwich on a bagel… mmm so good! We decided it still felt wrong to be leaving Tahoe at 1pm, so we stopped by The Backcountry, a ski shop across from Wild Cherries and Matt ended up getting a great off season deal on some touring ski boots that he has been wanting for a long time.

Delicious post run lunch.

In case you were wondering what our favorite sport is... just checkout that giant smile. New ski boots!!!

 All in all a super great weekend, looking forward to more adventures (and more training) this summer!