MALT ride, Alcatraz anxiety, and 10 day countdown

Posted by Rachel 

This entry is a little bit late, but this week has been pretty busy. Starting last Saturday, first there was the MALT ride (MALT = Marin Agricultural Land Trust). We learned about this ride through my aunt and her friends. When we signed up back in winter/spring 2014, I was on the fence about the whole thing until I saw they were serving 3 Twins ice cream. SOLD! I decided for sure I would do the ride, and Travers convinced me that it made more sense to do the 60 than the 40 (although at mile 30 on that day, I couldn't recall what this logic was). The ride was great but pretty difficult. Almost none of it was flat and we ended up climbing > 4400 feet on already sore legs.

The first rest stop was at mile 30, and they had a few special snacks (see photo).

 Pita slices with locally made goat cheese and fruit jam, as well as just straight up cheese

The roads were pretty desolate and Travers and I were able to ride side-by-side for a quite a bit of it. The only slightly congested part was on highway 1, but the great views made up for it. At one point, Travers said “listen to that”...and it was shotguns again! Luckily, it was a middle-of-nowhere shooting range, and no humans or cows were being shot at (that I know of).  

At the end of the ride, we were treated to the BEST FOOD EVER. Of course, I ate the ice cream so quickly that there is no photo. Instead, here is Travers with some cows after the ride:

Burger with homemade pickles, homemade ketchup, field greens salad, cherry tomato and eggplant salad, and a lemon rice salad (ice cream not shown due to fast consumption)

I also had my first dream about the Alcatraz swim last weekend. Before races, I often have some strange dream about it. In the week before my first 70.3 last year, I had at least 3 nightmares where I was swimming in Lake Merritt (if you’ve seen this lake, you know why this is a nightmare). My dream about Alcatraz was much different. In my dream, my sister was swimming Alcatraz with Travers and me. Ever since childhood my sister has never been concerned about being punctual (in high school I used to threaten to leave the house without her daily). In this particular “anxiety” dream my sister made us late for the Alcatraz and we missed the boat, arriving just in time to watch it pull away. Better than a dream about swimming in Lake Merritt or getting eaten by a shark, I guess. One of these days I’ll publish the recurring marathon dream I used to have.

For the third topic in the title of this post, it looks like we are TEN DAYS AWAY from signing up for our first Ironman. It’s about to get real.