The Gillens.net

Bike Box	Cyndee at Flower Fields	Flower Fields
Pre-race backpacker	Just before swim start	Sunny Oceanside, CA

This past weekend I traveled to San Diego to see my sister, Cyndee, and competed in my first triathlon of the year, the Ironman California 70.3 in Oceanside, CA.

AA canceled over 200 S80 flights on Wednesday due to some electrical wiring safety issues and this wrecked havoc on my standby travel plans, and thus the only way I could get to Southern California on Wed. evening was to fly into Palm Beach (PSP), 2.5 hours away from my sister’s apartment. I felt really bad making her drive all the way out there, but I really needed to get there on Wed. night instead of Thursday. I made it OK and Cyndee picked me up just fine. She wasn’t even that pissed off like I would have been.  She’s a great sister.

On Thursday, I was forced to wait around most of the day at Cyndee’s apartment for FedEx to delivery my bike box. I couldn’t have picked it up at their facility b/c the huge box would not have fit in her Camry. It finally came around 5pm, and I put it together quickly to make sure nothing got damaged during shipping. Everything checked out OK, and I was happy to have my bike in CA for the first time ever! That evening, we went into Little Italy neighborhood of San Diego and walked around a bit before settling on a nice Italian place for some good carbo loading.

On Friday, I got up early and drove to Mission Bay for a final brick workout before the race. It was really cool to bike around Mission Bay and Beach. I didn’t care too much about getting in much of a the workout as I was just making sure my re-assembled bike rode OK while enjoying the simple pleasure of biking along the beach boardwalk. There is something magical about biking along the beach. It was my first time to ever do this, and I won’t soon forget it

We then drove the 30+ minutes from SD up to Oceanside and went to the expo and packet pickup. Cyndee was kind enough to wait in registration line for me while I chatted it up with some online friends. Following packet pickup, we took a short jaunt over to Carsbad, CA and went to the Flower Fields. This 50 acre field of flower was incredible, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, taking pictures almost every minute! For Cyndee’s sake, I’m really glad we were able to do something new and fun that didn’t involve triathlon.  After stopping for quick lunch at an awesome huge salad bar called Souplantation, we made it back to her place just in time to see UT whoop up on Stanford!

Saturday was race day and I won’t bore you with all the race details, but if you  really want them you can read my full race report here.  To summarize in one sentence: While the ocean harbor swim wasn’t as cold as expected, the hills and headwinds on the bike course tired my legs enough to force me to have a sub-optimal run. Despite some tough mental spots on the bike and run, I’m still happy my overall performance. I’m also happy to have snagged an Ironman Lake Placid (IMLP) slot for July 20th, 2008. This was one of the main reasons I did this race.

I, however, was not the star of this weekend. That award goes to my sister Cyndee. She was very supportive the whole weekend especially on Saturday when she got up at 3:30am with me and then spent the whole day cheering me on at the race; over 15 hours! She put up with me converting her breakfast room into my own personal triathlon staging area. She even slept on an air mattress so I could get a good nights rest. I feel kinda bad that this trip was pretty much all about the race, but I still enjoyed visiting with her and her love and support reminded me how lucky I am to have such a wonderful sister.

Turner Falls Overlook	Sarah over Turner Falls	Turner Falls
David at the Falls	Polar Bear Plunge	David @ Rockledge

Sarah and I took full advantage of our long Easter weekend in 2 major ways: a trip up to Turner Falls on Friday and a “Polar Bear Plunge” on Saturday.

On Friday AM, We drove about 1hr 45 mins up to Turner Falls. We parked inside the park and then I headed out for a 2hr ride in the Arbuckle Moutains while Sarah started a fun hike around the park. The riding was great as I found 2 hills that were about twice as long as anything I’ve found in the Metroplex area. I did about 6 hill repeats of 7 minutes of sustained climbing each. The roads were generally smooth and overall it was great ride. Sarah thoroughly enjoyed herself hiking around the park capturing many of these wonderful pictures. She even found a few ponies to play with. After about 2 hrs, we met back up at the car and enjoyed a lovely picnic in the perfect spring weather. Afterwards, we continued hiking for a couple of more hours so I could have a chance to explore more of the park. It was an awesome day.

On Saturday AM, we met a group of about 15 triathletes for an open water swim in Lake Grapevine followed by another ride. The water was quite cold (~63 degrees) as you could imagine, but I managed better than last weekend when I did the same thing. I swam almost 1.5 miles and this was the perfect practice that I needed for my 70.3 mile triathlon next weekend in the San Diego area. Afterwards, we changed out of our wetsuits and into our biking clothes and headed out for a 34 mile ride. It was the first time on the Flower Mound country route for many of the riders and they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Sarah was very kind and gracious to lead the more in-experienced riders so that I and other veteran riders could ride our own speed. She’s the best and it wouldn’t have been the same without her.

A great weekend.