porta potty manifesto...and copperopolis race report

march can wait—let me write about the copperopolis road race.

...for those of you who don't know about the copperopolis road race, it is hilly and the road hasn't been repaved since the probably the new deal.

there were some doubters that i was actually going to do the copperopolis road race. in fact, nice guy, team captain brian peterson sent me the following email in january when i said i was going to do this race:

you are really going to do copperopolis? don't you know there is a hill on that course?

yes, i knew there was a hill on the course! thus began my peterson training, which i discussed in an earlier blog post. i couldn’t wait to cross the finish line and bellow out peterson’s name: PEEEEETEEEERSOOOOOON!!!!

i didn’t so much care if i was first or last, i just really wanted to yell his name at the finish line and get some weird looks.

so m and i woke up early for the race and i made the porta potty stop right when i got there… now, it was a super long porta potty line. i mean, extra long. There were probably 12 porta potties in commission. i couldn’t figure out why the line was long… i mean, i know it was 7:30am, so a bunch of people could have been taking their morning craps… but the line was moving very slowly. especially given how many stalls there were. after standing in line for awhile, i started to notice certain doors weren’t moving at all. [now, please note: these porta poties didn't have the red/green markers on them if you knew if they were open/closed]

at this point, i am about 15 people back, and i get out of line and try the door on the end, which i had noticed hadn’t moved in awhile…

open.

the next one, locked.

the 3rd one.

open.

i started going down the line of porta potties grabbing the handles and yanking them... and 6 were OPEN! there was a bit of commotion in the porta potty line at that point in time.

jesus, people! check the doors!

this happened yet again about 30 minutes later. i went back to the rest room while some of the men’s fields were started and there were 8 people in line. this time i just walk right up and start opening doors, and i demonstrated that 4 doors in a row were open.

at this point, i decide it was going to be a pretty good day. next, i did a very important thing:

thank you, boyfriend, for taking a picture of this. dipshit.

so, i get to the start line and there are only 9 of us. that kind of stinks, but i think if we had a huge field, it wouldn’t have made a difference. by the time of the first climb, we were down to 5. that lap a big dog almost ate us. YIKES! pace was pretty solid, i thought, and when we came through the feed zone to start lap 2, we were just behind the 1/2 women, so that was cool! after that climb, it was just three of us: tyler stewart, the tootsie roll eating pro iron (wo)man triathlete and miss marian jaminson. we rode lap 2 pretty good, i thought. i felt better this lap-- it was pretty cool to be in a small group with a pro-triatlete! i had no clue how long i’d last at this game, so i was having a good time. but, i shouldn't have been fooled by feeling good on lap 2, cause lap 3 i didn't feel so good!

start line... that is probably the happiest you will have seen me all day.

this is us at lap 2, looking pretty funny.

we go through the feedzone and this was probably the highlight of the race. i was a bit loopy at this point…probably should have been eating more (or riding slower, one of the two!) i had my water bottle to throw off, and I think I chucked it a bit too hard and nailed some lady in the gut in the feedzone! OOPS! my friend rainer was on the sidelines and said: “i think she threw that overhand”.

the climb up the last lap was hard for me. when the pavement smoothed out, tyler took off. now if 'she took off,' or i just hit the wall like a big sissy, i couldn’t say. alls I knew is the distance between us was growing at an exponential rate!

check out the sweet pictures from velodramatic. this is our 2nd time up this hill. as you can see here we are all suffering pretty good behind tyler... so you can just imagine the last lap!

marian and i crested the hill and thought for a second we could catch her, so we went as hard as we could (which was probably pretty pathetic at that point), and instead of catching tyler, it was some old guy wearing blue. doh! that last lap is a bit of a blur. all I remember is things that I didn’t think were hills in lap 1 and 2, suddenly became crazy steep pitches. i was so wasted at the finish line, I forgot to yell PEEETEEERSOOOOON, even though michael had the video function on his camera ready for me. rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. so mad!

anyway, long story short is that was hard!

i ate 4 burritos when I got home!

(homemade burrittos... not serious restaurant burritos.)