The F#cking Water

On Saturday Luisa and I ventured out from our friends' place in Superior, CO (NW of downtown and SE from Boulder). It's a great place to start a ride as it's easy access to the Boulder roads which are some of the greatest rolling roads apart from Wisconsin. On our 5hr 45 min route we might have slowed down for about 6-8 stop signs and had to stop at lights 2-3 times, which puts the rides in Phoenix to absolute shame.

As I'm sure you can recall from my last post I was quite frustrated with this stomach issue that I was having while riding and the only thing I could think of was the tap water in Boulder county. Well, at our gas station stop around the 3 hour mark I picked up a "gallon" of Ice Mountain spring water instead of hitting the tap (i say "gallon" because it looks like a gallon, feels like a gallon, but it's only 3.5L or something absurd like that...does that extra little bit of water really make it that much more costly to produce? It's fucking water! but I digress). I was a little nervous about the bottled water because if it didn't work, I would have to scramble around to figure out a new nutrition solution for the biggest race of my life, which is now just 24 days away.

The 4 hour mark came and went, the stomach was holding up as I continued to fuel ever 20min of so. 5 hours and I'm still pushing the pace. 5hrs 45min and we're done, and no stomach issue for the first time since Mt Evans.

The ride was somewhat bittersweet since it did turn out to be just the water. Here I was thinking it was the altitude, my fueling, my hydration; ride after ride would finish horribly and after all of those shitty miles it turned out to be the fucking water. The water...the fucking water! Hundreds of training miles, countless hours in the saddle, diminished by crappy water...are you serious!? Wow, that really pisses me off...

Tomorrow is my last long training ride prior to Ironman Hawaii. One more solitary six, one more period of pain, one last devil day, and one final chance to gain a tick of extra fitness prior to my taper hitting its top gear.