Tuesday, August 30, 2011

The Wedding Weekend of No Training and Waterfalls and a Hurricane

Knee out of commission? = No training

Wedding weekend? = No training

Enjoying not training? = No training

I went up to Rochester, NY this past weekend to see my running buddy, Lisa, get married to a mountain biker. *GASP!* I kid kid. I lent him one of my old road bikes last year, so technically speaking, he is a roadie. She is as well (I can take credit for getting her onto the bike). It was a perfect match wedding. I mean, just look at the wedding cake!


And for the wedding favor? A cowbell. I almost go a blister on my finger from ringing the damn thing so much to get the bride and groom to kiss. Totally beats dinging glasses with forks.


I really like Rochester. Glad I didn't go to school there (I looked at RIT), but the training terrain there is pretty nice. Lake Canandaigua is nice, including an AWESOME German restaurant called Rhineblick. I got the Weiner Shnitzel with a fried egg over the top! Holy GOD that was good!

Those are not worms. That is Spatzel
Can't remember what it is called, but I shall call it YUMMY!

We also can't forget that the one, the only, the super badass trichick Alexa "Two Ironman in one year isn't enough for me" Harding @ JustKeepSwimming lives there. Met up with her at Starbucks Sunday morning while Hurricane Irene's winds were blowing. Second time I have met her in person, and I guess the second time I lured her with the promise of sugary items? Hhhhhhmmmm......I guess my creepy blogger status is preserved? I think we chatted about ZIPP wheels and carbon bikes for a good 15 minutes. We are total tri nerds....also, we talked about what happened to Google+. Is anyone actually using it? The group video chat feature was cool, but a bit of a novelty...anyways, follow her on her journey towards tackling her 3rd Ironman, and 2nd Ironman in 10 weeks.

Since the hurricane blew out power and closed all roads from Rochester to White Plains (darn!) I had an extra day. Since we were so close to Niagara Falls, we took a detour west and saw them in person finally. So cool!

DAYAM!

I got soaked!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWW!!!

They need one of these at the start of an Ironman

Then I drove 6.5 hours home. Blah. The hurricane's aftermath only rerouted me once, but it wasn't bad. Soooooo, did you know that the Adirondacks, especially Lake Placid, Keene, and Wilmington got NAILED with record amounts of rain? Just look at these photos of what the flooding did!

This is at the intersection of Rt 73 and River road on the bike and run course. (source)

WTF?!?! It looks like someone peeled the asphalt off of the ground! This is 1-2 miles down River Road on the run course. I got the "runs" on this section (source)

Um? That is NOT an optical illusion. Half the road is now the river.

There was a bridge that went across this dam! I ran to it during the 12 mile trail run at my coach's training camp in June (source)
Man, this saddens me so much! I mean, a freaking hurricane destroyed the area surrounding Lake Placid! Lake Placid is soooooooooooo far INLAND!!!

I hope they can rebuild quickly up there because even though I won't be racing in Placid next season, believe me, I'll be up there once or twice for some training in that area because it is so epic.

22 comments:

  1. Thanks for the shout out! Your creepy blogger status has been cemented! I'm glad we got to meet up and talk about bikes, training, wheels, Ironman, etc. I'm also glad you liked Rochester.. I'm rather fond of it to tell you the truth. And I cannot BELIEVE how hard Lake Placid was hit.. it makes me sooooo sad. :(

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  2. Those pics are nuts man.

    SHould have told you to go to Nick Tahoe's while you were up in Rochester. I went to Oswego a good 3-4 hours to the East of Rochester and went there quite a bit. Great city.

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  3. Google what? Yep it was cool while it last. Facebook has already stolen some of their ideas for when you post a status update.

    The picture of the road peeled up is crazy!

    Creepy bloggers unite!

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  4. Wow that is some crazy road damage!

    Looks like you had a great time.

    Google + has gone the way of Google Buzz.

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  5. That's some crazy hurricane damage. It's sobering to see where something used to be that you know personally. Niagara falls is always amazing. That cowbell is a great idea as a party favor.

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  6. Crazy damage for sure!

    I haven't wanted to train either.

    COOL about IMMT 70.3 BTW (I just read the previous post) Got to get my name in for that one!

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  7. Fine, I will ask it, "When are we going to hear about you getting married?"

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  8. Oh wow - those pictures are crazy. It's hard to believe that upstate NY/New England had so much damage.

    I love the cowbell - your friends definitely know what makes for a good wedding!

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  9. yeah... typically they will put layers of pavement down to save money from ripping it up and repaving... looks like it delaminated and floated the top layer away.

    Tons of $$$ to repair all those areas though. A LOT of bridges were taken out by rising flood waters.

    Wish I knew you were up there, could have met up and gone to the falls together. We went last year, totally cool place. We shut our phones off in Canada though... too much $$$ for international data packages haha.

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  10. Wow, those are some crazy pictures of damage.

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  11. what a trip!
    awesome pics of NF....but not awesome in LP
    get well

    D

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  12. Holy smokes! That is nuts!!!!!! Thanks for sharing those pics!

    Glad you had a great weekend away and well done getting the bride and groom on the bike! :)

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  13. ZIPP WHEELS OMG. carbon is for creepers. i don't even know.

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  14. Glad you had a fun weekend! It's always good to have an excuse not to train and have a great time in the process. Also, it does look like you were eating worms. Yum.

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  16. Wow you have some amazing pics from this weekend, Niagara Falls looks great! I've always wanted to go there.

    Those are some crazy pics of the Hurricane Irene destruction, especially that river flowing right through a road!

    About Google+, just today facebook announced that you can post status updates to different friend groups, basically stealing Google+ idea. I never joined Google+ in the first place, I'd rather sit on the sidelines for a while to see if the site implodes, and it seems like it almost already has.

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  17. That damage is amazing. Literally, the road just peeled away?

    That wedding sounds awesome - cowbells? Genius!

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  18. I love the cowbell idea! How cool is that???

    Wow...those are some amazing pictures of the hurricane damage! Crazy!

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  19. I hadn't even considered that Placid was affected by the hurricane! I'm glad y'all raced weeks ago, but I hope they get everything there back to working order both for the people who live in and around that area and for all the other purposes it serves.

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  20. What craziness! I heard about the damage in LP but hadn't see it. Several friends in NY are still without power. Going to take awhile to get that straightened out.

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  21. Saw all that damage when we were up there this week. Poor Keene, they got slammed. Very sad to see. It would have been nice if the hotel had told us we'd have trouble getting there when I asked. I complained myself into an upgraded room though right on the lake.

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