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.