El Tour de Mesa - CycleRoad Race

Less than 2 weeks before this race, I got hit with Bell's Palsy. It came on quickly over the weekend when I had an 80 mile ride on Saturday and a 12 mile run on Sunday. I quickly got on steriods/anti-viral medication and it started to improve, but I couldn't wear my contacts because my left eye was too droopy. I did a 27 mile ride earlier in the week before this race and it was miserable. I wore my glasses and it was so hard to deal with the sun and the constant watering of my eye was annoying. I finally decided to just wear one contact and go with blurred vision in my left eye. It worked out pretty well and I managed to hang on for quite a while. At the top of the Usery climb I was so comforted to hear the sound of gunfire, it meant it was pretty much all downhill from there. Sadly, the winds were still strong and we all had to work pretty hard for the rest of the ride. I managed to make gold status since the cutoff was 3:45. The new Cannondale was a great ride to have out there!

Not much. I couldn't control the Bell's Palsy and the steriods I was on seemed to be elevating my HR. I also knew that since I was registered for Marquee tri the next day, I couldn't destroy myself on the bike today. That wasn't an ideal situation, but I got a half price entry for Marquee from work (Intel) so I wanted to do that too.

Nada.


Crappy vision, Bell's Palsy, medication, losing several days of training in the week(s) leading up to the event.


Garmin data:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/168080085