Risk & Reward

May 15, 2009 -

I had been dreading today for a bit so it was easy to keep putting its workout off. It was that five hour bike and thirty minute run brick. The risk was continually putting it off in order to avoid having to do it in the consistent shotty, rainy, windy weather as of late. The other risk is of pushing it off too long and having it run into next weeks five and a half hour ride and thirty minute run.

So I made the decision I could push it back no more...Friday....today...was the day. The reward, as planned today was gorgeous! I had to head out before it got warm, but I didn't care, it was sunny and clear.

When I headed out this morning at 7a it was 44 degrees so I threw on some warmer gear. I also loaded up a water bottle with Gatorade on my frame cage, and two with water and carbo-pro for my seat cages. I just bought these new plastic cages for my seat as I had a metal one at Wildflower that was cracked and rattling the whole time......annoying. Problem with these plastic ones....I was only a mile from my house when I saw one fly out onto the road after a bump spilling out everywhere, and the other one was already long gone. I picked up the the empty one and put it back in the cage and was happy to still have my Gatorade.

About a two hours into the run I stopped and bought another Gatorade and a water. I filled up my empty water bottle with water in one seat cage and put the Gatorade in the other seat cage. It was at about four hours into the ride when I realized I had lost both of those too.....damn. I had a half bottle of Gatorade left in my frame cage for the last hour of the ride. I also fuelled up with one power bar at two hours, a pack of powertabs throughout and one powergel at four hours.

All in all it was a good ride. I hit close to 90 miles averaging 17mph. My neck and shoulders were getting pretty tense around three and a half hours and by four and a half hours my neck and shoulders, lower back, wrists and sweet, hot booty were all begging to get off the bike.

I hopped off and sputtered out a three and a half mile run at an 8:40 pace which I was happy with as it involved a bunch of lame hills. After it was all said and done I fed out like crazy, hydrated like crazy and hopped in a car to drive five hours over to Idaho for my sister-in-law's college graduation (congrats Jill, proud of you).

I would say in the future, five and a half hours of working out followed by five hours of driving is less than ideal.

Day 135 Training Log - So there was that little five hour ride and thirty minute run today. Over all it went well, I felt fine after and was happy to break another barrier today of my longest bike to date. I was questioning on the run however...."tell me again how I do this for 26.2 miles after all that?"