Saturday, April 18, 2009

A Little Whipping

Today my "Aunt" Heather came up so we could do a long ride together and she could whip me into shape. (Ok, that's not the real reason, she just wanted to do it for fun and to get ready for Little Red Riding Hood, but she did do a little bit of very nice whipping) My training plan just says:

Bike: long bike, if using aero bars , try to get settled in and maintain aero position throughout ride. If you can't maintain same power/speed as nonaero position, make mental notes of further adjustments to make post-ride.

Run: 30 minute post ride recovery run at RPE 2

It doesn't really say how long of a long bike ride to do, but we decided to shoot for 4 hours. We went up my usual route through Bountiful and Farmington and into Kaysville. Heather really does make me push harder. Sometimes I would start just looking around at the scenery and loose focus, then I would see her just plugging away so I'd get back into it. Just like when we ran together, I thought, "I'm not going to be able to keep going at this speed, but then I end up doing it!" I'm really happy that I was able to keep up with her because she kicked my butt in the last tri we did together.

Pete mapped out this whole ride for us that ended up at Antelope Island, and I memorized like 5 streets (Shepherd, Smith, Angel, Gentile, Bluff - yep 5), but we only made it to Angel. We took a little break at a park there, used the bathroom, went down a few slides (not really, but we did think about it, just like we thought about stopping to get eclairs when we saw a sign for them, or stopping in at an open house at this really nice house, or buying a bunny, but then we decided that $10 was a little much for a bunny and kept riding), fueled up then headed back. We were really hoping the wind would be with us on the way back because we had a head-wind for a lot of the way up, but it seemed like the wind was still going against us! Is there a scientist out there who can explain to me how this can possibly happen?

Maybe the wind was really with us, though, because we made it back in an hour and a half. Our total distance was 55 miles with an average speed of 15.3 mph and our total time was 3:35. It was a good ride. We were hurting by the end of it though!

Coming home is so nice after a long ride like that. Of course, when we got home, we just changed our shoes and started running. It was really hard at first. My legs were really sore. We had pushed it pretty hard, and there are some good hills in that ride! But, after 10-15 minutes, I was feeling OK. Not great, but OK, like maybe it will be possible to keep running for 5 or 6 hours like that. Or maybe not. Ug! Heather was like, "This is going to be a hard marathon!" Too true. I will just plan on taking it slow, though, just one foot in front of the other. Anyway, we probably did 3 miles. We were doing a little faster than 10 minute miles, so that's pretty good after a hard 55 mile bike ride.

My legs are pretty sore and my knees hurt too. I've got my compression socks on. I think I'll take some Ibuprofen, get an ice pack and go to bed.

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