Back in the Saddle

It feels good to be back to full swing after that nasty bug!

Thursday and Friday I did two decent swims. I was definitely slower in the water, but it felt good to be back at it again. And Friday morning was my long run only now coach has me doing short rides before my long runs. The alarm went off at 4 and I got ready to go. My plan was to drive down to work, do my ride and run from there and then start my full day of work. I got to the office around 5 and was on my bike by around 10 after. It actually got light pretty early, so even though I had a light, I didn't really need it that much. I did our "normal" loop from work and tacked on some extra on the bike trail for a total of 19.2 miles in roughly an hour. Nothing too hard to get started. Then I jumped off my bike and headed out for my 2 hour run. My plan called for 20 minutes of warmup and then repeated slightly harder efforts with 10 min recovery. I headed over to the bike trail and went west. I wasn't sure how far I would go, but in the first hour, I made it all the way to the 12 mile mark on the trail. That's about 8.3 miles from the office. I turned around and did the return trip. My legs were really tired by the end, but the run was 16.6 miles in 2 hours. I was pretty happy with that - it was a 7:12 average per mile off the bike. The next day my legs were fairly sore, though, so I know the time off didn't help me.

Then this morning was supposed to be a 65 mile ride followed by an hour run at "somewhat hard" pace. I drove up to Auburn to scope out the bike course. I knew where the transition areas were because I have done some running races there before, so I got up there around 7:15 and was off on my bike by like 7:25. I headed back down the hill toward Rattlesnake Bar park. I got the park and scoped out the boat launch where the swim start/finish is. There is actually water in Folsom Lake! The swim shouldn't be too bad. I'm not expecting a blazing fast time because it appears that past times are not particularly fast when I look up the results. In any case, I turned around and headed back up the hill. The course has ~6000 feet of climbing over 56 miles (they don't call it world's toughest half for nothing!). I made my way back up Rattlesnake road and over to Shirland Tract. There are a couple of steep parts as you gradually make your way back up to Auburn. Once I got up there I reached for my cue sheet/map and lo and behold it was gone! Crap. Oh well. Now I had to improvise somewhat. I knew some of the roads anyway, but I thought I would wing it. I cut over through town and headed up Lincoln Way up into the Foothills. The route was still gradually taking me up and up. Also, I noticed there were painted marks on the road that I could follow for the most part. I decided to try to follow the course. I found most of the roads and only made one wrong turn! There are one or two serious climbs, but mostly rolling gradually up on the way out and rolling down on the way back. I figure if I can do this route in <3.5 hours, that would be a good ride and put me in a good position to see how I can run. Once I got back to the car, I went out for my run and after the first 20 minutes I felt like crap. I think I let myself get dehydrated because I never stopped for additional water, so on top of my Perpetuem, I only had 2 bottles over a 4 hour ride. Not enough. Also, approaching the transition, I chugged some of my Perpetuem which was not smart. I think it was too concentrated in my stomach and since I didn't have water to dilute it, it just sat in my stomach and I got more dehydrated. The run was tough. I was supposed to do an hour, but stretched out 50 minutes and I figure it was about 6 or 6.5 miles. At least I saw some of the course. All in all, it was a decent training day and will give me some piece of mind come race day in 3 weeks.