The Last Long Ride
Sorry for the posting hiatus. And thanks for the emails noting your concern. With a company strike looming, I think I’m subconsciously bracing for its impact. I did strike duty once in 1998. It was pretty much the worst possible job imaginable and for 82 hours a week at that. I’m still really hoping that there isn’t a strike or that it’s really short if there is, otherwise all my work that I’ve put in for Wisconsin this summer will have been for nothing. I have over 200 hours of training logged since April. I’m going to be so disappointed if I have to push my race back to next year.
But I digress. I went out yesterday and got my last official long, long ride in of the year. I say long twice because I still have an 80-90 mile ride planned in two weeks, but that’s not long compared to the 112 I did yesterday! That’s right. I went for it yesterday riding the full IM distance since it would be the last long one of my training. And it went really well! Not only did I ride farther than normal, I think that was my fastest paced long ride to date. It certainly helps that the weather was pretty much perfect with it being in the low 80s with little wind. And it helps that I was properly fueled the previous night by some Chipotle and DQ, and yesterday morning by a McDonalds big breakfast platter (read: 1200 calories!!). OK, perhaps I overdid it… or maybe not? All I know is, I wasn’t going to be under fueled and have a death ride like I did the week before. I also took four water bottles out there with me - two with ~850 calories of CarboPro goodness and the other two for water. It was a great day. Total ride time was 5:45:30 for the 112 miles which equates to 19.45 MPH. Add to that a 50 minute 3,000 yard swim in the morning and a post ride 25 minute three mile transition run and it was a very solid seven hour training day yesterday!
I really hope they don’t strike. What’s the saying? “Can’t we all just get along?” :)