Saturday Long Ride!

Got up this morning at 4:00 am to have some coffee and breakfast and headed out for my long ride at around 5:30am. I haven't been doing that many super early mornings simply b/c I haven't found it overwhelmingly necessary. With the flexibility I have in my schedule I can usually find time during the day to get my workouts in. Today however we have big family bike-riding plans AND company coming over... so I had to get it out of the way early. I LOVED how quiet it was out. There were literally ZERO cars out on the road so you could really hear the world waking up around you. I started out in all farmland... mostly grass farms and some cattle and sheep. It was pretty funny watching their reactions... I'm not sure that they knew what to think, "Hey! JACKASS! It's 5:30 in the morning... the suns just coming up... why don't you relax?" Pretty chilly to begin with but as you can imagine I warmed up pretty quickly. Hit some rolling hills about an hour in... most of which didn't exceed 8% grade at the most. Next thing I knew I was in Monroe... a "cute" little town with a sorta small-town farmy feel... time to turn around. I headed back on the dreaded Territorial Highway... which is notorious for being a cyclist's deathtrap. Of course by that time it was roughly 7:00am and the traffic was picking up and the pucker factor increased exponentially... although it was still bearable and I only had to spend about 6 miles on the highway. Made it back to my start point with a negative split feeling relaxed and comfortable.

So here's the stats for the ride:

• Time: 3:00
• Distance: 57.7 miles
• Avg Speed: 18.2
  
• Avg HR: 144
• Fuel: 2 x 24 oz bottles Hammer Nutrition's Perpetuem

Overall I'm pretty happy with the ride. To date... that's the longest ride I've ever done. Yeah... so I'm wondering if I'm actually prepared to ride that distance, get off the bike and immediately run 13.1! I'm guessing that I am but I'm also guessing that my dreams of holding a 7 min mile over the course of the 13.1 are just that... dreams. It occurred to me that my days of running really fast might be over. For one thing... in order to be fast at any distance you have to train very specifically for it... so in effect I have gotten slower b/c of cross-training for triathlon. But ya know what? TOTALLY WORTH IT! Jeah jeah jeah. Besides... at this point I don't know JACK about this amazing sport called triathlon. I think that's part of the appeal... I'm constantly learning.

Long run and swim tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be able to get out to Dexter Reservoir for an open -water swim! AwwwwwHELL JEAH...

Breathe....

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