soggy day...

Sunday morning:

The morning didn’t get off to a good training start as we were suppose to meet a few of Steelhead half IM friends for a 6am swim in Lake Michigan just north of Navy Pier. When I woke-up at 4am that morning it was pouring rain as it continued thru the next several hours. We sent a few e-mails to our friends early saying that we would not be attending the early morning swim due to the continued raining effort by Mother Nature…it’s a shame as we really need to get in the open water swim training as the half IM is about a month away already.

So as I woke-up again at about 7:30am the rain was getting lighter and the sky to the west was getting clearer so K & I decided to figure out where to get in our longer bike ride for the day. We decided to drive-up to a Lake County Preserve area in North Barrington about an hour drive away where the roads are much safer to ride on compared to where we live. We actually didn’t start riding until 10am which is late for us but based on the weather this is what are option was for the day. This area is where I used to do all my longer training rides back in the early to mid-1990’s with the triathlon group I hung out with so I remembered the route even though its been some time since I last rode it. The bike route is pretty hilly (alot more than the Indiana ride we did last Sunday) so that was a training plus for the day but the winds were brutally strong out of the west during the whole ride time.

K held a great pace throughout all of these challenges as we headed northwest towards the town of McHenry and beyond. As we continued to ride west of McHenry the winds got stronger and I noticed the clouds were getting quite dark & gloomy in the direction NW of where we were riding too. We could see raining falling off in the distance from those clouds as we both decided to turn-around and head back to our start point where our car was located. The whole way back Kristen held a fantastic pace especially for the size of some of the hills we needed to climb on our bikes plus the storm clouds were chasing us the whole time also. It didn’t start to rain until we were ~ 2 miles from our car when the clouds opened up on us at a decent rate of rainfall. Then just as we pulled under the pavilion at the Lake County Preserve area the massive downpour started with even stronger winds, a microburst weather climate zone which lasted about 10 minutes…we were soooo lucky.

After that passed we loaded our biking stuff into the car as we ran for 2.1 miles together to semi-salvage a simulated brick workout. The area in the preserve has a nice and rolling hilly limestone path so it was nice to training together during the short run after the bike.

As for the bike ride info we were trying to get in a 3 hour endurance ride but due to the weather our ride time was only 2:22:43 which we covered 37.3 miles for an average rate of speed of 15.7mph and I hit a coasting max speed on a longer downhill at 34mph. My average cadence was at 82rpm which is ok considering the amount of hilly climbing we needed did do but for some reason my HR monitor bpm did not record yesterday during the biking portion but it worked fine during the run portion…go figure.

So at least we were able to salvage part of the day yesterday for some proper triathlon training…plus over the last three Sunday long bike rides we have gotten rained on at somepoint…it’s getting old at this point.

b