cornfield bikin...

Sunday morning:

After yet another strong night of t-storms and heavy downpours of rain I woke-up early to load up our car with our tri-bikes & stuff for K & I to head out to DeKalb, IL for our usual long bike ride together which we choose this week at this staged event: http://www.kish-kiwanis.com/beanzie/general.html "Bikin with Beanzie". We choose to ride the 64 mile loop which works its way through the county roads of cornfields from DeKalb down to Lake Shabbona State Park and back to the starting point at the DeKalb High School. With the overnight cloud cover very low in the air the humidity was 100% thick throughout the ride duration except for the last 90 minutes on the bike ride when the sun finally broke through and baked us till the end of the ride.

As always with our long bike rides together as we train towards the half IM on 8.2.08 Kristen is the lead rider as I follow at least 4 bike lengths back per the USAT no drafting rules but I always make the offer to lead if she needs a break from the wind. K did a fantastic job once again Sunday on our long ride as she led the way from start to finish and picked-up the pace over the last 15 miles of the ride. We both had our bikes and ourselves loaded up with our half IM race day bike portion hydration & nutrition so we only stopped very briefly at two of the rest stops along the way of the ride route. For both of us this course provided a new challenge to us as the course was mainly straight & flat which is a lot different than are other long bike training rides which were hilly compared to this. This course required you to remain focused on your ride since in rarely had any topography changes to it…just cornfields, cornfields and more cornfields as the sun baked upon us.

Once we were done we were done for the day like we had been grilled. Any thoughts of a short run after this tough bike ride dissolved away from our minds as we stopped by our car. We compared our Garmin 305’s to each other, k’s said 66.5 and mine said 67.5 plus our bike computers each showed 67 miles…so 67 miles for the day was the final verdict based on data.

We covered that distance in 4:05:13 which is an average pace of 16.5mph all led by Kristen…great job honey! For me my average HR for the ride was an endurance burn low of 100bpm (was I alive?) with a max HR reaching 122bpm as we climb the bridge over Interstate 88. My average cadence for the day was spot-on at 90rpm with a max cadence at one point of 113rpm to flush out my legs…

Now that was a solid day and weekend of half IM training :-)

b