long bike day in the saddle...

Sunday morning July 6th 2008:

Sunday has become the long bike day for Kristen & I over the numerous weekends for our endurance training in preparation for the Steelhead half IM on August 2nd next month. I was able to find a group (Wheeling Wheelmen) ride that was riding two distances on Sunday; either 50 or 100 miles so we choose the 50 miler group bike ride that left from a NW suburb of Chicago know as Long Grove which we then rode NW to McHenry and back. The ride started promptly at 8am with 10 riders as K & I were the newbie’s of the group and too boot the other 8 riders just returned the previous weekend from an organized 7 day bike event in the mountains of Colorado in the Telluride, Durango and Ouray region for some high altitude work. Everyone was super nice which was great as we made sure we had que sheets in case they dropped us out there.

As always I let Kristen control the pace that felt proper for her bike training for which she once again did fantastic today! The terrain was rolling hills the whole way during the complete ride distance. The humidity, heat and very strong southwest winds were back out in force during this day which made the ride even more challenging. We were able to stay in touch & sight through the opening 15 miles but then they dropped the throttle in their mini-peloton and the next time we saw them was at the halfway rest stop where we all chatted for awhile and off we all went as a group SE to our starting area. It was only a couple miles into the return trip portion and they pulled away from us rather quickly mainly do to the hillyness of the return roadways plus the wind pushing us in the face the whole way back. Kristen pushed on and into this wind the whole way back per her choice since its greater training towards the half IM biking portion where drafting is illegal.

To be honest I was pretty fatigued during the last 15 miles of this ride but I did not let that be known until we were done with the ride. The long weekend of half IM training had did me in bigtime because when we pulled into the parking lot I hopped off the tri-bike and sat in the shade of a big tree trying to cool off in the warm breeze…I was spent at that moment but after a few minutes of relaxing we loaded up all the biking stuff, changed into running clothes as K & I ran together on the hilly Cuba Rd route for a simple brick workout 2.1 miler. Believe it or not the run actual felt good to me, it felt refreshing in a strange way. After the run though when we both stopped we were absolutely wiped out!

Below are my stat’s for the bike ride and run afterwards:

Bike – Time 3:03:xx - 50.3 miles – average speed 16.4mph – max speed 28.7mph – average HR 103bpm – max HR 124bpm – average cadence 91rpm – max cadence 112rpm

Run – Time 19:16 – 2.1 miles – 9:10 pace – AHR 122bpm – MHR 134bpm

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