Last week of August

The last week of August was busy and I didn't get a chance for many updates so here they are.

Thursday
I'm almost back being a duathlete again. Started the day with an early morning 2.7 mile run in the neighborhood. It was very humid and the run sucked. I found out latter that everyone pretty much had the same thing on their runs. Had an 11:02 average between walk breaks. Probably could have pushed it more but I was babying the foot plus the lungs didn't like it at all.

Thursday night Annette and I met James, Brenda, Heather, Cindy, Phil and Mark for a quick out and back bike ride from South Side at 6:30pm. Well, this turned in to a complete hammer fest. Who was leading and who was killing who. Pretty much how it goes on the bike. One person takes off and the others try to keep up until that person drops and then someone else hammers away to see how long they can hold on or how many people they can lose. Mark took the lead tonight and I figured it was payback from the last time I rode with him when I spanked them at the beginning. Its all fun though. We had a good fast group, Mark, James, Heather, Cindy and me. The others rode fast too but they were not crazy enough to try to hold our pace. SSE to Furlow was fast. We drafted and changed positions a few times and when we hit the store we had held a 20mph average. There was wind too and it wasn't the helping kind. We thought maybe we would have a tail wind going back. Wrong. I missed catching the wheel when the fast group pulled out so I had to pedal it back without the aid of any drafting. The fast group looked like they just kept getting further and further away but in reality they were not that far away, but too far for me to catch them. Again, the wind didn't help us at all. I guess it must have been a cross wind because it was almost harder going back. I know my speed dropped some. Still ended up with 16.3 miles and a 19.2 average mph. I'll take it!

We are thinking about making this a regular ride, or maybe I should say torture to make us faster. Only problem now is that we are starting to run out of daylight sooner.

Saturday
First off was the Clear Mountain 5k. I only showed up for this one because it was a championship race and I wanted to make sure the men had a team. I didn't plan to race it, still babying the foot and I knew I could run it slow. So that's what I did. Ran with Tim and Bob most of the time. It was Tim's first 5k and I told him to race it and he did finally run on and leave us. Bob and I stuck together through about 2.5 miles when he finally went on. I just slogged it out. Nothing spectacular. No PR's. No personal worsts either so I guess that was good. I finished with a 31:54 and a 10:17 pace. I really thought my pace was much slower. After not running for 9 weeks it sure felt slow. If not for my injury this could have been my PR race and I would have probably been in the 25 minute range. Good flat course so we had lots of PR's. Maybe next year for me.

After the race we were off to bike around 50 miles. It was Vicki's birthday so this was her annual birthday ride. We were riding from the River Trail to Sonic in Mayflower. We had a large group of bikers, probably close to 15 at least. As usual there are breakaways and hammer fests and today was no different. I just rode. Had a easy ride to Maumelle then one of the guys pulled in to Riders Ready to get a water bottle. I guess when he did one of the lead bikes turned in the next driveway and when he did the bike behind him went down. Not sure if the guy hit his wheel but I think that's what happened. The guy flipped over his bike and landed on the pavement hard. Luckily he was not hurt. He did crack his helmet and had just a little road rash on his elbow. I had more when I did a drop and flop but I'm sure he was sore the next day. It could have been worse.

Then Rock, Bailey and Phil had evidently made a wrong turn on the River Trail so I ended up dropping back and waiting on them some. Annette called a little while later and told me they were on Carnahan Drive and Vicki had a flat. So I waited some more. Finally Rock, Bailey and Phil come riding by. I stopped at the 365 intersection and waited on Annette and it wasn't long and they were there.

Then it was on to Mayflower. Rolling hills all the way. Some nice downhills and a couple good uphills. I think I pulled a lot, finally David came up and said let me pull a while and you can rest. I couldn't believe the difference from pulling to being in the draft. We finally got to Sonic and all had some food. The group sort of split up after that. A few left then another group left. Then it was our little group. I pulled and led almost to Palarm Creek. Rock moved up and pulled some then. We hit one of the big hills going back and Lisa M. and Gary from Searcy passed us like we were sitting still. They kept hammering and we couldn't catch them. The ride back was pretty uneventful. It wasn't easy. It had gotten hot and we were wearing down on the hills. Partly because the run before the bike. Some raced it hard.

By the time we got back I had logged 49 miles, I wasn't worried about adding one more. I still had a bike average of 16.1 mph which I guess is not bad on the trail and on those hills. We really need to work more as a group on our pacelines. We could all be faster then.

Sunday
Had to do something while I was thinking about Gary doing Ironman Louisville. So around 1:30 I took off in the neighborhood for a one hour ride. I figured I would count this one as heat training. It was sunny and windy. Pulled out 17.2 miles in an hour, some of which included stops for traffic. I had a head wind in one direction and a little bit of a tail wind in the other so it evened out.

Labor Day
figured I would go ahead and add this in even though its September now. Annette and I met the group at 7am and I ran 5 miles. It wasn't pretty but it was the longest single run I have had in 9 weeks so I was happy about that. The humidity was terrible. We were all soaking wet when we got done. Average pace wasn't very good, just an 11:17 but hey, that gets me under a 5 hour marathon! I could walk afterwards and my foot was not in severe pain during the run. I iced it afterwards and it is a little sore but that comes with the territory.


Happy Labor Day everyone!!