Training with a purpose

After the 15k on Saturday, Sunday was dedicated to being my bike day. I really need to bike at least once a week until the time changes and then I will get some rides after work. So I met James and the Cruiser group for our standing 1:30pm ride. Ended up being me, James, Phil, Rick W., Duane, and Rob. Nice size group and James and I had already talked about riding easy at first and then picking it up on the way back in. James was wanting a 2 hour ride for his 70.3 New Orleans training. Sounded good to me.

We decided to do the Mt Carmel/Bethlehem/Mt Tabor loop. Almost 30 miles with a lot of hills and rolling terrain. Of course it was windy. Again, we wanted to keep the pace easy going out. And we pretty much did. Everyone stayed together up until about the last hill on Mt Carmel and Rob fell off. We stopped at the Water Dpt on 31 to regroup and went on out Bethlehem. Just kept a pretty steady moderate pace. Rob decided he would cut his ride short and took a short cut back as the rest of us went on. I knew it was going to happen and after we turned on to Mt Tabor we hit a head wind. It was a good one too. We still all kept on pace though we hadn't started to hammer yet. It was tough pulling, not quite as bad if you were in the draft. Phil came up to pull and asked me if we wanted to hold 20mph and I said sure, we can try. Well, we did till about the first hill, even into a strong headwind. I can tell my hill legs are still not back but its getting better. I took all the hills on Mt Carmel in the big ring going out so its just time in the saddle. Needless to say, we couldn't hold 20 long. 17 was much easier. The wind was brutal.

Eventually we were done, with everyone really picking it up for the last 5 miles. Duane had turned off on Dogwood so James, Phil, Rick and myself all made it back at the same time. I know Rick and I had our tongues hanging out, James and Phil didn't seem near as tired. It was a good ride though and we did what we said we were going to do.

Stats:
28.3 Miles
17.1 mph avg. with head wind & hills
28.8 max
1733 calories
150 avg HR

Monday was a recovery run. My legs were trashed. Between the 15k and the bike on Sunday, I just needed to stretch them out a little. So Annette and I did our lunch run. We decided that we would try to keep it slow, around a 10:20-10:30 pace. Weather was nice, mid 40's, sunny, but again there was wind. This was a great run, I kept the pace slow and felt great. It was actually nice running at this pace with very little effort. I decided into the run that I was going to try to keep my heart rate around 160 or less. 164 had been about my marathon rate last year and that was running probably slower than this. It all worked out good and we did stay close to our goal pace. Recovery run done! Here were the stats:
Total miles - 3.11 - 31:52
Avg pace - 10:15 (very very comfortable)
1-10:21
2-10:27
3-10:09 (picked up the pace on the last block just to stretch the legs)
Avg HR 160


Wednesday is tempo day if we get to run at lunch. Weather is looking good for it, maybe a little warm.