Week 11 - Wednesday

Ryan, Paul, and I met up for a ride/run brick this evening, planning on a 25 mile ride followed by a 4 mile run. The weather was perfect when we headed out from my place to meet up with Rick, who was doing a 35 mile ride, at Hero’s Park. From Hero’s, we headed to Chinden to take the usual Joplin route. Traffic was heavy on Chinden, but Paul and I made fast crossings with ninja-like precision. Ryan and Rick on the other hand, seemed to be waiting for a crossing guard to appear out of nowhere. Once they finally got across, we were rolling again.

We made great time on the way out, staying around 20mph on average. As we approached our turnaround point for a 25 miler, we decided to join Rick for the full 35 miles. This took us through Middleton, where we got chased briefly by a large dog no one saw coming. Paul was the one the dog targeted, but he narrowly escaped without becoming a chew toy. We continued through town and further north to the intersection of Middleton Rd and Old Middleton Rd at exactly 17.5 miles. We stopped briefly there for a drink and Gu, before flipping around and heading back to Meridian.

There was a front moving in as the evening went on, so we had a headwind out of the southeast on the way back, but it wasn’t too bad and the temperature was perfect. We got back to Meridian and split off from Rick at Ten Mile and Chateau. We got back to my house in 2 hours, 6 minutes with an average pace of 17.5mph. We then made our transition to running shoes. I asked Paul to hold up my bike while I opened the garage door to allow us to stash our bikes inside, but once inside I got so preoccupied with changing shoes etc that I left him out there holding it! He, uh, pointed it out to me though when I came back outside…

Once we were ready to go, we started off on our run with the usual log-like feeling in the legs. Better than last week though. Within a half mile or so they felt fairly normal. At the one mile mark at Tully Park, Ryan took off like a shot. I think it had something to do with running past all the softball players and spectators in his snug Tri shorts.

We made our return trip and arrived back in 33 minutes and an average pace of 8:22 for the 4 miles. Ryan’s was faster, but this is my blog, he can write his own, right? One where he pretends to arrive on time for stuff…

It was a great workout, and it was good to get another brick accomplished. I plan on doing those at least once a week for the remainder of the training plan.