Week 16 – Saturday

I was starting things back off with a bang today. We were doing a brick consisting of a 50 mile ride, followed by an 8 mile run. This would be my first run since the marathon, two solid weeks ago. I was feeling much better after a few days off, but still have a nagging cough. Nothing like it had been though.
It was an absolutely beautiful morning when we started off from Bardenay’s parking lot in Eagle. Our group consisted of me, Paul, Brent, Ryan, and Todd. We went north on Eagle Rd, and then turned west on Floating Feather. We followed Floating Feather out to Brandon Rd, where we turned north for a short stretch before turning west again on New Hope Rd. We followed New Hope, which later became Foothill Rd for many miles with virtually no traffic through beautiful farm country. We were able to ride side by side most of the route. We reached Middleton Rd and turned north for a few miles before turning west again on Galloway Rd. Once on Galloway we followed this west, over I-84 and to our 25 mile turnaround point. It was already getting warm when we took a break there before heading back. My legs still felt pretty fresh, but I knew we had the second half of the ride ahead of us, followed by that run. You could tell heat was going to be a real factor by then.
We made our return trip reversing our original route. By this time, there we scores of other riders out on New Hope and Floating Feather, which was fun to see.
We reached Bardenay again and locked up our bikes before heading out on our run along the Eagle Greenbelt. As we started off, my legs felt like stumps. I ran alongside Paul. It felt like we were crawling, but we kept having to hold our pace back at first to ensure our legs could make the adjustment. It was really, really warm at this point. Although my legs adjusted and felt fairly strong after about a mile, my heart rate was running uncomfortably high.
We reached 2 miles and had to take a walk break. This was really defeating psychologically, because I knew race day is going to be at least this hot, probably hotter, and everything will be longer than today’s training. Not a good omen for me.
We continued this walk-run routine for the remainder of the miserable @$%&ing 8 miles. The day had started off so well, and now the run had been a real ass-whuppin’. I figure I need to get some runs in this coming week in the heat, or the run portion of the 70.3 will end up being a long, embarrassing walk in front of a few thousand people.