Monday, May 17, 2010

I am a litterer!

Yesterday I went out for a little ride and really had no idea of how far I was going to go or how it would go. So, after I crawled out of bed at the crack of 10:30, had a little breakfast I hopped on the bike and headed east. For whatever reason (perhaps it was the 11 hours of sleep) I was feeling good and just kept riding until I came upon Manor. When I pulled into the Dollar General on the outskirts of town, I looked at my watch and it had only been about an hour and 15 minutes to get out there. Once I got home I found out that my route was a little over 21.5 miles. While this might not come off as astounding speed, I was very happy with it. The better part of the first half of that journey was through Austin and involved a fair amount of stop signs and traffic lights. Perhaps I am being a tad optimistic, but I think I was probably averaging over 20mph once I got out on the open roads. (20mph or greater is my arbitrary barometer of what I need to do at a minimum in my races.)

After my last race, I realized that I do not spend near enough time in the big chain ring and then shift way to early on hills and kill all of my speed. This ride I tried to not be afraid of dropping it into the big ring and gain the speed whenever I had a chance. The other real tri geek tidbit of this is that I mixed two bottles of Pure Sport Workout drink. It is an electrolyte powder that also contains protein in it. The initial taste is a tad different than what you expect from a lemon-lime drink, not really sure how to explain it, but it didn't take too long to get used to it. But it certainly seemed to keep me going for the duration of the ride. I took one Hammer Gel in Manor and then one when I got back home. Somehow I managed to make the return trip in just about the same time. Though as I was sitting at the light at Wickersham and Riverside I realized that I was one water bottle light from what I started with. Crap! I littered somewhere along the route. I AM A LITTERER!!!!

Oh well, as I dragged my guilt ridden butt into my house I realized that I still had a fair amount of energy. I had thought about making this a brick workout, but was not really thinking I would feel as good after the bike. So I grabbed my fuel belt and two water bottles and headed out. As I took off I decided that I would try to run down to the hike and bike trail and do the four mile loop and head back. It is about a mile and a half down to the trail so it would be a 7 mile run. My surprising amount of energy managed to stick around until I crossed the river at I-35 and reality started to catch up with me. By the time I left the trail and started heading back to my place, reality decided to really put me in my place. It felt like the end of a race just to get back to my place.

Alas I made it home. After a short stint in the pool to soak, I started to feel back to normal. I did try to wave to the other runners on the trail, but apparently an overly sweaty dude decked out in Lycra is even more frightening than just a typical waving runner. Oh well, I still tried and I will continue to do so. So - run friendly!

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