Good Training Weekend

Although I'm now left with what looks like an iron burn on my back, I had a great training weekend.

Saturday morning I had a good 15 mile run with Shellie and the gang. I hadn't blogged about it, but last Saturday in Austin I had a minor (major) scare with my right foot. I was fearing I had a stress fracture, or the beginnings of one, around mile 13 of that run. The top of my foot hurt, bad. Had I been anywhere near any place that I could have gotten a ride back to Jon and the car, I would have, but the only way back was to hobble/run/walk 3 more miles. It had hurt in the same place the weekend before, again coming on around mile 10 of my long run. It felt like my shoe was rubbing, but taking off the shoe did nothing to take away the pain...I've also been running in those asics for a few years now so it would be weird to assume they were the problem. Anyway, after not being able to move my foot/toes after the run last weekend, the pain slowly went away just as it had the week before. I got it checked out and it appeared to be some sort of soft tissue issue - not sure what, but as long as I am not on the brink of a metatarsal stress fracture (common in Newton shoe wearers), I'm good to go. So anyway, long story short, I wore the Newton's for my entire 15 mile run this weekend and it went well. I've been using Flector prescription antinflamatory patches on my foot for a few days, so either that or the Newtons or a combination of both proved to be good as I completely forgot about my foot until I drove home and remembered "hey! it didn't hurt!"

After being lazy and totally uninspired by the drizzly weather Jon and I finally dragged ourselves to go swim Saturday afternoon. I did a whopping 1600yds, but it was my third swim of the week so I was good with that. I'm glad we finally went when we did, because there is no way I can even think I'd go swim after a 100+ mile ride...I know myself too well.

Sunday morning brought by far the most "adventure" of the weekend. Robin and I did the Tour de Pink century ride out of Prairie View A&M. It was still dark when we got there, but we'd been hearing reports of awful weather all around us. We just went on as planned and figured the ride organizers would let us know if it was not safe or if the route was going to be changed/shortened, etc.

Robin and I rode together for the first 45-50 miles or so and really did not see many other cyclists. It was weird. They all either stayed in bed when the weather was bad or somehow left at 7 on the dot when we were let go at 7:05 (you line up at the start and are let go in waves). The first 50 miles or so were uneventful except for the ominous skies all around us and the lovely "shooting incidents" at mile 35. We were riding along, minding out own business, when all of a sudden "bang! bang!" I look over and see a guy with a shotgun (or rifle - any long gun is the same to me, but Jon corrected me...I still don't know which is which) about 100 yds off the road in a field shooting birds. Awesome! He was at least aiming away from us so I was not quite as worried. Then "bang!bang! bang!"- more shots, from all over the place! Awesome - I see about 10 cars lined up and guys scattered throughout a field shooting birds...as they were flying over US! One guy was just whipping around in circles shooting wherever he could. Cool. We made it out of that alive, obviously, but it certainly gave us something to laugh about for a while.

I got a flat around mile 55, just out of earshot of Robin, so that was the end of our time together (but TOTALLY fine...she is sooooooo much faster than I am). Of course it was on the rear tire and right after the skies burst open. Oh well, I went about changing it and took my sweet time to make sure I did everything right. A volunteer was on hand to help out as well. I did have a very hard time getting the tire dislodged from the rim, and then getting the actual tube unstuck from the tire. Can you say I've ridden on some hot roads over the last few months? The volunteer mechanic guy said he'd never seen one stick that bad. Go me.

Anyway, back on the bike and heading for the southern-most point on the ride at mile 65. By this point we'd been riding in a headwind for a good deal of the first 65 miles. I was thrilled at the thought of having mostly a tailwind on the way back. Not so much. The wind turned from SE to NW right about the same time I turned from S to N. AWESOME! By this time the sun was also out - in a big way...and I did not have sunscreen on. At mile 69 my garmin shut off so I had no idea of mileage, pace, heart rate, cadence...of anything useful. Oh well. I knew I had about 30 miles to get back and knew where to go so I just settled in for the long haul...into the wind. Safe to say my attitude was not great at this point, but as soon as I finished I was able to look back and say it certainly was a good training ride. No drafting whatsoever to be had because there was NO ONE around most of the ride, and a headwind for well over half the ride, oh, and a tire change experience too.

I had one last little "roadblock" at mile 98. I was soooo close to being done, and the last ~3 miles were of course on the worst-surfaced road of the whole ride, but I had to first stop and wait for the cows to cross the road. I think I slowed down the process too because the cows kept stopping to look at me.

101 bike miles in the books for the weekend...that is my 5th 100+ mile ride in six months. I know some people do that many in just one or two months, but I just do not totally love biking enough to do that. The thought of just 3-5 more 100+ rides in the next two months is very nice. It is also nice that after IMFL, it will be a looooooooong time before I have to do another. Maybe one of these days I'll get comfortable enough on my bike and like biking enough to "want" to do century rides just for fun, but I'm not holding my breath.