Two a day training and white-knuckle riding
I woke up Sunday morning planning to ride about 30-40 miles give or take. Several things worked against me from the get go. The first being I slept in until almost 8am. (Which by the way was awesome). We had to meet my parents and my great uncle for breakfast at 9:30 am so by the time I got up, cycling before breakfast was out of the question. I further procrastinated until it was about 8:30 and then I threw on my shoes and headed out for a 3 mile run. It was really muggy but I ran a respectable 7:24/M pace. Then we headed to breakfast at the world famous Village Inn.
After a fun breakfast with 10 of my near and distant family members we headed to the AT&T store. Shelley has been wanting a new phone/uber-device and had been trying to decide between the Blackberry Curve and the Tilt. I voted for the Curve as I have one and never have any problems with it, and it is quite simply the best device for email, which is her primary use-case. It was failing the “Coolness dance-off” with the Tilt, but ultimately she broke down and went with logic and we got the Curve.
Then we headed for our yearly picture of Christopher in the bluebonnets on the side of the highway. They hadn’t really come out that much this year but we Shelley persevered, found some, and we made Christopher take his photos. This year was much better than the year he is crying in all the pictures. Haha.
We returned home and Christopher wanted to mail a letter so he rode his bike to the mailbox with me chasing him. The weather had been sketchy and looked like rain so I didn’t want to go on a super long ride and get stuck in a monsoon, and also Shelley has a big project coming up so by the time I got around to riding it didn’t seem right to go on a 2-3 hour ride.
So I headed out on 620 again, hoping to get 15-20 miles in, and if at all possible avoid the wind demons from Thursday. No such luck as it was horribly windy again but I stuck through it. Going down the hill towards the dam between Lake Austin and Lake Travis the cross winds were literally moving my bike over towards the guard rail, I started braking and holding on super tight. I was white knuckling the ride and saying things out loud to myself like “Don’t fall”, “Don’t crash, don’t crash”, and once I made it to the bottom: “Whew!”.
I then turned around and still somehow was going into the wind. It didn’t seem fair. But hey maybe it will make me stronger. So I rode back through the gale and into my neighborhood. Now somehow I had escaped the wind and so I decided to add the final 3 miles to make it a 20 miler. I finished 20 miles at 16.2 mph. Not bad considering how windy it was on the way out. I’ll upload the elevation chart tomorrow; don’t feel like messing with it tonight. I was able to get up to 30 mph at some stretches when the wind died down a little and that felt really good. The 10 mph into the wind had felt less good.
After returning home Christopher wanted to ride his bike some more and so we did. He then said let’s do the co-pilot again. So I thought, hey three-a-day training! Just what I need. We jumped back on the co-pilot and made it 1.75 miles before he decided it was time to call it a day. We returned home and he decided that perhaps a ride to the park on his bike would be in order. I almost didn’t, because I have a lot of work to catch up on, but he looked so hopeful, and I will be on the road a fair bit the next few weeks so I decided we should go.
It is really exciting to watch him grow as a bike rider; he now will fire down hills that previously he would get off and walk the bike down. I like seeing his confidence grow, although I am dreading the day of the first crash and wonder how far back it will set us. But I’m sure he’ll work through it anyway. I am really looking forward to the day that he can ride his bike while I run (I am sure Shelley is also looking forward to this day of piece and quiet).
So that brings the weekly totals to:
27.5 miles running
35.75 miles biking
Which is the first time since November of 2004 that my cycling mileage is higher than my running mileage. Maybe I’ve got a shot at that Ironman thing. After all I’ve got … 83 days until race time. Gulp!
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[…] I’m not, I’m still at 18 so sue me). My last ride was on March 30th and it was slightly stressful. But today the wind wasn’t too bad and I was able to get up to 35mph going down some hills.