Can you believe I'm actually watching/paying attention to the Tour de France this year? I am still a runner...I swear. The second half of this week proved to be another hot one, but I've acclimated pretty well. This was a week of staying steady with the running and dialing back the bike a little to accommodate a couple of harder runs. I know it's shocking, but I'm trying as hard as possible not to do anything incredibly stupid with training over the next few months.
Monday: Run: 8 miles, easy with the Fed Hill crew
Tuesday: Commute: 18.4 miles total (a little detour)
Run: 8.5 miles total...3 miles @ tempo pace: 5:50, 5:48, 5:45 2 laps easy, then 4x400...70, 71, 70, 69.
First the commute. Since I've quickly become a complete cycling nerd, I now use Strava to track all my rides. It basically uses a GPS enabled device to track the routes you take, and gives you all kinds of stats on your mileage, elevation gain, and if you have the hardware...power and heart rate. People can also create "segments" or specific stretches of road that they consider a good spot to race. Strava will then track everyone's efforts on the particular segments and rank you. The fastest gets to be king of the mountain. This of course, is perfect for a moron like me. So I took a little detour Tuesday afternoon to reclaim a KOM that was stolen from me. I've got a couple to my name, though they are mostly small time. Soon I'm going to start going after some of the better known ones to see what I can do..
Second, the track workout was awesome. It felt so good to finally do a workout and get the legs moving in a non racing setting. I set out specifically to keep myself in check and not do anything crazy this early. It worked pretty well. I've also decided that my tempo work will not dip under 5:40 until at least late September/early October (if ever). This is part of that don't be an idiot streak I've got going...
Wednesday: Ride: 35 miles total, West Side Worlds, yet again. One of the stronger riders out there, Pat was on fire and broke away more than a few times. I could tell this was going to be a fast one. I was smart about not overexposing myself, but I was also starting to realize that I could hang on this ride, even if I did take a few turns leading the pace line. I even helped pull Pat back in on one of the break aways between two of our bigger climbs, so that was a good confidence booster. I ended up getting dropped 25 miles in after getting stuck behind the wrong people, but managed to loop back around and finish strong. Overall, that was probably the fastest ride I had done.
Thursday: Hot as crap out...
AM: Commute: 6.5 miles
PM: ride from work, 30 miles total. It was 95 degrees, I wasn't hydrated going into the ride, and my water bottles got piss warm in a hurry. My legs were also tired from Wednesday. Not a very good day.
Run (PM): 5 miles. By comparison, the run felt a lot better, though I had to deal with some cramping.
Friday:
AM: Run, easy, easy, easy 3 miles
Saturday:
At around 11pm Friday, the state of Maryland was slammed with a really nasty storm that knocked out about 1/3rd of the state's power. I opted for an easy 40 mile bike ride, and went out early to beat the heat, and make time for other important Saturday stuff! Overall, I felt 100x times better than I did on Thursday. There were a lot of downed trees, debris, non functioning traffic lights, a couple of downed power lines, one closed road, and some slick spots, but it didn't take away from the ride one bit. It was however, humid as crap.
Sunday: 5K out at Banneker Park. This was an event to benefit Adventures for the Cure. Since their Wednesday night ride (and the bike in general) has kept me together over these last few weeks, I knew I had to go out there to represent. It was probably 80 degrees at the start, and real humid as I was completely covered in sweat after a 2 mile warm up. The course was crazy, flying downhill for 1.5 miles before turning up to make us climb all the way back to the start.
Splits: 4:55 (yea), 5:25, ~5:55. The splits tell the story. That 4:55 was with holding back. The downhill in this race was steeper and longer than the famed Shamrock 5K. But unfortunately, going back up cost a lot of time. I ended up with a 16:52 and the win. One of the other ridiculously strong AFC riders, Adam was neck and neck with me through the half way point. He tried to take it on the hill, but I knew it was coming so just stayed with him until I started pulling away.
I ran for another 35 minutes afterwards easy to try and get 5ish more miles in.
Compared to the Fiesta 5K I ran in early May, where it was just as hot, but on a completely flat course, I think I ran substantially better here, beating that flat course time by 3 seconds on a freaking roller coaster. A combination of heat acclimation, fresh running legs, and a crap ton of bike miles may be the cause.
Totals:
Cycling: 130 miles
Running: ~34 miles
Next up...Arbutus 10K on July 4th. Should be another hot as crap race, and I hear it's hilly. I can't wait! I'm not doing anything Monday, and will likely just commute on Tuesday and run easy.
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