13.1 in a Brick

Man, I need to get caught up again. Just when I thought I had these updates taken care of, a week goes by and I'm behind again. So, here goes.

I'll start off with today. I had a very successful training day. VERY successful! I had another bike/run brick scheduled for this morning. But as opposed to the previous two weeks' events, I had no intention of raising my cycling mileage. The 52 miles I did last week were long enough. I wanted to do a run focused brick. So with that in mind I again rode from Strongsville to Brecksville and back. That's a 30 mile out and back route which is simple and light on traffic. And it has hills. I need to work on hills. And when I say hills, I mean HILLS! I mean, it's not everywhere in Ohio that you can find 600 feet of elevation change. There are some very nice hills located in the Brecksville Reservation of the Metroparks.

I ended up riding 30.6 miles in a little over two hours. That's a 14.9 mph avg. Which isn't good unless you consider I wasn't riding flats today. Some of those hills hurt bad!

Once back at the parking lot, I loaded up the bike, packed my fluids, and set off on my run. I headed towards Berea today for something different. Three miles out and back gave me six, so two more out the other directions would give me an even ten. But I felt good today and decided to go all the way to Rt. 82. By the time I reached the parking lot again I was just into mile 12. But I had told myself that if I reached 12, I would just do laps around the park until I hit the half marathon distance of 13.1. And that's what I did. It took me 1:43 and some change to do it, but I completed my longest run after biking ever. And that's as far as I need to go this year. I felt good pretty much the entire run which was great. I was worried about how I would feel running that far with tired legs. I'm beginning to thing that won't be too much of a problem.

The problem is going to be that swim. And swimming is what I did Friday afternoon. I did the full 1.25 miles of Steelhead in 1:14. That certainly is not good in comparison to good swimmers, but it would have me done with the swim before it gets cut off. I won't be racing other athletes that day, I'll be racing the clock.

Thursday night Ladd and I hit the trails in Hinckley with the regular trail runners for another 15 mile loop. We did a lot more single track trails than normal, which was nice. But we really picked up the pace when we got on the larger gravel paths. That hurt. I was more tired than usual that night. We did the circuit in 2:45 with only minor stops along the way. What a terrific opportunity for a mid-week long run.

That's all for today. I'm still very tired from this morning and will probably hit the hay early tonight. Well wishes to those I know who are currently vacationing in exotic locations such as Hawaii and the Canadian Rockies. We still need to wait till August for our break from real life. But I'm sure it will arrive sooner than we think it will.