Recovery? Ride

After the Chinook Olympic race on Saturday it was time to keep rolling on the road to Ironman.  That meant that a recovery ride was on the schedule!  How about a nice, easy 4 hour ride?  We rode out Highway 8 to Bragg Creek, then out towards Elbow Falls, aiming for a 100K ride.  My legs were feeling great!  Had I really raced the day before?  The last time I rode this route my legs were yelling at me on every uphill, this time I barely noticed those uphills.  Perhaps part of the reason for that was the great tail wind we had on the uphill out of town?

For this ride I carried my Infinit bike formula plus I also carried some sandwich wraps.  Kelly has turned me on to this concept – sandwich meat (turkey, ham), some cheddar cheese, all rolled in a corn tortilla.  We stopped in Bragg Creek an hour in and I had my sandwich.  We also ran into Angie out there so I was able to chat with her a bit about my race quickly.

The ride out to Elbow Falls was busy.  It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon so there were plenty of drivers on the road.  After we turned around the road got even busier with massive RVs as they vacated the campgrounds.  Some of them were so large and there were some crazy drafts off of them as they blew past us.

We also managed to see some great sights along the way – a deer and a group of wild horses including two foals!  Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me though.  At first I thought they were horses that had gotten loose and were crossing the highway, but the girls later confirmed that they were wild.

The head wind on the way back was wicked…  I was really tightening up between my shoulder blades.  I had to stop and stretch it out, but otherwise the ride went well.  Thanks to the wind our 100K ride was a bit short of the 4 hour goal, but we called it good for the day.

After the race I started noticing that I had some painful spots on my neck that were turning really red.  Check this one out: Wetsuit bite from Saturday’s race?

Going Long

Thursday was my long run day – 2 hours!  My number one favourite thing to do for long runs is to run from my house into work.  It is about 12.5 miles in and it helps me to get that long run out of the way nice and early.  I dropped a bag of clothes and toiletries off at the office on Wednesday.  In the evening I prepped my nutrition.  I’ve tested out Infinit’s single serving Run formula before and it works pretty well.  I just drink that and don’t worry about hauling gels with me.  I fill up a Camelbak with the Infinit and left it in the fridge.

Thursday morning my alarm rang bright and early.  I hopped out of bed, checked the weather (11C – warm!) and put my run gear on.  My route from home to work is hilly.  244 feet of climbing, 536 feet of descending.  The majority of the climbing seems to happen in the first few miles of the run and it took a good 4 miles before my legs actually realized that we were supposed to be running.  They just weren’t getting into the groove and they were tired.  Then things were good until about 1.5 hours and then my legs were just ready for this run to be over.  The only way for the run to be over was to get to work though, and I wasn’t walking….so trudge, trudge, onwards to work.  Painfully slow.  But the run got done!  I made it into work, grabbed my bag of clothes and a guest pass to the gym in the basement of my office and that was it.  It felt good to have the run done.  Shortly after getting to the office it started to rain, so I was definitely happy that I missed the rain!

On Friday I took the day off of work to meet up with my IMC partners in crime, Tara and Kelly.  Tara was racing a sprint on Saturday and had instructions to ride 120K the day before.  Kelly and I both offered to take the day off of work to keep her company.  We decided to ride from Calgary out west and then south towards Bragg Creek, then on to Elbow Falls.  The route is mostly flat until after Bragg Creek with just the occasional hill.  Every single baby hill my legs were screaming at me.  I felt good on the flats but the hills were just draining.  And apparently my brain wasn’t capable of doing math either.  For some reason or other I kept thinking I was riding 62 miles (100K), but I really needed to go for 74 miles.  I was so wrong on where I thought our turnaround point ought to be. 

Part way through the ride I made a big decision….

I changed my Garmin Edge from miles into kilometres.  All my rides are given in distances and it is getting a little tiring converting back and forth.  So into kilometres we go!  Kelly welcomed me to Canada when I made that little change over. :)

We wanted to avoid the big climb to Elbow Falls so we turned around a bit early, making for a total ride distance of 110K.  We were all pretty knackered so no one had the desire to tack on those extra 10K.  We did trudge through a pretty painful brick run afterward though.

There we go, two more long workouts in the bank for IMC.  Thankfully there were some fun things in store for the weekend!