A Good Solo Ride and a Bad Run

On Thursday the weather was too nice to not do something outside. I rushed home from work, changed, and threw the bike in the back of the car. I made my way out to Cochrane for my own solo ride on Horse Creek. As soon as I started riding my legs felt tired from Wednesday night's hills. Since I didn't have to worry about catching a group I figured I'd just ride and not worry about things too much. I figured I wouldn't get too far because I didn't want to be out on the road as the sun was setting. I opted to ride to the same turnaround spot as on Tuesday so that would give me a 15 mile ride or so. The leaves are changing colour up here already and it was absolutely amazing out. I wish I had thought to bring my camera to take a couple of shots. If the weather cooperates next week for another ride I'll try to snap a few pictures. On my way back there were a bunch of deer out, including one that was standing right in the middle of the road. I slowed down since I wasn't sure which direction he would want to go and he wound up bounding off into the field on my left. I finished up just in time as the sun was getting lower in the sky. When I uploaded my Garmin I realized that I actually rode faster on my own than when I was in the group trying to catch up on Tuesday. Weird, eh?

I had to move my long run to Friday, but considering I only had 45 minutes on the schedule I didn't think it would be too bad. I had planned to run in the afternoon, except that I forgot how much running and Friday afternoons don't agree with me. Of course, I hadn't had a day off since the last Friday, so no wonder my legs were tired. Those 45 minutes felt like they took forever, and it was some of my slowest running in a long time. I was approaching almost 12 minute miles. After the run I showered and ran out to meet a friend for sushi and some Kirin Ichibans which helped to make me forget about how bad of a run it was luckily!

Trying out the new stuff

On Friday I managed to whine my way through 10 miles. I was just not motivated. We had our hockey pool wind up party after work on Friday and after downing a glass of water and a coke, plus a couple of nachos and wings my stomach wasn't in the mood so much. I was still really thirsty when I got home so I knocked back a couple of glasses of water and my stomach just felt heavy after that. Even the thought of trying out my new Kayano 14s wasn't getting me excited. It was time for an attitude adjustment though so I hurried up and changed and got my gear ready, then was out the door. I decided to run into the next neighbourhood for a bit of a change in scenery. I didn't really care what my speed was and I didn't have a route mapped out, I just had a vague idea of where to go. It was kind of nice. The sun was blazing down still so I tried to stick to the shade as much as possible and was going through my water pretty quickly. Halfway through the run I pulled out my Razz Clif Shot. The texture was everything I feared it would be. Gooey...but at least it was easy to swallow. Sort of. Maybe the Razz wasn't the best flavour to try. It was kind of like slightly salty, really bad raspberry jam. I have to say I liked the ease of eating it though and my stomach didn't convulse in revulsion upon consumption. I've got a chocolate one and a mocha one to try, then a couple Hammer Gels as well, so we'll see how they fare. The run back had quite a bit of uphill in it, so it was a challenge, but otherwise the rest of the run was uneventful. 10 miles...on a Friday night...done!