Whew, that was hard!

After what seemed to me to be a particularly difficult week of training, I did a quick check of what I was doing leading up to my last HIM.  Surprise, other than my Saturday ride being shorter by over an hour, this week was just as difficult if not more so!  I thought it was hard!

Long ride with new bike fit

Saturday was only my second road bike ride on my TT bike in months.  I’ve done a lot of work on the trainer, even a two hour ride, but not much on the road.  The last time I went out I felt a lot of aches and pains from the new fit and cut the ride short, mostly because of knee pain.  With a race right around the corner I didn’t want to cause any problems.

Nothing has changed with the fit, other than perhaps I’m beginning to get more accustomed to it.  Fortunately many of the complaints were gone this time out.  There is still something wrong with my knee, and it is painful in the neck to go more than 90 minutes.

The ride was 1:15 out and back (2:30 total) which I did on purpose so that I wouldn’t be able to cut it short towards the end.  My legs and cardio held up fine for the entire ride.  My neck didn’t do so well.  It was shot at 1:45, and the rest of the ride was a suffer-fest.

The good news is that I was able to hold the same power output that I did in my last race.  My pace was a bit lower than I‘d hoped for, but with this being my first real outdoors ride in months I’ll take it.

A run in the hills

I’m trying to get in some more running in hills, which is very difficult in Houston.  Sunday I headed out to Magnolia, which is where I do my bike training.  In hindsight I’d have to say that this was easily the hardest course I’ve run.  I’d measured it out the day before while on my bike, so I knew that there were 4 hills that I normally stand on the bike to climb.  The implications of that didn’t sink in until I hit the first one.  All four of these bigger hills were in the 2nd five miles of my scheduled run, meaning I wasn’t “fresh”.

I think I did ok on the first two hills.  My pace might have dropped off some, but I was able to lean forward and push myself through them.  The last two hills came after the turn-around, which put me in a head wind.  Not only were the hills tougher, but there was no break on the downhill or flats because of the wind.  I reminded myself of my goal for the year and pushed myself through them.

The final challenge was a two mile stretch where I was supposed to drop the pace again (the first was after 5 miles).  I did the best I could given the wind, hills, and fatigue; focusing on my music and thinking about out lasting the person next to me.

I finished those two miles strong, then walked a bit to get my heart rate down to a reasonable number.  Running again, those last two miles seemed to go on forever.  It didn’t help at all that it started to rain really hard.  I was really surprised at how heavy my shoes got.  I can’t imagine how I would have fared if I’d worn less water friendly shoes!

Thank goodness today is Monday and I can try to recover a bit!