Hammer it out

With Justin still studying it was just Chris and I tonight for our ride. I was hoping Chris had recovered from his monster weekend training and we could take advantage of a good ride tonight. The wind was unusually out of the south tonight and we had a tailwind heading up York-Durham Rd. so I pushed harder and we got to Bloomington in pretty good time. This became the theme for the night, go hard. We kept hammering for the full 54 km and ended up at a 32 km/hr average speed. Not bad. I guess Chris has recovered.

Back in the swim of things

Literally and figuratively. I hadn't done any good swims for quite a while and my training consistency has been sporadic at best with my recent travel so today I got back at it. I did a 1500 m swim this morning and even though it seems a short swim it's a start to get back up to weekly 2000 m swim sessions. But after Sunday's run where everything seemed to fall apart on me I was really interested to see how my run today would go. Well thankfully everything looked to be getting back to normal. I ran 9.5 km and good thing number 1 was my pace, 4:50. I was very pleased to get that back down to where its been. Good thing number 2 and actually more important to me was that I recovered very quickly from the run. On Sunday it took quite a while to start feeling normal but today I was fine within a couple of minutes. This was good.

Wow, Chris IS human!

Ok, Tuesday night so it was ride night. Justin was still studying for his engineer certification so it was just me and Chris tonight. So I was thinking that based on last Thursday night's ride (remember the 38 km/hr INTO the wind?) and Chris' epic 160 kms on the weekend that I was in for it tonight. We started out well enough, along 16th to York Durham and turned north. Our typical start to most of our rides. We headed north and maintained a bit slower than normal pace. Ok, Chris will pick it up soon. We reached Major Mackenzie and I thought "Ok, now. Chris is gonna go now". Nope. Up the hill leading to Elgin Mills. Ok, at the crest he'll go. Nada. Up to where York Durham merges with Hwy 5, to Stouffville Sideroad, Webb Rd. Still an easy pace. I started wondering if he was hurt, or maybe on a rest week. Then I figured ahhhhh, we'd get to Bloomington and then he'd crush me. Get me back for last Thursday's sprint that I pulled on him. Evil Chris, evil. So we reached Bloomington and Chris turned to me and said "well that was tough". The man is human after all. He then told me that He'd done a 9 mile run in the afternoon and got a bit dehydrated so he was still feeling the effects of the run. Hey wait a minute ..... 9 mile run in high heat and humidity, dehydration ..... and still out riding at a decent clip. Dammit he IS Superman!

OK, That hurt

Two and a half weeks of inconsistent training has reared its ugly head and bitten me in the butt. My trip to San Diego and business in New York had me missing several days and I've only been able to run 4 times and swim even less. My cycling seems to have held up though but that's always been my strongest element. It rained all this morning and I was relegating myself to getting on the treadmill at some point to get my run in but it started to clear up in the late afternoon and I managed to get outdoors. It was long run day so I wanted to get 14-15 km in but I was more interested in what my pace would be like after the inconsistency. I started off faster then normal and this could have been a mistake. My first 2 km were at :15 to :20 seconds faster pace then I normally start off at and it may have affected the rest of the run. While my legs felt good that's where it stopped, the rest hurt. I can normally run at a 4:55 - 5:00 pace comfortably but today I was struggling at 5:10 - 5:15. The first 5 km were painful but I got into a bit of a rhythm at around 5.5 km and was hoping that it would get better as I went. No dice. I ran at 5:00 - 5:10 but it was still uncomfortable. By this time I'm easily at a 4:50 pace and while it is a bit of an effort it's not difficult to maintain. The evidence of my slipping backwards came at the end of and after my run. Normally my last km is my fastest but today it wasn't. I usually pick up my pace to finish, its hard but not painful but today I couldn't do it. And after I finish I always recover fairly quickly but today I didn't. I finished at 15 km at a 5:03 pace. Slow for my liking and worse then that it hurt. I sure hope that a few more runs will get me back to my previous level soon.

Justin's first 100 !!

Actually 108 km. I've been trying to build Justin's distance slowly up to and beyond 90 km so that come race time in Miami he'll be comfortable at that distance. Well today Justin blew 90 km out of the water! So far he's done rides of 70 and 75 km but we needed to get that distance extended and then follow that up with progressively longer runs off the bike. Well not only did we get 108 km in today he showed no where near the physical effect that his 70ish km rides had on him. His legs are getting stronger and I've had him working on his nutrition during the ride so his energy levels remain high. His progress over the last month has been amazing. Chris was on the ride as well and he was planning to ride for 5 hours so at some point he was either going to drop us or we'd part ways somewhere along the route. We rode up York Durham Rd. all the way to Zephyr and continued a few km further up to Ravenshoe Rd. A right turn and 6 km later we were in Udora where we stopped at the local store for a quick break and to refuel. Our distance at this point was 54 km and I turned to Justin and said "looks like you're going to break 100 today". I think he was kind of excited that he'd be riding 100 km but right at that moment it looked like he was more interested in his peanut butter sandwich because he just kind of nodded, half smiled and grunted "yup". I'm willing to bet that the sandwich had something to do with his excellent performance today. From that point Chris' and our routes parted. He set out back along Ravenshoe Rd. from where we'd come and I learned later after talking with him that he turned north to Lake Simcoe, followed the bottom of the lake to Woodbine Ave., back south to Bloomington Rd. and home from there. A total of 160 km and he averaged 31.5 km/hr. Wow. He must have really picked it up because we didn't ride that fast getting to Udora. Way to go buddy, awesome ride. Justin and I decided to ride south from Udora on Brock Rd. and work our way back to Concession 2 and then south to home. Hmmmm. In retrospect we could have made a better decision. Actually the blame is all mine because I picked the route. Sorry Justin but in the end you'll thank me when you rock the ride in Miami. Over the first 12 km riding back we hit climbs of 50', 85', 50', 100', 50' and 80' (thanks Google Earth). 'Get me off this freaking road' and I did first chance I could. We turned on to Sandford Rd., westbound to Concession 4, south to highway 8 then west again and in my brilliance south on Concession 2. With last weekend's ride and the hills that Chris and I encountered on Concession 3 still fresh in my mind I thought Concession 2 would be a better option. Well 4 km and climbs of 95', 45', 95', 75' and 85' later (thanks again Google Earth) I looked like an idiot. Once again I turned to Justin and said "you'll thank me later". I don't think he bought it this time. Actually I don't think the hills affected him that much because he rode very briskly the rest of the way home. Maybe it was just the fact that we were almost done and he wanted to get this ride over with so he could grab those couple of slabs of pizza he kept telling me about that he was going to reward himself with. Either way, I'm still waiting for that thanks. Seeing how good he was feeling at this point of the ride I figured this was a good time to tell him that I still expected a run out of him, no matter how short it might be. If he was feeling good up till then I think I changed that pretty quick because I know he wasn't expecting to run. Thing is though I need to get him running on fatigued legs so he relented and agreed. We did a real short run, only about 3 km but it was tough on him and I think he realizes these are necessary. As for me, my legs felt great and I could have gone much further. My plan was to go out with Chris after he got done riding but as good as I felt when running with Justin, by the time Chris called my legs had been immobile too long. So I settled with the 3 km but was happy that my legs had felt good for the short run I did.

Enough with the intensity Chris

Yet another break in my training. Business had me traveling to New York and I wasn't able to get any training in. I was on the road most of Tuesday, had to work Tuesday evening and Wednesday before getting back on the road Wednesday night. So between being in San Diego and business I've missed several days of training and I'm starting to feel like I'm getting soft. So I was definitely planning to get out tonight. I emailed Chris and our ride was on. Justin has been studying for his Engineer's certification and will be doing so for the next week as well so he couldn't make it tonight. Well you know what this meant. I'd be chasing Chris all over the countryside. We got an earlier start than usual. I rode over to Chris' and that's when I noticed that the wind was, well, kinda windy. Oh great. As if chasing Chris wasn't bad enough now I had to do it while battling the wind. It was slow, tough going heading north dealing with both the wind and climbing but we got up to Bloomington in pretty good time. From there it was right into the wind heading west. Chris, dude, do you not want me to survive till Miami? He flew. At one point I glanced at my speed and we were doing 38 km/hr into the wind. We rode another 10 km to Warden Ave. and turned back to retrace our route home. This is where I planned my 10 minutes of revenge on Chris. I hammered back for the next 4-5 km knowing that my legs would feel it but so would Chris'. I think we rode at around 42+ km/hr and when I finally slowed to look back Chris was a ways behind me. Whew, my chance to rest. Chris caught up and I fell in behind him and followed him all the way back. We ended up doing 55 km at 31.5 km/hr and I was thankful that another one of Chris' intensity workouts was done.

You never know who you'll meet.

I hadn't done a decent distance run in a while so it was time to. I did 11 km in San Diego (remember my encounter with the young fella?) but at this point I need to be doing 15+ km runs weekly. So I headed out thinking I'd aim for anything between 14-17 km, out along Bur Oak to McGowan or possibly Kennedy and then back. When I run now I first go east to the Markham Bypass and follow it back around to 9th Line and go west from there. This has added about 4 km to the distance of the usual routes I've been following. Just as I get to 16th and the bypass I hear someone calling me and turn to see Chris chasing me down. He's just started his long run, 32 km planned, so I change my plans and decide to run with him till about 8 km and turn back at that point. His route took us up 10th line instead, essentially a continuous climb from 16th Ave. on. But it was great running with Chris and I didn't even notice the upwards grade. I ran to the 9 km point where I wished Chris well on the rest of his run and turned back towards home. My pace picked up a bit and I felt good all the way back and finished at 18 km. Excellent considering the ride and run I'd done yesterday.