What a weekend! Saturday, I rode 72 miles at RB’s Ride Into Spring. After some lunch and a change of clothes, I headed out to Shelby Forest for a 25k trail run (that’s 15.5 miles for the metrically challenged). It was a really good run because I finally got my downhill legs back. It took me right at 3 hours- which included a sort-of long break at the turnaround point so I could refill my hydration pack, dump the grit out of my shoes, and walk for a few minutes while I ate a couple of fig newtons. Oh yeah- and I stopped to get a photo of a little snake that was sunbathing on the trail:

After taking its photo, I grabbed a twig and encouraged it to move off of the trail so that it wouldn’t get stepped on (accidentally or otherwise) by the next person coming through. It protested a bit and struck at the stick a couple of times, but eventually decided that the stick wasn’t backing down, so it retreated into the leaves.

By the time I was at around 12 miles, it was getting tough to convince myself to keep running. It was my longest run so far, but still only half the distance I’ll cover in a couple of weeks when I go to the Ouachita Trail 50k. I ran my first 50k a few years ago w/my longest run beforehand being 14 miles, so I think I’ll make it…

Anyway, I was pretty beat when I got home. Ryan was hungry and wanted to know what was for dinner. With little hesitation, I told him to order pizza delivery. It’s literally been years since I had Pizza Hut pizza and even longer since it’s been delivered to my door, and, considering I’d performed about 7 hours worth of physical activity, I wasn’t concerned about calories. It was freaking delicious. I sprawled out on the couch and ate half of a medium pan pizza (cheese!) while watching Cops on TV.

So what does a normal person do the day after training for 7 hours? Trick question- normal people don’t train for 7 hours!

I woke up yesterday morning and suited up for our usual 70+ mile Sunday ride. It was tough- We rode in to the Outdoors store on Union with a breeze of a headwind, then rode out with a big group to the Shelby Forest General Store. I rode hard with the group part of the way, but then split off and did my own sub-threshold interval for the last few miles before the store. My legs felt surprisingly good considering what they’d done the day before.
On the way back, Ryan and I didn’t ride with the group. There were probably about 30 people out, and I don’t really like being with such a large group going 27-28mph down Watkins because the likelihood of hitting random road garbage and wrecking is higher than usual. This meant that we had to battle a pretty tough wind most of the way until we were back downtown. Ok, I’ll admit- we should have stayed with the group…

It was a tough ride back. I think I got close to my limit on physical activity for the weekend, because by the time we were a few miles from home, the power I was able to sustain for any period of time was about 50 watts lower than normal. Once we were home, I had leftover pizza and a protein shake and passed out on the couch with Indy for about two hours.

So this is probably going to be a normal weekend for me from now on. Hopefully it will prepare me for whatever long-duration endurance fun I come across- I just want to be prepared for whatever comes along, be it adventure race, MTB race, trail run, etc… you get the idea. I’m sometimes amazed at the capacity I’ve built myself up to while still being incredibly eager to see just how much more I can do.