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.

Well, Ryan took off Saturday morning for the Tuscaloosa race. I rode with the small group from Trinity and we ended up cutting the ride a little short because we got drenched in the rain, and the wind was getting fierce (like, not uncomfortable fierce… more like “blowing you off the road” fierce). We still ended up riding about 50 miles. When I got home, I cleaned up, ate some lunch, and chilled out for a bit.

After luch digested a bit, I changed and headed back out- this time on foot. I ran (ok, jogged slowly) down the rail trail to Shelby Farms where I made a muddy lap of the Tour de Wolf trail before running home. According to mapmyride.com, it’s’ exactly 3 miles from my house to TdW, and the trail is 6 miles… 12 miles! I was pretty sore by the time I got home, but felt alright otherwise. This is my longest run of the year, and, considering it was also my 4th one of the year, I’d say it was pretty good, albeit pretty slow as well.

The weather got pretty gross overnight. The wind slowed to a “calm” 15mph, but the temps dropped into the low 40’s. The sun rose behind a solid blanket of clouds. Yuck! Nevertheless, I bundled up and headed to Outdoors Inc on Union to meet up with the 9:00 group. I enjoyed riding straight into the headwind the entire way- most of the time doing around 200 watts and only going 15 or so mph. With a lot of people gone to Tuscaloosa for the weekend, it was a small group. I was miserably cold, and my legs felt like they were filled with rocks from the rail trail the day before. Luckily, Henry and Dennis were also beat from battling with the wind yesterday and decided to ride about half way to the normal turnaround before heading back. I went for it- even after a nice hard pull down Mud Island, I still hadn’t warmed up (my hands had actually lost more feeling). On the way home, we took an alternate route up Central instead of Union. It was pretty cool to see some of the large, old midtown houses and boulevards.

Oddly enough, I’ve felt really strong on the bike this weekend. I happened to take a second look at the Tuscaloosa race flyer last night- I’d forgotten that they were paying the top spots of P1/2/3 women out the same as P/1/2 men. I probably could have made a little money. Oh well. I have had a good weekend otherwise. The break from worrying about racing is pretty relaxing, and I’m having more fun on my bike now than I have in a while.

Next race I do will be Ride to Live on April 11th- it’s on the Barbour Motorsports Park track, which is a freaking BLAST to ride on. It’s also nice because it can be made into a day trip… gotta keep saving up for that mountain bike!