I was really not sure what I wanted to do for a long ride last week. Ryan and I were really debating what to do. I was in Michigan, and Ryan was coming up for buy off for his work in Windsor. My mom had her 60th birthday party in Ohio on Saturday evening. The intial plan was that we would go to Ohio, and Ryan and I would ride 50+ miles together somewhere in Ohio. Meredith (http://meredithrunningworld.blogspot.com/) was busy working a photo booth by day and wedding by night, so I wasn't going to be able to meet up with her for a ride. I didn't ask Big Daddy Diesel(http://tridiesel.blogspot.com/) what he was doing yet since we had no clue what we were doing anyway, and he had a big ride on Sunday. Ryan's buy-off was getting postponed, and was going to take all day on Friday. This meant that driving to Ohio on Friday night would be hard. Ryan and I had to figure out what we wanted to do. I had initially planned on taking Friday as a light swim/rest day, but when I called Cristina and learned that she had to do her long bike on FRIDAY, I knew what I had to do. I started calling/emailing/facebooking around to find a sitter for the kids for 5HOURS to ride with her in Brighton, and then Ryan would ride with his club on Saturday, and we would drive down to the party then.
It was really tough getting up on Friday after already riding my longest ride ever on Wed and following it up with a mental toughness 10 miler on the treadmill. I was beat. I actually had a diet dr pepper with my breakfast in the morning. Ugh. I got Keira to school and then went home and got to packing for the trip and the day. I had a small issue trying to get my rear tire off my trek. Initially, I didn't think I would need to since I wouldn't need to have the car seats in the car with me, but due to my arrangements for them, I had to pack up my bike first thing in the morning and have it with me all day. I miss my Escape with roof rack that we left in KY! I couldn't get the webpage to load that showed how to open the rear brake on the Trek site. Argh! Since I am an engineer and spent years determining how to put cars together, I applied the same thing to the bike and just started taking things apart. I was surprised how much stuff I had to take off to be able to open it up! I needed 2 different allen keys to do it. I finally got everything all loaded up, the kids picked up and dropped off again, and then out to Island Lake to meet Cristina. It was much harder to put it back together than take apart! Boy, I wish I would have read my facebook comments about stressing over flatting before doing all this! Kent said that if the tire was flat, it would just go in and out easily. Duh! We finally got everything back in order and started our ride.
This is everything that I removed from my bike to open the rear brake:
We started on our first lap and met up with local triathlete superstar Amy Gluck. She is a Kona Qualifier and very fast lady. It was absolutely no surprise to me that I could not keep up at all, but it was still frustrating. I tried to keep it in perspective that she is amazing and I was trying to go slow to pace myself for my longest ride EVER, 60 miles. I did not want to burn myself out by pushing too hard for pride reasons and then bonk later. I actually got so far behind that I couldn't find either her or Cristina. Thankfully, they opted to stay in the park (as did I), and we found each other again at the turn around point. We also ran into another triathlon rockstar, Ironman Mark Savedes. He was having a "slow" day on an old bike. He and Amy continued on ahead of us. Even on a slow day, I still could not and did not have any business trying to keep up with him. Cristina and I finished up our second lap in the park and then went over to Kensington. We rode through Kensington, up the infamous Tower Hill, and then over to the GM Proving grounds. We opted to not ride around them, but take a slower route through a park to get back to Kensington. We were both out of water at this point and being slow in a park on a little path was pretty much what I needed. I was getting super tired. I just felt dead. At one point, I verred slightly to the right and found myself in the grass. Dang it! What a dork move! I had to stop to get back on the path. Thankfully I didn't wreck. Where the path ended, we had to ride through a bit of grass, but I handled that part just fine. We were almost to the end and I was just so tired. I knew where we were and I got off the road again and into the grass and couldn't get back on without stopping. Seriously, what is my problem? Oh, yeah, maybe I was exhausted from all the biking. The trek is just so much more squirrelly than my dolce. The bad thing was that on account of this "off roading", I bumped my rear brake into my tire. The last couple miles were miserable, and thankfully, when I got off I learned that I had this massive rub on my brakes. Argh. I don't think it had been for much more than the last few miles, because those were really REALLY hard.
We finished the 58.6 miles in 3:34:34. A minute or so more than my marathon time. I actually felt pretty decent once I got off the bike. I was STARVING, and ate some gu chomps in the car and thankfully had a water bottle of ice water in a cooler in the car waiting for me. It sort of blew my mind that I was able to double my cycling max in one week and live, and actually feel fairly decent. I would not be able to do this after running. I mean, when I ran my marathon I felt like I was going to DIE afterwards. I was sick and didn't want to do anything, eat included. After this ride, I went and picked up the kids and took them to dinner, and then took care of them myself until I put them to bed. I am really thankful to Linda who watched the kids and for Cristina who put up with my slowness and got me through it. She is great at that.
I realized that I had completed more mileage on my bike than Ryan planned. He was planning to ride with the "A" group on Saturday morning, and had a shorter ride planned, 55 miles. It was on Saturday night that I said, well, maybe the world will end tomorrow since I rode more than you. It did not end, but I think some sort of cycling equalibrium was distrupted. I got a call from Ryan on Saturday morning....
"I am fine, but Kent is not. His head is ok" was how it started.
That is a very scary call to receive. Kent had touched his front wheel to Ryan's rear wheel in a paceline while going about 28 mph. They had a huge group of riders, and everyone was slowing. Ryan moved slightly to the left and his wheel was overlapped with Kent's. Had Ryan braked, Kent likely would have run into the back of him. Ryan stayed up, but Kent went down really hard. A bone in his pinky finger dislocated and broke through the skin. He posted a picture of it on f/b. He also broke 3 ribs and has a collapsed lung, and will be in the hospital for the next couple of days for that. Please keep him in your prayers. We felt horrible that we had to leave town so quickly and could not help out more. They are great friends and have helped us out a ton, especially this week so I could ride.
We made it back to Kentucky yesterday. I had to leave my Trek behind. It came up inside the mariner since there were no carseats that trip, and the plan was that it would ride outside on my rear bike rack. No such luck. My miniature bike was too small to fit on it, so we brought the road bike instead. I guess that it fine. It is there in MI waiting for me and I will be doing some group rides this week and next so that will be better anyway. I am also really glad it is finally taper time. Any advice for how much biking I should be doing the weekend prior to my half Ironman? Is doing a 50 mile ride a good or bad idea the Saturday one week prior? I am so used to the marathon taper that is like a vacation, I am not sure what to do for the next two weeks.
See, my dolce barely fits on there too!!!
1 comment:
Sounds like a great bike week! And yes, you can do the 50 before, but I wouldn't push the pace... And then REST REST REST! :)
So scary about Kent! Pacelines can be so dangerous! :(
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