Weekends = Hard Work!

Last Friday night (4/24) I met the Team (Z) at George Mason University for the Colonies Zone Short Course Yards swim meet. A bunch of my teammates and I were entered in either the 1000 yard or 1650 yard events, which were run simultaneously in side by side-ish pools. The results are here. Our team is affiliated with CUBU Masters and we ROCKED the large team category with a total of 2338 total points. The next largest team had 1429 points. This could be due to the large number of swimmers we had entered! (see previous post). Anyway, I had put my seed time as 16:00 based on where I had been last year at that point when I swam the 1650. I did a pretty good job estimating my time; I ended up with a 15:49.48!

Then…Saturday (4/25) was my *new* epic bike ride. I say epic because now, each time I ride, the distance is longer than any distance I’ve ridden before. This week 80 miles were on the schedule…we went 84. I rode with a group of ladies that I’ve started riding with on a regular basis. Then we picked up a few other riders. Our main group had 8 riders at one point. The first 25 miles were great. We made our scheduled stop then continued on…we came to one crazy hill that was listed as STEEP on our cue sheet. That was a first for me. It must have been steep because the road itself had switch-backs on it. It was nice though – there were just enough flat spots on the road to let me recover and make it to the top without having to get off and walk my bike. We hit the next scheduled stop and I still felt relatively good. I got more water and Gatorade, thinking ‘only 20 miles left, two bottles of fluids should do me’. Little did I know…I was wrong. Very wrong. I made an unscheduled stop with about 10 miles left to go. One of our SAG-ers had stopped and was offering water and ice. I put ice in my Gatorade bottle and filled upon water. Then…the next 10 miles were definitely the hardest of the day. I continued on with one of the other rides while two waited behind. Four others had already gone ahead. The heat was getting to all of us. We caught up with two of the four riders who were having stomach issues. It was such slow going! Finally we made the turn to the last street where we were parked. I then *missed* the turn into the park and went to the other entrance…which meant I had to bike up one. more. hill. LOL

On to Sunday (4/26)…I had a 16 mile run scheduled on what was to be a brutally hot day. I did not get out quite as early as I wanted…I sort of slept in. So I finally go out around 8AM…I was maybe 4 miles into my run on the hot streets and thought there was no way I could last out there. I looked off to my right at one of the entrances to the park and decided, though right now I don’t like running on the trails, that the park trails would have to be cooler than the blacktop streets. So I turned right and headed into the park. And the trails were a tad cooler. Whew! Shortly after this I ran into a Z-mate going the other direction. We both had delayed recognition at the same time. We chatted for a bit (and the rest was of course nice) and off we went. I basically did an out and back which took me back onto some streets from about mile 6 to 7.3 but I thought I would give my ankles a break. This course was not too bad because it put me by bathrooms / water fountains 4 times total. On the way back I filled up my camel back thinking it would be enough to get me back home. I was again wrong and ran out of water with 1 mile left, which happened to be at the high school. I had planned to do a few laps around the track (as much as I could stand) but with no more fluid bagged that idea immediately. It turns out I ran about 14.85 miles, so I was happy with that considering the dreadful heat!

Monday was a travel day for me. I went to visit my mom (who has been ill) for a few days. I sat with her most of the day on Monday and only got out to eat. Tuesday morning I did manage to get a short run in – in the heat wave that hit New England as well. Whew! Wednesday morning I did the same short run and was thankful for the cooler temperatures. Wednesday afternoon I came back home, well it was evening by the time my plane landed in Baltimore. I had a fairly good visit with my mom, but was so completely exhausted I slept in this morning and blew off swim practice. I do plan to swim for an hour tomorrow afternoon from 3-4PM.

This weekend it is a 5K race on Saturday – our speed work for the week. I’m not sure if we have additional mileage for Saturday or not, after the 5K. Then on Sunday it is a 90 mile ride! I can’t wait! I do hope to get a swim in on Sunday night, too….