Because of the 5K on Saturday a group of us moved our long run to Sunday morning.
We were meeting at 5:30 at the elementary school. I thought it would just be Me, Kelly, Bailey, Michele and Jane but we actually had a good size group. The Davis brothers came to run with us and brought along J.J. we also had Melisha and Danielle.
It was another beautiful morning, not quite as cool as Saturday morning had been but very nice. I had asked Brenda "The Route Master" for advice on a 14 mile route. She e-mailed it to me and I printed off a couple of copies. I knew when I saw it that we were in for a HILLY run but that's what we need so we just have to suck it up!
Gary and Melisha took the lead and after a minute or two we never saw them again and it turns out they missed a turn and made up their own route. Melisha is in taper for her Ironman in Oklahoma in two weeks and Gary just finished Ironman Louisville in Kentucky last weekend so I thought they were a good pair, plus Gary was the only one in this particular group who could run her pace.
The rest of us ran together for about the first mile and then we all started breaking out in little groups or partnerships. Kelly, Danielle, Bailey, Jane and I ran together for a long time, but then Kelly and Danielle had a little more gas in the tank and ended the run together just ahead of us.
It was a tough run, I felt the 5K from Saturday in my legs... nothing major just a little fatigued. We kept up a decent pace for the first 9 miles but then my stomach did it's thing. Actually it wasn't too bad and I never had to come to a complete stop, I just had to take a couple unplanned walk breaks to let it calm down. Luckily we were headed back to the school and gas station so I was able to make a pit stop. Sometimes after a pit stop I feel great and can usually run faster, but sometimes the opposite happens. Unfortunately this time it was the not good feeling, I know this is T.M.I but I felt like I could have stayed in that bathroom for much longer, but I was worried about everyone waiting on me. Because of the pit stop we had altered the running route and now were just winging the last 4 miles. Unfortunately I never recovered from the break and only ended up with 13 miles the last three of which were pure torture!!
I really do need to figure out this nutrition thing... I know that 14 miles on an empty stomach isn't a good thing. I had 2 or 3 honey stingers during the run and it just wasn't enough to keep me going.
As I was approaching the school parking lot I saw Brenda drive up. We were meeting at 9:00am for a 25-30 mile bike ride, actually there was a whole big group meeting.
After chatting for a little while with Michele, Gary, Curtis and Brenda I realized we had a lot of time before the other bikers would arrive. I asked Brenda if she wanted to go to Mt. Mudd with me and get Sugar Free White Chocolate ice coffee. I didn't have to ask twice!! so we hopped in my car and got our iced coffee's. Tyler was working and started lecturing me about not eating, Brenda had already been telling me I needed something to eat and she suggested I call Arland and have him bring me a pop-tart. I don't know if it was the double shots of espresso in our iced coffee's or the sugar in the pop-tart but I did feel much better after having both!!
There were a lot of hard core bikers in this group and Brenda and I knew all along that we weren't even going to try to bike with them. We did start off on the same route they were taking but when they had dropped us within seconds of starting we decided we would go on our normal 27 mile route. The advantage of our route is although it has plenty of hills it also has some roads that we can socialize on...if we had followed the others we would of had to stay single file the whole time and that's no fun!
We didn't "hammer" like the other bikers but we definately rode hard and we only took one break and that's when Arland called to ask if Bailey was with us. She had dropped back from the hard core group, well it turns out i had missed a call from her so I called and she said the other group were just being maniacs and she decided she didn't want to play with them so she had turned around thinking she would ride with me and Brenda, but unfortunately she didn't know we had gone another way. She was o.k, she had gone back to her car and was actually almost home when I called her. I wish she would have turned back sooner so that she could have ridden with us.
There is about a 6 or 7 mile stretch of hwy where the traffic is usually really light and it is kind of flat so I practiced getting down in my aero bars. I still feel nervous first going down in them but yesterday once I was there I was o.k. and I managed to ride for probably 5 or so miles.
Phil had stuck with us for the first 15 or so miles of the ride but then he wanted to experiment and ride as hard as he could for the last 10 or so miles and once he started pedaling hard it didn't take long for us to lose him.
We had already decided before the ride even began that we were going to go back to Mt. Mudd on our bikes and get another iced coffee so when we got back to the intersection of 321 and 89 we just kept on going straight up hwy 89 to Mt. Mudd. Seriously you would not believe how good a sugar free white chocolate ice coffee is after 30 miles on the bike... on a hot day!! We put our coffee's in our water bottles and then we headed to Michele's house so that Brenda could see her new bike. We had perfect timing they had just gotten home from Church.
We stayed a few minutes and admired Isabella and then it was time to head back to our cars.
If it were not for Brenda I would not get in as many biking miles as I do... there is no way I can keep up with Arland and the rest of that crazy group and I know me, I would get so frustrated that I just wouldn't ride.
I look forward to our Sunday morning bike rides all week!! Thank you Brenda for being such a great biking partner... and great friend!
It was right around noon when we said our good-byes and headed our seperate ways, Brenda home to garden and me home to get a quick bite to eat and then head out on another bike ride. Yes another one, I hadn't quite tortured my legs enough yet.
I was meeting James and Michele along with the regular 1:30 on Sunday group. They meet at a gas station on Hwy 5 and then ride all over the hills out in the County.
It was hot and I was getting a little cranky... when David told us what the route was I just wanted to cry, there was no way I could ride 45 more miles!! Heck I was going to be lucky to get in another 20.
I told James I don't think I can do it and he said we would just wing it... so we all started out together well I thought we were together. I didn't realize that I had left James and Michele behind. This was Michele and Isabella's first ride together and they were getting adjusted to each other. When we came to the first turn on the route I was with Lisa Ford and I said I'm going to go back for Michele, but then I saw her and James so I turned back around again, went off in the grass and only crashed... and then they just keep going. HELL now I had to scramble and try to catch up to them. I don't know where that burst of energy came from but it didn't take me too long to catch them but when I did.. well I was tired!! I told them they had missed the turn but we weren't planning on riding the same route anyway so we just kept going. We were riding along one stretch of road and had just come around a curve when all of a sudden about 4 or 5 dogs started chasing us luckily it was a slight downhill so that helped. This whole road was nothing but hills luckily there were also some great downhill sections, well actually we didn't find it so lucky on the way back!
At about 8.5 miles we came to a church with a nice big shade tree so we took a break. We were about to turn onto a fairly busy road and I said I didn't like the idea of riding on it and Michele said why don't we just turn around now. Sounded good to me so that's exactly what we did.
Remember the pack of dogs I told you about... well this time we had to go uphill as we passed them, the only advantage we had was we knew where they were so we started pedaling really hard, by the time we lost them as we were going up the hill I was dead !! I thought I was going to have a heart attack. The thing that saved me was a beautiful long down hill, we were able to coast down it and recover.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful and we made it back to the store in one piece. Michele and I went into the gas station and we both got something to drink, a diet mt. dew for me and a package of almond M&M's. We found a little bench to sit on and we just hung out in front of the gas station waiting on the boys to come back. I'm sure we were quite a sight sitting there in our bike gear all hot and sweaty, we sure got a lot of strange looks from people going in and out of the gas station. LOL
Total's for Sunday
13.1 run miles
49 bike miles
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