Long Rides

September 12th, 2009 No Comments

In preparation for my LIVESTRONG ride in Austin, Texas next month I’ve been doing some long rides for the last three weeks, starting out with two hours, three and a half hours, and today with four hours.

Two hours, no problem. Rode to the coast at Carlsbad with Murray.

Three and a half hours, legs bonked out at 60 miles, but rode on for 10 more.

Today’s four hour ride, legs bonked out at 70 miles, rode for 8 more, and then ran for half an hour afterwards for three miles.

The last two rides have been fun, riding at a challenging pace with my buddy from Breakaway Training, Eric Heiser. I decided to do my long rides with Eric since he’s training for Ironman Arizona in November. I like the rides because we push hard. With my legs tiring at mile 70, 10 miles later than the previous water, the ride was an improvement over last week. At this rate, I will most definitely be ready for Austin in October.

Surprisingly, I got a flat tire near the end of the ride today. The culprit was a sharp metal shard that looked like a nail. It punctured my rear tire and deflated the tube almost instantaneously. The tire change went relatively quickly. It was definitely the quickest tire change for me.

Two negative things about the flat repair:

  1. CO2 cartridge adapter did not work (glad Eric was there to let me use his).
  2. Inner tube valve on brand new inner tube had a loose screw, which is a defect.

I need to replace the tube later so that I don’t have to worry about the valve. And guess where I bought those two pieces of garbage? Yup, yet two more reasons not to buy your bikes or bike stuff there.

First Long Brick

August 30th, 2009 No Comments

Yesterday, I figured if I said let’s leave by 6:30 AM, then for sure we’d be out the door by 7:00 AM. Murray was never late for any of his personal training sessions with me at LA|FITNESS, but I’ve learned that if we need to be somewhere at a certain time, I need to plan for at least half an hour of “Murray” time.

We did leave by 7:00 for our two-hour bike ride to the coast in Carlsbad. It was a fairly comfortable ride for me, averaging a slower speed than what I usually ride. We rode at about 17 mph for 34 miles. Both of us had two hours on the bike as our planned workout.

Murray had a 10-mile run planned afterwards, and I figured it would be no big deal to join him. I was scheduled for a 20-minute brick run afterwards, but running 10 miles would be significantly longer than 20 minutes. I’m pleased to say that I did complete all 10 miles even though the temperature had risen to 105 degrees. The last two miles were pretty painful, nevertheless, I trudged on, refusing to walk. I think my average pace was about a 12-minute mile.

This milestone was a good wake up call for me. I know I have a long ways to go if I want to get close to my goal of going under 5:30 for my first half Ironman in March, 2010 @ California 70.3. By then I want to be at a level of fitness where I can handle that final half marathon run with no problem and still complete the run in under 1:40.

I have more than seven months to prepare.