Saturday, June 21, 2008

Wrapping up week 1 of Ironman Training and the Harpeth River Century

I'll wrap up week 1 of 20 tomorrow with a 1:10 run. That run was supposed to be today, but I substituted yesterday's brick with today's 100mile bike ride and pushed back the run to tomorrow so that I could do it on tired legs. All in all, the first week went great. I did skip the first day (last Sunday) because I was recovering from Bonnaroo, but other than that and switching/substituting some things so that I could do today's century ride, everything fit nicely into my schedule. I've looked over the next few weeks and decided that it's not going to be too bad. I won't be doing the McMinnville City Triathlon (sprint) next Saturday because we will be all up the in the middle of Briar's district all star tournament. I do wish goodluck to everyone I know who will be there, though...off the top of my head...Michele, Amy, Don, Chris P....I know there are more...

And...I gotta say congrats to my running peeps who smoked the Moon Pie 10 mile run in Bell Buckle this morning - Lee (1:13), Tim (1:16), Heather (1:26), Holly (1:18), Tony (1:24), Tammie (1:22) and Jay (1:38). And I also noticed that Lynn got first in her age group with a smoking 1:09!

As I have said, Holly and I went up to Franklin and did the Harpeth River Century ride this morning. Instead of a normal report, I have...

10 Things I Loved About Riding 100 Miles at Harpeth River

10. The weather was perfect. 70 degrees when we started and 82 degrees when got done. Little wind, lots of cloud cover...just beautiful.

9. Beautiful Countryside. Wow. What I would give for about 20 acres at most any place along that route. It ran along a little river nearly the whole way...so peaceful and pretty.

8. Great rest stops. We skipped the first one...but then there was Margaritaville. Then the hippie 70's rest stop...complete with incense. Then banana bread and some great chocolate chip cookies at the top of a killer climb. And we skipped the last one because we just had 13 miles left. Great volunteers...I ate rice krispy treats and oranges, mostly. I also had a warm chocolate chip cookie and some banana bread that rocked, and there was much more, but I have to be careful about what goes in my belly. Even being careful, I started to feel a little queezy from all the sugar during the last 15 miles.

7. Nice little cool-me-off rain shower during the last stretch. I call it a victory shower.

6. No mechanical failure. I had a terrible rattle all day long...especially on the rough roads. I finally found out it is just my bottle cage that has worked its way loose. Atleast I sure hope that's all it is. Either way...no flats and no mechanical failure over 100 miles is always something to be thankful for.

5. No knee failure for Holly. Around mile 35, Holly had a pain in her knee. It hurt with every downstroke of the pedal. With 60 miles to go, I was pretty concerned. I said a prayer for her knee every so often. Thankfully, it never got too much worse and she toughed out the full 100 miles!

4. Hammering up hills like nobody's business. I hereby declare myself a climber. And Holly too. We smoked the hills. You see that fire behind my tire at the top of this page? Yep...that's what it looked like out there behind us going up the hills.

3. Meeting nice people. That's one thing I love about century rides. I met "Mr. Lightspeed" that I had battled back and forth with on the bike at Mach Tenn. I found out his name was Paul...and I met his friend, Paul, too. We also met Tom Campbell from Mureesboro, and many others.

2. Riding right past our car at mile 96 and proceeding to do a 4 mile out and back because the course was 4 miles short. Well, maybe I didn't exactly love this at the time, but I do now. You see, this was Holly's first 100 mile ride...ain't no way we're riding 96 miles and hanging it up just because the course was short. We kept on trucking and got the full 100.

1. Sharing in the victory of my sister's first ever full century ride!!! Victory tastes sweet when your cyclometer trips 100 miles...and it's even sweeter when you've rode the full 100 miles with your sister during her first one. Gotta love it.

Ride time was like 6:03, I think, and total time including rest stops was like 6:38. And now for the pics:

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear you and your sister had a great ride! You guys deserved all the cookies, banana bread and rice krispy squares they offered. Well done.

Here's to putting week 1 of 20 behind you.

faithrunner said...

Looks like you had a great time, it's cool that you and your sister have biking in common. Keep going.
Good luck

Comm's said...

noticed this is your first race report to not have a picture with a beer in your hand.

Just sayin!!!

IronTriTim said...

Week 1 down, 19 to go. :-). Wish my speedo was accurate, on IM last year it only got up to 95.. damn wireless speedos!

Marathoner in Training said...

You did great, that is week one down and only 19 to go.

Bridgeport Asbestos Removal said...

Great post, thanks for sharing it.