Saturday June 13, 2009:
I'm stealing this summary of what we did from my teammate Eurie (Eurie...I have no clue how you kept track of all these towns...I could not think straight during the ride). Saturday our team pedaled from Anaheim through Santa Ana, Fountain Valley, Costa Mesa, the tail end of Huntington Beach, Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, San Clemente, Camp Pendleton, Oceanside, Carlsbad, Leucacia/Encinitas, Solana Beach, Del Mar, Torrey Pines up to UCSD and back down to Del Mar. WHOOOP! WHOOOOP!
Yes indeed, ONE HUNDRED MILES on the bike. I still can't believe I did that. Here are my statistics for the ride based on my spiffy new bike computer:
Distance: 100 Miles BITCH! (yes...my computer bike said "BITCH" after it caculated the 100th mile)
Time: 6 hours 41 minutes
Average Speed: 15 mph
Max Speed: 33.8 mph
Calories Burned: 6,339
This week I tried something different and I tried to document our practice by using the video mode on my Canon Powershot Digital camera. I hardly ever use the video mode but I found it to be FUN. Here are the highlights from the longest ride of the season.
YES, I already know I misprounounced "San Onofre". I couldn't remember the exact name of it. Come on, cut me a break, I was at mile 44 of a CENTURY RIDE.
The day of training was fantastic. We met at 8am in the parking lot of Anaheim Stadium where the Angels play. There is a train station next the the stadium so the plan was that after we biked to San Diego, we would just ride the train back up with our stuff right back to the starting point where our cars were parked.
Overall I'd say it was a medium ride in terms of difficulty. It was mainly flat, a couple of rolling hills, and then a few big hills that the coaches added in on purpose. At mile 85 near the UCSD campus we had to do a bit of climbing. The hills were purposely incorporated to the END of our ride to get our tired legs used to doing some work. I'd say 80% of the ride was along PCH and through many beach towns. It was beautiful. There were so many little towns I had never been through and seeing them this way was so cool.
When the ride was over I was definitely tired but honestly, it was not that bad. My ASS did hurt from sitting that long on that uncomfortable bike seat but I still had energy to keep going. That is a good sign that my conditioning is paying off. The other thing that I was happy about was MY BACK. My lower back has been bothering me for most of the season on a lot of the much shorter rides so I was prepared for it to really kill me after 100 miles of riding. NO PAIN...YAY! It was a little stiff about halfway through the ride but no real pain to report. I had to stretch it out once (see picture below of my stretching) at one of the rest stops and that was it.
We finished our ride in the parking lot of the hotel we were staying. The next morning we had to be up by 7am to run our 20 miles before heading back to Anaheim on the train.
Sunday June 14, 2009
Statistics:
Running Miles: 20 (longest run of the season so far)
Time: 3 hours 10 minutes 22 seconds
Speed: FAST as HELL my friends...hahaha...j/k
When I woke up on Sunday my quads were still a little bit stiff and my BOOTAY was definitely sore. To be expected I suppose after such a long bike ride. But no time for rest...20 mile run was next for the weekend.
We did a simple route...10 miles north on PCH and then 10 miles back south to the starting point. Coach Paul emphasized that we work on our pace today. He recommended we take it easy during the first half and then try to negative split by running a harder second half.
My run felt GREAT. As you all already know, running is my favorite thing to do so I get so excited when we run that far. I ran the entire 20 miles with an 8:1 interval (run for 8 minutes, then walk for a minute...repeat). I find that usually by the 7th or 8th minute my body naturally starts to get tired so stopping to walk every 8 minutes really works for me and helps me stay steady. I ran so well that I even finished SPRINTING the last 1.5 miles. Similar to the bike ride on Saturday, I still had gas left in my tank when the run was over. If I had to, I definitely could have run 6.2 more miles if necessary.
Great weekend of training overall. June is a BEAST of a month for training. Let's see what the coaches have in store for us next weekend.
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