Workout #3 + extra shoulder fly and leg exercises. I'm getting feeble on pulldowns!
Cycling long 4:00:00 [2]
Nice ride with Bash down to the rail trail, to Inglewood to pick up Knobless, then via muddy trails and the dreaded Grange Hill to Belfountain for an iced Soy Mocha, and back.
I used the Omega bike, which is more of a road and trail cruiser. It's certainly faster into the wind and on roads! Bash was on her shiny new steed, and put Knobless and me to shame on the slippery muddy bits.
An unpromising early morning wake-up during a thunderstorm turned out OK. Nice long run with Bash, Slowrunner, Rocky and Boston Rob from Mono Mills down to the rec centre. Great company, but key issues left BR and me running to his house to get MsBR to drive us back up to get the various cars.
Time's approximate- I'll have to see what K/O had on her watch.
Bike around Albion with Coach LD and The Gazelle. Bash came along on PN's Specialized epic, but took her own route so she could familiarize herself with the bike.
2 AM mud-fest after heavy rain that dumped during Sid's lap- so much for the "easy" course. (Sid was a trooper, btw!) Slippery and slimy first half, second half was more solid. I had a better lap than I feared, mainly because there wasn't much traffic. Goose encountered more people dragging their bikes up the mud-slopes on the previous lap.
I really enjoyed the slower, more cautious "riding in the moment" cruise.
Cycling race 1:00:00 [4]
Last lap at the 24. Sid made it in before 12:00 with 3 minutes to spare, so if I pulled off a 1:03 it would count. Much drier, and sparse traffic on course made for a decent lap with time to spare. (Actually 33 minutes to spare, it turned out.)
Assorted pre-ride, warmup, cooldown for the Summer Solstice 24.
Cycling race 57:00 [5]
First lap at Albion Hills during the 24hr Summer Solstice.
The course is flatter than pre-07 years.
Kept my HR at race pace, but I just can't get the big 'bent around the turns any faster. Every time we'd hit doubletrack or a climb I could take off, but had to creep through some of the tight bits.
Time approximate- I'd lost the chip at the start and it took a while to find it again.
Total aside here- 52 year old John Schlitter just finished Race Across America- 5000km solo in 11 days or so, the first recumbent to do so. He won the 50-59 age group, and was 8th overall I think. Wow!!
http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/wordpress/wp-cont...
Note
I did some tricky dentistry yesterday, and I could feel my neck during wide-grip pulldowns. Sure enough, I've thrown it out of whack, and am walking around with an ice-pack.
Why I ride a recumbent. This is a pic from a solo rider doing the 5000km Race Across America.
http://www.raceacrossamerica.org/wordpress/wp-cont... There's only one recumbent solo, currently in 8th. He's in his mid 50s, but at least he doesn't need to brace his neck.
Easy ride around the Albion course with Bash, Coach LD and Goose.
Less doubletrack climbing this year, which I actually will miss.
More non-aerobic twisties that I'm pokey at.
ESAR with Goose and Tiny
We had pretty much guessed the route for this one as we came up to train a bit in the area. Also, seeing all the bike racks at the B&B we stayed at on Lake Eugenia didn't hurt.
I knew this race would be hard, not only because we were starting with a ride straight up and out the Beaver Valley and I'm bad on hard starts, but also we were going head-to-head with Children's Wish, and Glenn had recruited superstar Dave Corner from Supplier Pipeline.
Our other competition Gazelle and Mique had sadly lost Janica to injury the day before.
At the line Gazelle made a disparaging comment about my bike breaking, and promptly got a flat. Don't trash-talk the 'bent! Goose gave him a pump to explode his spare tube, then gave him another tube.
A hard grunt up the big hill, and Tiny and Goose were both waiting up for me as we topped out in second place behind Anystyle. I was sucking wind for a good hour after the climb and took a couple of short tows on bike from the mighty Goose, (didn't work well) but I recovered during the latter part of the trek. Tiny was right on the nav, and kept up a great pace in the bush but CW was running right with us. We came out of the trek in first just ahead of them. We were hoping for a bigger and more complex trek to lose them, but no luck.
Back on the bikes, we traded the lead back and forth. Goose was a monster, towing Tiny and leading the charge. I tried to get ahead to let them draft me for what it's worth, but the Goose/Tiny express would blow by me on the uphills. Tiny had a small mechanical, which cost us 3 minutes or so, and from then on it was a hammer-fest. Our paddle went well (despite my usual leg cramps) but we couldn't reel in CW much. Back on the bikes down to the Beaver Valley ski hill, and the generous Goose skidded to a halt to pick up a shoe that a short-course team had dropped.
Next we had to light candles using our mandatory gear (?), drop the bikes and run the Bruce up the escarpment, along the top and down into Talisman. We could see CW the whole time but just couldn't reel them in. I was towing on this section, but at the end when Tiny saw that the last bit was a run through a Paintball shooting gallery he took off like Ben Johnson on steroids, leaving me as bait- Ouch! Quick stretcher carry and climbing wall, and we finished 2nd overall, 2 minutes behind CW, who ran a great race.
We worked very well as a team. At one point or other everyone took a tow or towed/ pushed. Tiny's very fast on the nav, Goose is a killer on the bike and boat and I could help out on foot.
Bash's rookie team was the first civilian co-ed! They had a great time, managed to film a lot of the race, and couldn't wipe the smiles off their faces.
Easy spin on the trainer watching stage 9 of the Giro.
A bit short on time as we had to do an emergency powertrain transplant on Bash's old bike for Hurtin. Thank goodness I have crates of spare parts lying around.
Navstock Raid with Hingo.
Hingo's been very busy lately and claims to not have trained. We figured this would be a race of attrition as the heat and distance wore out some of the orienteers who are used to shorter races, so we kept the pace reasonable and the hydration and salt high.
I managed to lose my compass with magnifier in the first section, and due to that and some inefficient route choice (in hindsight) we came out mid-pack.
We passed quite a few teams before the matrix, which I did without a compass. Ran into Scooby and Rocky here and quite often later- they were solid! The Walk the Line went fine thankfully, but I had to get Hingo not to stand beside the flag and read the map for long with teams right behind us:).
We towed past more teams who were walking up Horseshoe road, but managed to miss a turn in the photo-section, amazingly enough (No compass or magnifier and distracted looking for fake deer and totem poles), and ran well off the map before a hot run back up. Behind again. The very kindly Team RF's Logie sprained his ankle, so I gave him my emergency poles.
Back to the MC2 section, Hingo was feeling the heat so I did the climbs while he did the mud and then rehydrated. After that he was OK, and we had a pretty good clean run in the Southern Rogaine.
As predicted, there was a lot of attrition even at the top. We ended up 4th overall and won the Master's category. So much for Hingo's whining about being out of shape! We worked well together on the nav- good to race with him again.
Orienteering race 1:06:00 [4] ahr:158 shoes: Icebugs red
I was trying to take this one a bit easy so I didn't overheat before tomorrow.
Things went quite well until control 11 where I did one of my famous 20 minute errors on a very short and easy leg. I hadn't seen the scale was 1:7500, and tried to pace count with a (drifted) bearing instead of taking the easy route on trail. Oh well, got more exercise than most!
Orienteering race (Sprint) 28:00 [4] shoes: Icebugs red
Hope this isn't a trend- big error on the first control. Fairly tough course. Did I mention I hate sprints? Again, kept the pace down a bit.
Estrogen ride with LeAnimal, Rocky and the Powerhouse LD. Talk about the dream team to kick my butt on my poor little Omega bike in muddy conditions. Fortunately they waited for me after the tricky bits.
Highlight was hitting a bump on the steep slippery uphill on the Haute route and doing a backwards endo, and then falling off again shortly after on the next steep uphill. The North trails went a lot better, and the company was great.
Can't wait for the big bike to return!!
Cycling (Commute) 45:00 [2]
Easy ride to work and back with Bulletdog.
Way home's on my repaired big bike! Now I can retire the Omega from singletrack.
I'd intended to ride the trainer after a very tiring day at work, but Bash didn't find it hard to convince me to come bike-shopping with her, or at least come down to the shop to talk to the mechanic about her broken frame. My bike's still not back yet- tomorrow PM's the latest ETA. I was really hoping to do some hill training on it before the next race :(
Commute to work + hill intervals, and home the long way around the red trail, with 4 swims for the Bulletdog. Heavy load today too.
Lilacs in full bloom, scarlet tanagers and rose-breasted grosbeaks singing- ahh, commuting is tough.
Nice paddle down the Humber with Goose and Ms LD. We had the hounds on board to increase the technical difficulty in the mild rapids by jumping from side to side, or occasionally overboard. A lot of fun and quite scenic. I can't believe we've never paddled this before!