BRICKS

I guess it's called Brick training - doing one sport after another. I was doing a little of this back in September and early October but it's now become part of my weekend.

Saturday morning I set out on a couple big loops around Carefree, Cave Creek, Scottsdale, and back to Phoenix. Doug and Ken both bailed out on me Friday night. Good thing, too. The ride was absolutely miserable! Bitter cold of course but that wasn't the worst part. There's a long 20 mile uphill stretch on Cave Creek Road and the entire ride was into the teeth of a 15 mph wind. Like I said, miserable! If there had been anybody with me it would have been easy to talk each other into quitting. Along it was easier to get the ride done.

I must say that I was a little disappointed as I finished up. It was a five hour ride done at level 2. I honestly thought that if I had a great ride that I would pull in somewhere close to 100 miles. Worst case I was thinking 90, so you can imagine my thoughts as I looked at the computer and saw 81.23 on the display. A little arithmetic tells you that if the Ironman were to be held today, on that course, with that wind, my time would be just shy of 7 hours. Not a very appetizing thought.

There wasn't much time to feel sorry for myself though. I had to ditch all the cold weather clothing I was wearing, throw on my running shoes and hit the pavement for a 20 minute run. The idea here is that physically my body SHOULD be able to take the punishment of a long run right off the bike. What can go wrong is the nutrition or fuel that you've put into your body, so a short easy run tells you whether or not you are on track.

Observations:

1. My feet felt big. I don't know how else to describe it. They felt wide and heavy.
2. The muscle (if you can call it that) just above my right ankle on my shin hurt immediately and did not stop hurting until I stopped running.
3. Nutrition was fine. For the ride I opted for an all liquid diet. I did get the sensation a couple times while riding that something solid in my stomach would have felt good. I think this weekend I'll opt for a couple gels or a power bar while I'm out there. I felt good although my legs were tired. On the bike I noticed that my right big toe kept going numb and that both my ankles hurt at times, but neither was a concern on the run.

Long run tomorrow. I'd like to get 11 miles in.