A lovely day for a bike ride

This morning when my alarm went of at the absurdly early 5:30 a.m., I was resigned to it. I hopped out of bed, threw on my bike shorts, and headed outside. (Okay, okay... I did a few more things but not many! I was out the door in six minutes. Really!)

I hadn't paid any attention to the weather forecast and was a bit surprised to find a light rain. No worries; I raced in rain - I can train in rain right! Oh wait isn't that supposed to be the other way around?

Nonetheless, I headed to the Y to meet TriGirls Deanna L, Meghan, Jonah, Kathryn, and newly anointed (by me anyway) TriGirl Richard. I think he really likes that, by the way. We had butts in seats at 6 a.m. as planned. Love that! We were all pretty compatible speed wise and stayed together which was great. Some of us were doing the full 12 mile race loop and some of us were veering off the path to get a few more miles. As the rain picked up, the numbers in each category shifted towards the shorter ride. For the smart people that is...

Richard, Deanna and I split from the rest of the group to do a quick out and back. Deanna totally cracks me up - she started out saying she was going to ride 30 minutes, then 45, then she said, "I'll do 30 miles if you want." She is always self-depreciating about her talent then goes out there and lights it up. It was really fun to ride with her today.

The rain picked up and we hit some rolling hills. Truck traffic was heavy, particularly on the way back. At one point, Deanna was in the lead and we were riding pretty tightly when a big service truck zipped past us and almost immediately made a right turn - right in front of Deanna. She handled it really well but it kind of freaked me out. Almost immediately thereafter, a contractor van passed us and I'll just say he was not inclined to share the road. I know he had to see us but he certainly did not make any accommodation for us. I was very happy when the road widened to two lanes each way.

We somehow managed to finish our ride unscathed, albeit a bit dirty, for a total of 20 miles at 17.2 mph. Considering that we couldn't see, we were pleased.

Next I headed into the Y to get a little swimming in, since after all it was still only 7:30 a.m. TriGirl40 was in the pool and I got to catch up with her for a few minutes. Always a pleasure! She was more motivated than me and kept swimming, so alas, I had to get started.

I decided to do a timed 1000 as my main set today, hoping to build a little confidence that I won't have to walk at Luray. Which actually isn't an option since we're swimming in what I believe is a deep reservoir. I'm told it used to be the town's water supply. After a lazy warm up and an unnecessary rest, I started. It didn't feel great but fortunately it didn't feel horrible either. I swam the 1000 in 21:30 (approximately) which is an improvement of a minute over the last time I tried this in... um... April. Very significant when you look at it this way: 1:045/50 versus 1:05/50. Impressive, eh? Still I did it and that's what counts!

I followed that up with a 300 free then for some crazy reason I decided to do a 100 IM. Which fortunately I did before the guy next to me started busting out his multiple sets of 50 fly. He had an amazing stroke. I meekly did my cool down and got the heck out of the way!

And even made it to work by 9... this week anyway...