So I've got this brick, now what?

Yeah, I rode 109 miles on Saturday and I raced a half marathon on Sunday, now what?

Well, it has let me know that I still have some kind of fitness and has given me a gauge for my spring training. I have found that as I work my way around the country, it can be difficult to be consistent with my training. So I wasn't really sure how well I would do. My longest ride in the past ten months has been 75 miles, and my longest run has been ten or eleven miles. I haven't done any road racing or speed work with the exception of a 5K in Ketchikan last fall and the Lasse Viren 20K in December...both of which about killed me.

But as my friend and long-time cycling and running partner, Lyn Willoughby, said, "I'm relying on a lifelong body of training." Yes, Lyn, I think you are very right.

Saturday's ride was easy. I felt like a million dollars, like I could've ridden forever...or at least another 50 miles. The course was easy; no big hills or headwinds to tax the legs. So over a couple of beers at dinner, I started to think about the next day's 1/2 Marathon. Could I run it hard? How hard?

So as Lyn and I lined up on Sunday morning I told him that I was going to try running hard. And so I sealed my fate...

I headed out and soon began knocking out 6:45 miles with little effort. I knew that I was probably going out too fast, but I really had no idea on my pace for a road race, so I just kept going. At 6 miles I was at 39:27. Ouch! I was tearing it up and started thinking about sub 1:30 for my half. The legs felt fine for the moment. I kept it up for two more miles, then began to fatigue, but was still in the low 7's (7:05+/-) then 7:19. Gulp!

It came down to the wire and I crossed the the finish in 1:30:15 by the clock. But I had forgotten that I was racing with a chip and managed to pull a net 1:29:57 out of my @$$. It was good enough for 25th male overall and 5th in my age group. It was an incredibly hard run at the end and I payed for it dearly over the next few hours, but it gave me some perspective on how hard I could go.

So what now? I am currently training for my first triathlon since I was about 20 years old. I will be racing here in La Quinta on March 7th in the Desert International Triathlon. I will be racing the Olympic distance race (3/4 mile swim, 40K bike, 10K run). At this point I am feeling good about it and am already starting to think about racing a Half Ironman distance race (1.2 mile swim, 56 mile bike, and 13.1 mile run) for a total of 70.3 miles.


So what is your next challenge?