A long training day, the first of many

The final build for Arizona has begun, and yesterday was my longest training day out of any of my Ironman's.  I met with Andy and we headed out on a long ride.  The plan was to ride 100 and run off of the bike.  I had wanted to run 6 off of the bike, and wanted to run a certain pace, but would be satisfied with a little slower pace.

The ride: We left from my house at like 6:45 and did the new loop that we had discovered about a month ago.  I thought that the route was 50 miles, and it ended up being 52 and change.  The first loop went well and was without incident.  After a quick stop to refill bottles the second loop started.  I felt better early on into the second loop, until we hit about mile 80.  I could feel myself bonking, and there was nothing I could do about it.  I was doing my usual eating more sooner than expected hoping that things would come back.  I had to go to the bathroom, so we stopped at a gas station and I went to my known bonk breaker...mini frosted donuts.  After the stop things were going better.  I think the problem was that I wasn't in a rhythm, I would hammer and then chill...hammer and then chill.  That's not how I need to ride, I need to get into the zone and stay there, when I'm in the zone I'm all good.  Something to learn for sure.  We ended up riding just over 105 miles.  I started thinking as the ride went on and I was more satisfied with it.  I felt strong again towards the end of the ride which was definitely nice for the confidence.

Off of the bike I was going to be happy to run 4 miles, not knowing how my legs would feel.  But I have a little secret that I used to help get me started and to help keep me going...my dogs.  I knew that my dogs would set a nice pace right out of the gate and I really had no choice but to keep up with them.  So mile one was 6:30...far faster than I wanted to hold so I then figured that they burned off that initial excitement and I could slow them down so after that we settled in.  My goal was to run at a 7:00 pace, but I was going to be satisfied with a 7:15.  I went through the second mile under 7 minutes so I decided to keep things under control and try to get 6 miles in, as I got closer I said screw it I'm going 7, holding 7:00.  When things were all said and done I ended up running 7 miles at a 6:48 pace.  This was a great confidence boost.

Time for another week of training.  First a little recovery today with my Zensah compression tights.