Big Week and Skipping Spring

Mar 12 - Mar 18

S:  16,400 yds - 3hr 55min
B:  165.28 mi - 9hr 10min
R:  40.18 mi - 5hr 8min
Total:  18hr 13min

Like it says.  Another biggest week ever (I think).  And just like last year, it looks like we are jumping straight from 40 degree days to 80 degree days.

Training this week was full of adventure.  With the time change occurring last week, we now get daylight until roughly 7pm, which is great for biking during the week.  What this also means is that the Tuesday Night World Championships (aka "roadie ride") has started up.  It's always fun to get to duke it out with some solid Cat 1 and 2 guys, as opposed to just doing solo rides.  On Saturday, I headed out on the bike with Hallie and Ed, which has become a tradition of sorts.  Hallie usually has some sort of similar set of threshold sets, and Ed is a solid cyclist and is always up for anything...so it works out pretty good.  We warm up for an hour or so, and then start our respective sets and then meet up after we are done for the remainder of the ride.  We tried a new route and warmed up longer than usual, so when it was time to start a ~45' set I was down to 1 bottle.  Well, 3' into the first interval I hit a huge bump and unfortunately ejected my last bottle.  It was a 10' interval so I doubled back such that I finished the interval right where I thought I dropped it...but I couldn't find it.  From then on, it was another 3 sets of 10' without 1 sip of water...and the pollen was awful...that was probably one of the hardest things that I've done in awhile; not the workout in and of itself, but the fact that I lost my water! 

Well, I'm 1 week away from this year's first race.  It's a duathlon out at Oak Mountain State Park here in Birmingham, and it will consist of a 5k run, a 20k bike, and then a final run of 2.5k.  Total time should be close to an hour, so it will turn out to be pretty painful.  I'm ready though.  I'm more confident in my biking and running right now than I ever have been.  No question.  Biking has been going very well lately, and I'm anxious to put all the hard work to the test!