I wish I could call this a true "brick" workout, but since I did the bike ride on Saturday and the run on Sunday I can't call it that. I would have never dreamed that I could ride 65 miles on the bike one day and turn around and run 20 miles the next day! And actually when I signed for the bike ride, I didn't check my run schedule. Then about 2 weeks ago I was looking at my schedule because I had to alter it some due to going on vacation and that's when I realized that I had both to do in the same weekend!
I will say I was kind of nervous all week leading up to this weekend wondering how it was going to go. See my plan had been to ride 40-50 miles before the 60 miles at the bike-a-thon, but that didn't happen. I had only ridden 30 miles as the most at one time so I was kind of nervous. I knew it wasn't a race so we would not be riding as hard as we normally ride, but I still didn't want to be at the end of the pack either (call that the competitive side of me). For the bike-a-thon you had the option of 30, 60 or 100 miles. We picked 60. We learned at the event that they only had 16 bike riders that were doing the 100 miles. A few more than that doing the 60, but the majority were doing the 30 miler.
I was excited that several of my friends were also doing the 60 miles. I had never done a bike ride like this so I wasn't sure what to expect. I recently purchased a new GoPro camera to take to New York so I wanted to try it out on the bike ride. I noticed some people were looking at me with my GoPro on, but I didn't care...... I just made me a nice face and Mel took a picture. LOL
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| Me sporting my GoPro Camera and a orange tongue cause I had just drank a Gatorade. I think Sonya is saying ... "Oh my.. I've got to ride with this crazy girl." hee hee There were aid stations every 15 miles. Mel would stop and get off her bike and lay on the ground. I asked her what she was doing. She told me she was hydrating her disk in her back. I had never heard it put that way. She has disk problems worse than me. I had always been told to lay down and take the pressure off your disk when your back is hurting .... but I had never heard "hydrate" in the sentence. Anyway, I joined her for a few minutes and it felt so good!  We rode steady. Sometimes we would peak around 20-21mph and then I'd remember that I had to run 20 the next day so I'd back off. It was a lot of fun! Mel is our spin teacher and it's due to her that I'm strong enough to do most of the things I do these days. She kicks our butts in spin but it's good for us. They even had pickle juice at the aid stations. It was awesome. We all took a picture of us taking a shot of pickle juice at mile 30.  Gina, Mel, me, Frank & Sonya getting our pickle juice fix. 
When we finished the 60 miles, Frank mentioned that the wanted to do a 65 miler this month since it's he's 65 birthday so I told him if we were doing it, we would do it right then cause I sure wasn't coming back to ride 65 before New York... so we hoped back on our bikes and rode another 5 miles to get a total of 65 miles in. Happy Early birthday, Frank! For our 60 miles we averaged 15.2 mph which isn't that bad for a fun ride. It was a great day! I was shocked that my legs weren't really tired. My shoulders and neck however was very tense and sore. I went home and did basically nothing the rest of the day. I was asleep on the couch at 7:15pm. I needed my rest for my run. :>)
Sunday I wake up ready to do my 20 miler and to my surprise, I felt great. I'm not sue if it was all the pickle juice or the fact that I knew after today that I have only a 12 miler and then an 8 miler and then NEW YORK! It's almost here! Sunshine joined Frank and I today and I was so happy that she got to! I plan to run with her at the St. Jude marathon but we haven't had much time to train together this year. Both of us have had so much going on that we've had to alter our LSD on Saturdays to different days. I was so thrilled she was going to do the 20 with me! Frank probably gets tired of listening to just me lately anyway. ha! This training season has been different that last season. So many of the team members have had things going on during the weekends or been out of town that we've rarely ran together. I sure miss those times too! I loved last year when we usually had a big group running together each Saturday. But life sometimes gets in the way and you have to change your plans. Matter of fact today after our 20 miler I was talking to a guy that has ran many marathons. He's even qualified for Boston and ran it several times. He is what I call a true "marathoner". Anyway, we were talking about New York and he said he's marathon days are over. I asked him why wondering if he had an injury or something. He's not that much older than me either. He told me that training for a marathon constantly is like a second job and he decided he wanted more free time. He said he loves half marathons and will continue to do them, but he doubts he will ever do another marathon. He said when he was training full time he averaged 60-70 miles a week running! That's a lot of miles! I'm good to average 30. However, I do completely understand what he is talking about. Taking on a marathon is very time consuming. You have to almost put your family on hold on the weekends because that's when you need to get in your really long runs.
Sunshine grabbed a couple pictures of us during our run today. It was an absolute beautiful morning! 55 degrees and felt awesome!!!
She's cray cray! this is around mile 13..she's still smiling
This is mile 17.... not smiling so much anymore... I told her she was getting ready for Halloween!
We finished and laid down to "hydrate" our disk in our back and stretch.....talk about feeling good!
The threesome sporting our St. Jude Hero shirts today as we ran! 20 Miles down...Let the TAPER begin!
Have a bless day! D
P.S. Still amazed I rode 65 miles and ran 20 miles in the same weekend. There's only one person to thank.... GOD. Philippians 4:13! Got to have faith and believe!
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