Two milestones for cyclists are the century, a 100-mile ride, and the metric century, a 100-kilometer ride.  I’ve never ridden a century before, but today I rode my first metric century—quite by accident.  I’ve gone on long rides to the north, south, and east but I’ve never tried to ride west.  The problem, as I found from Bing Maps (which I actually like better than Google), is that Grapevine Lake, DFW Airport, and Highway 121 form a bike-free barrier between Carrollton and Grapevine.  But a bit of research turned up a route right along the northern fence of the airport, Airfield Road, that was perfect for getting to Grapevine.  So this week I decided to give it a try.

Plane flying right over my head at DFW

The route was definitely a Carrollton blast from the past.  For the folks that grew up in C-town, I passed MacInnish Field, Sandy Lake Park, and just south of Newman Smith.  And my target location for the ride fit the theme: my C-town friends Chris and Karen Garner’s house.  When I got there, Karen had to wake Chris up as their boy was up sick in the night, but he was getting up soon anyway to continue a bathroom remodeling project.  I still felt guilty, but it was nice hanging out, chatting, and geting a refill on ice for my second bike bottle of Heed.

So why was the metric century an accident?  Well, as you can see on the route linked above, I took two wrong turns that added just enough distance to make the ride slightly longer than 62.14 miles (100,000 meters).  I was frustrated about the wrong turns when I took them, and that last 10 miles was especially brutal, but it was worth it in the end.  With the Sprint triathlon next weekend and the baby coming anytime, this will likely be my last long ride for a while.

It’s been a busy week so I didn’t get a chance to post about my epic bike ride last week.  After riding north to Prosper, and east to Lake Lavon, I decided to ride south to White Rock Lake and visit my friend Sam Crowley.  Luis Garcia, another friend of mine, told me about a 7-mile trail from Hillcrest & I-635 that went straight to the northern shore of White Rock Lake. So I rode south on Ohio/Hillcrest to that trail.  It was great!  There were dozens of cyclists on the trail, and although it was narrow it was fairly easy to ride.

I’d never ridden around White Rock Lake before, and it was really nice.  There were hundreds of runners and lots of cyclists too, but Lawther Road had almost no cars and it was easy to get around the lake. I veered away to stop by Sam’s house, but I had forgotten that he’d moved a couple blocks away and I didn’t have his new address!  So I briefly freaked out the family living in his new house, called Sam for his new address and got his voice mail, and then continued on my way around the lake and back home.  Great ride.  Thanks for the tip, Luis!

Next up, riding west to Grapevine, I guess.

Assuming our baby doesn’t come three weeks early, next weekend I am racing the Take on the Heat triathlon in The Colony, benefitting The Colony Firefighter’s Association. It’s a Sprint triathlon with a pool swim that starts at 7:00am, which means that depending on how many athletes are racing day, I may not start my run until 8:20am.  Keeping that in mind, I decided to try an 8:00am to 9:00am run today and push myself to see how it felt.

It did not feel good. It was hot, over 90 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. The sun was high enough that I wasn’t able to run in the shade much, and the humidity kept the breeze from cooling me off.  I set a goal to try and maintain a 10-minute pace, and over halfway through the run I had managed to do it, even with a big hill climb at the start. But the heat got to me eventually, and pretty soon I found that I had to significantly drop my pace to keep my heart rate down.  By the time I got back to Parker Road and the final stretch to my house, I was exhausted.  I still managed to maintain a 10-minute pace during the last ten minutes, but that middle slow stretch was enough to drop my pace to 10:25.

The run was still a great test of how it might feel to really push during the heat of the race. And of course the Sprint-distance run will be 30 minutes shorter, and I won’t have to keep my heart rate artificially down.  So we’ll see how I do…

I got out of bed much easier this morning and was excited about an early ride. Since I wanted to limit the ride to an hour I decided to do a bit of hill climbing on Windhaven and then ride a few loops on Tennyson near my house.  The hill at Windhaven & Plano Parkway is known as The Widowmaker, and there’s no steeper hill that I know in the Metroplex to give yourself a real workout on a bike.  It’s slightly steeper than the average grade of a tough Tour de France climb, and even though it only takes around 8 minutes to ascend compared to over an hour for each of the tough Tour hills, you feel like Lance when you’re climbing it, even if for just a few minutes.  If you make a route of it, there are 3 good hills to climb in that neighborhood, and so I did all three of them during the first half of the ride.

With just under 30 minutes to go and traffic picking up, I decided to ride over to Tennyson. On my Sunday rides, I always see a group of cyclists riding loops between Parkwood and Preston. I’ve ridden on Tennyson before but never as a time trial, where you ride the same distance multiple times at a quick and steady pace in an aerodynamic position. My average speed was ~13% faster riding the time trial—not surprising I guess—but interestingly enough my average heart rate was ~20% higher on the time trial, not the hills.

Fun fact #1: I reached a top speed of 34.5 miles per hour going down Windhaven Hill before I climbed back up.  Fun fact #2: Lance averaged just a few miles per hour slower on his Tour time trial ride than my descent of the biggest hill in the neighborhood. Guess I need to work on my power-to-weight ratio.

The night before I exercise, I am invariably excited about getting up early and getting a swim, bike, or run in before Emma wakes up. And when the morning comes, I usually get out of bed with that same excitement. But this morning, I literally laid in bed for 30 minutes trying to convince myself to go back to sleep, trying to make up excuses and drowsing off in between steeling myself to jump up and get dressed. Finally, I tricked my own brain by rolling out of bed and onto the floor without thinking about it.

Once I got running, I felt great, of course. But I decided to punish myself for my morning transgressions by running a tempo run at a 10-minute pace (slightly slower than my race pace). I was pleasantly surprised when I held the pace for the entire run without “blowing up”, or even an overly elevated heart rate.  Guess I should punish myself more often!

Another busy work week left me with only three workouts in the past seven days, but I definitely made up for it in weekend distance. We had houseguests in from Austin this weekend to attend a baby shower for Joanne, and I didn’t want my exercise to get in the way of spending time with them. That meant a very early run on Saturday, a late bike ride on Sunday in sunny 90+ weather, and no swim.

I still enjoyed myself nonetheless, especially on the bike ride. I didn’t get started until our guests headed back home, which meant an 11am start.  By then the heat was in full effect and not a cloud in sight. But a complete lack of wind had me feeling confident and I decided to ride north of 380 for the first time ever. I ended up riding across Prosper and back home, but next time I’d love to try to make it to Celina.  The toughest parts of the ride were crossing 380 without a light a Coit, and riding back south on Preston on a very rough and bumpy shoulder.

So now I’ve ridden east to Lake Lavon and north to Prosper. Next up are south to White Rock Lake and west to Grapevine…

With only a Sprint triathlon remaining in my season—unless I get lucky enough to squeeze one more post-baby Olympic in before the end of the year—and with the knowledge that I won’t have many “long” workouts (i.e. over one hour) for a while after the baby is born, I began this weekend to toy with the idea of working some basic speedwork into my routine. Racing the Olympic on only a week’s training proved to me that I do have a decent base at this point, and if I’m not going to try a Half until ~2011, I might as well get faster in the meantime.

So on Saturday morning I hit the pool, and instead of swimming a mile straight to start, I decided to swim only 350-yard repeats.  I chose 350 yards instead of the typical 400 because my upcoming Sprint is a 350-yard swim leg.  Now, when I’m pacing myself for a mile, I typically swim 100 yards in ~2 minutes. Having never timed myself at speed, I wasn’t sure what I could do.  End result is that after a 200-yard warmup I swam seven 350-yard repeats and my average time was 1:50 per 100 yards.  This would mean a 6:25 swim in my next Sprint, which would be great if I could pull it off.  We’ll see what a month of speedwork in the pool can do for me.

My Sunday bike ride was great. Lebanon Road is finally fully opened to four lanes from Frisco to the Colony, so after a quick ride up Ohio, I U-turned and headed west on Lebanon. I was able to ride all the way to the Tribute, where I stopped for half a PowerBar and a stretch before I headed back for home.  Just under 40 miles, just over 2 hours, and cloud cover the whole way.

Sunrise over The Tribute golf course

That being said, this race was an interesting test of the factors that cause fitness/performance loss:

• Training. Prior to TexasMan, I had trained fairly consistently for 3 months straight. Prior to Disco, I had one week of training and over six weeks of injury.
• Weather. The high temperature on the day of TexasMan was 76 degrees. The high temperature on the day of Disco was 101 degrees.
• Weight. I weighed 194 pounds for TexasMan and 199 pounds for Disco.

What was the end result?  My final Disco race time was 9% slower than TexasMan.  My swim was 13% slower, my bike was 4% slower, and my run was a whopping 16% slower.  The hot weather was certainly a factor, but still it’s amazing how slowly base fitness takes to build and how quickly it disappears!

Swim (30 minutes 30 seconds, 205 out of 273)
The swim was intimidating the first time around—it just looked so long.  But this time around I was much less nervous. I knew exactly where the buoys were this time and the water was quite calm.  I did have a couple problems once the race started, though. My goggles got hit by another swimmer and leaked a bit of water, which caused me to flip over on my back and empty them. And I swam off course at one point because I wasn’t sighting for the next buoy frequently enough. Despite those problems, the swim was relatively easy, and I actually found myself pushing a bit at the end to pass a couple of people in front of me.

T1 (2 minutes 55 seconds)
Coming out of the water, I noticed the sun was hiding behind some clouds. Nice!  As I ran up the path towards transition, some volunteers with hoses sprayed our feet and legs to get the sand off.  That was great.  My transition went fine and I headed out on the bike.

Bike (1 hour 21 minutes 32 seconds, 230 out of 273)
The ride was just as beautiful as in May, and amazingly the sun stayed behind the clouds for almost the entire ride.  Hemming Road was brutally bumpy like last time, and my piriformis muscles (muscles between your butt and lower back) were definitely aching on the final stretch.

T2 (2 minute 13 seconds)
Another good transition and I met my goal of approximately 5 minutes of transition time in every triathlon.

Run (1 hour 9 minutes 36 seconds, 224 out of 273)
More than a few people, include my wife Joanne, told me that racing a July Olympic in Texas was a bit silly. But with the new baby girl due on September 4th, I wanted to squeeze in one more Olympic. And the Disco race is really a blast. Many athletes dress in full disco garb, with afro wigs and gold chains and tie-dyed race gear. That being said, it was HOT. Oppressively hot. And humid, too, like running through warm soup. I paid close attention to my heart rate for the whole run, knowing that if I tried to run the 10K in under an hour I would “bonk” and end up walking. The sun came out in the first five minutes of the run, and when the route turned onto the unshaded road heading out of the State Park, I knew it was going to be painful. I walked through each water station, taking a cup of Gatorade to drink and two cups of water to pour over my head and my chest. By the last two miles, the path was littered with runners who had bonked, walking in a daze towards the finish line. I must have passed at least 20 people then, and at least half of them looked significantly more fit than I. It was a tough run, but it felt great to sprint the last hundred yards and then collapse in the lake.

Final Result: 3 hours 6 minutes 44 seconds, 225 out of 273
I didn’t have a goal time for this race.  I knew I would be slower than in May, and my time off to heal my ankle was the longest since I started triathlon, so I didn’t really know what to expect in terms of fitness.  The heat and lack of training made the race painful, but I have to admit that I was proud that I finished well. Overall, the race made me optimistic that I am starting to build a long-term base that will survive the new baby and allow me to build back up quicker than it would take to restart from scratch.

Seven weeks ago, I sprained my ankle. Last week, after lots of icing and rehab, my doctor gave me clearance to start exercising again.  I managed to work in one swim, one bike, and three runs.  With our second daughter due in 4 to 6 weeks, I wanted to squeeze in a race or two before my baby-induced triathlon hiatus begins.  Since I missed the Playtri Olympic two weeks ago, there was only one more local Olympic before the baby’s due date.  Unfortunately, it’s this weekend.

That means I’ll have had only one short week of training before a second race of the longest distance I have attempted.  I felt really good in my workouts this week, and although I seem to have lost about 10% of my speed, my endurance (a.k.a. “base”, “engine”, “cake”) still feels decent.  I decided I’m going to give it a go, so look for the race report soon.

Basic anatomy of a healthy ankle

My doctor gave me some exercises to rehab and asked me to come back in a couple of weeks.  In the meantime, no swimming, biking, or running.  And that means no Playtri Festival Olympic-distance triathlon on July 5th. D’oh! Hopefully I’ll get at least one more race in this summer once I get better.