Tour de Pike + Publix 13.1
Time to start training hard again. As much as the cold winter months seems to proceed slowly, it seems as soon as the weather gets decent time suddenly goes very fast!
On a whim I decided to ride the Tour de Pike last weekend. I recruited a few friends. Really the reason I wanted to do this event was because I needed a long solid training ride this weekend but I knew I would be tempted to bail in lieu of running Publix hard and going for a PR. And my running volume isn’t where it needs to be to go for a PR AND I need to be training instead of racing so this would lock me in in a positive way, I hoped.
I have been having brake issues, but I hoped they would magically resolve in time to ride this century at a comfortable pace, then I would be fresh to run Publix reasonably hard so I hoped. Anyways, you can probably already guess where this is going…
This is the first aid station, where I still look optimistic.
You can already guess the punchline. Basically the first 42 miles were not as miserable as the death ride, but I did spend most of them thinking of any legitimate reason to have to bail early. Finally at mile 42 I removed the back brakes entirely, and the rest of the ride was a breeze.. except my legs were already shot.
It was a tough re-introduction to long rides, and I really didn’t want to get up the next day for Publix half. I had gotten these really cute tutus for Michelle, Katarina, Heather, and I to wear, even though our plans for running were different. I had toyed with just taking it completely easy, but I wanted to try to run reasonable hard on tired legs. I did this combo a few years ago and my time was quite slow. This year, even though Pike had worn my legs out much more than I anticipated, I tried to at least do a good job with nutrition afterwards so I could recover more quickly.
I thought if I could run sub 1:35 that would be a solid effort for the day and I ended up just under. I actually had a fun time at this race compared to the usual. One key difference was that normally I would be really out of breath during a half but since my body was too tired to push myself to that point, I could chat with others. I think people got a kick out of the tutu near-ish the front, and I had the very rare opportunity to have a bit of energy to encourage others along the way.
The coolest thing was Paul and John pushing Justin Knight for the Kyle Pease Foundation and coming in for the division win. Woohoo! It was a really rewarding experience and we hope to get more involved in the future.
