Last long ride

I'm starting to get to home stretch here in my training. I just did a fairly intensive month of training, now my volume will taper down again to give me time to recover for the race. Today was the last long ride - 5 1/2 hours on the schedule. I rode again with Al and Dan. Al chose to do part of the route Jeremy and I did a month ago - up St. Vrain Canyon, Peak to Peak highway to Ward and down Lefthand Canyon (Jeremy and I added the out and back to Nederland to make it an even 100). I rode a bit more aggressively at the beginning of the ride and that turned out fine.

Our first pit stop was at the park in Hygiene:



We had a brief water bottle refill in Lyons before the climb up to Raymond. On the climb I tried to keep my power at 140 again and that felt fine. Al and I rode together and chatted the whole way.

And you know, everyone does love Raymond.



Raymond has a weird little general store that sells snickers bars and water. We ended up waiting almost 20 minutes for Dan. Good thing he had a flat or we would really had to have said something. He's a good guy though, we always ride faster than him but he doesn't get all weird about it like some guys do. I can't tell you how many times I pass a guy that I've been gaining on for a mile, only to have him sprint by a minute later.



Next, the 12 mile, 1,500 ft climb on the Peak to Peak to Ward. Ward was strangely normal, or as normal as it gets. If you sit on the porch of the general store (which also sells snickers bars and water but only if you have cash) this is your view:



We had a brisk headwind going down Lefthand Canyon and I had to peddle the whole way. We took 63rd home again to get some more practice on the rollers, then I headed home while Al went out to round up to 80 miles. Since I rode from my house, I ended up at 84 and just a tad over 5:30. I used the same amount as energy as I did on our 100 mile ride 2 weeks ago so if we hadn't done 5,000 ft of climbing I think I would have done 100 again today. Al and I had plenty of time to talk today and we decided that after climbing for 3 straight hours at 7,000 ft, any one mile hill Wisconsin throws at us is going to be a piece of cake.

After the ride, I did a 4 mile run. My legs felt fine (and I averaged a 10:30 pace easily) but my gut was a little off. It was another hot day and even though I lucked out with some cloud cover for the run, it was still 90 degrees. This is one area for the race that is worrying me - my stomach seems more unhappier the hotter it gets.

Weekly Totals:

Swim: 9024 yards
Bike: 107.94 miles
Run: 22 miles
Walk: 7 miles

Total: 16:51