First Long Ride Outside - Chicked

The weather here has been crappy to say the least.  I don't mind riding in cold weather as I can ride until it gets down to about -5 C but when its rainy or windy, I'll pass.  Most Saturday's have been three hour rides on the trainer watching movies.  Last weekend the weather was warm enough.  I originally was going to ride Saturday morning around 10 am (way later than normal) with Rom but when I woke up and looked outside, it was cold and rainy.  By 9 am it wasn't any better so I called Rom and we agreed to ride Sunday afternoon when the weather would have been nicer.  I opted to study instead for an exam coming up next week and then later went for my long run.

My "long run" is now up to 45 minutes.  I tore my calf muscle twice since last October and with only six weeks until Mont Tremblant 70.3, I should be able to get it up to two hours.  The run itself was very manageable but man was I ever sore later in the day.

Sunday afternoon I rode over to Rom's house (20 minute ride) and we headed up Warden ave for a three hour ride.  We did this route hundreds of times last year.  Rom was coached by Roger (famous tri-magazine writer) for the indoor bike session this winter.  I toyed with the idea of working with Roger but opted (too cheap) to use last year's Ironman workouts.  I was interested to see if Rom was any stronger.  Well I got my answer pretty quick as he took off and I struggled to keep up.  We had a pretty good tailwind and he just hammered it.  I was hitting zone 5 on my heart rate and that's with a 20 km/hr tailwind!  This was going to suck when we turned around.  We picked up another tri rider along the way.  With Rom up ahead, I thought I would dump this guy but every time I glanced behind me, he as about five meters back.

We picked up a guy and a girl and all five of us rode together but we got stopped at a light but the girl and I made it through.  We rode together with the others far behind us.  After a while (like 30 seconds) I got impatient and blew passed her on a hill pushing out an impressive 792 watts.  I paid for it about one km later as I totally ran out of gas and she passed me along with the other three guys.  This was trouble as we were still heading north with the tailwind.  Later I found out that this was her first year of riding (its only April) and she chicked me although she was riding a Cervelo s5.  What a nice starter bike.

At Ravenshoe (90 minutes later) Rom and I stopped and the others kept going north.  I was tired dreaded heading back south into the headwind.  After reloading, we turned around and headed south into the head wind.  Within a couple of minutes Rom was gone well not quite gone.  He waited at every major intersection (about five km apart).  This is pretty much a repeat of last year.  I could not keep up.  Clearly he worked a lot harder in the off season than I did.  Finally I made it home and was exhausted.  Its hard to imagine that last year I was able to ride another 90 km. 

So a quick recap of where I stand:

My biking sucks
My long run is up to 45 minutes
Swimming sucks
I'm overweight by five pounds
Mt Tremblant is six weeks away and going to get smoked by all my friends racing it
I'm exhausted from study for an exam on Monday

That pretty much sums it up