Frolicking Through The Sprinkler

This is supposed to be a "down" week and the schedule called for a short 45 minute ride and a 60 minute run. No problemo however what the problemo was the humidity. The weekend was a lot less humid than the week before and when I left the house at 5:30 am, although it was only 23 degrees the humidity must have pushed the temperature over 3o degrees. By the time I came back from the ride the sun had started to come up making it a little hotter. In the past, I've run out of water on the run so I tried using a fuel belt that my brother Don had given me. It holds two flask (6 ozs) and one bottle of water that holds about 18 ozs of water. I really didn't like it as the bigger bottle bounced up and down with every step and then when it was half empty, began to fall out and the little ones were almost useless as two big gulps and they were empty. It was so humid out that within 20 minutes into the run I had drained the bigger bottle and and basically ran with out water in the last 15 minutes but was manageable. I did see one person watering their lawn with a sprinkler so I ran through it but it didn't help and I didn't see anymore. I think a fire hose would have been better. I don't really like running without water as for some reason, I'm always thirsty and if I don't drink enough I begin to bonk very quickly. Hopefully, it won't be as humid on race day or there are a lot of water stations.

This week promises more of the same weather, hot and very humid so there maybe more stupid runs at 4:23 in the morning. Now I know what my brothers meant by Kona North.

Saturday's workout was pretty good as I had to ride 2 hours and 45 minutes (80 km) followed by a 20 minute(4.5 km) transition run. Given that everybody keeps telling me how hilly Muskoka is, I thought I'd better start adding more hills and the route I ride is fairly flat with only two major hills so I incorporated several hill repeats. In fact I did nine hills and I was totally bagged by the time I finished. Thankfully I had a nice tail wind otherwise it would have been a very slow ride home. Ten minutes into the run, I was ready to start walking. I'm not sure how far I could have ran after that ride but something tells me I could be in a rude awakening for the Muskoka Long Course which is two weeks away as I start to taper down and there are no more opportunities for hill work. Interesting enough, due to the G8 meetings they have changed the course as need trails/roads were built so the run course has been reduced by two km to only 13 km. I was originally disappointed when I first heard that they were shortening the course but maybe that isn't such a bad thing after all.

In trying to better my times in T1 and T2, I've been practising mounting and dismounting the bike leaving the shoes clipped on the pedals as its far easier to run in bare feet than in riding shoes. This is far harder than it looks but practise makes perfect....sort of.