Two Thirds of an Oly Tri Tuesday

I had to drop a coworker at the airport (Dulles), so I took the opportunity to do tonight’s ride out on the W&OD trail.  By starting out near Dulles it is much quieter and far fewer intersections.  I had only planned to do an hour long ride (I’ve got my last race of the season on Saturday, an Oly Tri), and then follow it with a 5.4 mile run.  But after I got out there I was feeling good and the pace was solid – so I decided to instead make it a 40K ride (~24 miles, typical Oly tri distance).

I posted my fastest ride of the season (training or race), averaging 21MPH – including stopping at 6-8 intersections for cars, etc… It was awesome.  Also did aerobars the entire time (I only got them last week).  I noticed that when I got back my front tire had slowly deflated to 45PSI, no wonder I thought it felt harder.  Doh.  I think that was caused by some gravel I hit at a construction area near the turnaround point. 🙁

After that I drove back to Old Town for my run with the running group.  My plan for the week was to do the Tuesday run at high intensity, and then lay off the high intensity runs for the rest of the week.  Today’s run was 5.4 miles, with a few hills (total elevation gain of 170ft).  I knocked off 52 seconds off of last week’s time on the same course, bringing my pace per mile for this course to 6:36.  I nearly did the mother of all flying face plants on the final mile, I didn’t see a speed bump and caught my foot on it.  Close call, it would have left a mark.

I’m looking forward to Thursday’s run though, where I’ll be doing it at a really relaxed pace and just getting to know some of the group (it’s about 20-30 people large).

Today was just a really good night overall.  I’m also really excited about this weekend’s race – I’m hoping to see a solid improvement over my earlier (and only) Olympic Tri 45 days ago.