Highwood revisited, from the north side

Katie and drove out to Barrier Lake to ride Highwood. My plan was 6 hrs max, then a 30 minute run. From Barrier it's about 62 K to the top. We had a great day, though it was a bit windy at times. Of course, she can ride way faster than me, but she doubled back a couple times to make sure I hadn't been eaten by a grizzly or something.

There is a lot of up involved in this ride. Plus a bit of down. Plus a lot of false flat. I never figured it out. I'd be riding along, equally astonished at doing 14 or 24 kph. I didn't see any other riders till I was near the top. The last bit is tough sledding. I was down to about 7 Kph in the granniest gear, weaving all over the shoulder trying to avoid the bugs. Once at the top I rode a bit further to where I turned around last time, and looked for Katie, but she was much further down.

It was just under 3.5 hrs to the top, counting a detour back to the car right at the beginning for something I forgot. It was 2 hrs back down again, and I was choked at the wind at the top. Going down the steepest part of the grade and I couldn't even get over 60 Kph. Did way better than that further down on flatter slopes but less wind.

In some ways the ride down was tougher for me. I was getting a bit creaky, a bit tired of being on the bike, a lot tired of the motorcycles. I was ready for a run about an hour before the ride ended. There's one last hill up and that really took it out of me. What with a bit of riding back and forth near where we parked, it turned into 130 K ride, and 5:45 time.

Lets see, 3 Clifs bars, 2 bananas, 2.5 bottles of energy drink.

The run was good! Started off with a good stride, I think mainly because I was so happy to be off the bike. Ran 30 minutes, and only slowed down a bit at the end. My left knee was getting a bit cranky.

Drove home to find Linda had a lamb roast ready to eat. Yum!

Not fail, but not obedient either

Feeling better, even though I didn't sleep well last night. My brain was going a mile a minute, thinking about work stuff, tri stuff, stuff stuff. My body was tired, but couldn't find a comfortable position to settle into.

Swim was to be 60 minutes after a short warmup, 400 m or so. No counting laps. No stopping. Consistent. The start was much like IMC, I got one lap in, and 3 floaties joined me. Dudes in the next lane were sloppy swimmers with huge waves, wake, and bubbles. They had the pool jets on full to clear out the kid pee from swim lessons. Choppy. Swam hard 100 m or so, dodging the floaties and showing them I was on a mission.

After that I settled into a nice consistent stroke, back and forth. Counted strokes a few times, it was either 19 or 20 per length. Watched the pace clock a few laps near the end and realized I'd slowed down to 1 minute per 50 m. Dug in and sped back up to 55 seconds or so, and worked a bit harder for the last few laps. Finally looked at my watch at 66 minutes, and wanted to keep going and tweak the stroke a bit more. At 72 minutes I was attacked by the lane ropes as the pool staff started setting up for the family swim. Ended at 73 minutes. Could easily have carried on much longer.

Resting

I am, really. Only did a couple things after work, only two of which were tri related.

• One - got a phone call from my dear friend Susi, mostly re: our upcoming trip to Penticton and how we'll meet, tips for packing and getting transition organized.
• Two - called the motel and double checked that we're really booked in like I thought.
• Three - called our house sitter and made sure she had the dates for our trip.

Other than that I rested.

• Except for test driving some new cookies. I was so tired last night I sloughed (pronounced "sluffed" for my American visitors who are spooked by the letter u when accompanied by other vowels) off my cookie QC duties. Linda was shocked and horrified.
• Getting reaquainted with Amelia the cat, which involves a great deal of string animating and combing.
• Except for finishing up corp tax stuff. My accountant thought of some other stuff she needed, which mainly involved me digging in drawers like a dog after a bone, and filling out a spreadsheet. I know many of you are horrified, but I spend a significant fraction of my working life buried in spreadsheets of one kind or another, so I don't mind. I even put in the cute dollar signs for her. I know this reassures accountants that I'm counting beans, and not smarties or cookies. They have different symbols, you know. § and © respectively. See, aren't I just a font of information. (hahahahaha!)

No lawn mowing (though it will need it soon) or cleaning the basement (that darn tri stuff is all over the place, looking like it wants to go on a trip or something).


Getting pumped for riding the north part of Highwood on Sat.

(Hides face in hands)

Swim warmup was not good. Tried to relax and ease into it, to find the groove. I even did a bit of extra warmup, hoping my body would remember how to swim. Fist was a flail, trying to keep from sinking to the bottom. During the catchup drill my flip turns abruptly failed. I found this out when I banged my tailbone on the floor of the pool - in the deep end. I had lots of time to look at the surface, wondering how long I could stay down there before the lifeguards came to get me. Once I realized I was not naturally floating upward at a rate that would lead to my being able to breath when I wanted to, I just stood up.

Halfway through the first 400 m main set I made the mistake of looking at my watch. Holy crap. I don't think I've ever swum 200 m that slow. I gave it another 100 m trying really hard on my stroke, and I sure hope nobody was watching because it was ugly. Then I got out of the pool and put the toys away.

Another long run tonight was in the plan. 5K loops again, with the front patio as an aid station.
First loop. 39:39 avg heart rate 113. T Rex plods again! The entire 5K was on the verge of breaking into a walk.

Second loop. 38:46 avg heart rate 117 I pushed a lot harder, hoping for a 35 minute lap time. Not. There is nothing in my legs. Stride sucks.

Third loop. 48:15 avg heart rate 104. My legs stopped running (I use that word very loosely, you understand.) about 1:45. Thats about where I realized I was going slower than my fast walk.

Total 2:06. Max heart, the MAX heart rate for crying out loud was only 125. That's not even zone 3. The big success for the evening is that I didn't trip over a sidewalk slab and land on my head, lying there till some generous passerby reads the Road ID and makes a phone call.

Riding on a shredded tire

Schedule is kind of mucked up from the weekend. Did not swim this am. Did not want to get out of bed. Barely dragged my tail into work. Good thing Linda made excellent coffee

Run 60 minutes tonight. Ok. There's been better and worse. Nothing more worth saying.

Then downstairs for fail. Well, the intent was core, the result was fail. A pyramid of failure. It's shorter to say what didn't fail. Calf raises. Rows. Everything else failed before completion. Some, like tri dips got further than others, like plank. Some, like pushups and wall sit were instant failure.

A week and a bit ago I had a flat near Okotoks on my long ride. Remember how I said there was lots of crap on the road, and lots of it looked like glass? The tire was a bit soft before my Thursday ride last week and I pumped it up. It was a bit soft again before my Monday ride and I pumped it up. It was soft at the end of the ride, and when I looked at it this morning it was totally flat. I knew there was at least one good cut in the tire so I knew I didn't want to do IMC on it. It so happens my accountant is in the same building as a bike shop downtown. Campione, if you're interested. They had a tire that would fit so I bought it.

Found the hole in the tube pretty quick. Finding the tiny wire that caused it was harder. At least I think that's what caused it. There were several other possible candidates; tiny little pebbles lodged into cuts. What a mess! That tire is now in the garbage. I think that's the fastest I've ever used up a tire and there's still lots of tread on it, but it's the areas without tread that worry me. My hands got a core workout putting the new tire on, and I managed without any tire tools. I must be getting better at this.

The other thing I discovered in this process is that when I'd put the tire back on after fixing the flat, I hadn't flipped the little lever that widens the brakes so the tire can get out, back to where it should be for riding. So essentially, I've ridden the last several hundred K without back brakes. Oops.

So for the long ride this weekend I am NOT going to go on highway 7. Not sure where I'll go exactly. Maybe down to Hartell and left onto the road I did last time.

That was painful

No, not fixing the tooth. Remember, I've got the best dentist in the world. Not only does he understand triathlon, he's got deft fingers. He took one look at my tooth and laughed.
"You had me a bit worried when you said a huge chunk had fallen off; this is no big deal at all."
And it wasn't. Less than half an hour after lying down, I was up again, ready to go. And yes, it really was a huge chunk; almost half the filling was exposed. No followup needed. It becomes another thing to keep track of during the regular checkups.

The painful part was the bike ride today. Maybe I should have skipped it. With the last few weeks of good rides, I'd built my confidence up and was feeling good about the bike. After today's ride I'm not so sure anymore.

It was overcast and cool when I started out. I felt fairly good, and was looking forward to a fairly strong 5 hour ride. I wasn't out to set any records, but wanted to maintain a good pace and finish strong. By the end of the first hour I knew that wasn't going to happen. I was already hurting more than I had at the end of the 180+ ride last weekend. I could not get comfortable. My toes hurt, my legs were weak and feeble noodles. My right knee was really, really down on this whole bending thing. My hands hurt. My triceps were just killing me, especially the left, and in fact it still hurts now. My neck and upper back hurt. And my butt, holy crap did that hurt! It felt like someone had installed a couple of pointy bits on the saddle right where they would go into my sit bones.

I rode out 22X and down 22, a route I'm really familiar with in all sorts of wind conditions. The first hour was about what I had expected, but instead of building on that, I knew I was going to be lucky to hold onto that pace. Down to Millarville and west, doing not too badly, but struggling to stay focussed. I turned around where the road turns to gravel just after the Quirk Creek gas plant. Then went up 762 to the very top of the hill, and turned around. I got back to 549 right at 2:30.

So technically, what I should have done was turned around, gone back up the hill and down again, back to Quirk Creek, then headed for home. I couldn't. I just couldn't. I headed for home. Already my average pace was dropping off, and I felt weaker than ever. No matter which way I faced it seemed like I was into the wind. Normally I don't mind but today I was taking it personally.

I struggled along, wondering why I was feeling so weak, and so down about the ride. I'm not sure if the physical weakness drove my attitude, or if my lack of enthusiasm for the ride translated into the physical feebleness. At the 90 K point I was about 3:35. If this had been a 180 K ride I think I would have quit and called Linda to tell her which ditch she could find me in. As it was, there were a couple places I wanted to call it a day. One in particular, standing up to give my butt a break had my knee screaming. For a few seconds I thought I'd actually broken or torn something.

As I've been doing lately, I had thought carefully about nutrition. I'd had a good breakfast, and was even with the plan at the very least, and if anything was a little ahead of it. By and large it wasn't a bad day for riding. The clouds cleared a bit, and it wasn't cold. No rain at all, despite a 60% chance in the forecast, and threatening looking clouds at the start.

I am trying to retain my confidence about the bike ride. For some reason I've really struggled with the bike this year. If I'd known how slow and painful it would be, I think I would have skipped it. After all, workouts are supposed to build confidence and fitness, right? This workout didn't, and didn't. I don't think one builds fitness riding way, WAY slower than normal. How slow was it? 4.5 hours to go 108 K. That's about 24 Kph on roads that I typically average 26 to 27 Kph on. Even that's deceptive since the first two hours were mostly on track.

When I got home I put Estela into the basement and told her that she's a good bike and it's not her fault. Then I hit the showers. I simply didn't see the point of a T run. I'm going to try to put it behind me and think positively about the upcoming storm of workouts. One last build to go. Only a few more workouts, in the grand scheme of things, till taper, and the big day. But I'm feeling it today. I've been working at this fitness thing pretty hard and pretty steady now for 3 years. Almost all of it has been fun. Today wasn't fun, not even close. At this moment, this very moment, I think about IMC and it's "uggg, one more thing to do." As in, one damn thing after another.

It's ok Susi, no gory photos this time

My thought was to do the bike ride on Saturday, and spectathlete on Sunday at the local 70.3. Well, life gets in the way. I woke up Sat totally bagged. I knew right off there was no point going out for the bike ride, even if it was going to be the nice day of the weekend. It was nice to have a quiet day, mostly off my feet. Reading. Getting my corporate tax stuff organized. Watching videos, and (gasp) drinking beer. Watched the new Alice in Wonderland, and the Red Baron. First was pretty good, the second was pretty bad, which disappointed me.

Sunday I was feeling much better. Then while having a peanut butter sandwich there was an extra loud crunch. I've been having a sensitive spot on one of my upper teeth for a while. I've been eating carefully, trying to make it last till a dental appointment in September. Not. A huge chunk of tooth fell away from the filling, and since I didn't spit it out I must have swallowed it. My dentist is at the 70.3 race, expecting to see me among others. From Cath's tweet I know she and Julie are done in good time. Yay!

I thought long and hard about going for a ride today, all the while probing the missing bits of toothness. Drinking and eating has to be done extremely carefully, since there is a filling hanging out in the open, and I'd really rather not damage it any more than it already is. One touch of liquid is painful. I don't want to think about biting down on anything; that might crumble the filling. It's only 30 some years old and done with what my fabulous dentist calls "a primitive technique, even for that time." Even breathing through my teeth sets up a whistle effect that irritates me. My upper jaw is aching. So I didn't ride. Overcoming the habits of a lifetime of eating and drinking is difficult enough without adding bicycle operation into the mix. Last thing I need is a crash to make it worse.

In the latest news I have a 9am appointment tomorrow with my dentist. I'm not deluding myself that he can fix it up good as new in one go. I suspect what will happen is that he'll mold some tooth goop into a shape that will seal things up for now, and plan whatever has to be done as a long term solution. Since one of the things we've discussed in recent appointments is the gradual replacement of these fillings it will be no surprise all that has to be taken into account.