Long Ride

Last week, I decided to bike to work. Pharmie didn't work that day, so I was able to leave a bit early and get in 8 miles before class (it's only 2.5 miles to work, but I was able to bike a few extra miles). I loaded my laptop, lunch, and "teaching appropriate" clothes and shoes into my tri bag:

It was heavy. I do not pack light.

I got to work and destroyed my office. I already had some stacks of projects and a big pile of books on my desk from a week before, but now it looked like this:

For comparison, here's what Deb's area looked like in our 4-person shared office:

I'm a pig.

Between classes, I hopped on my bike for a hard tempo ride. The day was PERFECT for riding, so I had no excuse for slow times. You've probably heard me talk about my go-to loop that I like to do when I'm short on time, which is about 15.5 miles mainly along the river, and back home down Summit Ave. Well, I started off from school and went towards home to do "the loop" plus a few miles before and after. I knew it'd be around 20 miles of tempo riding. I even took splits as I rode past home on the way out and on the way back so I could compare the middle of this ride to my normal loop ride.

Well, with the good conditions, I nailed it. My tempo finished looking like this:

For mid-day, high-traffic, urban riding that included a Ramsey Hill climb, that's not bad!

And my "regular loop" pace averaged 20.18 mph, which is only the 2nd time that I got that above 20 mph! (My PR was set last September when I did it in 20.2 mph. Click that link to see a map of "the loop.")

I biked around for another 20 minutes as a CD before my final class of the day, and then I biked home EASILY (adding in a few more miles) later in the day. So my log for the day looks like this:

8 miles to class, 20 mile tempo, 5.75 mile CD right after the tempo,
and 4 miles home later that day. That's 38.55 miles on the day!

Yes, I thought about biking another 1.5 miles to make it 40 miles, but I had to get home to watch the boys before Pharmie had to go to a big meeting. And I realized I didn't NEED to make myself hit 40 miles for any reason. It was my biggest day of biking since this ride nearly 3 years ago (which was my first early morning ride - something I've been doing a lot of since then). That ride from 3 years ago and a group ride with my bros-in-law in 2010 were the last 2 times I hit 40 miles. (Actually, the ONLY 2 times I've been over 40 miles since I started keeping an online training log in Sept of 2009.) So 38 miles in a day was pretty great.

Then I spent the night with my 2 dudes as Mama was at a meeting:

p.s. In case you were wondering, my diarrhea finally let up around last Thursday. That made about 7 full days of crap. (I first posted about it last Monday and then gave an update in Thursday's post.) It was about 8 days before a normal BM. All is well now. Thanks for the flowers and cards.